House of Commons
Prayers
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Oral Answers to Questions
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
We ran a consultation between 20 December and 28 February on proposals to ban microbeads in cosmetics and personal care products. The consultation also sought evidence on the extent of the environmental impact of microplastics found in other products. We are now reviewing the responses to the consultation and any new evidence will be used to inform future UK actions to protect the marine environment.
Mr Hollobone
May I welcome the proposed ban as far as it goes? However, it appears that several products such as make-up and sun cream will be excluded. I therefore urge the Minister to adopt the Greenpeace definition of microbeads, which is,
“all solid water-insoluble microplastic ingredients of 5mm or less in any dimension used for any purpose.”
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Dr Coffey
The US ban has not yet come into force, but we will continue to monitor its progress and consider any learning from that approach. Our proposals so far are supported by evidence, which shows that rinse-off products can damage some marine environments. We have extended the consultation and issued a call for evidence on other matters.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
The Government’s progress on banning microbeads is welcome, but other forms of plastic are polluting our seas, including the 15 million plastic bottles that are thrown away every day. The Cornish-based charity, Surfers Against Sewage, has obtained 209,000 signatures to a petition that calls for a plastic bottle deposit-return scheme. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can advance that petition and make progress?
Dr Coffey
I would be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the matter. As I informed the House at the previous Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Question Time, we are looking at the issue in the context of the litter strategy. Let me take the opportunity to publicise this weekend’s Great British Spring Clean campaign, in which I am sure many hon. Members will be involved. I also want to advertise BBC Suffolk’s “don’t be a tosser” campaign. Frankly, we do not want people who toss litter about to flood our beaches with the plastic bottles that my hon. Friend mentions.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
A microbeads ban would be welcome, as would extending it to more products. However, as has been said, larger plastics that break down and become microplastics in the marine environment are the biggest problem. A deposit-return scheme would make a big difference. What is the Minister doing with the circular economy to try to get manufacturers to design out such products so that we do not have the problem of what to do with them in the first place?
Dr Coffey
The advance of plastic packaging reflected consumer desire for on-the-go, safe products that individuals can carry. I welcome instances of manufacturers introducing their own recycling schemes. When we were children, we perhaps got pocket money on some of the deposit-return schemes, but we now have kerbside recycling, which has successfully increased the amount of recycled plastics.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
The Minister has shown real leadership on the issue and I applaud the Government’s efforts so far. However, for us to make a genuine difference we need other countries to get on board. Will my hon. Friend say more about what she is doing to ensure that we work collaboratively across borders to tackle the problem?
Dr Coffey
My hon. Friend is right. I understand that the recent explosion of nurdles in the world’s oceans is due to the fact that several containers fell off a ship and the contents were dispersed. We are all stewards of the ocean and we therefore want to work with other countries and support efforts to ensure that our oceans are as clean as they can be.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
Having visited the nurdle hotspot at Kinneil, we clearly need to know much more to quantify their impact and presence in our seas in order to eliminate them. To date, the European Union has co-ordinated and funded much of the research by scientists in the UK under the marine strategy framework directive. Can the Minister give any certainty that those scientists will still have funding or opportunities for collaboration with European scientists after the UK leaves the EU?
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)
First, may I welcome the hon. Member for Workington (Sue Hayman) to her place? It is very good to see her on the Opposition Front Bench and I look forward to working with her.
Mr Speaker, may I convey the sincere apologies of my farming Minister, whose plane has been delayed? He sends his very sincere apologies and we will write to you shortly.
Since the referendum, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Ministers and officials have regularly met representatives from across the fishing industry. Fisheries will be a key area in negotiations. As a coastal state outside the EU, the UK will be responsible under international law for controlling UK waters and for the sustainable management of the fisheries within them.
Mr Carmichael
I have an instinctive sympathy for anybody who is delayed by planes. It is a big part of my life.
The Secretary of State will be aware that before we had the common fisheries policy we had the London convention of 1964, which governed the access of foreign vessels to the six to 12-mile-limit waters. Is it the Government’s intention to remain a party to that convention after we leave the European Union?
Andrea Leadsom
What I can say to the right hon. Gentleman is that I am very aware of the issues around the London convention. We are looking at it very closely and will be able to comment on it in the near future.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
There is no doubt that when we went into the EU back in the 1970s fishermen had a very poor deal on the amount of fish they could catch and on quotas. Is there not now a real opportunity to ensure we have better access to our waters and to larger quantities of fish, so that the industry can progress much further?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is right that leaving the EU presents enormous opportunities for UK fishers. We will seek to get the best possible deal in our negotiations.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The Secretary of State knows that our fish processing industry is more important to our economy than the catching sector, and that it is very dependent on imports. We export more than 80% of what we catch, so is not maintaining tariff-free and other barrier-free access to the single European market more important than sterile arguments about fishing rights that could result in battles or worse?
Andrea Leadsom
I disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. Our fishing communities around the UK provide a vital vibrancy to local communities and the rural economy, so I do not agree with the suggestion that processing is somehow far more important. We will seek the freest possible access to European markets, but when I was in China last year I signed a memorandum of understanding with the Chinese worth £50 million, which included UK seafood. It will be very important for us to be able to find new export markets.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Last Friday, I spoke at a seafood processing and fishing industry seminar in the Grimsby-Cleethorpes area. The industry recognises the opportunities of Brexit, but understandably it has some concerns. I welcome the Secretary of State’s reassurances to date, but can she give an absolute reassurance to the seafood processing sector that it will form a key part of the negotiations?
Andrea Leadsom
I had a very happy fish and chip lunch in Cleethorpes with my hon. Friend and I look forward to further such opportunities. He is right to point out that seafood processing is an absolutely vital part of our fishing sector. We are very much taking it into account in our negotiations on leaving the EU and in looking at opportunities around the world.
Mr Speaker
It is always a joy to learn about the culinary habits of the Secretary of State. We are most grateful for being provided with a little extra information.
Calum Kerr (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (SNP)
Despite the fact that we are eight months on from the referendum, at a recent meeting with Scottish Ministers the Secretary of State was unable to provide any information on what powers over the rural economy will flow to Scotland after Brexit. Has Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservative leader, let the cat out of the bag today in The Times? It looks like there will not only be a power grab, but a cash grab. When will the Secretary of State come clean and own up to what the Government plan to do with Scottish fishing and Scottish farming?
Andrea Leadsom
I think the hon. Gentleman will recognise that the UK market is incredibly valuable to all our fishing communities. It will continue to be very important. The Prime Minister has been very clear that no powers that are currently devolved will be, as he says, grabbed. They will continue to be devolved. What we are looking very carefully at is the best possible deal for all parts of the United Kingdom as we seek to negotiate Brexit.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
Mr Speaker, I apologise for being a little late. I was at the Gulfood exhibition in the Gulf and my plane was sadly stranded because of fog.
The Government want the UK to grow and sell more British food and drink. Through the introduction of a new plan for Government procurement, we have sought to enable Departments to source more local food, and recent successes include the Ministry of Justice implementing the plan in prisons. Last year, exports of food and drink increased by 9% to £20 billion.
Jeremy Quin
West Sussex is home to our finest food and drink, including the superb Sussex Charmer, produced by our exceptional Rudgwick cheesemakers. What further opportunities does the Minister foresee to promote high-quality, well-branded food of local provenance?
George Eustice
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. The quality heritage of our local food, such as Sussex Charmer and all the great wines produced in the South Downs, is second to none. That is why we have set up the great British food unit—to promote our food at home and abroad. It is also why I have just returned—late, sadly—from Gulfood, the world’s largest annual trade fair.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I remind the Minister that we do not want food at any price. As we have heard this morning, another seven species are in danger in our country because of intensive farming. When will we have good, productive, sustainable farming and start importing less?
George Eustice
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. As we design domestic agriculture policy after leaving the EU, we will be looking to ensure we have sustainable farming, so that we get the benefits of farming sustainably, while improving productivity.
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. Wight Marque celebrates the Isle of Wight’s brilliant range of food, from locally produced milk to a vast array of fruit and veg. It is a great example of how a little public money and the support of partners can really celebrate the provenance of our local food.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Farmers are facing a critical shortage of seasonal labour, and some are afraid that our food will rot in the ground this year. The Government have been asked to reverse their decision to scrap the seasonal agricultural workers scheme, and Ministers say that they are reviewing the issue, but can a decision please be made as a matter of urgency?
George Eustice
While we remain members of the EU, we still have free movement, and fruit farms and farmers can still source their labour from countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. We are aware that some have raised concerns about agricultural labour after we leave the EU, and we are listening carefully to their representations.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend share the view expressed by the Conservative Animal Welfare Foundation that leaving the EU can both help farmers increase their share of domestic products and improve animal welfare by preventing the import of goods produced under circumstances not permitted in the UK?
George Eustice
As my hon. Friend is aware, the Government have a manifesto commitment to place a stronger recognition of animal welfare issues in the design of future agriculture policy and to promote higher standards of animal welfare in international trade deals. We intend to implement those manifesto commitments.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
Yesterday during a session of the Scottish Affairs Committee, we heard evidence from Gary Mitchell of National Farmers Union Scotland, and two things were made very clear: access to migrant labour for seasonal work is essential for our agriculture sector and the Government are yet to the respond to the representations made by NFU Scotland over these concerns. Will the Minister commit to looking into this and providing an urgent clarification to the agriculture industry on where they stand on migrant labour?
George Eustice
I have regular meetings with NFU Scotland. Earlier this year, we had a meeting and engaged on a wide range of issues pertinent to future agriculture policy in Scotland, including labour.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
There is a lot of interest in seasonal agricultural labour at the moment. DEFRA Ministers engage regularly with ministerial colleagues at the Home Office and other Departments to discuss the issue of migrant labour in the agriculture sector after we leave the EU. We are aware that the availability of labour is a concern for some sectors of the industry. However, leaving the EU and establishing controlled migration does not mean closing off all immigration; it simply means that we will be able to identify where we have needs and put in place suitable arrangements.
Helen Whately
Growers in my constituency are worried about fruit going unpicked not only after we leave the EU, but this year. Can my hon. Friend assure me that he will continue to press the Home Office on this issue, and not only on seasonal agricultural workers after we leave the EU, but between now and then?
George Eustice
As my hon. Friend may know, I spent 10 years working in the soft fruit industry; indeed, I will know many of the strawberry farmers she represents. I am also aware that the Secretary of State has taken up a kind offer from my hon. Friend to visit and meet some of the farmers there to discuss their concerns. As somebody who ran a soft fruit enterprise employing several hundred people, I can tell my hon. Friend that I do understand the challenges the industry faces.
Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
But there is an immediate problem in that many of the fruit farmers in my constituency have already entered into contracts for migrant labour for this coming fruit-picking season. They have been concerned about some reports last week that the Government are considering restricting free movement or introducing work permits when article 50 is triggered. Can the Minister confirm whether that is happening, or give them an assurance that it will not happen and they can fulfil the contracts they have already entered into?
George Eustice
The point that we have been making to the industry when we have met it is that while we remain members of the EU—that is, until we leave, not until we trigger article 50—free movement remains. The feedback I am getting is that most farmers are able to source the labour they need from countries such as Bulgaria and Romania. We will give the industry plenty of notice of what arrangements we intend to put in place after we leave the EU.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)
At the recent National Farmers Union conference, I set out five principles that will support a prosperous future farming industry: trade, productivity, sustainability, trust and resilience. We are now in the process of a broad consultation ranging right across farmers, food producers and non-governmental organisations to hear their views as we build a policy that will achieve our twin ambitions of having a thriving farming sector and an environment that is in a better state than we found it in.
Michael Fabricant
Like my right hon. Friend, I meet farmers regularly—mainly through Staffordshire and Lichfield NFU—and they are actually very positive about Brexit and see the opportunities. But I know we export about £20 billion-worth a year overseas and into Europe, so what efforts is my right hon. Friend taking to ensure that we continue to have access after Brexit?
Andrea Leadsom
We are working very hard right across Government to make sure that we get the best possible deal on market access for our agri-food sector when we leave the EU. There are huge global opportunities for Staffordshire farmers and food producers, and later today I will visit Harper Adams University in neighbouring Shropshire and the chamber of agriculture to hear from the next generation, as well as current farmers, about how we can seize those opportunities.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
Our constitutional arrangements today are very different from those in 1972. What assurances can the Secretary of State give that after our exit from the EU the agriculture rules that are currently set in Brussels will not be exclusively set by the UK Government, but will instead be set by the devolved Administrations with the closest knowledge of the local farming industries?
Andrea Leadsom
In the great repeal Bill we will be bringing all the acquis communautaire into UK law. We in the United Kingdom will then be in a position to look at what works best for the UK. I can tell the hon. Gentleman that I am working very closely with our colleagues in the devolved Administrations to make sure that we get the best possible deal that works for all parts of the United Kingdom, and I will continue to do so.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right. The complexity and bureaucracy associated with the CAP cost the industry £5 million a year and 300,000 man hours, so reducing burdens will help our farmers to grow more, sell more and export more of our great British food.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
The strength of the farming sector will depend on whether it has an adequate supply of labour. Earlier the Minister of State suggested that there was not yet a problem here, but we know that workers from the European Union are already reluctant to come to the UK to work, so when is the Secretary of State going to make it clear that we are going to have a seasonal agricultural workers scheme? What is the timeline?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Lady is not correct when she says that people are reluctant to come here. In fact, the Office for National Statistics figures for last year show that there were more migrant workers coming from the EU than ever before, so that is just not true. As my hon. Friend the Minister of State has pointed out, free movement will continue until the point at which we leave the EU. We are working closely with the Home Office to assess, understand and put in place good systems to ensure that we continue to thrive in this important sector.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
Andrea Leadsom
I agree with my hon. Friend. The three crop rule is exactly the sort of measure we should change once we have left the EU. Of course, we want farmers to manage sustainable rotations, to optimise yields and to protect soil, but we can do that without forcing them to grow a specific number of crops on a specific acreage of land.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The National Farmers Union warned last week that the Government’s lack of clarity risked stifling the farming industry. This week, it was reported that the price of agricultural land fell by 7% in the past year due to the uncertainty of Brexit. The absence of any Government planning is plunging farming into a grave state. When will the Government give clarity and a long-term commitment to the farming industry on access to the single market, access to a seasonal workforce and a new long-term agricultural policy?
Andrea Leadsom
The Prime Minister has made it clear that our ambition is to have an all-encompassing free trade agreement with the European Union and to retain free and fair access to the European single market. As we have already discussed, we are looking closely at the need for a workforce now and in the future, and we are looking carefully at what more we can do around the world to make a huge success of leaving the European Union.
Dame Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
We recognise the important role that forestry plays in the United Kingdom as a carbon sink. In 2015, forestry contributed an annual emissions reduction of 17.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to our carbon reduction targets.
Dame Caroline Spelman
During last week’s Storm Doris, many trees were felled by the force of nature, and we could see that many of them were diseased. What is the Department doing to ensure that threats to tree health are factored into the carbon reduction strategy?
Dr Coffey
The Government take tree health extremely seriously. That is why we promote biosecurity internationally, at UK borders and inland to ensure that pest and disease risks are effectively managed, so that we can continue to actively manage our woodlands and forests and contribute to the carbon reduction targets.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
As well as helping to meet the Government’s carbon target, the planting of trees has a wide range of environmental benefits. Does the Minister think that the Department’s plans are ambitious enough to reap the benefits that trees and woodland undoubtedly bring?
Dr Coffey
I do think that they are sufficiently ambitious. We are absolutely confident that we will hit our target of planting 11 million new trees during the lifetime of this Parliament. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will speak to his former right hon. Friend the Mayor of London to ensure that he plants the 2 million trees that he pledged to plant, before he was elected.
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
The Minister will be aware of the outbreak of sweet chestnut blight near Exeter. I welcome the first national survey of historical woodland, but what more can be done in the short term to prevent the importation of the devastating diseases that are spread by the international plant trade while doing nothing to discourage tree planting and woodland creation?
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
The main drivers of changes in food prices are energy costs and exchange rates, and those forces affect all countries, whether or not they are members of the EU. In 2008, there was a steep spike in food prices, which continued to rise until 2014. Since 2014, food prices have fallen by 6%. Despite the depreciation of sterling last summer, retail food prices have remained relatively stable, with an overall fall during 2016 of 0.5%.
Alex Cunningham
Large numbers of people in my constituency are in work, but they are still in poverty. They are feeling the effects of increases in food prices over recent months. Given that they are so dependent on cheaper EU food products, what will the Minister do to protect them in the longer term?
George Eustice
As I said, the facts do not bear out what the hon. Gentleman says. Food prices have fallen by 0.5% over the past year and by 6% since 2014. We monitor the situation closely. The annual living costs and food survey closely measures the poorest households in particular and how much they spend on food, and the situation has remained remarkably stable over the past decade.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
The paradox is that we starve the poor by refusing to buy food from them. Will the Minister bear that in mind when we escape from the common external tariff?
George Eustice
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. We have some preferential trade agreements in place with some developing countries, particularly to buy sugar from the Caribbean. We want to maintain and secure such arrangements so that we can support developing countries.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
The Minister talks about food prices falling, but supermarkets are warning of the potential for food prices to rise significantly this year, which will have a huge effect on every household in the country. Nearly half our food is imported and prices are already starting to rise for the first time in three years owing to the weak pound and inflation. What exactly are the Government doing to help with rising prices in people’s weekly food shop?
George Eustice
As I said earlier, we closely monitor the amount of money that people spend on food, which has remained remarkably stable at around 16.5% for the past decade. We continue to keep the issue under review. I simply point out to Labour Members that the greatest spike in food prices took place in 2008 on Labour’s watch. Food prices have been falling since 2014.
Sue Hayman
The Minister talks about monitoring, but it was recently revealed that research to inform agricultural and environmental policy once the UK leaves the European Union has not even been commissioned by the Department. The Minister’s warm words are all very well, but the agricultural sector desperately needs long-term clarity and the Government are failing to deliver it. Will the Minister tell us how the Government can have any real understanding of the current situation without adequate research being in place?
George Eustice
I simply say to the hon. Lady that the Department is doing a vast amount of analysis and research to inform future policy. We received a specific parliamentary question about whether we have commissioned direct scientific research on the effects of leaving the European Union, and she is right that we have not, but we do not need to. All our environmental policies are regularly evaluated for their strengths and weaknesses.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are behind time. May I gently hint to colleagues that there are opportunities for others lower down the Order Paper to come in on Mr Carswell’s question if they wish?
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
There is already a degree of self-management of the fishing regime by producer organisations in the fishing industry through our system of trading quotas and markets in both the leasing and exchanging of quotas among producer organisations. However, leaving the EU does create the opportunity to consider how we manage our fisheries and to look at the approach taken by other countries.
Mr Carswell
Leaving the EU is a wonderful opportunity to rethink public policy. What are the Minister’s thoughts on ensuring better terms for UK fishermen and better access to our exclusive economic zone?
George Eustice
As the hon. Gentleman will know, I have consistently made it clear that leaving the EU means that we will take back control of our exclusive economic zone—the area out to 200 nautical miles or the median line—and that will allow us to look afresh at mutual access agreements and shares of the total allowable catch in shared waters.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Mr Speaker
I was hoping that there would be some linkage between hedge cutting and fishing previously unknown not only to the Chair but to humankind, but we will have to leave that for another occasion.
George Eustice
They have in common the fact that they are policies that originate in the EU. Leaving the EU obviously gives us an opportunity to review some of those things, but we already have a derogation so that farmers who grow winter crops are able to trim their hedges a little earlier. Certain species are very vulnerable—particularly the yellowhammer, which breeds late—and we want to protect them.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
George Eustice
I reassure Scottish National party Members that I regularly promote Scottish salmon, most recently in the Gulf this week. Scottish salmon is one of our major exports, alongside Scottish whisky, and we champion it at every opportunity.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
George Eustice
I specifically discussed proposals along those lines with NFU Scotland at the beginning of this year. A consensus is emerging that there needs to be some kind of UK framework, within which we obviously want to ensure that the devolved Administrations can pursue the policies that are right for them. We will work closely with all the devolved Administrations to ensure that, after we leave the European Union, policy works for Scotland and other parts of the UK.
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
George Eustice
I do not accept what the hon. Lady says. The truth is that we have guaranteed payments up until 2020. We have ensured that the budget is still there, and we have made it clear that, well in advance of that date, we will be able to give farmers throughout the UK a very clear picture of what future support arrangements will look like.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Andrea Leadsom)
I will update the House on the delivery of the basic payment scheme. As of today, 95.5% of eligible farmers have received their payment, which is good progress but there is still more to be done. Last week I secured agreement from the Treasury that a 75% bridging payment will be available to any farmer with an outstanding claim at the end of March. The window for 2017 applications opened yesterday.
Dan Jarvis
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. In response to my earlier question, the Under-Secretary mentioned our former colleague, the Mayor of London. Will the Secretary of State pay tribute to his work on tackling poor air quality? Will she say whether it is her policy to retain the existing provisions of the air quality regulations in UK law after the UK leaves the European Union?
Andrea Leadsom
It is absolutely the case that we will keep all regulations when we leave the EU so that regulations look the same the day after we leave as they did the day before. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are looking very carefully at the whole issue of air quality. We have spent more than £2 billion since 2010 on ultra-low emission vehicles and on trying to reduce the impact of poor air quality. There is more to be done, and we are looking closely at that.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Andrea Leadsom
We are determined to hold this terrible disease at bay for the sake of our entire poultry sector, and our robust actions so far have included an amended avian influenza prevention zone from 28 February, which covers all of England and requires mandatory biosecurity for all keepers and the compulsory housing or netting of poultry and captive birds in defined higher-risk areas. That is very important for the entire sector.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
Further to what the Secretary of State just said, she must be aware that English poultry producers are concerned about the prospect of losing free-range status because of the postcode lottery of the bird flu restriction system. The British Free Range Egg Producers Association is particularly concerned about the inconsistent approach. What more can she say to assure egg producers throughout the UK that the right measures are being taken to sort out this whole sad issue?
Andrea Leadsom
Colleagues will be aware that there was a full housing order until 28 February. With extensive scientific advice, we have gleaned that those places where wild fowl congregate are high-risk areas. That has been extensively peer reviewed on the basis of scientific evidence, which is why we have published a paper to outline the rationale. This has absolutely not just come out of our own heads; in no way whatsoever are we doing anything other than protecting this vital sector.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
My hon. Friend makes an important point about an issue I championed while I was responsible for this part of the portfolio. The Government have recently published proposals for improving the laws on the breeding and selling of dogs, among which are proposals that anyone breeding and selling three litters in a 12-month period will need a licence and that no puppies will be sold under the age of eight weeks.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)
Traditionally, councils were given grants for their flooding responsibilities through the rate support grant. I visited the centre near Jaywick and saw the excellent work that was being done by the council and by many voluntary services, as well as by our emergency service response. I am sure that councils will continue to work, to reflect on what happened, and to monitor whether their schemes continue to be appropriate.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
The Prime Minister recently laid out plans to invest £4.7 billion in innovation by 2021. Will the Minister please explain how the food and farming communities of rural West Oxfordshire can look forward to benefiting from such measures?
George Eustice
As my hon. Friend will know, we already have in place an agri-tech strategy worth £160 million, which has supported more than 100 different projects to support science and technology transfer in food and farming. In addition, we have food information networks to try to create clusters of innovation in the food sector.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Dr Thérèse Coffey
We take the marine environment very seriously, which is why we said in our manifesto that we would extend the blue belt, and that is what we have done, not only around this country’s shoreline but around those of our overseas territories. I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to play a leading role through OSPAR, as well as through our role on the Council of Europe and the related Bern convention.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The BBC drama “Resistance” airs tomorrow on Radio 4 and portrays a dystopian future without effective antibiotics, and antibiotic resistance is also the subject of a Westminster Hall debate I have secured for next week. Does the Secretary of State agree that although we are world leaders in work on antibiotic resistance both in health services and in agriculture, the fact that we have recently licensed three new colistin products, which are the last line of defence, shows that there is more we can do?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend will be aware that the UK has taken a leading role in the work on antibiotic resistance, which we have pushed on to the agenda of the OECD, the G7 and the G20. We can adopt processes to reduce our reliance on antibiotics—for example, through the acidification of water in the pig sector. We can always do better, but some of these critical antibiotics have a role in agriculture, too.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Dr Thérèse Coffey
We take the preservation and the use of water very seriously. The opening up of the market for small and medium-sized enterprises and businesses is a good advance, but I am looking at those other matters carefully.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
On the day after St David’s day, will my right hon. Friend reassure Welsh farmers that Welsh lamb and not New Zealand lamb will be at the forefront of her mind when negotiating an EU exit?
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend, like me and lots of other colleagues from across the House, enjoyed that lovely reception at Downing Street and the fabulous Welsh singing. I can absolutely assure him that we will keep Welsh lamb farmers at the heart of any negotiations on free trade agreements.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Andrea Leadsom
It was a private meeting. In fact, the agreement was that we would not talk openly about the level of discussions. I found our meeting helpful. We made some progress and got a clear way forward. Such discussions need to take place, and I look forward to more of them in the future.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
Has the Secretary of State seen the very positive statement from Associated British Foods, which runs British Sugar, the iconic sugar beet and sugar factory in Newark, saying that it expects that, post-Brexit, the ability to design our own system without EU quotas will lead to up to a 50% increase in its profits and sales, which is good news for farmers and consumers?
George Eustice
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Associated British Foods is one of the great British-owned food companies. It is a world leader in sugar and it has driven competitiveness and investment in the industry. I believe that the sugar industry in this country has a great future.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Since 2010, the budget of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been cut by 57%, which means that the Department is struggling to get out plans such as the 25-year farming plan. What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Treasury to protect the budget from the 6% cut expected next week?
Andrea Leadsom
My Department is indeed involved in a transformation project, which will take out costs, but it will also deliver better and more focused frontline customer service. I am very optimistic about that, and we are looking very carefully at the further efficiency savings that are needed.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise to the House. The House is very hungry today, but, as is so often the case, demand exceeds supply, and it is not possible to satisfy the appetite of all colleagues. We must now move on to questions to the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), representing the Church Commissioners, and to the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), whom we welcome to her responsibilities as representative of the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission, and the Chairman of the Public Accounts Commission.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Dame Caroline Spelman)
I would certainly like to welcome the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) to her position and I look forward to working with her at these question sessions.
There has been a lot of interest from colleagues in this question of how to provide the internet to parts of the country that currently have poor provision. Churches play an important role in supporting community infrastructure, and the Diocese of Norwich has led the way. Since 2011, it has been the majority shareholder in WiSpire, which provides wi-fi internet signal boosters to churches across the diocese. We are in early discussions to expand that provision into the St Edmundsbury and Ipswich and Ely dioceses.
Andrew Stephenson
May I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer? Can she explain how the Church is engaging with communities that live in particularly rural and sparsely populated areas to enable them to receive high-speed broadband?
Dame Caroline Spelman
Obviously, the topography of Lancashire is challenging, so I am very sympathetic to my hon. Friend’s case. In fact, I went to see an example of a wi-fi booster signal, and as long as there is a line of sight between a church tower and another church tower, or a high building, it is possible to provide internet coverage in remote rural areas that currently have no signal. I encourage him to speak to the Bishop of Carlisle and I will give every support in his endeavour to ensure that his constituents are not digitally divided.
Chris Davies
Right across the country, church buildings are central to strong local communities. Will my right hon. Friend explain whether it has been possible to provide wi-fi and broadband in listed churches and chapels to help those buildings to remain sustainable well into the future?
Dame Caroline Spelman
I am grateful for that question, because there is a commonly held myth that it is not possible to amend ancient and listed buildings in these ways, but as my hon. Friend will have seen from the success in Norwich diocese, there is no fundamental barrier to putting a wi-fi booster set or a mobile phone booster on the top of a church tower or spire. That is why the Government have welcomed the partnership with the Church of England to try to reach our notspots.
Daniel Kawczynski
Will my right hon. Friend outline what work the Church is undertaking to assess the potential scale of this project, and how Members can identify buildings in notspot areas that could be used for wireless transmitters?
Dame Caroline Spelman
Yes; my hon. Friend is right. I am sure that he would like the Church in Shrewsbury to be actively involved in this. The absolute key to this is knowing where the notspots are. I met the Minister for Digital and Culture, as I think many colleagues in the House did, who has an enormous spreadsheet that shows where the gaps are, and that is now being matched to what the Church can provide. We have offered to help to create a property asset register, so that this matching process can take place, and I hope it will benefit my hon. Friend’s constituency.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
Dame Caroline Spelman
Chester cathedral already has a very strong reputation for the provision of excellent services to its visitors and its local community. Indeed, for over 1,000 years, the Church has been a patron of the arts. Churches and cathedrals provide an excellent venue for exhibitions; I am convinced that the cathedral in Chester is a very good venue for them.
Christian Matheson
I am most grateful to the right hon. Lady for the support that she has given in the past to Chester cathedral’s efforts to increase visitor numbers and therefore, hopefully, to increase worship numbers as well. Does she share my dismay, however, that Arts Council England has declined to support Chester’s bid for support for the major sculpture exhibition that it is hosting this year—the largest in the north of England? Might the Church Commissioners indicate to Arts Council England their support for the cathedral?
Dame Caroline Spelman
Cathedral attendance is rising, in no small part because of the quality of the services that are offered. People enjoy going to cathedrals for exhibitions. The Church of England fully supports Chester’s ambition to hold a similarly significant exhibition. My understanding is that the funding for this is on a rolling programme, so I really encourage the cathedral to apply again, and of course we will provide our support.
Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)
It is often new churches that are best configured for a variety of uses. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Richard Coldicott, the incumbent, and the congregation of St Mark’s, Holbrook, in my constituency, on its consecration last week as a brand-new parish church?
Dame Caroline Spelman
It gives me great pleasure to congratulate the congregation of St Mark’s on having the vision to create a new church. In fact, the Church of England is opening as many new churches, typically in new developments, as it is closing old ones. Of course a new facility like that is a wonderful venue for the arts and for exhibitions such as those that we are discussing.
Mr Speaker
I hope the Hansard text of the right hon. Lady’s reply to the hon. Gentleman will be posted on the church door. That would seem only fitting.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the right hon. Lady also bear in mind not only exhibitions, but new music? Will she look at a work performed at Peterborough cathedral only a few days ago, “Even You Song”, with a wonderful new libretto by someone called Dr Lucy Sheerman?
Dame Caroline Spelman
I am very impressed to hear about that. When one looks through the list of the exhibitions that are being held in cathedrals up and down the country, one cannot fail to be impressed by the range and depth. May I commend to hon. Members an exhibition about refugees at Southwark cathedral, a mere short step from the House, should they require some respite from the labours of the House and its debates? This is a very current topic, and I commend it to the House.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Many parish churches in the borough of Kettering, particularly in rural villages, are opened up for a variety of community activities, including art exhibitions. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is an excellent way of getting people into churches who might otherwise never cross the threshold?
Dame Caroline Spelman
My hon. Friend is completely right. The sheer scale of these beautiful buildings creates a backdrop for the presentation of art and the display of sculpture. We have some really interesting and famous examples of sculpture in our cathedrals, including works by Gormley, and indeed Tracey Emin has a piece in Liverpool cathedral. I encourage all Members to encourage their constituents to visit their churches and cathedrals not just for worship, but for the beauty of the art presented within them.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough)
The NAO audits the financial statements of the Department for International Development annually, and it issued an unqualified opinion on the Department’s accounts for 2015-16. The NAO also produces a number of reports each year on different aspects of DFID’s expenditure. It last reported specifically on official development assistance in 2015. Its January 2015 report, “Managing the Official Development Assistance target”, looked at DFID’s management of its increased budget and at the target to spend 0.7% of the UK’s gross national income on overseas aid.
Martin Vickers
I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. He will be aware that our constituents in Lincolnshire have growing concerns about the aid budget. They will be reassured that the NAO is looking closely at it. Can he commit the NAO to looking much more robustly at many of the aid projects, which are of growing concern to our constituents?
Sir Edward Leigh
I can assure my hon. Friend that the NAO will indeed look robustly at all aspects of DFID’s expenditure. For instance, its reports on the CDC and on St Helena both identified challenges for DFID in overseeing expenditure outside its core area of expertise. The Public Accounts Committee’s report on St Helena concluded:
“Thus far, the Department has unquestionably failed the residents of St Helena and the British taxpayer.”
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Under the Government’s new aid strategy, an increasing proportion of the 0.7% is being spent by Departments other than DFID—it is estimated that the proportion will be 30% by 2019. Will the NAO also look at how that money is spent and address concerns that it is being siphoned off, undermining DFID’s core objectives?
Sir Edward Leigh
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that an increasing proportion of the aid budget will be spent by other Departments. That is clearly a challenge for audit, but one that the NAO is capable of undertaking, because DFID remains responsible for reporting to the OECD on official development assistance spending and for reporting to Parliament on the Government’s performance against the 0.7% target. I can reassure her that the NAO is scrutinising that expenditure extremely carefully.
Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South)
The Electoral Commission has recommended that an accessible proof of identity scheme should be developed and implemented for polling stations across Great Britain. However, the commission has also recognised the potential implications for electors who do not have access to the prescribed identification documents and costed options for introducing identification requirements.
Julie Elliott
I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. What steps is the Electoral Commission taking to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable in society are not disproportionately affected by the requirement to show ID at polling stations?
Bridget Phillipson
My hon. Friend is right to raise that concern, because some groups will be less likely than the general population to hold certain forms of photo ID. The commission estimates that approximately 3.5 million electors in Great Britain are without suitable ID and would therefore need to obtain an alternative form of identification. It is for that reason that the commission has recommended that electors in that position should be able to apply for identification free of charge, as they can in Northern Ireland.
Mr Speaker
In welcoming again the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) to her new responsibilities, I hope that I can, on behalf of the whole House, very warmly thank the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who undertook these important responsibilities for several years, and who in fact served on the Speaker’s Committee on the Electoral Commission from October 2006 onwards. He has discharged his obligations extremely competently and efficiently in the interests of the House, and we know that the hon. Lady will certainly follow in his footsteps by doing so as well.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
As part of this assessment, what consideration is being given to international best practice from around the world?
Bridget Phillipson
The Electoral Commission will consider all evidence, and I will relay the hon. Gentleman’s comments to it. It is clear that recent public opinion shows that 82% believe that voting at polling stations is safe. That will be kept under review. It will be for the Government to make recommendations to the Electoral Commission about how that can be improved.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
My hon. Friend correctly identified the 3.5 million people who do not have the photographic ID required. Does she agree that the Government are completely short-sighted by ruling out a voluntary voter card scheme that would assist those very people?
Bridget Phillipson
The Electoral Commission has been clear that an identification scheme along the lines of that in Northern Ireland would be the best option. I will relay my hon. Friend’s concerns to it, and I am happy to arrange for him to meet the Electoral Commission to make those points more clearly.
Mrs Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Dame Caroline Spelman)
The Church of England is responding to the crisis in South Sudan with prayer and practical action. The Church of the Province of South Sudan has 5 million members and is spread across 43 dioceses, so there is an opportunity to provide aid right to the frontline through the Church network.
Mrs Villiers
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Church, which is flourishing in South Sudan, can play a really valuable role in helping to distribute aid and support to all those affected by the famine there?
Dame Caroline Spelman
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. In International Development questions, I asked the Secretary of State to acknowledge the opportunity to distribute aid through the Church network. We should not forget the work of Christian Aid in South Sudan, which is providing direct unconditional grants, equivalent to $93, to families who have lost everything so that they can rebuild their lives.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Dame Caroline Spelman
The majority of members of the General Synod voted to take note of the report of the House of Bishops, but the motion did not pass because a small majority was against it in the House of Clergy. Following that, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued a statement committing them to find a way forward.
Mr Bradshaw
Was it not very significant that it was the clergy, who are in the frontline of providing pastoral care to their parishioners, who voted down the bishops’ paper? Is it not increasingly untenable for our Church, which enjoys significant privileges in this country because of its established status, to continue to discriminate against its own members simply because they happen to be gay?
Dame Caroline Spelman
There was a narrow margin in the House of Clergy vote—93 in favour of taking note to 100 against—but a majority is required in all Houses. The way forward, as outlined by the archbishops, is that the pastoral oversight group led by the Bishop of Newcastle, the Rev. Christine Hardman, will now work on how to be as generous as possible to welcome all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex people into the Church and to include them in the work of the pastoral oversight group.
Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)
My right hon. Friend may be aware of the case of my constituent, Canon Jeremy Pemberton, who was found not to have been discriminated against on the grounds of sexuality when the Diocese of Southwell denied him permission to officiate in the light of him having had a gay marriage, despite the fact that neighbouring diocese would allow him to officiate. Does my right hon. Friend accept that allowing each bishop discretion in how to handle these, admittedly, complex issues is creating unfairness and variances that are quite hard to justify?
Dame Caroline Spelman
It is hard to comment on the specific case. It has come before the House previously, but it is a legal process, which we normally do not comment on, although it has now reached its conclusion. My hon. Friend may not be aware that the Ecclesiastical Committee actually met and was content with changes to the law with regard to the need to protect children and the powers and discretion that bishops have. Changes have taken place and more need to happen.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
But discretion is not always good in the Church, is it? Jeffrey John, the Dean of St Albans, has been barred from becoming a bishop in the Church in Wales, which I know is separate from the Church of England, because the other bishops have refused to do what they have done in every other case—accept what the members of the local diocese have wanted.
Dame Caroline Spelman
I am not responsible for the Church of Wales—[Interruption]—because I am responsible for the Church of England. However, I appreciate the point the hon. Gentleman is trying to make. This is a really serious matter, and we should heed what the Archbishop of Canterbury, as the head of the Anglican communion, said about the need to have radical Christian inclusivity. The Church of England is working within the current legal and doctrinal context towards a culture change that is inclusive.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South)
The Electoral Commission’s report on the administration of the EU membership referendum, which was published in September 2016, concluded that, overall, the rules on campaigning worked well. The commission has, however, made a number of recommendations based on the experiences in the referendum, which are intended to further improve transparency and the overall effectiveness of the referendum controls. These are now matters for the Government to consider, and the commission looks forward to receiving their response in due course.
Mr Nuttall
I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for that reply. Given that lead campaigners and several of the campaign groups on both sides of the debate now face investigation regarding their spending, does she agree that that suggests there may be a need for the rules to be made simpler for participants to understand?
Bridget Phillipson
The commission announced last Friday that it has opened a number of assessments and investigations into the accuracy and completeness of campaigners’ spending returns. It would not be appropriate to comment at this stage on ongoing cases, but the commission will announce the outcomes when it has concluded its investigations.
Petition
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Government’s consultation paper (Early Years Funding: changes to funding for 3 and 4 year olds 11 August 2016) outlined proposals that will leave nursery schools financially nonviable, forcing them to close; notes that this funding will not cover basic costs, let alone staffing with qualified teachers; and further notes that state nursery schools have very good outcomes with regard to closing the achievement gap and supporting children with special needs, and that state nursery schools are legally required to employ highly-qualified teaching staff, who are proven to give young children the best opportunities for academic achievement and enabling social mobility.
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge the Government to recognise the school status of state nursery schools and fund them accordingly.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002022]
A petition in similar terms has been signed by 304 people.
Business of the House
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
Just before we come to the business question, I remind the House that, on Monday, I did indicate that there would be an opportunity for hon. and right hon. Members to pay their own tributes to the former Father of the House—that parliamentary giant, Sir Gerald Kaufman. That opportunity for Members comes today, in the course of business questions. Therefore, I will exercise some latitude in terms of the normal length of questions if colleagues wish to express their own personal and heartfelt tributes. I look forward to hearing what colleagues have to say about a very, very remarkable man.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Will the Leader of the House please give us the forthcoming business?
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)
Mr Speaker, as you said, this is the first business questions since the death of the Father of the House. There is this sense with Gerald Kaufman’s passing of another link being broken with a former political age. His first general election contest was in 1955, when he stood against Harold Macmillan himself in the Bromley constituency—I think without too much expectation of a shock victory on that occasion. Then, of course, he represented successive Manchester constituencies for many years.
This was a man who also served in No. 10 under Harold Wilson and who carried the memories of working alongside him and debating against—in those days through the columns of the press and in his speech-writing capacity, rather than as a Member of the House—his opponents in my party. He went on to serve as a Minister and, for many years, as a senior member of the shadow Cabinet during the Labour party’s years in opposition.
I can certainly say from experience that Gerald’s book “How to be a Minister” is still worth reading—[Interruption.] I suspect that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) is looking for ways in which to publicise a second edition sometime soon. I do recall from my reading of Gerald’s book the importance he gave to getting control of your diary and private office at the earliest possible date, and also his sage warning to Ministers to avoid, so far as they could, their numerous invitations to speak at banquets and formal dinners, which inevitably ended with the host denouncing the guest of honour in the most strident possible terms.
Gerald was perhaps most in his element as the Chair of first the Select Committee on National Heritage, and then the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport. Even those of us who did not share Gerald’s politics knew that he was a man who was passionately committed not only to his own political party and tradition, but to the importance of the arts and cultural values as something that mattered to people in all walks of life in all parts of the United Kingdom. While his interests and enthusiasm in the field of the arts ranged widely, it was perhaps cinema for which he had a particular affection. I do just wonder what we have missed in not being able to hear his comments on the Oscars debacle that took place earlier this week. I suspect that they would have been fairly forceful and waspish in tone.
We mourn Sir Gerald’s passing and we shall miss him in this House. I am sure that everyone, on whichever side of the House they sit, would want to send their sympathy to his family and friends.
The business for next week will be as follows:
Monday 6 March—Second Reading of the Vehicle Technology and Aviation Bill.
Tuesday 7 March—Remaining stages of the Children and Social Work Bill [Lords], followed by a motion relating to the appointment of the chairman of the UK Statistics Authority, followed by a motion relating to Standing Orders.
Wednesday 8 March—My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer will deliver his Budget statement.
Thursday 9 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Friday 10 March—The House will not be sitting.
The provisional business for the week commencing 13 March will include:
Monday 13 March—Continuation of the Budget debate.
Tuesday 14 March—Conclusion of the Budget debate.
I should also like to inform the House that the business in Westminster Hall for 6, 9, 13 and 16 March will be:
Monday 6 March—Debate on an e-petition relating to high heels and workplace dress codes.
Thursday 9 March—Debate on the second report of the Scottish Affairs Committee on the demography of Scotland and the implications for devolution, followed by a debate on human rights and political situation in Turkey.
Monday 13 March—Debate on an e-petition relating to sentencing for child abuse offences.
Thursday 16 March—Debate on the sixth report of the Transport Committee, “The future of rail: Improving the rail passenger experience”, followed by a debate on Jobcentre Plus office closures.
Colleagues will also wish to know that subject to the progress of business—I stress that point—the House will rise for the summer recess at close of play on Thursday 20 July and return on Tuesday 5 September.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the business.
With your permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to spend some time talking about and paying tribute to one of our great parliamentarians and the Father of the House, Sir Gerald Kaufman, who died at the weekend. You paid a brilliant tribute on Monday. His family described his death as the end of an era; it is for us here in Parliament, too.
As the Leader of the House said, Sir Gerald’s great loves were ice cream and films. Apparently he went to see “Singin’ in the Rain” 20 times in all the cinemas in Leeds when it first came out. He worked on “That Was the Week That Was”, the forerunner of “Saturday Night Live”, with the great broadcaster Alasdair Milne, the future director-general of the BBC. He was fearless in his support for justice internationally and for his constituents. His majority at the last election was 24,000, and that was down to his popularity and his care for his constituents. Today—World Book Day—he is remembered for his iconic book “How to be a Minister”. Before I came into this place—before I met Sir Gerald—I bought that book as a present for my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) when he first became a Minister in the Blair Government. Many hon. Members here, as well as former Members who are now in the other place, have told me how they used that book as their bible.
We have some lovely anecdotes. The Clerk of the House reminded me that on your re-election, Mr Speaker, Sir Gerald was quite keen to get the whole process right, and he proceeded with avuncular dignity. I remember the day; it went off absolutely beautifully and you were re-elected. He loved marmalade, so on a Select Committee trip to the Isle of Mull, to cheer him up on his birthday—it was one of the big numbers—he was made orange marmalade ice cream. On a Committee visit to Rome, some Members had not been there before, so before he went to the ambassador’s dinner, he took them to the Trevi fountain and, of course, to have some gelato. Another Member told me that when Sir Gerald was a Minister, he always gave a lift to Back Benchers in his ministerial car because he knew that one day he would be a Back Bencher. We talk about the greasy pole of politics. I think it is more like the luge, actually—you just get battered as you go down.
Sir Gerald dressed beautifully—I always used to watch him in the Tea Room—and that was probably a tribute to his father, who was a tailor. He was a close friend of Harold Wilson, another great Labour Prime Minister. He was loyal, clever and courageous, and he will be missed from this place. We send our condolences to his family and friends.
I thank the Leader of the House for providing the dates of the summer recess. Everyone is rejoicing because we now know we will rise on 20 July. I wonder whether he could give us an indication of when the state opening of Parliament will be. I know that the Deputy Leader of the House is keen to get his outfit ready, perhaps in keeping with the tribute to Sir Gerald.
I know that the Leader of the House has been busy tabling motions. One, in particular, will be considered on Tuesday 7 March. It relates to Standing Order No. 83. Many lawyers like amendments that read “Substitute ‘the’ for ‘and’”, but I might have to explain the motion to other people, so I wonder whether the Leader of the House could publish an explanatory memorandum and tell us why this is being hurried through on the day before the Budget? I know that the motion relates to things that are happening in Scotland.
The Leader of the House is keen on visiting the other place, so he will be interested to know—I do not know whether he has caught this on the news—that their lordships intend to send back the EU Bill with an amendment, which they won by 358 votes to 256. Will the Leader of the House give us some indication of when the Bill is likely to come back to this House? Will it be in the week commencing 13 March or the week commencing 20 March?
On a point that the Leader of the House made last week, I remind him that, as has been pointed out in a cross-party Select Committee report, the Government’s claim that the NHS will receive an additional £10 billion by 2021 does not accurately reflect
“the impact of the Spending Review on health expenditure…If the spending review period is considered—2015–16 to 2020–21—that increase is £4.5 billion”,
not £10 billion. I would be grateful if the Leader of the House cited the alternative figure.
I thank the Leader of the House for providing me with the closing date for the consultation on the new funding formula, which is 22 March. I appreciate that he has also written to me. The Prime Minister yesterday said that we “have had free schools”, as though they are in the past, but that they continued to create more good places. She said no to grammar schools, but was that a no to free schools? The overall funding of new places through free schools is set at £7.9 billion out of a total of £14.9 billion for new places. Will the Leader of the House comment on the latest National Audit Office report, which found that some free schools opened in areas where there were already plenty of places, thus creating spare capacity that could affect the future financial sustainability of other schools in the area? May we have a statement on whether funding for free schools represents good value for money for the taxpayer, and whether it will fix the problem of school places?
I am trying to rush through my points because I am aware that other hon. Members want to make contributions on Sir Gerald’s life. Given that we will have a debate on International Women’s Day after these proceedings, I want to raise two cases of women who have been arrested and placed in a detention centre. Irene Clennell was married to a British husband for 27 years, and her children and grandchild were born here. She has been removed without warning. A 20-year-old student, Shiromini Satkunarajah, who is about to finish her degree, has also been placed in a detention centre with no warning. Will the Government clarify the policy on the deportation of women who are no threat and who have been caught unfairly by these arbitrary decisions?
It is now 10 years since the Corston report on women in prison. Women who enter prison are more likely to be there for non-violent offences. Last year, 12 women killed themselves in prison in England and Wales, and there were 22 deaths of women in prison. The noble Baroness Corston has called for more Government funding for women’s centres. I know from sitting on the Criminal Justice and Courts Public Bill Committee that the Government had committed funding for secure colleges, but they U-turned on that decision. If that money is there and committed, will the Leader of the House have discussions with the noble Baroness about using it to protect existing women’s centres and create a more sustainable model?
Lastly, I welcome the two new Members: the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), who is the 456th woman in this place, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). It is good to have another Labour Member from the west midlands. I hope that both hon. Members will be inspired by the life and work of Sir Gerald Kaufman, a great parliamentarian. May he rest in peace.
Mr Lidington
I happily join the hon. Lady in welcoming our two new colleagues. Apropos of state opening, while I can assure her that my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House has more than one outfit available for such ceremonial occasions, I cannot yet give her the date that she is seeking.
On the hon. Lady’s point about the motion on the Standing Orders, I have already had a similar request from Scottish National party Members for an explanatory memorandum—we will provide one. The proposed change to the Standing Orders is to recognise the fact that the Scotland Act 2016 has devolved to the Scottish Parliament the right to set the main rates of income tax. Our own Standing Orders on English votes for English laws therefore need to be adjusted to take account of the fact that we may well in future have resolutions or pieces of legislation relating to main income tax rates that are specific to England, or to England, Wales and Northern Ireland, but not to Scotland, because those matters have been devolved. That is the purpose of the technical change to the Standing Orders.
We will return to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill as rapidly as possible after the House of Lords has finished debating it and given it a Third Reading. The Government certainly remain of the view that the Bill is straightforward—it does no more than confer authority on the Prime Minister, as required by the courts, to initiate negotiations by triggering article 50 of the treaty—and we will therefore seek to resist changes that would make the negotiating task more difficult.
The hon. Lady asked about the national health service. The figure of £10 billion is completely accurate. It represents the £8 billion that the head of NHS England said was needed to finance the NHS’s own reform plan, plus a further £2 billion that was allocated to the financial year before the period in which NHS England intended to carry out its reform plan. It is not only that because, in response to the request from the chief executive of NHS England, the Department of Health has front-loaded the funding, so the NHS is getting an additional £4 billion this year to get the reform plan off to the best possible start.
The hon. Lady asked about free schools. I have to say to her that, for me, the key test for free schools is whether there is a demand for them from parents in the area in which they are to be located, because without that, those schools will not be able to survive. The test for free schools, like the test for any other school, is whether they are able to provide the best possible opportunities and life chances, and to improve the achievements of the children sent to those schools. Children only get one chance of an education, and we should be looking for every opportunity to improve the quality of educational opportunities offered to them.
The hon. Lady talked about International Women’s Day and cited two particular cases. Without going into the detail of those cases, the principle is that people—men or women—are detained only if the Home Office or the immigration service has reason to believe that they may be at risk of disappearing and avoiding removal from the country. Such a step is taken only after people have exhausted their rights to appeal and it is clear that they have no further legal right to remain in this country.
The hon. Lady’s point about prisons was perfectly reasonable, but it is one of several important issues to do with prison reform. My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary made it clear in her recent White Paper that she is committed to a programme of prison reform that improves the chances of women and men who serve time in prison being treated decently while they are there, as well as giving them opportunities for the type of courses, work and education that mean that they will have a better chance of leading law-abiding lives after their release.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I associate myself with the remarks of both Front-Bench spokesmen about the late Father of the House. He gave me one piece of helpful advice when I first arrived in the House: “On immigration cases, young man”—that is always good for getting my attention—“my strong advice is to ask anyone who comes to see you, ‘Have you got a lawyer?’ If they haven’t, tell them to get one, and if they have, tell them to use the lawyer.”
Speaking on behalf of the Backbench Business Committee, I note that the Leader of the House did not announce the business for a week on Thursday. We now have a queue of debates that would fill Thursdays until Prorogation. Early sight of the business for a week on Thursday would therefore be appreciated.
Sadly, on Monday, Mohammed al-Zufairi, a constituent of mine, was murdered at a cash point in Wealdstone High Street. It appears to be a targeted murder, and I am pleased to say that the police have arrested an individual whom they believe to be responsible. May we have a debate on the increase in knife crime in London and the impact that we can make on stopping people carrying knives to ensure that no one else suffers my constituent’s fate?
Mr Lidington
I happily take on board my hon. Friend’s request for allocating more slots for the Backbench Business Committee at an early opportunity.
May I pass on to the family of my hon. Friend’s constituent my sympathy and sincere condolences? They must be going through the most appalling and harrowing time. There will be an opportunity on Monday 6 March at Home Office questions for my hon. Friend to raise his concerns about knife crime more generally, and he may well wish to seek an Adjournment debate on the subject.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I thank the Leader of the House for announcing the business for next week.
May I add to the tributes to Gerald Kaufman? The Leader of the House was absolutely right—he summed it up perfectly—when he said that Gerald Kaufman was from a generation that is quickly passing away. Hon. Members relied on Sir Gerald for advice and guidance, such was his experience. For many hon. Members, he was simply a style guru. I remember those long scarves he used to wear. One day he had to be rescued at the entrance to the tube station because his scarf had got caught, and I remember the great efforts that went into ensuring that Gerald was separated from his scarf. I send my condolences to his family and friends.
I welcome the fact that today is World Book Day—I think that Sir Gerald would appreciate that, too. We should pay tribute to the writers of this country. I have the great pleasure and privilege of chairing the all-party parliamentary writers group, and it is right to recognise the wonderful work of all our authors and writers, and to ensure that they are properly rewarded for the fantastic works that they produce.
What about three cheers for our heroes in ermine, although perhaps not from the Government Benches? The people’s aristocrats have spoken and their voice must be heard. Every time I raise the House of Lords with the Leader of the House, he tells me that there are no plans whatsoever to reform the other place, therefore accepting its legitimacy to raise such issues. Will he now listen to the House of Lords and say today that the Government have no plans to use the Parliament Acts if our unelected friends continue to show backbone?
I also thank the Leader of the House for announcing the dates of the summer recess, but I express our profound disappointment that, yet again, the Government have conspired not to have a long recess that will cover the school holiday periods of every nation of the UK. Once again, my colleagues from Scotland will have to try to make sure they have particular childcare arrangements in place. They will struggle to find an opportunity to have a proper school holiday with their children. Will the Leader of the House make sure that this is the last time we have to deal with this issue and ensure that in future all nations are covered by the summer recess?
We need a debate on how the Scotland Act 1998 operates. Schedule 5 to the Act lists all the reserved powers. If it is not on the list, it is devolved. I looked at the list again this morning and I cannot find agriculture or fisheries on it, so I presume they will be devolved after Brexit. Will the Government confirm that today, or do they intend to reserve more powers?
Finally, next week will see a huge Commons event. I am referring not to the Budget, but to the Second Reading of the driverless cars Bill. Believe it or not, they do share similarities: one is a journey with no one at the wheel heading for disaster and the other is the driverless cars Bill.
Mr Lidington
I am happy to join the hon. Gentleman in celebrating World Book Day and in paying tribute to authors. It is a welcome trend to find that the public’s appetite for old fashioned hard copy books seems to be increasing in a way that defies many of the predictions of recent years.
On the Scotland Act, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland could not have been clearer yesterday at Scottish questions. As powers are brought back from the European Union following Brexit, additional powers will be exercised by the Scottish Parliament and the Scottish Government. What we have to work out, and what the United Kingdom Government are looking at in consultation with all three devolved Administrations, is how that can be done in a way that preserves the integrity of a single market across the United Kingdom as a whole. It will not help food and drink producers in Scotland who sell in large quantities to customers in England if we find, because we have not thought this through properly, trading obstacles in the way of them being able to sell at the least possible cost to those English customers. I therefore suggest that the hon. Gentleman needs to have regard to the interests of Scottish producers.
On the House of Lords debate on the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill, I cannot add much more to what I said in response to the shadow Leader of the House. However, the hon. Gentleman’s new-found passionate affection for the House of Lords suggests to me that it is not just Mr Farage who has secret yearnings for the honours list.
Mr Speaker
It is a great pleasure to welcome members of Sir Gerald’s family, whom, I have just been advised, are here to witness the proceedings. You could not be more welcome and thank you for coming.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Those of us who had experience of Sir Gerald’s long life and parliamentary career will choose those parts that affect our own areas of interest, so I hope the House will forgive me if I focus on the crucial role Sir Gerald played, between the years of 1988 and 1991, in shifting Labour party policy away from a stance in favour of unilateral nuclear disarmament.
He started in 1988 by contributing to a policy review. If I remember correctly, it was called “Meet the challenge, make the change.” In it, Labour acknowledged that it would be sensible to get some reciprocation in return for giving up Britain’s nuclear deterrent. Then, after a lively exchange of letters in the national press with the then chairman of the Conservative party, Chris Patten, and others, he ended on 10 July 1991 with the all-important statement that a future Labour Government would continue to possess nuclear weapons as long as other countries had them. This marked the end of a crucial policy realignment.
When the Blair Government, with the support of the Conservative Opposition, voted to renew the nuclear deterrent in March 2007, Sir Gerald made a great speech, referring back to the fact that he famously described Labour’s 1983 anti-nuclear manifesto as the longest suicide note in history. He urged his colleagues not to make the mistakes of the 1980s, and he ended by pointing out what it would mean if Labour went back to that stance:
“Defeating the Government tonight…could so reduce our party’s credibility as to contribute to a Labour defeat at the next election…A cartoon in The New Yorker once showed an army officer in a bunker saying to his assembled troops:
‘Gentlemen, the time has arrived for us to make a futile gesture.’
Futile gestures can be personally satisfying, but what do they get us? I will tell the House what they get us: 18 years in opposition. It is one thing to revisit the scene of the crime; it is quite another to revisit the scene of the suicide.”—[Official Report, 14 March 2007; Vol. 458, c. 344-45.]
Those of us who believe in nuclear deterrence have every reason to be grateful to him for his crucial role in restoring bipartisanship between the Labour Government and the Opposition of the day, which secured the renewal of the nuclear deterrent, and I think the country has reason to be grateful to him too.
As I ought to pay lip service to the fact that this is business questions as well, I will segue from one form of unilateralism to another. May we have a statement from a Brexit Minister about the Government’s assessment of the motives of those with whom we will be negotiating in other countries in not responding to our initiatives and indications that members of their societies who have chosen to live in Britain can continue doing so as long as our citizens can continue living in their countries? Unilateralism, as a principle, is sometimes high minded and sometimes a futile gesture. In the spirit of what Sir Gerald did to the Labour party, we ought to think about whether we really want to leave so many of our citizens exposed to poor treatment by other countries while offering generous treatment to their citizens living here.
Mr Lidington
The EU27 Governments have been clear that they will engage in negotiations only once article 50 has been triggered, but I am optimistic that a reciprocal agreement on the status of each other’s citizens can be achieved. It is in the rational interests of the UK and all our 27 EU partners, and so I very much hope that it can be an early achievement of the negotiations once they start.
Margaret Beckett (Derby South) (Lab)
I thank the Leader of the House for giving us the dates of the summer recess. It was a shame he could not do it earlier, but at least we now know where we stand.
On Sir Gerald, it is rare—it must be many decades since it last happened—that we are unfortunate enough to lose a Father of the House during his incumbency. I am sure the whole House shares my regret that the new Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), cannot be with us today. One of Sir Gerald’s more gleeful tales was of how he had the forethought, when first elected to the House, to take the oath before the right hon. and learned Gentleman, in the belief that both were likely to be here for some considerable time and so be contenders for the post of Father of the House. He took great glee in telling that story. I would like to say that I think he probably would not have begrudged the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe his opportunity, but I am not absolutely certain about that, and I would not wish to do Gerald an injustice in any way. Certainly he was desperately anxious to become Father of the House and fully deserved to hold that office.
As everyone has said—like others, I am pleased that some of his family can be here—he was witty, he was brave and he could be extremely acerbic, but he was a very skilled parliamentarian. I see that some of the obituaries have referred to his skill in Committee, and, as somebody who was a Whip when Gerald was a Minister, I can certainly testify to that. Gerald was a Minister of State trying to get a Bill through the House at a time when we did not really have a majority; people would be astonished about that period, and it might be worth their looking back at some of the Hansards of the time. We had a notional majority of maybe one or two, most of whom were too sick to be here at any time unless things were absolutely desperate. So in Committee things were extremely tight, but Gerald was an absolutely brilliant Committee Minister. He flattered the Opposition shamefully and quite disgustingly; he covered them with compliments and praise while just not being able to quite see his way clear to accepting their brilliant amendments to the Government’s proposed legislation.
As people have already said, he was also very good value as a confidante and adviser. I happened to be in Committee with Gerald on a day when we had a Government vacancy—it had been vacant for some little time. I was summoned to No. 10 and I had to say to the civil servant who made the call, “I can’t possibly come. I’m the Whip on a Committee and we have not really got a majority. Don’t be ridiculous, of course I can’t come now. I will come at lunchtime.” That gave me the opportunity to consult Gerald. I had only been a Member for just over a year and was unenthusiastic about the prospect that appeared to lie before me, and I said to Gerald, “Do you think I can ask for time to think about it?” He, like me, had guessed what the summons might mean and the first thing he said was, “Congratulations. That’s fantastic. I’m thrilled.” I said, “Yes, but hang on; can I ask for time to think about it?” He replied: “My dear Margaret, when the Prime Minister sends for you and offers you a post in the Government, you either say ‘Yes, Prime Minister,’ or you say ‘No, Prime Minister.’ You do not ask for time to think about it.” Looking back I am stunned by how naive I was even to ask the question, but it was certainly very helpful advice.
Gerald was also an extremely kind man. As it happens, I have a close personal friend who worked with him in No. 10 and who always spoke about what hysterical and great company Gerald was, but also what a kind person he was. He was—despite the advice he gave to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), who spoke earlier—a ferocious advocate on behalf of his constituents. The Leader of the House should probably count himself lucky that he did not have the chance to hear Gerald’s comments on the cases raised by my hon. Friend the shadow Leader of the House on people who were detained without notice. Gerald would have had a lot to say about that, and it would not have been very nice to hear.
Mr Lidington
I was looking forward to hearing more of the right hon. Lady’s reminiscences. She has reminded us of the length of Sir Gerald’s career and the depth of his experience, and of the wisdom that comes with that experience of operating in this House and in government over such a long period of time.
Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)
Like you, Mr Speaker, on separate occasions I saw Gerald Kaufman at his home in St John’s Wood only a few weeks ago: I know that you visited him as did a good friend of mine and that of a number of other hon. Members, Claire Ward, the former Member for Watford. Even just a few weeks ago, Gerald was still saying how keen he was to return to this place, and we are all very sad that he did not.
Those who did not know him saw him as being ferociously vitriolic, and he was in this Chamber. But outside he was a very different man. He had a waspish sense of humour. I had the privilege of joining him in 1993 on the National Heritage Select Committee. The Committee was excellent, the trips were so marvellous and he was such a brilliant Chairman that I stayed with him not only on the National Heritage Committee, but also, for two Parliaments, apart from a brief excursion to the Select Committee on Home Affairs, on the Culture, Media and Sport Committee.
Gerald hated pomposity—that was one of his most admirable features—but he loved outrageous clothes, as hon. Members have already said. I used to go with him to the theatre and the cinema from time to time. His last recommendation to me was to see a brilliant movie called “Hail, Caesar!”, which I duly saw and loved. It could sometimes be embarrassing to go somewhere with Gerald, because if the weather was cold, he would wear a red tea cosy on his head. When I mentioned this to him, he said it was not half as embarrassing as what I was wearing. [Laughter.]
Gerald also loved ice cream. I remember being on a Culture, Media and Sport Committee visit to Los Angeles and attending a meeting that was getting very boring. We were being addressed by a chap from the Foreign Office about something that had nothing to do with our inquiry, and Gerald got up and said, “Thank you very much for your speech.” The Foreign Office official rather foolishly said, “But I haven’t finished.” In the way that only he could do, Gerald turned round slowly and said, “Oh yes you have.” Then we toddled off to get our ice cream. Ice cream, musicals—which he could sing along to; he knew all the words—and Judy Garland were his great loves.
Gerald was a brilliant Chairman of the National Heritage Committee and the Culture, Media and Sport Committee. He was great fun. He was not party political. I am now going to lose the support of all my hon. Friends by saying that I often found myself defending the BBC, whereas Gerald wanted to abolish it. That was a strange juxtaposition of roles.
He told me not long ago that the present Conservative party chairman—when he was a junior Whip back in 1993—had asked him to take me under his wing because I was rather wild and perhaps he could make me more like a conventional parliamentarian. You can see that that worked!
In short, Gerald was a wonderful man who brightened all our lives. He was a great friend, and he was nothing like the person whom I think the public saw him as. He was self-deprecating, kindly and a great parliamentarian. I think we will all miss him.
Dame Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker, for giving the House this opportunity to pay tribute to Sir Gerald. He inspired so many parliamentarians, as others have said, and he certainly gave me invaluable advice and support during my time as a Minister and as Chief Whip. Gerald was a stalwart member of the Labour party and, with a political career stretching back over 50 years, he knew that principle without power was not enough, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Margaret Beckett) said. He campaigned tirelessly for a Labour Government. His book “How to be a Minister” remains a classic guide for new Ministers wanting to make their mark. He had an ability to sum up his views with a witty turn of phrase that could be as colourful and memorable as his suits.
It was an honour for all of us when Gerald became Father of the House, and we were very proud to see him take up that role. He took the role extremely seriously. He had always been fiercely protective of the rights of parliamentarians, and I remember him bellowing at the then Leader of the House, William Hague, when he felt that Mr Hague had sided too closely with the Executive against the wishes of Members of this House. Gerald continued to uphold Members’ rights when he became Father of the House.
When I last saw Gerald, he was clearly very ill, but he was still keen to talk politics and to offer his advice. That advice was as insightful as ever. I was greatly comforted to see him surrounded by his loving family, who clearly adored Uncle Gerald.
As so many have said, Gerald made a distinctive mark on our national life, particularly in this place. He will be greatly missed. Given his 10 years of chairing the culture Select Committee, I can think of nothing more fitting than a debate on the importance of the arts to our economy and society and on the devastating effect of Government cuts, particularly on arts funding in the regions. I hope that the Leader of the House will let us have that debate.
Mr Lidington
The right hon. Lady pays a moving tribute to Sir Gerald. I will take on board her request for a debate about the arts at some future date. It may also be something that the Backbench Business Committee would consider.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
I join others in paying tribute to the late Sir Gerald Kaufman. I got the impression that Sir Gerald did not entirely approve of me, which is quite understandable. I was never sure whether that was because I was once the Member of Parliament for Basildon or whether it was down to my views on the state of Israel, but I can say without hesitation that he was a commanding figure in this House and a great orator, and that I would not have wanted to get on the wrong side of him.
I am really glad that Sir Gerald became Father of the House. As a result of his death, I am now No. 14 on the list. As I look around the House, I see a number of colleagues who are in front of me in the queue and note that they are in extremely good health, so I am not holding my breath about my becoming Father of the House.
Turning to my question, will the Leader of the House find time for a debate on fake news? An increasing number of constituents complain to me about once reliable websites giving false information and about the number of scams. I have to tell my right hon. Friend that it was announced this week that Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway opened an envelope and suggested that I had won the Oscar for leading actor. I am delighted to tell my right hon. Friend that they opened the wrong envelope and that the award has now been given to its rightful recipient: Mr Tony Blair for his performance at the press conference following the publication of the Chilcot report.
Mr Lidington
I understand the genuine concern about the wide availability of sometimes deliberately misleading information on various websites. Inevitably, the international character of the web means that addressing the problem is not straightforward, but the Minister for Digital and Culture is convening a roundtable of a broad range of people from the news industry on 14 March and this topic will be under discussion.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I met Gerald Kaufman when I came into the House in 1979. He was part of a wonderful gang of people, including John Smith and Roy Hattersley, who were getting used to being in opposition, which we had to get used to because we were going to be in opposition for a very long time. We would all say that Gerald Kaufman was a great parliamentarian, but when I came into the House—when the wind-ups were taken much more seriously, and when debates were taken more seriously in terms of attendance—the one thing that could be guaranteed was that the House would be packed if Gerald Kaufman was at the Dispatch Box. He was the funniest, most incisive and most brilliant debater I ever saw in this House. I have seen some very good debaters in this House, but Gerald in his prime was peerless. People should remember that.
I look at where Gerald sat for so many years and remember him serving on the Liaison Committee with me as the Chair of a Select Committee. As he got older, the wonderful thing about Gerald was that he did not lose any of his brainpower in his later years. His body let him down, but his brain certainly did not.
As some will remember, last year was the centenary of the birth of Harold Wilson. Gerald gave me a tremendous amount of information about when he worked for Harold Wilson in No. 10, and I will tell the House about one little incident. Gerald was in No. 10 one night when the phone rang—it was Lyndon Baines Johnson, the President of the United States, asking to speak to Harold Wilson. Gerald took the phone call and passed it over to Harold Wilson. Lyndon Baines Johnson was begging Harold to send at least a token British force to Vietnam, and Gerald described how Harold listened patiently—he was a good friend of LBJ—and, at the end, said, “I’m sorry, LB. Not even a Scottish pipers band.”
I talked to Gerald about where the party had been, and some Labour Members will remember some of the uncomfortable things from when the Labour party was in trouble. No one has mentioned this, but Gerald was the brains behind Solidarity, the group within the Labour party that wanted to be very careful about a shift to the hard left. That work, with Hattersley, John Smith and a bunch of others, was very important to how the Labour party survived and thrived to win the election in 1997. Labour Members must pay tribute to the man who kept our ship moving towards a decent target.
When I first met Gerald, he had a great friend, Eric Varley. Many people do not remember Eric Varley because he died very young, but he and Gerald were close friends, and I think it right to mention Eric’s name in relation to that period of Gerald’s life when he was a very happy man.
I will tell the House one last story. No one ever wanted to cross Gerald about a film. I remember foolishly going into the Tea Room and being enthusiastic after seeing “Superman” for the first time. Gerald had also been to see it, and he gave a caustic review about everything that was wrong with American cinema at the time, with the plot and with the acting. He said, “But you liked it, Barry, so it couldn’t have been all bad.”
Gerald Kaufman has left a legacy. He did not have any children, but he has left a legacy both in this House, in the country and in his constituency. I used to tease him because Harold Wilson was born in Huddersfield and had to go to Lancashire to get a seat and, of course, Gerald was a real Leeds man who had to go to Manchester to get a seat.
Some people have talked about Gerald’s sense of style, and his wonderful suits pushed the boundaries in some ways. He remained faithful all his life to the same Leeds tailor and would specify the Huddersfield mill in which the cloth would be spun and woven. He was a man of great talent, great common sense and brilliant oratory. We owe him so much, not only as a party or as a House but as a country.
Mr Lidington
I thank the hon. Gentleman for this heartfelt tribute, and particularly for his reminder of the key political role that Gerald Kaufman played at that particular time in the Labour party’s history.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
I am afraid I am unable to contribute any anecdotes about the life of the late Father of the House, but I of course associate myself with the expressions of sympathy to his family and friends.
Earlier this week, the all-party group on retail crime met to review a recent survey of the increasing levels of verbal and physical violence against people who work in the retail trade. Will the Leader of the House find time for an early debate on this serious issue?
Mr Lidington
I cannot offer an early debate in Government time, but there may be other opportunities. I am sure the entire House shares my hon. Friend’s sense of revulsion at the threats faced by shop workers and others in the retail trade, which should not be tolerated in any decent society. I am sure everyone would agree on how important it is not only that the police try to make sure that such attacks are deterred and that perpetrators are punished appropriately, but that citizens who might have information about them come forward.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I thank you, Mr Speaker, and the Leader of the House for this opportunity to pay brief tribute to Sir Gerald Kaufman. After my selection as a parliamentary candidate, I was lucky enough to attend many community meetings and events with my next-door neighbour. They would often reflect the causes that Sir Gerald championed, such as the rights of the Palestinians or Kashmir. I particularly remember doing a Bollywood dance routine with him on an open-air stage in Longsight market a couple of years ago. I have to say, his dance moves showed up my own, even though he was well into his 80s at the time.
Whatever the event, what was quite remarkable was the admiration and extraordinarily high esteem in which Sir Gerald was held by his constituents. I genuinely do not think I have come across another MP who was so widely admired by their constituents. It was largely because he was such a fierce champion of their interests both in Parliament and in Manchester, but also because he was so assiduous in his dealings and communication with them. Residents often told me how they had written to Sir Gerald and received a hand-written reply. Sometimes, the replies would reflect his sharp tongue; a particular favourite of mine was:
“I agree with your concerns on this issue. Unfortunately there’s no point in me writing to the chancellor because he’s useless and won’t listen to me.”
Perhaps the only thing sharper than Sir Gerald’s tongue and mind was his dress sense. In Parliament, we will miss his remarkable suits and shirts almost as much as the people of Manchester, Gorton will miss his quite remarkable service.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman made his point well. I think we will all be searching YouTube to see whether a video of that dance routine survives.
Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
I, too, add my commiserations to the family of Sir Gerald. He was not only a legend in this place, but had a formidable career before he arrived here, working for the BBC on satirical programmes such as “That Was the Week That Was”. I must say I was a bit too young to watch them, but I have seen some of the stuff that went on.
As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House knows, in 2020, Plymouth and the UK will celebrate the 400th anniversary of the Mayflower ship leaving Plymouth to found the American colonies—
Oliver Colvile
Sadly, I do not think there were any hedgehogs. May we have a debate on the possibility of a Mayflower national walking trail through the concordat places through which the pilgrims travelled?
Mr Lidington
That sounds like an excellent idea, and I hope there might be an opportunity for an Adjournment debate in which my hon. Friend can pursue the matter further. It strikes me that it is something to which the Government would be sympathetic, but that it would also need a great deal of local work to try to make it happen.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I would like to add to the tributes to Gerald Kaufman, who was a friend of mine for very many years. As has been said, he was elected in 1970—at the same election as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner)—and was one of that generation of MPs who did not get to the Cabinet. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was a Minister of State in 1979 when Labour left office—sadly for many of us, including Gerald, it was for 18 years. If things had been different, Gerald would have reached the Cabinet and would certainly have made an extremely impressive Minister: he was quick; he was witty; and he had a rare ability to think on his feet. Not many people can do that, but Gerald certainly could. I used to see it on a regular basis, including in parliamentary Labour party meetings. As chair of the PLP, I can tell Members that PLP meetings have certainly had their moments of interest. [Laughter.] I am not breaking any confidences in saying that as those meetings are virtually open to the public at the moment. Gerald certainly lightened the tone. There were times when I was chairing PLP meetings when I would find myself momentarily discombobulated by Gerald’s sartorial magnificence. He used to walk in just as I was saying something sensitive.
Gerald always had something interesting to say in PLP meetings, in private conversations and in the Chamber. He was never that easy to pigeon-hole politically or personally. He often had views that seemed at odds with his public reputation. Although he was, in some ways, rebellious, he was actually a natural loyalist. Every Labour leader recognised that Gerald had very loyal qualities. If he had any criticisms of Tony Blair when he was Prime Minister, he never made them public. When he spoke to me, he would start any criticism with, “As you know, John, I bow to no man in my admiration of the Prime Minister.” Then he would go on to be acerbic about something that the Government had just done. He will be very, very deeply missed by many of us from all parts of the House.
In a not entirely unrelated issue, because Gerald represented a city that has a very, very strong footballing tradition, the local football team in my constituency, Leyton Orient, was served with a winding-up order yesterday. This was not something that I was going to raise, but the order was served yesterday. The owner, who has caused mayhem in two and a half years and who has taken the club right down from some of its highest points to some of its lowest, has not paid Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs for a number of years. No one knows exactly how much he owes, but the rumour is that it is about a quarter of a million quid. We are seeing that sort of pattern in football on a fairly regular basis. I know that we have had debates and statements in the past on the governance and administration of football clubs, but I think that we could do with another statement, or a debate, on the governance of football clubs, because we are seeing people of increasingly dubious character buying up football teams in Britain for whatever mendacious reasons they may have. I think that an awful lot will come out about the owner of Leyton Orient.
Mr Lidington
I am sure that the whole House will have welcomed the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to Sir Gerald Kaufman. On his point about football and Leyton Orient, we did have a debate about the governance of football only two weeks ago, so I do not think that I can offer a further debate in Government time in the short term, but I will undertake to report his concerns about both Leyton Orient and the general issue that he raises to the Secretary of State.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
May I associate myself with the tributes paid by right hon. and hon. Members to the late Father of this House? It speaks volumes about the depth of knowledge and wisdom in this House that the late Sir Gerald was a Member of this House and of the Government before I and many other Members were even born. Although I only overlapped with him in this House for a year and a half, I think that I am on very safe ground in saying that his wisdom, judgment, wit and experience will all be sorely missed from the deliberations of this House in the future.
Today the Joe Humphries Memorial Trust, which was set up in memory of Joe Humphries, a 14-year-old boy from my constituency who dropped dead suddenly while jogging in 2012, is holding an important conference in the city of Leicester to bring together professionals from the world of sport and the medical profession to discuss sudden arrhythmic death syndrome, also known as sudden adult death syndrome. They want to discuss what can be done to raise awareness of it and to help to prevent it. Will the Leader of the House join me in paying tribute to Joe Humphries’ family and to all those who work with the trust for their work, and can we have a debate in this House on sudden arrhythmic death syndrome?
Mr Lidington
I certainly join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to Joe’s family and to the others working with them. I very much welcome the initiative that he describes to encourage a fruitful exchange of ideas about how we can do more to detect and treat these very distressing conditions. The death of a young person, in particular, causes devastation to their family and friends.
We have some of the fastest improvements in hospital death rates for strokes and heart attacks anywhere in Europe, and there is some evidence that that is partly due to the creation of specialist stroke and cardiac units, but there is a great deal more to be done. I know that the Department of Health will want to applaud the work that is happening in Leicestershire.
Alex Salmond (Gordon) (SNP)
May I associate myself with everything that has been said about Sir Gerald Kaufman? He had acerbic wit and pomp, certainly, but in his role as Father of the House, kindness and wisdom were his outstanding characteristics. Listening to the warmth of these tributes, I cannot help thinking of a procedure in the Scottish Parliament in which the death of a sitting Member is followed by a motion of condolence led by the party leaders, which provides a real opportunity to hear some of the warmth, humour and insight that we have heard from so many Members today. Someone of Gerald’s stature would certainly have been well worthy of such a motion.
The Leader of the House could have done with having Gerald Kaufman here today, because Gerald had been a Member for almost 30 years when the late Donald Dewar introduced the Scotland Bill. Donald Dewar’s genius was to put at the heart of the Bill the principle that any matter not specifically reserved to this Parliament would automatically be devolved to Scotland. When the Secretary of State for Scotland was caught like a rabbit in headlights yesterday, and the Prime Minister was seemingly unaware of that foundation principle of the Scottish Parliament, that was not just insensitivity towards Scotland or a betrayal of commitments that were made in the referendum campaign; it struck at the very heart of the devolution statute itself. Rather than resting on civil service gobbledegook, perhaps the Leader of House will now show some awareness of the seriousness of not agreeing that everything that is not specifically reserved automatically goes to the Scottish Parliament, including fishing, farming and a range of other issues.
Mr Lidington
The right hon. Gentleman is correct in how he describes the Scotland Act 1998, but that Act was taken through Parliament in the context of the United Kingdom’s continuing membership of the European Union and with the clear knowledge on all sides that certain powers were exercised at that level. We are now in a very different situation. Whichever side any of us took in the referendum, I think there is an understanding that the decision that the UK electorate made represents a profound change of course for the United Kingdom. This is exactly why the UK Government are talking to the Scottish Government, both at ministerial and at official level, about how exactly to deal with the repatriation of powers from Brussels to ensure that they are correctly allocated.
The right hon. Gentleman oversimplifies the position, I am afraid. To take the fisheries question that he cited, the powers exercised by the European Union relate to matters that might well involve the devolved Administrations exercising jurisdiction, and the settling of matters between the European Union and third countries that involve United Nations conventions and that would be reserved matters under the Scotland Act. It is that conundrum that has to be addressed.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
May I, too, associate myself with the many comments that have been made about the late Sir Gerald Kaufman? I cannot claim to have known him very well, but that does not diminish the respect that I and fellow Welsh Members on the Government Benches had for him. I send our sympathies to his family.
There are several park home developments in my constituency. The owners pay their council tax, utility bills and maintenance charges, but when it comes to selling their properties, in addition to the estate agent’s fees, they have to pay 10% of the sale price to the site owners. May we have a debate on the unfairness of that additional charge?
Mr Lidington
My hon. Friend, as always, speaks up strongly on behalf of his constituents. The site owner’s entitlement to receive a commission is an implied term in all agreements, and my understanding is that the commission is an important income strand for park home businesses, enabling them to ensure that sites are properly managed and maintained. The issue was looked at in 2012 by the Communities and Local Government Committee, which recommended that the 10% or less commission rule remain in place, and the Government then agreed that the current position should continue. A review of the Mobile Homes Act 2013 this spring will provide a further opportunity to listen to representations and consider how the present system is operating.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
Gerald Kaufman was justly proud of being the longest serving Member of Parliament for Manchester ever, both continuously and by broken service, as he would tell us from time to time—he was particularly proud of that.
When I became leader of Manchester City Council in 1984, I went to see Gerald, because he had not always been appreciative of the efforts of the council’s officers to deliver services to his constituents. We came to an agreement whereby he could come to me if he had contacted a department twice already, and if I could not sort it out he could be as critical as he liked. My phone rang one morning and it was Gerald. He said—this is not one of the most acidic comments he made, but I think it epitomises him—“Graham, do they employ human beings in the housing department?” He was very dissatisfied with the treatment of a family who were in severe housing difficulties.
What was more remarkable was that on that morning he was the centre of worldwide media attention because, as shadow Foreign Secretary, he was in charge of changing Labour’s policy from unilateralism to multilateralism. Yet he took time off in the middle of that media hubbub to take up cudgels on behalf of a family in his constituency who were in need. He was a ferocious tribune of the people of Manchester, Ardwick, his first constituency, and Manchester, Gorton.
Gerald loved this place. He intended to stay here as long as he did. When he started drawing his pension, there was a lot of interest from young Turks in his constituency, who rather fancied that they could do a better of job of representing the people of Manchester, Gorton. When they sidled up to him and asked, “Gerald, are you standing at the next general election?”, he would reply, “Yes—and the one after that.” That was always his reply, even until recently.
Gerald’s love of musicals has already been referred to. He was a personal friend of Stephen Sondheim, the American lyricist and songwriter. He brought Stephen Sondheim to Manchester to stage some of his plays. I guess you, Mr Speaker, have never been serenaded by Gerald Kaufman, but my office has been opposite his for the past 18 years. If he had been to a particularly good musical in the west end the night before, I could hear him singing the songs from it, which is not the image that most of the public would have had of him.
A number of colleagues have mentioned Gerald’s book, “How to be a Minister”. I once went with Gerald and the other Manchester MPs to see a Labour Health Minister because there was a problem in the city’s hospitals. The unfortunate Minister mentioned that he had read “How to be a Minister”, and, as we were leaving—not particularly satisfied with the meeting—Gerald said in a very loud whisper, “He might have read it, but he didn’t understand it.” That Minister is no longer a Member of this House. Gerald loved his constituents and cared passionately about his party, and both will miss him.
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman reminds us that, although an adopted son of the city, Gerald Kaufman always felt that his roots were very much embedded in Manchester. He always strove to represent the interests of his constituents and the city more widely.
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
May I associate myself with the lovely tributes to the late Father of the House? As a new Member, I did not have the opportunity to get to know him well, but what I have heard today has provided a tremendous insight, from which I can conclude only that he will be a sad and great loss to his friends and family.
I ask the Leader of the House whether we may have a debate on what it actually means to
“be committed to the best possible outcome for the United Kingdom following its departure from the European Union”.
Does the Leader of the House not agree that we all want the best possible deal in the circumstances following the referendum result, but that we may disagree on what that deal might look like? To that end, does he agree that to ask the organisations bidding for Government contracts to subscribe to the Government’s political view on Brexit is not only wrong but would take us down a dangerous path for the future?
Mr Lidington
I assure the hon. Lady that there will certainly be many opportunities to have the sort of the debate she seeks, when all views, including her own, can be expressed in full. Government contracts are allocated under a fair and transparent process that is laid down by the Cabinet Office.
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
We all feel a real sense of loss at the passing of Sir Gerald Kaufman. In considering why, we remember, as hon. Members have done this morning, his many qualities such as his personality, humour, powerful intellect, dress, individuality and charm. In missing him, the greatest tribute we can pay is to ensure that his memory lives on and that we never forget the example he set to all of us.
When looking at Sir Gerald’s past, I noticed that he was shadow Home Secretary in the ’80s. I am sure that he would wish me to continue to hold the Government to account as he did then, so I ask the Leader of the House whether we can have an urgent debate on policing. Astonishingly, the Government have today failed to come forward with a statement on the policing crisis we face. Forces, including my own, are rationing their responses to the public in the face of a 15% reduction in the number of police officers between 2010 and 2020. It is not good enough. We need a debate. It is a crisis. What does he say to that?
Mr Lidington
First, I salute the hon. Gentleman’s tribute to Sir Gerald Kaufman.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s challenge about the police, I would say that the police—like all parts of the public sector—have, indeed, had to face up to the need for very difficult decisions about budget priorities. Those decisions were made necessary by the parlous state of the public finances that the Government inherited in 2010, but chief constables, and police and crime commissioners, have responded extraordinarily well. Testament to that is the fact that there has been a significant fall in crime despite the reductions in police funding described by the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to the work that the police are doing and the leadership they have shown in setting those priorities and getting on with the job successfully.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
May I apologise to the House and to you, Mr Speaker, for not being here earlier? It was just not possible for me to be here, as I indicated yesterday.
I would also like to say a few words about Gerald Kaufman. I pay tribute to him, as hon. Members on both sides of the House have done. If there ever was a one-off, it was Gerald—in the way he approached his job and in the way he had various enthusiasms, not least films. Apparently, he saw “Singin’ in the Rain” 70 times, but he was not entirely satisfied with that, so he made an appointment with Gene Kelly in Hollywood and wrote about it—it must have been one of the high moments in his life.
I knew of Gerald before I came to the House in the mid-60s, because he was quite a well-known journalist by then and wrote a regular column in the New Statesman. When I came here, he was what we now call the “spin doctor” for Harold Wilson. If you look at all the diaries about the kitchen Cabinet—the rows that went on, the difficulties about Harold Wilson’s private secretary and the rest of it—it is all very interesting, gossipy stuff, and it is perhaps politically interesting as well, but you will not find a single mention of any of that by Gerald. He never wrote about it, although he could easily have done so—he was a professional journalist, and he might have kept a diary, for all we know. The reason he did not write about it was that he was so dedicated to Harold Wilson as his employer, and he did not gossip about what went on in private proceedings. As I say, none of the exploits of the kitchen Cabinet at 10 Downing Street, which became so well known in political circles, was written about by Gerald.
I was once in the Members’ Lobby during the days when Gerald was a spin doctor. He said to me, “Come here a moment,” so I did. He said, “Look at those two”—they were two of my Labour colleagues. They were chatting together, and it was simply innocent, as far as I was concerned. He said, “You know, those two were hardly on speaking terms until recently, and look at them now.” What he was implying was that they were plotting against Harold. If Harold had paranoia, his spin doctor contributed to that, but he did so out of a dedication to the Labour Government.
Gerald spoke in the House when Harold Wilson died. He told us about his time as a junior Minister in the Environment Department dealing with transport matters. He said, “I received a memo from the Prime Minister saying, ‘Will you make provision for former Prime Ministers to have a car and a chauffeur?’” He said, “At that moment, I knew Harold Wilson was going to retire,” and he was probably right.
If I may, I will make two other points before I sit down. As has been mentioned by others, including Manchester colleagues of his, Gerald was dedicated to his casework. You will know, Mr Speaker, and you mentioned it yesterday, how he would rise in the Chamber and ask why he had not had a reply about so-and-so and so-and-so. It was not just occasionally—he did it quite frequently. That shows his dedication. Despite the fact that he did 46 years, he was as dedicated as a constituency Member of Parliament, by all accounts, as he was in his first week or his first year here, and that says a great deal about him. It also says a great deal about Members of Parliament in general, because there are very few now who do not take great care of their constituents in replying as promptly as possible and pursuing their cases.
The last point I want to make is perhaps controversial. Gerald was born in 1930. If ever there was a person of Jewish origin who understood the horrors of what was to take place by the time he was 15, it was Gerald. He knew from the very beginning, when the stories came out and the statements were made in the House of Commons, how Jews were being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands—in the end, 6 million—not because of their politics or anything else, but for no other reason than that they shared the same origin as Gerald, and indeed myself for that matter. From early times, he was an ardent supporter of Israel. Before he was a Member of Parliament, during the 1967 war, I remember his eagerness that Israel should survive. His great fear, shared by many others who became critics, was that if it was otherwise, the Jewish population could be forced into the sea, as in the threats that were made at the time.
But later Gerald became a harsh critic of Israel, not because he ceased to be concerned about Jews—a false accusation that was made against him from time to time—but because he believed that the Israelis were showing a total lack of consideration for Palestinians, thought that they were treating Palestinians, in many instances, with contempt, and felt a strong urge to speak out in the way he did. In doing so, he antagonised a number of people in the Jewish community, but Gerald was not the sort of person who would feel intimidated because people did not like what he said. I happen to believe that he was right. One would expect me to say that, because I too have very strong feelings about the way in which Palestinians have been treated: the contempt for human rights and the fact that, as far as I can see, the Israeli authorities—the leading people—show no desire to bring about a sovereign, independent Palestine alongside Israel.
Gerald was not the easiest of people to get on with. I had my own rows with him occasionally, and then we made up and spoke about films. He was difficult in many instances, but how many people with such courage, determination and single-mindedness do we not find difficult when we assess their lives? He did good; he wanted to do good. He was dedicated to the Labour party and the Labour movement, and to this country. We shall miss him a great deal.
Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)
I wish to add my tributes, on my behalf and that of my party, to the late and much missed Father of the House, Sir Gerald Kaufman. He was an extraordinary servant of Manchester, which he represented for such a remarkable number of years, but, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, he was in fact originally a Leeds boy. He was born in Leeds, went to school in Leeds, and developed a lot of his political thinking in Leeds. Leeds is proud of him and pays tribute to him.
He was also the son of Jewish refugees who escaped pogroms in Poland. For the son of foreign refugees fleeing persecution to end up as Father of this House is not only an enormous tribute to him and his family but something that must surely send a very clear message today, in these troubled times. We should all reflect on it and be proud of his achievement. He was a great parliamentarian—a real defender of this Parliament. All of us who regard ourselves first and foremost as parliamentarians, ahead of our roles in government and party, have certainly lost one of our own.
With regard to my party, it has to be said that he was not always the greatest fan of Liberal Democrats. No doubt that was largely because of Manchester Liberal Democrats snapping somewhat unsuccessfully at his heels for many years. He was clearly never going to be shifted, no matter how long that continued. He had a large personal vote, in addition to representing a safe Labour seat.
Sir Gerald, as hon. and right hon. Members have said, spoke without fear or favour, and he will be long remembered for that. I think some of that goes back to his Leeds origin and famous Yorkshire bluntness. He had the courage to disagree with his own party leaders and colleagues. He had the courage to criticise journalists, as a former journalist. He had the courage, whatever people may feel about his views as a proud Jewish man, to speak out about the situation in Israel and Palestine. The legacy of that is that we must reach the stage where we feel obliged not to take one side or the other, but to fight, as he did, for justice, peace and resolution.
Sir Gerald, I am pleased to say, supported consistently the campaign for fairness in respect of pub companies and their landlords. I am proud to say that he was a parliamentarian who stood up for Parliament in the vote on the matter in November 2014, in which MPs defeated the Government on a three-line Whip after Ministers had not listened. I am proud of the fact that he was involved in that.
On that point, may I ask the Leader of the House for a debate on the way in which we tax pubs? In this country, 37% of pubs face a rates rise, and many thousands face paying £10,000 or more. That will put many pubs out of business. For pubs in Manchester, Leeds, London and all around the country, can we have a debate urgently in Government time about recognising the social value of pubs in the tax system? That simply does not happen at the moment.
Mr Lidington
Although I cannot offer a specific Government debate on that subject, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I am confident that the debate on the forthcoming Budget statement will provide him with the opportunity to raise all those questions.
Chris Bryant
I think the last Father of the House to die in office was T. P. O’Connor in 1929, so this is a very unusual moment for us. I support the earlier call for us to have a formal means of paying tribute to Members, so that the decision is not just left up to you, Mr Speaker.
I think I am the first gay MP to speak in today’s business questions. Many LGBT people in this country are deeply grateful to Gerald. He campaigned on LGBT equality for a long time when it was very unfashionable, long before anybody thought of a Labour Government introducing equal marriage and all the rest of it. He had an impeccable record on that.
Sir Gerald loved musicals to the point of distraction. Everybody has referred to the fact that “Singin’ in the Rain” was his favourite musical. I was on the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport when he chaired it. When the Committee went on tour—I use the term advisedly, because every year he insisted that the Committee had to go to the west coast of America, so we had to find something that we needed to investigate there—he would welcome us all to breakfast by singing, “Good morning, good morning”. I remember him being very angry with the hon. Member for Lichfield (Michael Fabricant)—I am sorry the hon. Gentleman is not here—who said one morning, “Oh yes—that great song, sung by Debbie Reynolds.” Sir Gerald pointed out, “No, Debbie Reynolds danced in the routine, but she was dubbed by Betty Noyes. You should know that.” He was, as has been mentioned, a great friend of Stephen Sondheim, and the first time he met me—I having formerly been a priest in the Church of England—his first words to me were from “Sweeney Todd”: “Stick to priest!” But his favourite lyric was:
“shepherd’s pie peppered
With actual shepherd on top!”
People have referred to Sir Gerald’s dress sense. It was recondite, I would say. I think he probably outlived his tailor from Leeds, because he certainly wore Etro from Milan all the time by the end. It was not enough to have a loud suit; he had to have a loud tie and a loud shirt, neither of which went with the other. It was a kind of act of defiance against people’s eyesight. I remember that when he was cold in Las Vegas airport, he wanted to go and buy a jumper, so he went off with Claire Ward, and when he saw the Missoni store he went straight in. He and Claire could not decide between two jumpers, so they asked me for advice. I said, “Gerald, they’re both absolutely hideous. You shouldn’t buy either of them”, so he bought both.
Gerald had been at university with Rupert Murdoch, who had never given evidence to a Select Committee at that time, so on the same trip we went to Fox studios to beard him in his den, as it were. There was a great moment when Rupert arrived with his men at the end of a very long avenue of trees while we were at the other end, and we then marched towards each other as in the gunfight at the O.K. Corral. During the phone hacking scandal, I told the story about the lunch we had had with Rupert Murdoch, when Gerald had teased him about getting him thrown out of the Labour party for corruptly organising the election of the wrong person at university. I think they opened the wrong envelope—it feels as though that has been happening for the past six years in British politics as well, but anyway. I told a journalist the story about how Rupert Murdoch had been so violent and aggressive in the meeting—how he kept on hitting the rings on his hand against the table and all of that—and that I just thought it was so funny for all that to happen in the Judy Garland room at Fox studios. About three weeks later, Gerald came up to me in one the Division Lobbies and was absolutely furious with me. Many people have referred to his reputation for giving a little bit of a sharp dig. He came up to me and said, “Christopher, you should know better! You told that story, but we were on tour.” I thought he was going to say, “What goes on tour stays on tour,” but he did not; he said, “It was not the Judy Garland room; it was the Shirley Temple room.”
I remember once at a meeting of the parliamentary Labour party—the chair of the PLP, my hon. Friend the Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer), has left the Chamber, so I hope it is all right for me to refer to something that has been said in the PLP—that he started his contribution with the words, “As Lana Turner once said to me,” and a new, young Member of Parliament who was sitting next to me said, “What seat did she sit for?”
Gerald was also something of a fan of Bette Davis, and I am thinking of his last few years. Bette Davis once said:
“Old age is no place for sissies”,
and I think Gerald would have agreed, because it was sometimes a travail for him to come to the House. He was quite frail, but when he had to represent his constituents he was absolutely determined to be here, and when there were issues he cared passionately about, he made sure he was here. I think the last year was tough for him. I know, Mr Speaker, that you visited him, as Claire Ward did regularly. I do not know whether it was “Sweeney Todd” or “Singin’ in the Rain”, but he was still singing musicals last Tuesday.
To move on to a serious subject, Gerald used to get very angry about ticket touts. He thought it was very unfair that people who contributed nothing to the performance or the venue and who did not enhance the experience for anybody should manage to make, in some cases, thousands or tens of thousands of pounds on the secondary ticket market. I just hope that the Government will do something about this very soon; we are still waiting for a review. In honour of Gerald, may we have a Gerald Kaufman memorial debate on ticket touts and the pernicious scum that they are?
Mr Lidington
I cannot help remarking that if Gerald Kaufman was actually able to sing along with numbers from “Sweeney Todd”, he must have had a very good musical ear indeed, because they have some pretty challenging lines.
In response to the hon. Gentleman’s question about ticket touts, I will refer to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport his point about wanting a review. I also draw his attention to the efforts being made in the Digital Economy Bill to limit what ticket bots can do in snapping up vast numbers of tickets for musicals and other public events and then selling them at, indeed, a quite extortionate price.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
First, I pay tribute to the late Father of the House, Sir Gerald. As I arrived in the House only in 2015, I did not get much of an opportunity to learn from him. However, while going through the voting Lobby, I observed how stylish and dapper his sense of dress was. In fact, one day he went through the Lobby with a fabulous Panama hat on. He spent time with two of my parliamentary colleagues on an overseas trip to Jordan, and they spoke very highly of him, including of how interesting all his parliamentary stories were. I will leave it to parliamentarians who had the pleasure and good fortune to serve alongside Sir Gerald between 1970 and 2017 to pay longer tributes to him, but I offer my condolences to members of his family who are in the Gallery today.
The Hansard Society, which is widely respected and regarded as an independent expert on Parliament and democracy, has warned that the current process of scrutiny is “not fit for purpose” for the Brexit process. The society’s director has warned that if Parliament is to fulfil its responsibility to hold the Government to account, MPs need better procedures. Will the Leader of the House inform the House whether he is taking these concerns seriously, and will he urgently review the parliamentary scrutiny process so that any necessary changes can be made before the great repeal Bill is introduced?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady makes a very serious and important point. The Government, including me, are indeed paying close attention to the question of how, given the implications of the Brexit process for both primary and secondary legislation, we can ensure that there is proper and fully adequate parliamentary scrutiny and parliamentary debate.
I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady on one point arising from the Hansard Society report. Any additional powers for secondary legislation that may be sought in new primary legislation, such as the repeal Bill, will of course themselves have to be approved by Parliament through the normal process. When such a Bill providing any kind of enabling power is introduced, Parliament will be able to debate and decide properly on questions concerning the scope, definition and duration of such powers.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
It has been wonderful to hear from many long-standing colleagues of Sir Gerald. When I was first elected as a new MP in 2010, I distinctly remember deciding to take an office on the corridor above Star Chamber Court on the basis that if it was good enough for Sir Gerald, it was certainly good enough for me. To my delight, during my first week there was a knock on the door and it was the man himself, Sir Gerald. I was a young MP—I was only 29 when I was first elected—and I did not really know anyone down here and I was away from home, but our constituencies were quite close to each another. He knocked on the door and invited me to his office for a drink, which I thought was a wonderful gesture. We talked for hours: about Harold Wilson, about Jim Callaghan, about the winter of discontent, the 1983 manifesto, the Social Democratic party. He was a living encyclopaedia of Labour and British history. We talked a lot about foreign policy—about Kashmir, about Israel and Palestine—and many of the Labour party’s foreign policy positions are actually those that he set during his time as shadow Foreign Secretary. When I expressed my admiration of his office, which was rather more palatial than mine, he took very great delight in telling me that he had been given it over Tony Benn, who made expressly competing demands, on the basis that he had a longer period of continuous service, and that clearly still mattered a great deal to him. I believe that for someone so distinguished and experienced to give so much time to and take so much interest in lots of new Members is the mark of not just a great and true parliamentarian but a great colleague, and we really will miss him a great deal.
One piece of advice that Sir Gerald gave me that day was never to hesitate to raise on the Floor of the House of Commons a constituency problem that I was not able to resolve through paperwork alone. In that spirit and in homage to Sir Gerald, may we have a debate about decent access to universal broadband in all parts of this country? My constituent Peter Edwards of Matley in Hyde runs a business from home, but his business is severely hampered by poor broadband speeds. BT has not been able to resolve this matter satisfactorily in correspondence with me, but surely Mr Edwards should not have to wait to get a decent broadband connection. Universal access to good broadband speeds should be available for everyone.
Mr Lidington
We all know from our constituency experience how important it is for businesses, large and small, to have fast broadband access so that they can compete and sell to customers. If the hon. Gentleman will let me have details of his constituency case, I will refer it to the Minister responsible for digital affairs.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I did not know the late Father of the House but, as a student of politics, I was aware of him for many years. It is clear from today’s tributes that he combined great intellect, principle and political acumen with warmth, humour and insight. I would like to pass on my sincere condolences to his family and friends, particularly those on both sides of the House.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) for reminding us of Sir Gerald’s work in campaigning for LGBT rights. As a gay woman, I am very grateful for that. I am particularly conscious of the fact that Sir Gerald campaigned at a time when it was not fashionable to support LGBT rights and when, sadly, not all political parties in the House supported them. That has now changed, which is largely due to the work of people like Sir Gerald.
Earlier this week, I wrote to the Home Secretary expressing my concern about the circumstances surrounding the deportation of Irene Clennell, whom the shadow Leader of the House has already mentioned. May we have a debate about flexibility and discretion in the immigration system, the need to respect basic human dignity and family life, and the need for due process? May I suggest that such a debate would be a fitting tribute to the late Father of the House, who clearly believed in such principles?
Mr Lidington
I understand the strength of feeling that the hon. and learned Lady expressed about that particular case. However, my understanding is that Mrs Clennell has spent the majority of her life, including her married life, in Singapore, that several applications were refused between 2003 and 2008, and that since July 2014, she has had no legal basis for remaining in the United Kingdom. I stress that all applications for leave to remain are considered on their individual merits, in line with immigration rules, and subject to the various appeal mechanisms under United Kingdom law. Obviously the hon. and learned Lady is welcome to raise that particular case directly with the Home Secretary or the Immigration Minister, but the facts are as I have outlined.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Like many Members and thousands of people throughout the country, Sir Gerald Kaufman had an impact on my life, not least because I was given a copy of his book, “How to be a Minister”, for my 21st birthday, which probably had something to do with the fact that I became a Minister 25 years later. I had not forgotten the brilliant advice in Gerald’s book about how to deal with one’s ministerial box and civil servants, and about how to get things done, rather than just being a spectator in government. I am eternally grateful for his advice in that book.
Those who have paid tribute were right to mention Sir Gerald’s assiduousness towards his constituents. I entered the House in 2001, at the same time as my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant), and I learned that business questions is the most important session of the week and that Members of Parliament value it. It is more important in some ways than Prime Minister’s questions because, apart from on the rare occasions when Mr Speaker has to curtail our efforts on a Thursday morning, it is an opportunity for every Member who is present to raise a matter. Sir Gerald often used business questions to raise a point, and it was almost always related to constituency casework: a Department that had failed to answer a letter; a Minister who had not come back with a quick reply; or even some other institution that had failed to treat correspondence from a Member of Parliament, acting on behalf of a constituent, with appropriate respect, or to furnish an appropriate reply.
Sir Gerald was absolutely right to do that because, whatever one’s view of electoral systems and so on, the strongest thing about our democracy is the representative link between Members of Parliament and their constituents, and the way in which Members of Parliament use this place and their title of “Member of Parliament” on behalf of their constituents to help them—not to enrich themselves or to burnish their reputation, but simply to help the weak against the strong. That is what democracy should be about and Gerald, I think more than anyone in the House, showed us all how that should be done. We would all do well to remember, whatever heights we reach in politics—whether just the Back Bench or ministerial office—why we are here. Sir Gerald was an exemplar of how to do that.
As has been said, Sir Gerald was also politically brave. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) said that this was a controversial point to make at the end of his remarks, he was right to mention Gerald’s position on the state of Israel and its treatment of the Palestinian people. It was extremely brave of him to raise those issues in the House in the way that he did, and it is to his eternal credit that he did so.
People have mentioned Gerald’s dedication to his constituency. One morning about four years ago, I was having tea in the Tea Room, as I often do—I was probably with my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda—when Gerald came in, dressed as usual in colourful fashion. My hon. Friend and I had a brief debate about exactly what colour his suit was, and indeed whether a word existed in the English language to describe such a colour. Gerald had a spring in his step and looked delighted. We wondered whether he had been to a musical the night before—he was whistling as he entered the Tea Room. Then the penny dropped. The Boundary Commission proposals had just been published and Manchester, Gorton was not to be dissected in any way. Sir Gerald was delighted that he could say, “Yes, I’ll be standing at the next election, and the one after.”
My hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda also mentioned Rupert Murdoch; as this is business questions, I think that Gerald would have wanted my next point to be raised. The Leader of the House will have read press reports about the speech that is being made today on the proposed takeover of Sky by 20th Century Fox. How will the Government inform the House of their intentions in relation to that announcement?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman raises an important issue about media ownership. He will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport has to act in a quasi-judicial manner when making decisions about any proposed merger. It would therefore be wrong of her to express any kind of view in advance of a formal notification. If formal notification is made, she will make whatever decisions fall to her by law.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Anyone who has a love of musicals, Judy Garland and Bette Davis, and who can begin a sentence with the words, “As Lana Turner once said to me,” is positively sound in my book. Although I did not know Gerald Kaufman well, there is clearly much admiration for him, particularly among Labour Members. I send his family, friends and colleagues on the Labour Benches my sincere condolences.
On 24 March, it will be exactly one year since the shopkeeper Asad Shah was killed in my constituency by a man called Tanveer Ahmed. Members may know that the newspapers today cover a “celebration”—I hate to call it that—of Asad Shah’s death and the veneration of his murderer in Pakistan. Mr Shah was one of the most gentle and kind people ever to own a shop anywhere in the United Kingdom. He was loved by many people in the south side of Glasgow. Will the Leader of the House join me in condemning the horrifying display that we can see in newspaper and online coverage? Will he also do something to ensure that what we remember is the kindness of this wonderful man and his wonderful family, not the demagoguery of the man who took him from us?
Mr Lidington
I willingly join the hon. Gentleman, and I am sure the entire House, in expressing unreserved revulsion at and condemnation of the event he describes. It is, frankly, sickening to hear that human beings could be prepared to behave in such a fashion. I remember, from reading and seeing news reports just under a year ago, the sense of shock and genuine grief on the part of people in the south side of Glasgow. People from very different ethnic and religious heritages felt that they had lost a friend and a devoted champion of community life. That is how we should remember.
In a sense, the best tribute would be for people in Glasgow in particular, and all of us, to redouble our resolve to eradicate from our society this scourge of bigotry, whether it is based on racial, religious or any other grounds. I hope very much that the Pakistani high commission in London, which I think will have been equally appalled by these news reports, will have taken note of the words that the hon. Gentleman has spoken this morning.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
As a fellow Greater Manchester MP, it was my privilege to visit Sir Gerald in his constituency and see for myself the love of his constituents and the esteem in which they held him. He will be greatly missed in that constituency and by everybody in this House. Like everybody, I will miss Sir Gerald’s sartorial elegance. I remember one day, when he turned up in a particularly flamboyant number, my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) commented that several deckchairs in Blackpool must be missing their seats.
My last memory of Sir Gerald is his absolutely barnstorming speech from the Labour Back Benches against the forced academisation of schools. I was pleased—no doubt this was thanks to the efforts of Sir Gerald and many others—that the Government backtracked on those plans.
Another subject very close to Sir Gerald’s heart was the NHS. With that in mind, I would like to request an urgent debate on the activities of NHS Shared Business Services. When I worked for Pennine Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, NHS Shared Business Services put in a bid to run our payroll services. As trade union reps, we did a quick search of the internet and found a catalogue of woeful errors it had left in its wake from the NHS contracts it already held. May we have an urgent debate about why it was allowed to carry on performing NHS work?
Mr Lidington
The issue with NHS Shared Business Services was identified by the Department of Health and NHS England in March 2016. They immediately established an incident team, which is still working to try to resolve the situation. A team led by NHS England, including clinical experts, has now reviewed all 708,000 items of correspondence. Some 2,500 were identified as having potential risk of harm and required further investigation. Local GPs have now identified nearly 2,000 as having no patient harm. There remain 537 active cases, and they are still being followed up so that we can be absolutely certain there has been no harm to any patients. So far, there is no evidence to suggest actual harm. When the investigation is complete, I am sure that it would be reasonable for the relevant Health Minister to report to the House.
Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)
I would like to associate myself with the many wonderful tributes to Sir Gerald Kaufman and offer my condolences to the family. It is interesting to hear so many stories, and it is through such stories that we remember our own. As a very new Member—within the first month of my being here—I had my first opportunity to have a quick chat with Gerald in the Lobby. I remember saying to him, “I really like the look of your new suit.” To this I got a long, slow languorous look up and down to say, “You’re not doing too bad, either.” I assure the House that I will aspire to Gerald’s sartorial nature.
The UK Government claim to support a world free of nuclear weapons, achieved through multilateral disarmament, yet bizarrely they plan to boycott multilateral negotiations at the UN to ban nuclear weapons. May we have an urgent debate about the Government’s important obligation not only to support but to participate in this UN conference?
Mr Lidington
I will draw the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the conference to the attention of the Defence Secretary, but the Government’s position is very clear indeed. We are a party to the non-proliferation treaty. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that gives particular responsibilities to the acknowledged nuclear powers. We remain an active supporter of the independent inspectorate. We are a very active supporter of multilateral nuclear disarmament, but that has to take place in a way that is genuinely multilateral. It is sometimes easy to come up with suggestions for unilateral action or slogans that do not actually deliver what is needed: detailed treaties that help to reduce the nuclear threat.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
It has been really good to remember Sir Gerald Kaufman today. I used to talk to Gerald in the Members’ Tea Room about film whenever I could, and I got some great recommendations about what important films I should see.
May we have a debate on the rent to buy sector? Customers are being ripped off across the country. In my constituency, young families who are struggling to get by are being told by BrightHouse that they can buy a cot for their baby for just £5 a week. However, because of eye-watering interest rates, they end up paying £780 for a £283 cot. That is just not on.
Mr Lidington
It is very important that people who are tempted by offers of apparently cheap finance really do look hard at the underlying terms and conditions before they commit themselves to what turn out to be quite extraordinary and extortionate repayment obligations. The law is not always the right answer when trying to deal with these matters, as sometimes that just has the effect of driving such activity underground, but this is the sort of question that the Government keep under review the whole time.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
As a relatively new Member, I confess that I did not have the opportunity to get to know Sir Gerald Kaufman personally, but I can tell by the warmth of the tributes that have been paid to him today that I have seriously missed out in that regard. I would like to extend my sympathy to his friends and family.
My constituent, Mr Johnson from Whitburn, was medically disqualified from driving. Since his treatment, he has made an excellent recovery. In June, with favourable reports from his consultant and doctor, he applied to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency to resume driving. May we have a statement or a debate in Government time on how long such DVLA reviews take? I was informed in September that the process would take a few weeks, but his file is with a specialist DVLA professor for review and he is still waiting for a conclusion.
Mr Lidington
The best advice I can give is that the hon. Gentleman pursues the matter directly with Transport Ministers and the chief executive of the DVLA. The principle has to be that somebody who has temporarily lost their licence on health grounds should be able to reapply and have their case looked at fairly on the basis of the evidence, but those assessing the evidence clearly have to satisfy themselves that other road users and pedestrians would not be put at risk were their licence to be restored.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
May I associate myself with the comments about Sir Gerald Kaufman? I hope that in my time here I achieve a fraction of his stature in the House and reputation as a doughty campaigner.
Given Sir Gerald’s passion for all things related to culture, as well as the recent by-election in my great city of Stoke-on-Trent and some of the appalling coverage it received, can we have a debate in Government time on why my great city should be designated City of Culture in 2021?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Lady has launched the campaign this afternoon, and I am sure she will have opportunities, whether in questions to Ministers or debates of various kinds, to make the case even more strongly. Most of us know that the towns making up the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent have an amazing history of cultural contribution to our country, most notably through the pottery industry, but also in the role Stoke played in the industrial revolution and in the development of British industry and technology over many years. We have seen with Hull this year the difference that being designated City of Culture can make to a city’s self-confidence and opportunities. I hope, without prejudicing any future decision, that one day Stoke-on-Trent might have that opportunity as well.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I would like to associate myself with the remarks about the late Father of the House. I did not know Gerald as well as some of my colleagues, but I always found him to be immensely kind.
I wish to talk about my private Member’s Bill on boundaries. Last year, more than 140 Members, from every region and every party, stayed on a Friday to vote overwhelmingly for the Bill. It was and is the will of the House. Yet, instead of allowing it to progress into Committee and, if they so wish, voting against it on Third Reading—if they could get the votes—the Government have chosen to engage in what I can only describe as a series of dirty tricks to prevent it from getting into Committee. I suspect it was because they feared I would have the support of the Committee and that the Bill would have progressed to Third Reading. I remind the Leader of the House that we had a referendum in this country in which the sovereignty of Parliament and the will of the House was an important feature. Yet this has demonstrated to me that the will of the House counts for nothing if it clashes with the will of the lady in No. 10. I have worked well with the Leader of the House in the past—I shadowed him when he was Europe Minister—and I have found him to be a decent man, but this has not reflected well on him. It has not been well done.
Mr Lidington
There is no doubting the hon. Lady’s commitment to her private Member’s Bill, but in fairness she must acknowledge that the Government are the Government only by virtue of having a majority in the House of Commons and that the Government came into office with commitments of their own on boundary changes—commitments on the basis of which they fought and won a general election. I understand that it is possible for her Committee to meet and to begin debating, irrespective of whether a money resolution has been secured. My advice is that the Committee convene and begin its work.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
In May 2005, I was in the Tea Room, and I was rather chuffed to be sitting near Sir Gerald Kaufman, listening to him talk. A Whip came in and said that the queue to take the Oath of Allegiance was short and that any new Member who wished to join it could do so, even though it was ahead of the days allocated. Gerald turned to me and said, “Go! One day, it might help you to be Father of the House.” I slightly glazed over at the thought of how old I would have to be, and how long I would have to totter on for, to be Father of the House, but I heard this voice say, “Go!”, and I did. Yesterday, female MPs were sent a list of where they stood in the ranking of women elected to the House, and I am ashamed to say that I took some pleasure in noting how many women who arrived in the same year as me I was ahead of because of that advice. I am 264th and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who is sitting opposite and who went to school in Bridgend, is 265th. I cannot begin to tell the House the pleasure Sir Gerald will always give me thanks to that little piece of advice.
Sir Gerald also talked about the importance of focusing on the people who send us here, so that is what I shall do. Is the Leader of the House aware that the automotive industry is worth £71.6 billion a year to the economy, and an additional £18.9 billion in added value; that it directly employs 169,000 people; and that more than 184,000 are employed in the wider industry? Is he further aware that 12% of the total value of UK exports and goods comes from the 30 manufacturers building 70 models of car and the 2,000 component providers working in the industry—never mind the £4 billion invested in automotive research and development? Given events in Bridgend yesterday, may we have an automotive summit composed of hon. Members, appropriate Ministers, automotive companies and trade unions involved in this great British industry, the future of which we must work to secure post-Brexit?
Mr Lidington
I completely understand the vital importance of the automotive industry both in the hon. Lady’s constituency and in the country as a whole. There will be questions to the Business Secretary on Tuesday 14 March, but I will certainly ensure that he is aware of her concerns before then. I hope she knows that he is committed personally to doing all that is in the power of Government to ensure that the UK automotive industry is competitive and able to deal with the challenges posed by Brexit and the wider issues of global competition and digital technology, and that the Government are determined to ensure an industrial strategy that delivers jobs and prosperity to every part of this country.
Steven Paterson (Stirling) (SNP)
May I associate myself with the many warm tributes to the recently passed Father of the House?
The Tory-Labour coalition administration running Stirling Council recently tried to privatise sports service provision in the area and was only forced to back down because of public outrage, having spent a colossal sum of money in pursuit of that policy. May we have a debate on the provision of public services more generally so that we can help to educate Tory and Labour councillors in Stirling that privatisation is not the answer for these services?
Mr Lidington
The judgment that local authorities of all political colours, as well as national Government, have to make is what outcome will be best for the people we serve who use particular services. The quality of outcome for the service user is more important than whether it is provided through a directly managed service or one managed by a contract of some kind.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)
In paying tribute to Sir Gerald, I speak, I think, as the newest Member of the House currently present in the Chamber; seven by-elections have followed mine, but I think I am the most recently elected Member here at present. I do not think I ever had the privilege of actually speaking with Sir Gerald—he became very ill following my election in May 2016—but I did receive a note from him on my election, as I did from many Members from across the House. The note said, without quoting it verbatim, that, “As the Member for Ogmore, get comfortable, you could be here for some time,”—if anybody knows the history of my seat, they will know about that—“but don’t take it for granted.” He then decided to give me a potted version of the chequered history of my three immediate predecessors, all of whom he had served with. I will never, ever release the letter, especially to my immediate predecessor, who is now the Assembly Member for my constituency, but that experience will live with me for the rest of my life.
As many Members have mentioned, the key point of Sir Gerald’s work in this House was championing his constituency, and I am sure the Leader of the House was in the Chamber yesterday and heard the question of my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) to the Prime Minister about Ford, which affects many hundreds of workers in my constituency. May I echo the calls that my hon. Friend has made for an automotive summit? May I also request that we do not just wait for questions to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, but that we have a statement on the Floor of the House to explain what the Prime Minister meant yesterday about there being ongoing discussions with the automotive industry and how exactly the Secretary of State will help the people of Bridgend and ensure that Ford continues in the years ahead?
Mr Lidington
As I said in response to the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon), I will, well ahead of questions on 14 March, ensure that the Secretary of State is fully aware of the concerns that both the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady have expressed, and I will ask the Secretary of State to consider the requests for a summit and for a statement.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
May I echo the sentiments expressed on the passing of Sir Gerald? I have enjoyed listening to the heartfelt tributes from Members across the House on his passing, and offer my condolences to his friends and family.
Following a promise of near-federalism, voting no to remaining a member of the EU, the plea that we lead the UK rather than leave it before immediately proposing English votes for English laws after the independence referendum, a promise that agriculture and fisheries would be devolved in full, and the establishment of a UK-wide position for triggering article 50 after the EU referendum, will the Leader of the House facilitate a debate on broken referendum promises made to the Scottish people?
Mr Lidington
The promise that I remember being broken is the promise that the referendum in Scotland would settle the issue for a generation.
Mr Speaker
I thank the Leader of the House, the shadow Leader of the House and all colleagues who over the last two hours and more have contributed so eloquently and with feeling, based on their knowledge and appreciation of the late Sir Gerald. These are very difficult, fraught and perhaps even harrowing times for members of Gerald’s family; I hope that they will derive some succour and comfort from knowledge of the affection and esteem in which their great family member was held in this House.
Reference was made to the fact that I, among others, had visited Gerald in recent months; I did indeed visit him twice at his London home, most recently in January, and I will always treasure my very close memory of the conversations we had. His recollection of historical anecdotes was second to none and they were often extremely amusing. He was a very special person, he was certainly a great parliamentarian, and I am sure people will understand if I say that, alongside being an outstanding and indefatigable Member of Parliament in his constituency, Gerald was quintessentially a House of Commons person. I think that on behalf of colleagues I can offer no greater tribute to Gerald than to say that.
Point of Order
Thursday 2nd March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Senior Judiciary Appointments (Disregard of Age of Candidates) Bill 2016-17 View all Senior Judiciary Appointments (Disregard of Age of Candidates) Bill 2016-17 Debates Read Hansard Text
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. First, may I associate myself with those eloquent remarks, and completely concur?
I know you were in the Chair, Mr Speaker, when the unaccompanied children in Greece and Italy debate occurred—I know that because you cut the time limit for speeches immediately before I spoke. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.] That must have been said by a Whip. There was a strange occurrence at the end of that debate, however. There was suddenly, in the normal way, the call of Ayes and Noes, and there was a bellowing of Noes from the Opposition Benches; in fact, I remember the Labour Deputy Chief Whip bellowing that he did not agree with the motion. Because we had passed the time of interruption, there was a deferred Division. Well, lo and behold, the results of the deferred Division were reported in Hansard this morning, and I can find only one person, who happens to be Conservative Member, voting against the motion. Normally when a Division takes place, there has to be at least two Tellers and somebody who has objected. It appears to me that this was a totally contrived vote to waste the time of the House and cost the House money. But perhaps I am misunderstanding it. I would certainly like your advice, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. It certainly would not be for me to suggest that any Division of the House was contrived; I am not in a position to make any such statement. There is of course a very long-standing convention in this place that vote should follow voice; that is to say, it is profoundly disorderly for somebody to shout in one direction and then vote in another. However, the convention is quite strict and, in my experience, clear: a Member must not vote in opposition to the way in which he or she shouted; there is, however, no obligation to vote. It is therefore conceivable that somebody could shout in one direction and subsequently not be present in the Division Lobby. I am neither advocating nor denouncing such a practice; I am simply recognising the procedural and constitutional reality for what it is. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman, who is himself doughty and indefatigable, has registered his point in his own inimitable way.
Bill Presented
Senior Judiciary Appointments (Disregard of Age of Candidates) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Keith Vaz presented a Bill to require those responsible for the selection and interviewing of candidates for, and appointment to, the posts of Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, the President of the Queen’s Bench Division of the High Court of England and Wales, the Keeper or Master of the Rolls and Records of the Chancery of England and the President of the Family Division of the High Court of England and Wales to disregard the age of applicants under 70 years of age; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 24 March, and to be printed (Bill 150).
Backbench Business
International Women’s Day
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House welcomes International Women’s Day as an important occasion to recognise the achievements of women; and calls on the Government to join in this international event and pledge its commitment to gender parity.
I am honoured to lead this debate today and pay special thanks to the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), and the hon. Members for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) for supporting the application to the Backbench Business Committee, on which I remain the only woman member.
International Women’s Day is an opportunity for all of us to use our voices to celebrate the amazing women of the world. It is also our opportunity to send a rallying cry out to the world about the hardships and injustices women everywhere still face. With each passing day, it seems that right now the women out there need to hear us in here and how we support them more than ever before.
It will surprise no one that the subject that I will speak about today is violence against women and girls. Before my rallying cry, I want to reflect on where we were last year and where we are now. As I closed my speech on International Women’s Day last year, I declared that the women murdered in the UK deserved better than what they got. I pressed this House to hear their names and feel their pain.
I have been proud to be a Member of this House in the past year, where parliamentarians, including my hon. Friends the Members for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) and for Hove (Peter Kyle), myself and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and many others, called on the Government to overhaul a family justice system that leaves women and children damaged and unsafe. Our calls were heard, and an establishment—an actual establishment, in this time when we talk of establishments—that others said we would never change will now begin to improve. From this place, a message was sent to women living in fear, and hundreds of them have contacted me to express their gratitude.
Last week, the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) did a thing that few will manage in their time here when she pushed her Bill to ratify the Istanbul convention through this place to its completion, regardless of those who wanted to stop it. That Bill will mean that a Minister will stand at the Dispatch Box in this place every year and lay out to us exactly how they are going to protect vulnerable women and children.
Yesterday, the Government finally heard the calls that have echoed round this place for over six years and made sex and relationship education compulsory. We have waited too long for this, but the euphoria felt by myself and many campaigners across the House made me want to cartwheel down the halls.
The work over the years of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke and many others means that girls will now be safer. These changes in the past year are not exclusively due to but have been led and pushed through by the women in this place, with the support of amazing women’s organisations such as Girlguiding, Women’s Aid, IC Change and many other female-led organisations.
Sir Desmond Swayne
The issue that the hon. Lady has rightly drawn to our attention has international implications. Does she agree that one of the most important things we can do is provide the incentives for girls to remain in school much longer? That reduces the opportunity for early marriage, from which so many of the evils of which she has spoken flow.
Jess Phillips
I absolutely agree. Every time a girl stays in school in any part of the world and uses her education to stand up and speak for the other women in the world, the whole world becomes a better place. Women with voices matter. Women with voices change things. Women with voices in here give hope and protection to women without a voice at all. I am proud of our efforts, and today I will lay down another marker and say that there is still much to do.
Last year, I rose to my feet in this House and read out the names of the 125 women who had been murdered by men. I decided that I would do that every year while I still had the privilege to be in this place. While we have achieved many things here, I hope that this list once again reminds us of all the reasons we must keep going. I want to stress that this list is the Femicide Census, which is collated by Karen Ingala Smith. The list is made up of all the women killed where a man was the perpetrator or is the principal suspect. While the majority of these deaths can be attributed to partner violence, they are certainly not all in that category and include all the women murdered by men they did not know in the UK since last International Women’s Day. Their names are:
Lyndsey Smith; Robyn Mercer; Paige Doherty; Carrie Ann Izzard; Lynne Freeman; Jodie Betteridge; Joanna Trojniak; Amina Begum; Natasha Sadler; Laura Marshall; Elizabeth MacKay; Marie Johnston; Norma Bell; Tracy Cockrell; Helen Bailey; Leigh-Anne Mahacci; Jean Ryan; Coleen Westlake; Nasreen Khan; Laraine Rayner; Fay Daniels; Louise O’Brien; Xin Liu; Natalie Hemming; Becky Morgan; Iris Owens; Julie Cook; Khabi Abrey; Anne-Marie Nield; Maria Mbombo; Maria Erte; Sonita Nijhawan; Dawn Rhodes; Sylvia Stuart; Andrena Douglas; Karen Hales; Jade Hales; Jo Cox; Helen Fraser; Jean Irwin; Nijole Sventeckiene; Agnieszka Szmura; Sarah Nash; Albertina Choules; Allison Muncaster; Fiona Southwell; Emma Baum; Claire Hart; Charlotte Hart; Tracy Gabriel; Samia Shahid; Nicola Haworth; Lenuta Haidemac; Hannah Pearson; Margaret Mayer; Darlene Horton; Gregana Prodanova; Lynne Braund; Donna Williamson; Xixi Bi; Mia Ayliffe-Chung; Shana Grice; Alison Farr-Davies; Melinda Korosi; Hayley Dean; Annie Besala Ekofo; Zofia Sadowska; Elizabeth Bowe; Nasreem Buksh; Zoe Morgan; Jackie Pattenden; Natasha Wake; Mandy Gallear; Lucy Jones; Vicky Bance; Alice Ruggles; Sophie Smith; Jodie Wilkinson; Pardeep Kaur; Ellia Arathoon; Belen Trip; Natasha Wild; Deeqa Ibrahim; Lisa Skidmore; Rebecca Johnson; Linda Ordinans; Holly Alexander; Andraya Webb; Umida Eshboboeva; Angela Best; Claire Nagle; Hayley Wall; Nicola Woodman; Eulin Hastings; Victoria Shorrock; Leonne Weeks; Kiran Daudia; Kulwinder Kaur; Anita Downey; Ann Furneaux; Chrissy Kendall; Gillian Zvomuya; Amandeep Kaur; Tina Billingham; Hannah Dorans; Catherine Kelly; Hang Yin Leung; Karina Batista; Humara Khan; Hazel Wilson Briant; Margaret Stenning; Avis Addison; and Julie McCash.
Let these women be our inspiration. Let these women be the ones who drive us. I would ask each and every one of us to remember these women, one of whom was one of us. We must remember them when we make our decisions and when we use our votes and our voices. We have a responsibility to be the voices of these women, now they are gone. On this International Women’s Day, let us remember why we are all here and let us raise our voices.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)
Order. Before I call the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, I must inform Members that there will be a time limit of five minutes on other Back-Bench contributions and that, if there are too many interventions, that will have to be reduced.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
It is an enormous pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). She is right to say that we are here to raise our voices. Another hon. Member who is particularly good at raising her voice is the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), to whom we should all pay tribute for the way she works on behalf of women, not only in her constituency but throughout the country. It is a particular pleasure to see you in the Chair for this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I should also like to thank the members of the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to hold this debate, and to hold it here on the Floor of the House. I hope that it will become entrenched as part of the parliamentary calendar from now on. I also want to thank the numerous organisations that have so carefully prepared briefings for us today. They include the National Federation of Women’s Institutes, Women’s Aid, the Young Women’s Trust and Relate—the list goes on. Without their experience and frontline work, our debate would not be as rich as it is.
We are here on a daily basis, and we are reminded daily of the challenge that we still face in achieving equality. The job is far from done. When I tell people that I was only the 265th woman MP ever to be elected in this country, they cannot believe it. Indeed, I was the first ever female MP in north Hampshire, though I am proud to be joined on these green Benches by at least two other female MPs representing Hampshire and leading the way on women’s issues. I think that there was another in our midst earlier.
I sat in the Chamber yesterday to see the swearing in of the newest Member of Parliament, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison). It was heartening to hear that she is the 456th woman MP. Things are changing, but there is still a steep hill to climb. To mark International Women’s Day, it is right to applaud the work of organisations such as Women2Win, led by my noble Friend Baroness Jenkin, and 50:50 Parliament, and also individuals such as Professor Sarah Childs and our very own Mr Speaker. All are absolutely committed to ensuring that there are more women in this place after the next general election.
Women’s lives have changed for the better over the 100 years since we were given the right to sit in this place. We have a record number of women here and record numbers of women are in work. The right to request flexible working benefits thousands of women, and the gender pay gap has been all but eliminated for younger women. There are no more all-male boards in the FTSE 100, which the Government felt was a significant milestone that demonstrates the importance of female representation at the heart of decision making. I am therefore somewhat surprised that a third of Government Departments—eight out of 25—have all-male ministerial teams, so we may also need some targets there.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Be Bold For Change” and we must all be bold. There can be no hiding places. Women’s Institute research shows that 70% of women still feel that they are not equal to the men in this country, that women are judged by different standards, that women who stay at home to raise children are not valued in today’s society, and that despite record numbers of women in work the way that our workplaces are structured means it is still difficult to balance work and home life. We understand all that. Those problems have not gone away. We must continue to modernise our country’s approach to reflect how women’s roles have changed, not simply try to retrofit women into a workplace designed for a different age.
Men are also central to any change. Working Families’ “Modern Families Index” shows that men want change, too. So many families now have two full-time working parents—one in three—and 47% of dads want to downshift to a job in which they can better balance work and family life. A third of dads would even take a pay cut. The sorts of false choices that women have been forced to take for generations are now being forced on men. One of the many reasons why the Women and Equalities Committee is looking carefully into the role of fathers in the workplace is so that we can solve such problems for them as well.
The establishment of the Women and Equalities Committee has given hon. Members the opportunity to drive forward the scrutiny of Government equalities policies and particularly of how those policies affect women. I hope the Minister will take this opportunity to update the House on the Government’s support for making the Women and Equalities Committee a permanent feature. The value of the Committee’s work is clear to see. In our report on sexual harassment in schools, which was published last September, we uncovered disturbing levels of sexual violence against girls in schools. Indeed, it was the third Select Committee report to call for sex and relationship education to be made compulsory for all children in all schools.
With the support of more than 40 other Members, my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) and I tabled an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill that was due to be debated next week. The amendment, which also had the support of the Chairs of the Health and Education Committees, was intended to make relationship education compulsory. I am delighted that the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Edward Timpson), did so much work on this and that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has been able to take the idea forward and will put it in the Bill for the Government to press on with next week. That is the sort of change that cross-party working can achieve. I also put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for her support in ensuring that that work was truly cross-party. Organisations such as Barnardo’s and Girlguiding worked hard on making sex and relationship education a top priority for politicians. We should thank them for that hard work and their assiduous campaigning.
I want to highlight the work done and progress made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. This week, she announced a review of online abuse, which will be of benefit to women in particular, and sits well alongside making relationship and sex education compulsory. I urge the Government to support a Law Commission review of online law, particularly the need for anonymity for adults who are subject to online abuse through images in what is commonly known as revenge pornography. The revenge pornography helpline was put in place by this Government and provides victims with invaluable help. Is the Minister able to update the House on its future?
All of us will acknowledge that the Government have made great progress on several issues that particularly affect women. I acknowledge the personal role of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister in championing the cause of stronger legislation around domestic violence. The Government recognise the complex nature of domestic abuse and coercive and trolling behaviour. I pay tribute to the campaigning work of Women’s Aid in this area, which demonstrates that domestic abuse is not simply about physical violence. Training for police officers is critical if the legislation is to work as intended, so is the Minister able to tell the House how many police officers have received approved training on domestic abuse issues?
Time is short today, but there are a few more issues that I want to shed light on. It is right that Parliament scrutinises issues, including how they might affect vulnerable groups, and the Government are to be applauded for recognising that an exemption is needed around new child tax credit limits, which will come in next month, for women who have children conceived by non-consensual conception or rape. We must ensure that our policies do not penalise women who live in an abusive relationship, perhaps in fear of what might happen if they leave. They are perhaps one of the most vulnerable groups of women. What plans does the Minister have to ensure that that group are not penalised as a result of the actions of the men they live with?
Our country has done so much on the world stage to champion women’s rights, and we should proud of our international reputation. I am sure that Home Office Ministers carefully followed the national refugee women’s conference in London this week. We need to look at how to ensure that women refugees in this country are properly supported. However, the sustainable development goals that the Government signed up to begin at home. In advance of the Commission on the Status of Women meeting in New York later this month, I hope that the Minister is able to reaffirm this Government’s specific commitment to implement sustainable development goal 5 in this country. How do the Government plan to ensure that the devolved Administrations are compliant with SDG5? Is there a plan for the harmonisation of women’s rights across the UK? Universal access to sexual and reproductive health services and to reproductive rights is central to the sustainable development goals. My right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) and the then Prime Minister David Cameron fought hard for that goal. We must fight hard for women’s rights internationally, but we also must fight hard for every woman in this United Kingdom, including in Northern Ireland, and not hide behind the fact that such matters are devolved.
We will not make the necessary progress unless we lead by example. We need to address the lack of women in this place, the fact that some Departments have no female Ministers, and the need for the permanent scrutiny of equality issues. We must be bold for change, and we must advocate that that change is as strong at home as it is abroad.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
I have spent much of my time in this place encouraging and celebrating women. At the turn of the century I made a study of how much difference the 101 Labour women who were elected in 1997 made, and it was clear that it was because of women in this place that, for example, our defence forces started focusing for the first time on the needs of the families of those who fight. It was because of women in this place that Budgets started resourcing women’s purses, rather than men’s pockets. Frankly, it is very sad that since 2010 the tradition, which started in 1999, has been reversed. I hope that when the Chancellor delivers his Budget on International Women’s Day he might go back to recognising that it is time for women to benefit at least as much as men, if not more. After all, we put our money into the pockets of children, and men use their money for their own pleasure—I generalise, but it is true.
My speech will concentrate on violence against women. We all have constituents who have been groomed by pimps, beaten up by violent partners or subjected to forced marriage or genital mutilation. It is important to think about how we help them. Rather than just supporting the expert organisations—in my case, East Berkshire Women’s Aid and Sewak Housing—we must ensure that organisations that are not so expert actually realise their own failures. One organisation in Slough is very good at promoting itself but, frankly, is not very good at protecting women. I have called out Jeena International on those things because it cannot offer people a service and then let them down.
We also need to try to increase resilience among women by helping them to be aware of and to resist the risks of grooming, and so on. I have tried to create a network, largely of south Asian women in my constituency, that aims to build their resilience and that of their sisters. It aims to raise women’s awareness of things such as how to help their sons deal with porn on the net.
I will finish by focusing on some of the most vulnerable women in the world. Yesterday I had the privilege of hosting a meeting organised by Khalsa Aid, a flexible, opportunist aid organisation led by the Sikh community in Slough. Khalsa Aid has been working with Yazidi women. When Daesh overran the Yazidi community, many women starved and expired of thirst after they were abandoned on a hill. What happened to the other Yazidi women afterwards was more degrading that most of us can imagine. They were bought and sold like radios or books. They were raped, beaten up and forced to watch their children being raped. Their sons were kidnapped so that Daesh could try to turn them into terrorist jihadi fighters.
Daesh developed a kind of bureaucracy with rules for using the people who are owned. One of the 15 rules states:
“The owner of two sisters is not allowed to have intercourse with both of them; rather he may only have intercourse with just one. The other sister is to be had by him, if he were to relinquish ownership of the first sister by selling her, giving her away or releasing her.”
That is today. That is the reality of slavery. We call modern slavery “slavery” in the UK, but this is ancient slavery. It is horrifying to look at the price list. A woman of between 40 and 50 years old is worth £27—that is her price. Daesh publishes the prices because it wants the money to buy bombs with which to blow us up. Terrifying, a child under nine is worth four times as much—£109 is the price of a young girl.
Those women have participated in an exhibition called “I am Yazidi” that tells their stories and shows photographs of them. I hope to bring the exhibition to this House, but in the meantime I encourage everyone to see it.
Ravi Singh of Khalsa Aid told me about one woman who managed to fight off her rapists, who then turned on her daughter. After her daughter’s abuse, her daughter said, “Mum, it’s your fault.” The woman does not know where her daughter is now, and she is terrified that her daughter still believes it is her fault. That is the extremity of violence against women, and we should work in solidarity against it.
Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)
It is an honour to speak in this debate about International Women’s Day, a privilege that few women across the world are yet able to enjoy. I congratulate our determined and passionate colleague the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing this debate and on continuing her great mission in this House.
I am proud to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor as MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, Mabel Philipson, who was only the fourth woman to be elected to this place—she was first elected in 1923. I am only the 378th woman ever to be elected to this House, of a total of 456. I very much hope that the number increases sharply in the years to come, and we all have a part to play in encouraging women who are already passionate about their families, their businesses, their communities and their country to play their part in shaping the future of our nation by standing for election to this place. Our latest arrival, No. 456, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), is a walking example of that, and she is the woman who took us across the line—the total number of women ever elected to this House is now greater than the number of men currently serving in this Parliament.
I shall focus my remarks on the women who serve in our armed forces, often in unsung roles. They work just as hard as their male counterparts, and often harder. Many of us civilians are perhaps unaware of the huge strides that women have made in their crucial roles protecting our nation. We are perhaps already aware of the vital part that women played, through necessity, during the great war and the second world war, when women stepped up, ably and with great passion, to take on the roles left vacant by the men who had gone off to war.
During the first world war, 100,000 women served in the uniformed services, primarily as nurses but with few officially close to combat. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was formed in 1917—100 years ago—and provided women with jobs as telephonists, clerks and chauffeurs. The Women’s Royal Naval Service was created in the same year and saw women taking on domestic work within the Navy, freeing up men for combat roles. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was formed a year later, with women working as drivers, cooks and record keepers.
Beyond the uniformed services, women took on a range of roles left vacant by the men who had left for war. From working in munitions factories to driving trains, women rose up to fulfil what had been seen as “male” roles. Of course, many of those women were forced out of their job once the surviving men returned to the UK, but their ability to take on such roles demonstrated to society how capable women are and what a valuable resource they are to our economy. Just a year after the end of the war, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their gender.
Women have played an integral role in our armed forces for a century, but what of their role today? As of October 2016, there are 15,380 women serving in our armed forces, making up just over 10% of the total across the three services, with more women serving in the RAF than in the Army and Navy. That represents an increase of three percentage points over the past decade, but there is clearly much more to do. Just as we need more women serving in this place, the talent of women to serve and defend our nation must be harnessed more effectively.
The value of having more women in our armed forces extends beyond their individual contributions. The female of the species brings a different perspective to the challenges of war fighting and peacekeeping in the modern age. The presence of women during peacekeeping operations brings an opportunity to gain access and insight to local communities that is simply not permissible for our male military personnel.
As they serve, women are quietly proving that they are an invaluable asset to our nation, from Royal Navy officers Captain Ellie Ablett, recently promoted to command HMS Raleigh, and Commander Eleanor Stack, who has taken command of HMS Duncan—one of our Type 45 destroyers which I had the privilege to inspect last year—to Commodore Inga Kennedy, the most senior female officer in the Royal Navy; Major General Susan Ridge, our most senior female Army officer; Brigadier Sharon Nesmith, who was the first woman to command a brigade of 5,000 soldiers; and Air Vice-Marshal Elaine West, the most senior woman in the RAF. Those women, and the 15,000 serving across our three armed services, are an inspiration to girls and women today who, when pondering their future career choices, can be inspired by the leadership of those amazing women in leading roles in the armed forces.
The future of our nation’s great asset, the finest armed forces in the world, is safe in the hands of its women and men, and I look forward to continuing my efforts to encourage more young women to study maths and the sciences and then to take up careers as engineers, medics and musicians, pilots and navigators, submariners and logisticians, linguists and intelligence officers. Those are all rewarding career choices both within the armed forces and as civilians with the extra military skillset of personal self-discipline, commitment and passion for a chosen trade.
This time next year I hope to be able to report that the statistics for women in our political networks and our armed forces have continued to grow, and I also hope to report that my recent application to join the Royal Naval Reserve has been accepted. I encourage other colleagues to consider applying too.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I wish to focus on Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, a British citizen, charity worker, mother, daughter, sister and wife, who has been imprisoned in Iran for almost a year now. Nazanin lives 10 minutes down the road from me in west Hampstead. Her life was not very different from mine until she went on holiday to visit her parents with her two-year-old daughter Gabriella, who is also a British citizen. She was detained at the airport and, following trumped-up charges, handed a five-year sentence.
Long periods of Nazanin’s detention have been spent in solitary confinement in a wing of Iran’s notorious Evin prison. Her health has been deteriorating further and further, and her mental health has also been affected. Last week, she tried to walk to the prison clinic, but could not physically make it there and collapsed. After she came round, many hours later, she could not speak for hours on end. Doctors at the hospital in Iran have said that she needs immediate treatment to prevent long-term damage.
Nazanin’s detention, and her lack of legal representation and access to her family, fit the UN’s criteria for torture. It is therefore not a surprise that the UN has said that her detention is unlawful and arbitrary. Some 800,000 people have called for her release, and Nazanin’s family and I took a petition to the Foreign Office with the signatures of 200 MPs from different parties.
This country is not perfect in our treatment of women in prison, and more than half a million women and girls are currently in appalling conditions in prisons around the world. The excuse we often hear for criminal justice systems not having gender-specific options is that the proportion of women prisoners is too tiny to require circumstances to be changed. That is not a good excuse; we must ensure that the needs of female prisoners are met.
It was no surprise when in 2010 the UN General Assembly voted unanimously to adopt the Bangkok rules, the first international instrument to address appropriate conditions for female prisoners around the world. The rules also outline safeguards for the children of female prisoners. Iran has signed up to the Bangkok rules, but it has flouted them at each and every stage of Nazanin’s detention.
I ask the House to bear with me as I read out just how those rules have been flouted. Rule 23 states:
“Disciplinary sanctions for women prisoners shall not include a prohibition of family contact, especially with children.”
Try saying that to two-year-old Gabriella, who spent her second birthday without her parents and has not seen her mother for the best part of the past year. Rule 26 states:
“Women prisoners’ contact with their families…shall be…facilitated by all reasonable means”,
especially when they are detained in prisons located “far from their homes.” Try saying that to Nazanin’s husband, Richard Ratcliffe, who has had barely any phone calls with his wife. Those that he has been allowed have been monitored by Iran’s revolutionary guards.
Iran has signed up to the Bangkok rules, and so have we. As I said, our record is not 100% positive. We need to look at our prisons and the way in which our female prisoners are treated, but that does not mean that we should shut our eyes to abuse in other countries. We should be shouting loudly to make sure that Nazanin, a British citizen, is reunited with her family and brought back to this country. I went to the Foreign Office with a Government Member, the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden), but the Foreign Secretary did not come down to receive the petition, and he has repeatedly declined my request for a meeting.
I shall end on this. I am a female Member of Parliament, and I ask another female Member of Parliament, the Prime Minister, to do something to secure Nazanin’s release so that she can be brought back to west Hampstead and reunited with her family. The Prime Minister has said that she wants to be a compassionate leader; if there was ever a time to show compassion, this is it.
Nusrat Ghani (Wealden) (Con)
It is an honour to follow that passionate speech by the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Be Bold for Change”, so that is the theme of my speech.
In medieval times, a women who killed her husband was guilty of not only murder but petty treason, because she had betrayed someone superior to her. Her punishment was to be drawn and burned alive. In comparison, a husband who murdered his wife was hanged. Why was the woman’s crime worse than the man’s? Because she threatened the established social order, in which each person had, and knew, their place. By killing his wife, the man did not threaten that order.
The law was changed in 1828, and four years later the Reform Act 1832 gave the vote to 300,000 more people, but none of them were women. Between 1870 and 1904, women’s suffrage was debated 18 times in this House. In every vote on the matter from 1886 onwards, a majority of MPs were in favour of allowing women the vote, but we did not get it until 1918.
I shall read out some of the arguments that were made against women being given the vote—arguments that we probably still hear when we are going about our business, delivering public service. They included that women are by nature subordinate to men; that men are made for public life and women for private; that allowing women to vote would, heaven forbid, allow them to think that one day they could become MPs—an idea that was self-evidently absurd; that only men should legislate for women because only men know what is good for women; that we have no grievances, and if we do, they can easily be put right by men; that politics would get women over-excited and lead to nervous breakdowns; and that if women had the vote, they would be pestered on polling day.
Political parties had their own motivations. For the Labour party, votes for women would just enfranchise more of the propertied classes; for the Conservatives, women voting would lead to socialism; and for the Liberals, women were too conservative by nature, so the Liberals would lose elections.
Not everything has changed, but some things have. I want to put on record the women we must acknowledge who came to this place before us. The first female MP to take her seat was elected in 1919. We got our first female Cabinet Minister in 1929, our first female Prime Minister in 1979, and our first female Speaker—the legend that is Baroness Boothroyd—in 1992. Yesterday, in 2017, when my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) was sworn in, we got our 456th female MP, finally surpassing the number of male MPs currently.
It has taken us close to 700 years to reach this stage, and we still have a long way to go. With only 30% of our MPs being women, we are behind Italy, Germany, Norway and Rwanda. I want to send out a message today to any young girl or woman who is listening and wants to enter politics. I want her to hear loud and clear that everyone in this House will welcome her wholeheartedly.
We have moved on from the medieval age; we are now in the technical age. We are among the first generation of parliamentarians who have had to deal with modern technology and the access it gives the public to their politicians. Those of us who use social media know what it is like occasionally to go on to Twitter and Facebook and see a barrage of abuse from trolls. These faceless and nameless cowards need to be called out and challenged. When the Minister responds, will she say what more can be done to put pressure on social media companies and search platforms to encourage them to take down the hate and abuse that is focused on women just because of their gender, faith or heritage? It would be a grand day if, when all the women in this House saw a fellow female parliamentarian being abused just because of who she was, we all went on to social media and drowned out that hate.
I shall finish by thanking some of the female leaders in and around my constituency. Five of the eight East Sussex MPs are women: my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd); my hon. Friends the Members for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) and for Lewes (Maria Caulfield); the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas); and me. We have a female chief executive of the county council, Becky Shaw, and a female police and crime commissioner, Katy Bourne, as well as dozens of fantastic female councillors at county and district level who have mentored me and are inspiring leaders in their communities. They are the ones who show, each and every day, that politics is very much the business of women.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) and all the female Members who have spoken in the debate so far. Notwithstanding the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), it is a shame that there are not more men participating in this debate—[Interruption.] I am pleased that he has saved us all some time.
The theme of this year’s day is, “Be Bold for Change”. It is a call for women and our allies—I thank the few men who are here—to think outside the box, to envision, to be more inclusive, to ensure we have a more gender-equal and fair society, and, ultimately, to be the change that we want to see in the world. Yet today, despite all the progress that we have made, there are still too many women who are adversely affected by cuts, pay disparity, domestic violence, sexual assault, rape, and female genital mutilation. I could continue, but the list only reminds us of how far we still have to go.
I am pleased to say that, last week, my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) made history in this House by ensuring that the ratification of the Istanbul convention will proceed. I am grateful to all women’s aid organisations, both in Scotland and across the UK, and to IC Change, which helps to deliver the services on which women rely every day.
Although I welcome the Government’s actions on the gender pay gap—I was proud to sit on the Committee overseeing legislation on that matter—they do not go far enough. It is simply not good enough if a baby girl born today has to wait until 2041 to achieve gender parity. I am pleased that the Government are taking action but, as always, I want to push for more.
I want to highlight some of the bold and courageous women from my constituency who have acted for change and made a difference. Those women have shaped my world view and my view of politics. They are one of the reasons why I am standing here today—this is not the institution that I aim to be in but, none the less, I am here.
I recently went to see the film “Hidden Figures” which documents the untold story of African-American women working at NASA, challenging gender and race stereotypes. The fact is that, all too often, many women who do both ordinary and fantastic jobs every day remain hidden in our society. We should recognise them, although no films are made about a cook, a cleaner or an ordinary woman who works hard but does not earn the same as a man.
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the election of Winnie Ewing in Hamilton in 1967. She was a lawyer who became the second ever SNP MP. Therefore, being a young girl growing up in Hamilton meant knowing about strong, passionate women who believed that they could change things in politics, and I hope that that is what I am here to do. Winnie Ewing went on to be known as Madame Ecosse in Europe, and she led the way in fighting for many of the protections that we enjoy today. We must ensure that Brexit will not remove those equality protections. Winnie was unquestionably bold and she acted for change. As well as increasing representation in this Parliament, I wish to see an increase in women local government representatives after the elections in May.
Hamilton was also the home of the late and great Margo MacDonald. Margo challenged the established political order in 1973 in the Govan by-election, and she went on to have a long and successful career in journalism and politics. Sadly, Margo lost the battle with Parkinson’s disease, but she never lost the courage to fight for what she believed in. She was indeed bold and brave in striving for change. Like me, she wanted Scottish independence—I remain resolute that I will see that in my lifetime.
One more great woman who inspired me from a young age is Horse McDonald, who grew up in the area of Lanark. She is a role model for many in the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. Her play “Careful” outlines her own experience of growing up in Lanark. She displayed bravery at a time when being an openly lesbian musician was challenging to say the least.
I have named just some of the inspirational women from Lanark and Hamilton East, but, as I said earlier, there are many more who do ordinary jobs and live ordinary lives, and also deserve to be recognised.
Let me outline one final matter that I wish to change. The Prime Minister has committed to review domestic violence legislation, which I welcome, but I ask her to consider the cross-party calls for a review of the child maintenance tax for domestic violence survivors. I have gone on at great length about that, but if the spirit is to be bold and to ask for change, I will continue to do so.
There is still much work to do. As we celebrate women across the world, let me quote some words from Maya Angelou:
“If you don’t like something, change it.”
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Who could argue with that? I call Lucy Allan.
Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) and her excellent speech—indeed there have been many excellent speeches so far. I am pleased that there are so many women who are being bold and who are bringing about change in this place, and I am proud to be one of them.
I am deeply proud of being Telford’s first ever Conservative MP, and of overcoming the odds and obstacles to make that possible in what was once a safe Labour seat. However, I am prouder still of being Shropshire’s first female MP since 1929 and of overcoming the odds and obstacles to make that possible, because that was the greater challenge.
No one should underestimate the difficulties and roadblocks that, inevitably, are still there for women who want to come into Parliament and get the voices of women heard. It may not be as difficult as it was in 1929 when Edith Picton-Turbevill was elected to be MP for The Wrekin, or in the days of my family member, Janie Allan, who was a militant socialist suffragette arrested for smashing windows in Downing Street. In 1912, she was imprisoned in Holloway where she was force fed.
I have no doubt Janie Allan would be proud, and probably also amazed, that I am here and can go to Downing Street to make my voice heard without the need to smash any windows, and that when I do so, the Prime Minister is a woman. I pay tribute to Janie Allan for her daring; she was a bold woman. I also pay tribute to the women who came after her who enabled us to be in this place today.
Sometimes, we minimise the difficulties that women face in getting into Parliament and in staying here. Sometimes, we prefer just not to talk about it. However, if we pretend that there are no problems, we do no favours for the women who are still to come to this place.
The increase in women MPs since 2005, when there were only 17 female Conservative MPs, has created transformational change in the make-up of the House of Commons and it has transformed the things that we talk about and the debates that we hold, which is to be welcomed. We must pay tribute to Baroness Jenkin, our Prime Minister and the organisation, Women2Win, which has helped so many women over those years. Today, seeing 70 women Conservative MPs in Parliament, is a proud day, but the work is not yet done. For more women to stay in Parliament and to follow on behind us, we need to speak out about some of the obstacles that we experience. That will make it easier for the women who come to this place after we have gone.
I am becoming increasingly concerned about a tendency to treat certain crimes, where women are predominantly the victims and men predominantly the perpetrators, as gender-neutral crimes. It is suggested that, as these crimes can happen to men too, they are not about gender relations, and that the male/female dynamic is irrelevant. I do not agree with that. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) is not in his place to hear this part of my speech. An example of where that is happening is child sexual exploitation. The perpetrators are men and the victims are almost entirely women and yet, because there have been some male victims, we are told that it is a gender-neutral crime. If we fail to understand that some crimes are predominantly committed by men against women, we cannot tackle the causes and we cannot provide the support that women need to recover from these crimes.
Child sexual exploitation is about the exploitation of a power imbalance between men and women, and it is where men groom and trade young girls for sex with other men. If we do not see it in those terms and we say that child sexual exploitation is a form of child abuse, that gender is irrelevant and that the perpetrator’s gender is irrelevant, it does not take us any further forward. This is a crime perpetrated by men against women, and let us not pretend otherwise.
I do not have much time left, so I shall cut to the chase. I began by talking about the difficulties that still exist for women to get into this place and stay here; I want to add that most women do not want any special treatment or favours. No one wants to be perceived as complaining. In fact, when I first came here, I did not want to be labelled as a woman who would speak up only for women’s issues, and I steered clear of the Women and Equalities Committee, but I am now extremely proud to be a member of it and to have had a complete change of heart. I want to be a voice for other women whose voices cannot be heard.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I want to use today’s debate to highlight an oral history learned at my mum’s knee about the match women of London’s east end, who took control of their lives, setting ablaze a fire of trade union activism that not only secured better conditions at work for themselves, but inspired an era of labour organisation that would see workers’ rights entrenched and a political party of labour founded.
These courageous, poor, ill-educated women worked in appalling circumstances at the Bryant and May factory in east London. In 1888, they came out on strike to secure safer working conditions. Yet their story has been misrepresented and their impact on the early days of the labour movement has been underestimated—they were not the ones writing the histories. Their victory is attributed to Annie Besant, although not in the version I heard from my mum; in fact, she had never heard of Annie Besant. Let us give Annie her due—she did much to highlight the horrific working conditions at the factory—but she was opposed to the strike. She tried to dissuade the women from going on strike; she feared for them.
The version of history in which the defenceless waifs of London’s underclass were rescued by the principled, sympathetic middle-class champions has been comprehensively debunked by the amazing, remarkable, redoubtable author Louise Raw. In her brilliant book “Striking a Light”, she meticulously details just how the match women, led by five workers—Alice Francis, Kate Slater, Mary Driscoll, Jane Wakeling and Eliza Martin—knew their own minds, designed their own tactics, led their own movement and forged their own history. They were the true leaders of the match women’s strike.
Witnesses at the time were in no doubt of the significance of the event. The Star newspaper reported:
“The victory of the girls...is complete. It was won without preparation—without organisation—without funds...a turning point in the history of our industrial development.”
But the true story of the match women is so much more than just proud local women’s history. These women were and are integral to our national story. History records that it was the heroic London dockers of 1889 who spurred the foundation of the labour movement. But the record needs to be clear that it was London’s working-class women, a year earlier, who were the vital spark of trade unionism. The men learned from the women—they learned from their mothers, their wives, their sisters, their daughters and their neighbours. John Burns, a leading trade unionist at the time, told the striking dockers—men—to
“stand shoulder to shoulder. Remember the match girls, who won their fight and formed a union.”
Today the leaders’ names have echoed in this Chamber. But it ain’t enough. We have no memorial to them—their fight, their impact and their place in history. I have asked the Government before, and I ask again: please put pressure on English Heritage. We need to get this changed. I have tried, and so far I have been unsuccessful. English Heritage does not seem the least bit interested, despite its recent commitment to reflect diversity in its blue plaque scheme. I want a blue plaque on the site to recognise the true leaders of the match women’s strike and the 1,400 women who came together to withdraw their labour, demanding and winning safer and fairer working conditions. We need a plaque to remember the women who organised, who fought and who won against massive odds—women who were instrumental in founding a political labour movement that continues to fight for fair pay and conditions for all of Britain’s workers.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
I am delighted to speak in this important debate and to follow the very powerful speech from the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who can count on my support for her campaign.
The UN’s theme for International Women’s Day this year is
“Women in the Changing World of Work: Planet 50-50 by 2030”
and the global theme is “Be bold for change”, but 2030 is only 13 years away, and there is still much to be done. The Prime Minister has called the gender pay gap—the difference in earning power between men and women—a “burning injustice”. I could not agree more.
We still have some way to go in the changing world of work in the UK. British women still have 71% of the economic opportunity that men have. Yes, there are other countries that are doing much worse, but the UK should be a leader in this area. Sadly, we are not.
UN sustainable development goal 5 describes gender equality as a world issue. It is a sad statistic that between 1995 and 2015, global female labour force participation decreased from 52% to 49%. Only 69% of women are employed in the UK, compared with 78% of men. The global gender pay gap is 25.5%, but the UK gender pay gap is 19.2%. That is not something to be proud of. We cannot lecture other countries around the world that we have it better. If the current trends continue, it will take 70 years to close the global gender wage gap, but the Government have vowed to reduce it within a generation.
If we are going to be bold for change, we will have to look very hard at where we can make a difference. One way to address that is by looking at older women in the workplace. I want to focus on women returning to work, particularly older women. One of the findings from the gender pay gap inquiry by the Women and Equalities Committee, on which I serve, was that women who have been out of the workplace for more than six months find it difficult to get back into employment. The longer they are out of work, the harder it is.
I set up the all-party group on women and work with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) to look at the barriers to work. Our group has proved to be incredibly popular—we have standing room only at most of our meetings. There is still a definite need—I wish it were not so—to help women in the workplace. Our first all-party group inquiry was about women returning to work. We published our report in January, and it seems to have struck a chord with employers and women up and down the country.
There are some very good examples of companies that are already doing it, but we need to do much more to get people on board and to see the wisdom of tapping into the life experience and work-related experience of older women employees who are keen to get back into work. In my view, companies that cannot see the potential are missing a big trick. To put it quite simply, there is a huge pool of talent out there.
People take time out of the workplace for all sorts of reasons. The biggest reason is caring responsibilities, whether for children or for elderly relatives. Some people, including me, took time out because we think that parenting is the most important job in the world and we wanted to take responsibility for bringing up the next generation—there is absolutely nothing wrong with that view. For others, childcare costs are an enormous barrier for women who want to return to work. Having 30 hours of free childcare will help, but I fear that too many men and women are not taking time out to look after their children because they are worried about getting back into work. Taking time out of the workplace is a huge financial commitment, but more would be prepared to make that choice if they knew that they would not struggle to get back into work at a later date. Families would be in a better place to budget, too.
The more social investment and measures that Governments can put in place to balance work and family commitments for both men and women and to recognise the importance of looking after children, the better. I am pleased that the Government have recognised many of those points in their policies, but we need to take it further. For instance, our group’s report found that few people were taking up shared parental leave—just 1% of men are taking it up. It is considered complicated and unwieldy.
There is little recognition of the work that women—it is predominantly women—do when they are at home. We have to stop this idea that just because someone has taken time out of the workplace, they are any less capable. My heart sinks when people dismiss mothers or fathers who are staying at home; what is more important than bringing up the next generation? It should be treated as equally important as going back to work.
Many women who have been out of the workplace for some time have lost confidence and do not know how to start, but several organisations are addressing this. We are incredibly grateful for people such as Julianne Miles, the co-founder of Women Returners, who contributed to our report. Companies need to be flexible in their approach and in their conditions. They must not see a gap in a CV as a barrier and show a reluctance to employ someone. Employing older women and men is a huge economic opportunity, especially if we are going to live until we are 90, as the predictions are for South Korea. I challenge all companies: be bold for change and lead the way.
Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)
I rise to speak as No. 404. Obviously, none of us should simply be a number, but being only the 404th woman to be elected to this place seems astonishing to me, in this day and age, when we would all like to believe that we had moved beyond all that. But we have not. Both at home and further afield, the life chances of women and girls are too often hindered by barriers, sometimes insurmountable ones, that should not be there.
We all know of exceptional and inspiring women in the public eye who have overcome those barriers, against all the odds, but there are many women who plough through more quietly and are just as influential, and who are no less impressive for being out of the public eye; women such as my late mother-in-law, Harbhajan Kaur, who spent her young life in rural India, where she taught other young women, before moving to Scotland and raising her own family, teaching her own girls to be strong, independent women, as she was. Today we must applaud all the individual women around the world who are pushing against the barriers.
I recently saw an Indian television advert about a cheery chap called Gurdeep who ran a sweet shop selling piles of delicious-looking ladoo. His shop was called Gurdeep Singh & Daughters, and the message behind the advert was that girls can do anything that boys can, which of course is true. In some ways it is a great shame that in 2017 we even need to say that. But we do need to say it, and that holds true here just as much as it does in India.
In too many ways we are nowhere near where we should be. Last year, the median average earnings for full-time female employees was £12.82, as opposed to £14.16 for men; less than 27% of FTSE 100 company directors were women; and in this House—well, it has a long way to go. I am pleased that the Scottish Government are very focused on action to make a difference to these and other areas of women’s lives, and we do need action. We need action here, too, such as the brilliant work of my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford), who did such a great job in shepherding through her Istanbul convention Bill. We do need frameworks, which is why the Scottish Government’s commitment to gender equality is so influential. These commitments, and role models such as our First Minister, make a significant difference to women’s lives and the aspirations and beliefs of our girls.
Those things also make a difference to the aspirations and beliefs of our boys. As a mum of fantastic boys, I believe that I would be doing them a huge disservice if I did not spend time ensuring that they understand that girls and boys, men and women, are equal in value, in ability and in every way. So the fact that equality for women is at the heart of our vision for an equal Scotland, and seeing that commitment in action in those who influence us, makes a huge difference. It is important for all our children to see these principles of equality and fairness in action in public life, as well as in their own daily lives.
We all know someone whose commitment to women’s issues and to equality has inspired us. We in this place must amplify that, live it every day and show it, so that all our young people have every prospect of success, whatever their identity. When I was a wee girl, I cannot say that I was inspired much by the most famous female politician of the day—even then I knew that she did not speak for me. But I also knew perfectly well that I could do whatever I wanted with my life, and be whoever I wanted to be, because I was inspired by another politician much closer to home: my own mum. She lived a life that was very far from ordinary, and she believed in her girls in a way that every child deserves. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) said, she was the change that she wanted to see in the world. That is what we all need to do in this place, here in our Westminster ivory tower. We are in the most privileged position. If we do not use it to push the rights of girls and women, we are letting ourselves down, we are letting our girls down, and we are letting our boys down, too.
Let us rise to the occasion. Let us not just come here every year and agree—I think that largely we do agree—that the rights of women really do merit some attention. Let us all commit this year to making a concerted effort to do the big things and the small things, to make the decisions and to change the policies that really will make a difference.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)
International Women’s Day is an opportunity to celebrate the amazing achievements of women around the world. I therefore want to begin by marking some of the great accomplishments of women from my constituency of Ogmore. Norah Isaac, who was born in Caerau, was one of the greatest 20th-century Welsh authors and a passionate advocate of the Welsh language. Norah’s accolades include being the first woman ever to be a head teacher of a Welsh medium school, and later, at Trinity College in Carmarthen, establishing the first ever Welsh drama department. Sian Lloyd, from Maesteg, is one the UK’s longest serving weather forecasters, after spending 24 years at ITV Weather. Aside from her meteorology work, Sian is also known for her charitable efforts, including her support for the Prince’s Trust.
The achievements of women have built our world to what it is today, but unfortunately so many women are supressed and limited by a world that still favours men. I want to encourage each and every male Member of Parliament to use the platform that we have been given to highlight that injustice. It is our duty in Parliament to highlight injustices, and one of the greatest injustice that remains in the world today is the barriers preventing women from succeeding.
The situation for women in the UK should embarrass us all. In the workplace, according to the Opportunity Now campaign, for every £1 a man earns, a woman earns 81p. One in 10 women have experienced sexual harassment at work, and over half of tribunals involve some form of sex discrimination against women. There are unfair pressures on women that men simply do not face in day-to-day life. For example, one in five women are carers, and they can face even more significant difficulties balancing work life with other responsibilities.
On a global level, only five countries have gender pay gaps below 10%, and some have a disparity of close to 40%. Internationally, only 1% of land is owned by women, and only a fifth of managers are women, in all walks of life and professions. Progress is being made, but in my opinion the speed is far too slow.
I passionately believe that men must be far more vocal on these injustices. Ultimately, the fight for gender equality should be led by women. However, as allies in the fight, we male Members of Parliament must use the platform that we have been given to highlight the injustices.
I want to focus for a moment on the scale of femicide in the UK. In December I raised in this Chamber the femicide census published by Women’s Aid and nia. The report details the cases of nearly 1,000 women in England and Wales who have been killed by men since 2009, demonstrating the absolute worst product of sexism in the UK. It showed that the majority of women killed by men are murdered by their former or current partner, in what the report says is often “the final act of control” in an abusive relationship. Following the release of those data, Women’s Aid and nia called for long-term funding of specialist domestic abuse and sexual violence services, as well as additional funding for specialist projects for women to exit prostitution. The partnership also called for a specific recognition that post-separation is a significantly heightened risk period for women leaving abusive relationships.
That report and the subsequent recommendations were published on Wednesday 7 December. The following day, in this Chamber, I called on the Government to make a statement on what they will be doing to put a stop to any more women being killed at the hands of men through domestic violence. I am disappointed to say that, 12 weeks later, there has been no public response from the Government on those recommendations—I am happy for the Minister to correct me if that is not the case.
I am pleased by the action being taken by the Welsh Government down the road in Cardiff Bay. The Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015 improved the consistency, quality and join-up of service provision, introduced a needs-based approach to developing strategies that will ensure strong strategic direction and strengthened accountability, and worked to promote the awareness of, and to prevent, protect and support, victims of gender-based violence, domestic abuse and sexual violence. Since the Act became law, the Welsh Government have consistently looked for new ways of tackling domestic violence.
I started my speech by naming two women who are famous for their accomplishments in various fields of expertise. I will end by paying tribute to the many women in my constituency, and probably in every constituency, who frankly are the lifeblood of our communities, be they the women who run the football clubs, the youth clubs, the scouts and the guides, or the business leaders, the managers, the public servants and the entrepreneurs, and all the women who hold public office, in this Chamber and every council and Assembly Chamber across the land. Their leadership is vital, their achievements are many and, frankly, they do a damn sight better job, often with more complex lives, than many of the men I know who do it.
Sarah Olney (Richmond Park) (LD)
May I say how pleased I am to represent the Liberal Democrats in this debate on International Women’s Day, as the 454th female MP? I am proud to say, in contrast to some previous Members’ contributions, that I am not the first, nor even the second, woman to have held my seat. I am, in fact, the third Liberal Democrat woman to represent Richmond Park, and I am extremely proud of that.
One of the advantages of being a London MP is that I get to go home to my family every evening and spend time with them every morning. As the mother of young children, this is a particular blessing to me, but it does mean that I live a life of contrasts. Yesterday, for example, I spent the first part of the morning trying to get my son to clean his teeth and my daughter to brush her hair. I then travelled into Westminster and challenged the Prime Minister in the Chamber about her spending priorities for education. Of the two things, the latter was more remarked upon—it was heard by Members here, recorded in Hansard and shared on Twitter—but getting my son to clean his teeth was the greater achievement in many ways. It took more ingenuity, effort and emotional commitment, but nobody noticed, cared or applauded me for it.
It often sounds ironic or self-deprecating to refer to the tasks of motherhood as being more taxing than tasks carried out in the professional sphere, but in this case, I am not being ironic; it is precisely true. We are so used to underplaying the work we do as mothers and in the home that we do not think anyone will take us seriously if we talk seriously about it. So today, in the spirit of the motion to recognise the achievements of women, I want to celebrate the everyday, unacknowledged, unrewarded and unnoticed achievements of women.
I start with childbirth, which is probably the ultimate feminine achievement. Women are often told not to make too much of a fuss about childbirth, with people saying, “Millions of women all over the world and throughout history have done it, and most of them don’t have access to pain relief,” “It’s the most natural thing in the world,” and so on. But the births of my three babies continue to be the most profound experiences of my life. We do not actually talk all that much about childbirth. Yes, we discuss the timing and order of events such as what we were doing when we went into labour and how long it took, but we have not really developed a language to talk about how it feels or how it makes us feel. We just do not have the words. Although the experience leaves a lasting imprint, it is never fully acknowledged. The memory of childbirth remains with us—unshakeable and unshareable, but never fully expressed. I want to take advantage of this occasion to say what a huge achievement it is to give birth, and how proud we, as women, should be of our capacity to do that.
I also want to acknowledge those first weeks and months of a baby’s life when a woman gives herself over entirely to looking after her child. We all choose different ways to do this, but the achievement is the same. Whether our children are now fully grown adults or still small children, they are only here because their mothers kept them alive in those early weeks and months. Again, the effort and sacrifice that takes is often dismissed or overlooked, so I tell mothers everywhere to be proud of what they did because their children would not be what they are without them.
The long days and short years of childhood that follow are full of minor, unacknowledged successes such as wrestling them into coats, coaxing them to sleep and getting them to eat vegetables—the hard, hard work of persuading resisting children to do what is best for them. Each tiny triumph is a building block to a better person, but the reward is a very long way away, and nobody will remember the battles fought to make it happen. So, to every mother who managed to get her children up, dressed, teeth cleaned and to the school gates on time this morning—particularly in their World Book day costumes—not just this morning, but every morning: be proud and do not underestimate yourself. It is a great achievement to raise children.
I am conscious that people will think I am stereotyping women by referring only to their achievements as mothers. If am doing that, it is because I want to focus on the things that only women do and only women can do. I am just as proud of women who achieve great things in a professional, creative or sporting field, especially if they do it against a background of gender bias, but I want to focus on the things that only women do. I do not want to ignore the role of men in childrearing. All the fathers I know are as equally involved in the unglamorous, difficult bits of parenting as the mothers, but this debate is about International Women’s Day, and we should acknowledge that, globally, the vast majority of childrearing and domestic work is done by women. The truth is that this is why our achievements in this sphere are so often overlooked and underappreciated. It is because this work is done by women that it is so often ignored or taken for granted.
I am as grateful as any other woman of my age that social progress has enabled me to have a broader life than just being a wife and mother, and I am glad that so many other women are also making the most of opportunities to leave their homes and go out to work. It makes a positive difference, not just to them and their families, but to our economy and society. However, it means that women are not at home to do the unpaid domestic labour that they might have done 30 years ago and have done for centuries. We have found ways to outsource the tasks of childrearing and domestic upkeep, and meet the costs of that from our own pocket, but the job of looking after sick and elderly relatives is now increasingly being met by the state, and we need to find ways to meet the costs of social care that result.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I have been absolutely inspired by what I have heard this afternoon. In fact, I have rewritten my speech a good deal as I have been sitting here, but I am going to make the one that I originally started with. When I was asked to take part in the debate, I was also asked whether I could give the perspective of an older woman. I resisted for all of about 10 seconds, because I have now fully embraced my age.
A mother gives her child the best future she possibly can. She teaches her children what her mother taught her. My mother was born in 1919 and was an intelligent, caring woman who only wanted what was best for her three daughters, but she was raised in a time when men ruled. One of her favourite expressions to me was, “Marion, hen, don’t argue with your father. Just know that you’re right.” I could never take that advice and I frequently argued with my father, but I could only actually do that when only he and I were there, because he still had to be seen as the man of the house, and as untouchable and unarguable with it.
My husband was raised by his mother and four older sisters, although women are still a complete mystery to him. His mother insisted that George did not have to do any housework. Why should he? He had four sisters; I have heard frequently over the past 46 years how they felt about that. Many years later, he actually said to our daughter, “Rachel, why haven’t you tidied up?” My daughter said, “Why haven’t you asked my brothers that?” And he said, “Because you’re a girl.” I am not denigrating my husband—I actually asked him whether it was alright to tell these stories, because he knew I was going to do it anyway—but I just want to point out how much progress has been made in this regard. My husband would be horrified and absolutely heartbroken if his granddaughters did not receive equal opportunities and pay, and equality across the board. This is how progress has been made. It has not been easy and it is still ongoing work, but we have made progress in the Fellows household.
I have personally been discriminated against in my lifetime. I secured an exciting new job setting up jobcentres across the east coast of Scotland in 1974. When I phoned to confirm the final arrangements for starting, I mentioned I was pregnant and was told, “Goodbye.” I never started that job. It is vital that the kinds of tests that I had to face are never, ever revisited. Although there are laws to protect us, it is attitudes that matter, and attitudes have to change.
When I started working, I actually got equal pay with the men I worked alongside in Midlothian County Council. However, when I was a councillor in 2012, before I entered this place, I found myself on a member-officer working group on equal pay. The women on North Lanarkshire Council who did the best and worst jobs—home support assistants, lollipop women and all that—had fought for 10 years, but only when they went to a woman lawyer, Carol Fox, was their claim finally made. That should not happen.
I realise that I do not have much time left, but the one thing I want to say is that this is not about me, my family or the UK. I went to one.org last night, and I want to say, here and now, that I fully support its “Poverty is Sexist” campaign. It is vital that we educate women across the world. I quote the African proverb:
“If you educate a man you educate an individual, but if you educate a woman you educate a family”
and a nation. Let us do that. Please Minister, let us make sure that there is absolutely no cut to what we give to women internationally.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows). I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing this important debate, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it.
I, too, would like to address the need for an ambitious change in attitudes and culture, as well as for legislation to protect the victims of rape and sexual violence. There were 35,798 complaints of rape in this country between 2015 and 2016, but just 2,689—7.5%—resulted in convictions. Some 90% of rape victims are female, and 10% are male.
Last week, I was very fortunate to visit Argentina with the Westminster Foundation for Democracy. I spoke with Diputada Victoria Donda about the huge protests in the streets last October, following the drugging, rape and brutal murder of 16-year-old Lucía Pérez. According to the popular movement Ni Una Menos, which means not one woman or one girl less, one woman is killed every 30 hours in Argentina, and there are still protests on the streets outside the Congresso today. That is despite the fact that a law was passed in 2012 against so-called femicide.
However, legislation without enforcement, and without cultural change, is not worth the paper it is written on. As today’s motto reminds us, we must be bold—bold enough to engender change on all levels, from the attitudes of the police, to the process of the justice system, to, most importantly, outcomes and the experiences of victims. I attended the police parliamentary scheme last summer, and it was interesting to see the work being done with the police to address attitudes. We must not be satisfied that legislation alone will make a difference; we must address the culture in all stages of the criminal justice system, be that the police or the courts.
Following my private Member’s Bill last month, the Government have—I am proud to have, I hope, contributed to this—announced a review of section 41 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999. That is a move I wholeheartedly welcome. The Act sought to prevent rape complainants from being questioned about their previous sexual history with a third party in all but exceptional circumstances. The Act came into effect in 1999, but that is not what rape complainants experience when they go into court. Some 36% of rape trials overseen by the Northumbria court observers panel last year included questioning about the prior sexual conduct of the complainant with a third party. The number of harrowing individual cases I have heard indicates that that draconian tactic is still employed by many defence lawyers across the country.
The brutal cross-examination of rape victims re-traumatises the vulnerable at a time when the system should be protecting them. It is not a matter of proving whether a rape complainant is lying; it is a cynical strategy to discredit complainants’ characters by portraying the complainant as promiscuous, in a way that makes them less credible to the jury. Irreparable harm is done to victims under the noses of judges in our courts. The procedures that are supposed to be followed under the 1999 Act are, in many cases, disregarded. This victim-blaming attitude needs to be stamped out in not only the justice process but our society as a whole.
On this, our International Women’s Day, we are being reminded to “Be Bold for Change”. At home and abroad, we have an obligation to change not just legislation but perceptions of rape and sexual violence to ensure that all victims, regardless of their gender, have the confidence to come forward and report these serious crimes. I hope all Members in the House will join me as we continue to battle to change not only the laws but the attitudes that fail victims in this society and abroad.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow that inspiring speech.
Yesterday, Labour Women made a short film for International Women’s Day. One of the things we were asked to do was to complete the sentence, “I want to live in a world where”. I said I wanted to live in a world where violence against women was eradicated and where rape was no longer used as a weapon of war. However, I wanted to go on to say that I also wanted the statistic that every week two women are murdered by their partner or ex-partner to be eradicated. That figure remains stubbornly the same, and no amount of awareness raising, improving of police handling of complaints and passing of laws, such as Clare’s law, appears to make a dent in it.
As we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), those two women per week are not statistics but real people—colleagues, friends, mothers, sisters and daughters. Leading up to their deaths, there is usually a catalogue of assaults—not reported—with partners pleading that they will change, and a repeat of the cycle of violence.
Imagine the trauma of being a child growing up in that situation, seeing the two most significant adults in their life fighting; going to bed at night wondering whether the night will be broken by yet another argument; worrying all the time; and, sadly, in many cases, thinking that all this is normal because it is all that they have experienced, living in a state of permanent high anxiety.
The fallout from domestic abuse is wide, yet the figure of two deaths per week sticks stubbornly. I was pleased to hear our honorary sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), talk about that issue earlier. We need to do something about the funding of women’s refuges. Too many women are turned away, and it is still not a statutory and, therefore, a funded duty of councils to provide domestic abuse services.
As this debate is about International Women’s Day, I want to talk about the plight of women around the world. In any conflict, women often have fewer resources to protect themselves. With children, they frequently make up the majority of displaced and refugee populations. War tactics, such as sexual violence, specifically target women.
However, women are almost completely missing from peace negotiations following conflict. The international community has recognised that women’s contribution is vital to achieving and sustaining peace. In 2000, the UN Security Council passed the historic resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. It calls for women to participate in peacebuilding, to be better protected from human rights violations, and to have access to justice and services to eliminate discrimination. Yet, almost 17 years on, more than half of peace agreements make no mention of women. We face new threats, including climate shocks, global health pandemics and violent extremism directly targeting women’s rights. Now, more than ever, we need the women, peace and security agenda.
I want to finish with these words:
“When you have warfare things happen; people suffer; the noncombatants suffer as well as the combatants. And so it happens in civil war…there is a good deal of warfare for which men take a great deal of glorification which has involved more practical sacrifice on women than it has on any man.”
Those are not the words of our sisters from Nigeria, Iran, Sri Lanka or anywhere else around the world; they are the words of Emmeline Pankhurst in 1913. Yet they still ring true and have relevance to the international community of women today.
This week, it was my pleasure to be able to vote on the design of a statue of Emmeline Pankhurst to be erected in Manchester, as a welcome relief from the many statues of men in our city. In the borough of Rochdale, we recently erected a statue of Gracie Fields, and Bury in Greater Manchester is working on a statue to commemorate the wonderful and much missed Victoria Wood, so I go back to where I started: I want to live in a world where it is no longer unusual to put up a statue of a prominent woman—not just in Greater Manchester, but the world over.
Ms Tasmina Ahmed-Sheikh (Ochil and South Perthshire) (SNP)
It is an absolute pleasure to wind up this debate on behalf of the SNP. As I often say, this Chamber always feels like a different place when there are mainly women in it, not least because we do not hear funny noises or sounds that are unrecognisable to most of us. This certainly feels like a period of reflection.
I pay tribute to the many women MPs who have spoken out in the past year with great bravery, not least my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh West (Michelle Thomson), who spoke here a while ago about her rape. Many across the Chamber have spoken of the domestic violence and assault that they have faced. I salute them all, and I am sure that everyone watching does, too. It takes tremendous courage to speak about such personal issues in such a public forum. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald), who spoke about mothers. We should remember those who have lost mothers over the past year, as well as how much mothers contribute to what we have to offer our children and the rest of society.
As I said, this Chamber can often feel like a different place. Our levels of tolerance often have to increase depending on who is speaking and what they are saying. I pay particular tribute to our Tory colleagues who, on certain occasions, need to have much higher levels of tolerance than the rest of us, but achieve that with such grace. I am grateful for the many brilliant contributions that they have made today.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who always speaks with great eloquence, passion and knowledge about victims of domestic violence, started the debate with another awe-inspiring speech. The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) spoke about Yazidi women and brought home the terrible plight that they have to endure, which we really must do something about. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) spoke eloquently about women in the armed forces, to whom we pay continual tribute.
The hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) spoke about social media. I had the pleasure of being on a programme with her and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley about how social media abuse can affect women disproportionately. The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney) reminded us about the important—perhaps the most important—job of men and women in bringing up their families. What can seem like small triumphs at the beginning of the day in getting children to do minor things are actually major triumphs, and we should never forget any of them. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who spoke about her husband, George, whom I have met—a wonderful individual. If he is not a feminist through choice, he is certainly one through submission.
We have heard about the main theme of International Women’s Day—and, indeed, that of the UN’s International Women’s Day. We support both excellent themes. I would like to reflect briefly on the achievements of women in the past year. Since the last time we gathered for this debate, Taiwan, in May 2016, elected its first ever female President, with 56% of the vote. Last year, Afghanistan’s first lady, Rula Ghani, officially inaugurated the first ever women-only university in Kabul. Here in the UK, we saw women taking up positions of leadership, not least the Prime Minister.
Progress is being made, but there is much more to do, particularly in the professions. Women remain significantly under-represented, given that they are 51% or 52% of the UK population. Research shows that we have more female lawyers than ever before, but that does not mean that our legal system has a real gender balance. We also see many more female journalists. I pay tribute to Sophy Ridge, with her new programme on Sundays, and Emma Barnett, with her programme on Radio 5. I have no doubt that they face a very different level of scrutiny from that of their male counterparts. I hope that Members will join me in saying that we are with them as they try to deal with all the stereotypes while producing excellent programmes. Again, however, having more women in journalism does not necessarily mean that our reporting of politics is more gender balanced.
I would like to mention some experiences of women in the Chamber. My hon. Friend the Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley), as usual, made an excellent speech about equality. She mentioned Winnie Ewing, the first female SNP MP, who, after she came down to Westminster, talked about being stalked at night:
“I first noticed the problem in the Select Committee on Scottish Affairs. Wherever I sat this MP sat opposite...Then I noticed that he has started to follow me along corridors, appearing behind me without saying anything...I set through the dark Chamber and into the Public Lobby to go to the stairs leading to the Members’ Entrance, from where I could ring for a taxi. However, as I left the Public Lobby, I saw the door swinging in front of me. I felt afraid but I went on through the door and down the steps…As I turned a bend on the stair, there was my stalker right in front of me, looking very sinister indeed. I tried to humour him as I wanted to reach the cloakroom—where there was an attendant—without anything happening. He kept staring and following me, but I made it and breathlessly told the cloakroom attendant what was going on.”
That was in 1970, and this is of course 2017, but in 2017 you get barked at in the Chamber. I am sure that I speak for all women in this Chamber when I say that we have had more than enough of this nonsense. While Winnie, Nancy Astor and Barbara Castle were isolated here, I genuinely do feel that if we work together, in our greater numbers, we can make real, positive change. It is not about fighting for equality for equality’s sake—it never is—but making sure that this Parliament is more a place of representative democracy. Having a female Prime Minister does not mean that we have a Parliament built on equality, because in 2017, as we have heard, only 30% of the MPs sitting on these Benches are women. However, we have made progress, and we should celebrate that where it occurs.
I would like to speak briefly about violence against women. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) on her excellent work on her private Member’s Bill to ratify the Istanbul convention. She has demonstrated how working across this Chamber can really make a difference. The debate on that Bill was one of the brighter days of my time down here at Westminster. Around the world, more than 35% of women have experienced either physical or sexual violence. Intimate partners are responsible for 38% of women’s murders. The Honour Based Violence Awareness Network believes that there are 5,000 honour killings internationally per year. Of those, there are thought to be about 12 honour killings in the UK each year. UNICEF claims that at least 200 million girls and women alive today, living in 30 different countries, have undergone female genital mutilation. The World Health Organisation estimates that 3 million girls a year become at risk of this procedure. These are shocking statistics.
Of course 2016 was a difficult year, with our solidarity being put to the test by Trump’s election. It is now more important than ever for women to stick together, as we know how to do so well. On next week’s agenda for Westminster Hall, we see a debate to which I am very much looking forward on an e-petition relating to high heels and workplace dress codes. I am really interested in whether there can possibly be a contrary opinion to women being able to wear what they want, when they want, whatever that may be, but I have no doubt that one will surface from somewhere.
We can and must continue our work to achieve a gender balance in Parliament, in journalism and in civil society. We need women in all parts of public life, not because that is good for women but because it is good for all society. While we do not agree on everything—of course we do not—and there is not a singular female view, there are opportunities for those of us from across the political spectrum in all parties, and those who belong to none, to come together about the things that really matter most.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to speak in such an important debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing it, and thank her for her ongoing commitment to women’s equality. Her passion and dedication to women, and particularly to ending domestic violence, is second to none. This House is definitely a better place for having her in it, and I am grateful for her contributions.
Before I first came here I had been blessed, because my previous careers were first in the arts and then in healthcare, which are professions dominated by women. It was therefore quite a shock to come into this place, not just because of the small number of women here, but because our voices are very rarely heard. I came into Parliament to give a voice to those who do not have one, so I was quite surprised to find that our voices were shouted over, and that we were belittled, called hysterical or not engaged with at all. That is something that we have to change, and it is why I am so grateful for debates such as this one.
As a result of that, it is important that I give over most of my time to reinforcing the sisters in this place and giving their voices an extra platform. I start with the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who proposed—perhaps half-seriously—quotas for ministerial appointments. I am grateful to her for talking about the revenge porn helpline. It is superb that the Government have introduced lots of great legislation on that, but the cash needs to follow the policy. She was right to say that domestic violence is not just physical violence.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) made an incredibly upsetting and powerful speech, which was very appropriate for this Chamber. I hope that we can debate the issue that she raised further. She championed Yazidi women, who are being persecuted, bought, sold, raped, exploited and commodified by Daesh. We need to do more to stop this barbaric form of slavery. I urge the Government to do all they can to prevent it.
The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) was right to give us the history of women’s roles in the armed forces and to explain how far we have come. I am grateful to other Members who raised the impact on families.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) spoke about her constituent Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, who is imprisoned in Iran and suffering extreme ill health. The Iranian Government are breaching the Bangkok rules that they have signed up to. There are half a million women in prisons worldwide. I also want to raise the fact that Holloway prison is being sold off, which is likely to put pressure on women. I do not think that prisons are the right place for women. The number of women I have met in my constituency who have been imprisoned for evading the TV licence, or for stealing nappies because they could not afford them, shows that there is something very wrong with the system.
The hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) did a good job of giving us the history of women’s rights and women’s interventions that brought her to this place. I am particularly grateful to her for welcoming all young women and girls into politics, and for telling them that if they come here, we will support them. The hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) highlighted the great women who inspired her. It is right that we pay our respects to the women who give us the power to keep going and who inspire us to believe that we can do this.
The hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) has been doing some superb campaigning around child exploitation. She is right to say that we often talk about violence as being gender-neutral, but a lot of it is not. We need to call out gendered violence and name it for what it is.
My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) gave another powerful speech. It frustrates me that it is down to us to correct history and draw attention to the fact that in 1888, the match women, led by just five remarkable women, changed history. They effectively created the labour movement. The match ladies were—I steal this phrase from my hon. Friend—the spark that started the trade union movement, and yet there is no memorial for them. English Heritage needs to listen, and I support my hon. Friend’s campaign. I do not just want a blue plaque; I want a statue. It is only right.
The hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) talked about the gender pay gap. It is so frustrating that we consistently have to go back to the gender pay gap, and to the obstacles that prevent us from closing it as quickly as we would all like. I am grateful to her for raising the issues that prevent women from returning to work and make it much more difficult for them to reach their full economic potential. How lovely it was of the hon. Member for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) to talk about mothers and boys. She highlighted the importance of inspiring them by demonstrating equality in public life.
I am grateful to have the voice of the honorary sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore), here. I make a lot of speeches about gendered violence and gender inequality, and I tend to speak to rooms full of women. I am looking forward to the day when debates in the Chamber about women are attended 50:50 by men and women. My hon. Friend was right to highlight great local women and to say that men have a duty to combat abuses against women. He was also right to highlight the fact that 12 weeks on, he is still waiting for a response to his questions.
We welcome the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). It was interesting to hear her put a personal spin on the complex balance between parenting and working—one that is not helped by this Chamber, but one with which we in this Chamber have a duty, legally, to help other women. In the contribution of the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), I loved the line: “Don’t argue with your father. Just know that you’re right.” Unfortunately, some of us did not get the follow-on sentence; I am grateful to her mother for saying that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving living examples of progress. Sometimes, it feels as though we are making achingly slow progress, so I thank her for showing us that progress is being made.
The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) highlighted the fact that only 7.9% of rapes result in successful prosecutions. I commend her for the work that she is doing to try to address that. She is campaigning for changes in the attitude of the police and in the processes of justice. We must, as she rightly says, address culture and not just legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes) is a great campaigner, particularly around the fact that two women a week are murdered by their partners. I am grateful to her for drawing attention to the impact on children, the broader family and the community. So often their voices are not heard, and there is usually no support for the people who need it the most. I am also grateful to her for raising the fact that funding for refuges is decreasing all the time. It is concerning that because of the funding cuts, local authorities are now using generic providers rather than giving vital specialist support. I agree that the provision of refuges should be done with statutory, central Government funding, rather than being a duty that falls to local authorities.
Finally, I echo the voice of the hon. Member for Ochil and South Perthshire (Ms Ahmed-Sheikh), who saluted all the women—particularly, but not exclusively, those in this Chamber—who have, over the last year, had the courage to come forward and use the horrors that they have experienced to try to change legislation and attitudes.
International Women’s Day first emerged from the activities of labour movements at the start of the 20th century. Its roots can be traced back to 1908, when 15,000 women marched through New York City demanding voting rights, better pay and shorter working hours. I can only see it as a sign that this year’s International Women’s Day falls on the same day as the spring Budget, and I urge the Government and the Minister to make sure that this Budget works for women.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Women and Equalities (Caroline Dinenage)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and other Members on securing this really important debate, and all the inspiring female MPs—and, indeed, one brave male MP, the hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore)—on taking part in today’s significant debate, because International Women’s Day is significant. It is an inspiring annual event that celebrates the achievements of women, both past and present day. It is a great opportunity to take stock of how far we have come, but also to keep fighting for what we believe in around the world and to look at how far we still have to go in our own country. I am grateful to Members from both sides of the House for their thoughtful contributions.
I am incredibly proud that we now have our second female Prime Minister, and that our Parliament is becoming more diverse. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani) said, it has been 700 years in the making, which is painfully slow by anybody’s standards. She is right to call on any women watching our proceedings today to come and join us. As my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) rightly pointed out, it is the presence of women in the Chamber that is changing the situation we are talking about. The reason we are having this debate is that there are so many more females MPs, and that is the only way we will make the significant changes we want.
The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is “Be Bold for Change”, and the Government want to be bold for change. It is only through being bold, being courageous and taking risks that we can create the lasting change we all want. No country can truly succeed while half its population is left behind, and despite the conscious efforts of many men and women over the years, barriers to equality do exist. The Government are committed to tackling such barriers to equality wherever they manifest themselves. That is why International Women’s Day is for everyone, and we know that gender equality is not a zero-sum game: true equality enables both men and women to be who they want to be, unconstrained by outdated stereotypes and unconstrained by assumptions about what it means to be a woman, or indeed a man.
I know that Members on both sides of the House share the Government’s commitment to driving forward this agenda. I am particularly grateful to the Women and Equalities Committee, which rightly holds the Government’s feet to the fire all the time. It is very hard to believe that this Select Committee only started to exist in June 2015, given the breadth and range of its inquiries so far. Its work is rightly recognised and respected, which is why I am very pleased to announce today that the House of Commons intends to make the Women and Equalities Committee permanent. This is a very fitting testament to the energy and commitment of all members of the Committee, but I must pay special tribute to the very dynamic leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller). I pay tribute to her and all the members of her Committee for their work and their amazing achievements in this important space.
Not only is gender equality the right thing to do, but it is good for our society and really good for our economy. It is essential to unlock the potential of women in the workplace. We need to build a stronger economy that fully utilises the talents that women have to offer. I am very proud that there are more women in work than ever before and that the gender pay gap is the lowest it has ever been, but we must go further. The Government are committed to eliminating the gender pay gap entirely, which is why our bold and groundbreaking legislation coming into force next month will require businesses, voluntary organisations and the public sector to publish both their pay and bonus gaps. The regulations will shine a light on the difference between men’s pay and women’s pay, and we hope employers will lead the way by publishing early. We have also set the standard for highly productive, agile working practices by bringing in shared parental leave, extending the right to request flexible working, and providing 30 hours of free childcare a week for working parents of all three and four-year-olds so that men and women alike can balance work and family life.
My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), who is the excellent co-chairwoman of the all-party group on women and work, rightly celebrated the skills, talents and experience that older women can bring to the workforce. On 2 February, the Government published our “Fuller Working Lives: A Partnership Approach” document, which sets out the key actions the Government are taking to support older workers to remain in the labour market. That is not just great for business. I was struck by the words of one woman who had just gone back into the workplace after many years of caring responsibilities when she told me, “It’s the first thing in my life I have ever done for myself.” Those words have really stayed with me.
We want to support women and girls throughout their lives, but to get the whole picture we must look at everything—from the classroom to the boardroom and beyond. In education, we are committed to increasing the number of girls studying STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects. We are also supporting girls and boys in school by giving them the tools they need to be safe, confident and able to develop healthy and respectful relationships. That is why my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education announced yesterday our plans for 21st-century relationships and sex education. Our proposals will ensure that children of all ages and from all backgrounds will have the opportunity to learn what positive, healthy and nurturing relationships should look like. The building blocks for this will start in primary school with relationships education, and continue in secondary school with relationships and sex education.
We have made great progress at the very top of business, where female representation has gone from strength to strength. We know that companies with more diverse boards and senior executives can access a wider talent pool and that they better represent the society they serve.
To ensure that girls and women thrive, succeed and go as far as their talents can take them, they must have the right to live safely and free from all forms of violence. The key to that is a strategy to prevent violence against women and girls. Sadly, many Members, like women across the country, have had their lives invaded by the new threat of online violence. There is no doubt that that insidious misogyny limits the benefits women can gain from the digital world, but there should be no public or private space where violence should be allowed to continue. That means eradicating violence and abuse of any kind, anywhere—online, in our workplaces, in our communities, and in every home.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke asked about the future of the revenge porn helpline. I am very keen for its important work to continue and we are looking closely at how we can continue to support it. In addition to the £80 million already committed to provide services and support for victims and survivors, the Prime Minister recently committed to reviewing the legislation on domestic violence and abuse to transform the way we think about and tackle violence, and that basic right to safety. We are determined to ensure that the law is working to protect women and girls so that intervention and prevention, not crisis response, are the norm.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley again this year read out the list of women killed at the hands of violent men since we were last in the Chamber for this debate. This year, the names included, of course, one of our own, Jo Cox. Every life lost is a tragedy; every name is a name too many. No girl should be in doubt of her right to succeed free from fear and the threat of violence.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) spoke compellingly about her constituent, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. She drew attention to the plight of women and girls in prisons overseas, but specifically to the tragic case of her constituent, and I will personally take that up with No. 10.
The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) was absolutely right to outline the pain and suffering that the Yazidi women endured—we should never forget that. The hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), who is a force of nature, spoke about the importance of educating girls internationally, and we are supporting 5.3 million girls in school, including girls from the most marginalised communities. We have also helped 36 million women to get access to financial services and are spending more than any other country on bringing an end to female genital mutilation. Those examples underline our commitment to promoting gender equality at home and overseas. I am proud that we are a world leader in this work.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke asked about the number of police trained in dealing with domestic violence. All new recruits undertake a public protection learning programme, of which domestic abuse is a key feature. New police training called “Domestic Abuse Matters” focuses on recognising controlling and coercive behaviour. That has already been rolled out in five police forces, with many more in the pipeline.
My hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) made an excellent speech on behalf of women in the armed forces. She is a feisty champion of the armed forces. Despite some excellent initiatives, more remains to be done, but we have raised our target for recruiting women in the armed forces to 15% by 2020.
The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) spoke beautifully about the match ladies. I remember going to see a play about them when I was at school. It was so inspiring and I certainly back her call to have those ladies recognised.
International Women’s Day is a fantastic opportunity to take stock, to recognise the progress that we have made and to celebrate the amazing women, past and present, who have fought the battles, and who continue to fight every day all around the world in the name of equality. It is an opportunity to discuss how much further we have to go, and a time to remember that there is so much more to do and to remind ourselves to be bold in the pursuit of change.
Jess Phillips
I shall be incredibly brief. I thank the Backbench Business Committee—I am thanking myself—for allowing us to have the debate. I thank everybody who spoke in today’s debate with much passion and consensus.
One of the names I had to read out today was that of Jo Cox, my friend and colleague. Her voice should always be heard in this place, so I shall let her have the last word. When Jo Cox was asked what sort of feminist she was, with the idea that we are all terribly divided, and that “I’m this sort of feminist, you’re that sort of feminist”, her answer was, “a massive one”.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House welcomes International Women’s Day as an important occasion to recognise the achievements of women; and calls on the Government to join in this international event and pledge its commitment to gender parity.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. This week, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) was in my constituency. To his credit, he informed me that he was going to be in my constituency for a Conservative fundraiser. I offered to go with him, but he rejected my advances. Today I opened my local paper, the Camden New Journal, to read that he had described the “pygmy” nature of the Opposition. Do you, Mr Deputy Speaker, think it was appropriate for him to use the term “pygmy” when he was in the constituency of the shortest MP in Parliament? I await your guidance.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
The hon. Gentleman is normally a very courteous Member, and he did give notice. I know the hon. Lady will have a quiet word in his ear, but knowing the Member I am sure there was no intent. If there was, she will need to come back to me.
Welsh Affairs
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
We now come to the Backbench Business debate on Welsh Affairs. I remind hon. Members that the debate is very oversubscribed. If we can try to start off with five-minute speeches, I will try to give everybody equal time. If there are interventions, I will have to drop that straight away.
Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered Welsh affairs.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting this debate. I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Cardiff North (Craig Williams) for joining me and others in putting the case for securing it.
I am proud to be a Welsh MP, proud to serve in the House of Commons, proud to be Welsh, proud to be British and proud to be an internationalist. Wales has made an enormous contribution to Britain and the globe. I was hoping to make my opening remarks as the Welsh team were on the way, as Triple Crown winners, to winning the Six Nations championship. That is not so, but we are still a very united country and it is unity that is the theme of my speech today.
Yesterday, as Welsh people, we celebrated with patriotism. We had an excellent service in the House of Commons, where the Speaker’s Chaplain officiated in both English and Welsh. It is now on the record that we are allowed to use the Welsh language in future Welsh Grand Committees. I say to Mr Deputy Speaker that he should take a leaf out of the book of the Speaker’s Chaplain. He should attend a Welsh Grand Committee debate and, as a great visitor to my constituency and many other parts of Wales, speak in both Welsh and English.
Before I move on to some of the issues that have shaped the past 12 months, I want to say that there has been some good news. I remind the House of the excellent performance of the Welsh football team in Euro 2016, when we led the way for the United Kingdom. I remind Members, particularly those on the Labour Benches, that Labour was returned to government in the Welsh Assembly and that we again have a Labour First Minister of Wales.
Since St David’s day 2016, there have been some issues that have divided the country and the world. Brexit divided many of our constituencies—it divided Wales and the United Kingdom—and Bush was elected President of the United States. To talk of building walls—I said Bush, but I mean Trump. I have made that mistake before, but he is worse than Bush. The serious point is that Trump talks about building walls. To talk about building walls is to ask on which side of the wall people belong. We need to put an end to that kind of divisiveness. Of course we need political debate, critical thinking and broad opinion to shape our future, but we need to stop talking about Brexiteers and remainers. We need to talk about the 100% we are elected to represent. In Scotland, they still talk of the 45%, but if we are to move forward we have to move away from tribalism and towards unity.
As you know, Mr Deputy Speaker, Welsh MPs have played a pivotal role in the House of Commons. They have introduced policies and concepts that have united the United Kingdom. I am talking about Nye Bevan and the national health service—something we all support, because it has helped all our people—and Jim Griffiths, the former Member for Llanelli, who introduced the National Assistance Act 1948, again to give social protection to everybody in the UK. Those things have helped to shape the politics of the UK.
We must now build a consensus across parties on the big themes that can unite Wales and the UK. For one, we must provide social care for all our people, and we should have that debate here in the House as Welsh MPs. Over the last few years, I have been saddened to see divisions over the health and social care service being used politically by parties to divide us, when it should unite us and help the most vulnerable in society.
The digital revolution is something else that can unite us. We need to find 21st-century solutions, and one of those is superfast broadband. [Interruption.] Does my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) want to intervene? No? Superfast broadband liberates communities and families—I know of Welsh families with sons, daughters and other relatives around the world who now speak to them regularly because of the digital information technology facilities available—yet many people in rural and peripheral areas of Wales do not have the same facilities as those in larger towns and cities.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for spearheading the effort to secure this debate. Does he agree that it is not just a matter of householders’ rights and opportunities? We also need to get broadband right if we are serious about developing the economy in those peripheral areas.
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman is right. In fact, I was just coming to businesses. I welcome the Digital Economy Bill. I have been arguing for some time, like many other Members, that we need universal coverage in the UK, and it has been resisted for too long. Now it is in the Bill. United as Welsh MPs, we can take the lead and have the universal service obligation rolled out in Wales first. The Secretary of State, who I know is paying attention on the Front Bench, could be pivotal in taking this up in Cabinet. The Welsh Government, as a single body, are working with BT to roll this out in Wales, unlike in England, where there are several roll-out bodies. We can be ahead of the game, as we have been on many other big issues that have united us, so I hope he will listen and respond positively.
Like many Members, I have worked with BT Openreach and the Welsh Government, and I have worked to get individual businesses connected with fibre to their premises. The Welsh Government are moving forward, but according to the Library, many constituencies in Wales are behind the UK average when it comes to superfast broadband roll-out and the minimum of 10 megabits per second in the universal service obligation. We need to move forward on that. I say to the Secretary of State that we should have a cross-party group. We can be pioneers and lead the way. Wales, with its peripheral areas, rurality and sparse populations, can be a microcosm of the rest of the UK. I urge him to work with me and others on that. Many of the rural areas without superfast broadband also do not have mains gas, pay more for fuel and are greatly disadvantaged and socially excluded, so it is a serious issue I raise when I talk about broadband being a step forward for those areas. I hope that Members will work with me on that campaign.
We also need a transport system that works for the whole UK. I know that the Government have been pushing the case, with the Welsh Government and others, for better cross-border facilities, particularly in the south and north of Wales. It is important that we are an integral part of the UK network. The Secretary of State will get the backing of the Opposition if he pushes not just for electrification of the north Wales line but for better connections between north Wales and Manchester and Liverpool airports. That is essential. Many of my constituents, such as the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), do not come down to Heathrow or Gatwick if they can get to Liverpool or Manchester. Making that easier for them will be a good deal for the people of north Wales.
I was in the Chamber for the beginning of the International Women’s Day debate, and was very moved by the comments in the opening speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) about our colleague Jo Cox. Jo’s maiden speech will go down in history, not because she so sadly left us, but because she talked then about uniting people and highlighted that there is more that unites us than divides us. We need to go forward with that as an emblem.
One of my predecessors, Lady Megan Lloyd George, moved the first St David’s day debate, and she was one of the first pioneers: she stood up for women across the United Kingdom; she stood up for Wales as an integral part of the United Kingdom; and she was not afraid to talk about high unemployment and to fight for the national health service and social insurance. She had the good sense to move from the Liberal party to the Labour party, and she was a pioneer on those very big subjects. Wales can be very proud that in this House of Commons we have an annual debate, and also that throughout the year we are pioneering Members of Parliament across the parties, and that we work together for the best for our constituents, and work best for Wales within a United Kingdom as outward-looking internationalists. I am proud to open this debate, and—
Albert Owen
I am sure that my right hon. Friend wants to intervene, as he tried to earlier.
Mr Hanson
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. He raised a number of issues that he wants to put to the Government, and I want to ask if he would include among them the impact of the revaluation of business rates on businesses throughout England and Wales. The Welsh Assembly Government are helping businesses quite considerably, but I have, for example, only today received notice from one business that its business rates are rising from £22,000 a year to £66,000 from 1 April. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should be looking to address this in next week’s Budget?
Albert Owen
I certainly do, and if we had had more time I would certainly have raised the issue, because we did have a revaluation earlier in Wales. We had a transitional period, and now that that has come to an end many of our friends in England are looking to Wales to see what is happening. We need to work together to help in particular rural businesses that are being evaluated on the size of their premises. There are many horse-riding schools in my constituency, one of which I visited on Friday—I did not ride a horse—and it is suffering due to that.
I conclude by saying that the UK Government must take the Welsh dimension to Brexit far more seriously; I hope, and am sure, that they will. The Joint Ministerial Committee is important in areas that are wholly devolved to Wales. That voice of Welsh MPs and the Welsh people needs to be filtered through to Government level. The Prime Minister is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and she represents Welsh interests, and it is important that the devolved Administrations have a firm voice in those negotiations going forward.
I will listen to, and respond to, the debate.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman mentioned that I go to Wales; that is true, and I do like Trearddur Bay—I put on record that Ynys Môn is one of my favourite islands, and Holy Island as well.
I should also say that the Wales Rugby League came to Parliament this week to increase the profile of the Welsh rugby league and of this being the week for Wales. I want to make sure that everyone is aware of how important rugby league is, as well as rugby union.
I call David T. C. Davies, and introduce a five-minute limit on speeches.
David T. C. Davies (Monmouth) (Con)
Members will be aware of the plan by the Heads of the Valleys Development Company, led by Mr Michael Carrick, to build a racetrack at Ebbw Vale. Mr Carrick persuaded the Welsh Government to put £9 million into his company, Heads of the Valleys, in order to develop this, but has so far been unable to get the private sector to back the scheme without an assurance from the Welsh Government that they will provide over £200 million as a loan guarantee.
Mr Carrick claims to be an expert in building infrastructure. He has been involved in attempts to set up infrastructure projects in the Shetland islands and the Port of Ardersier in Scotland, as well two biomass projects in Africa and another in Ireland, and a river barrage scheme at Fleetwood. None of these projects has been successful. I have spoken to many involved who say that they feel let down and misled, and in more than one case that they are owed money. I could give some examples, but do not have the time. One that has been in the press, however, involved Mr Bob Long from Fleetwood, who tried to set up a river barrage. Mr Carrick told him that he had the funds available to develop the project, but the money never arrived, and Mr Long claims the project has been almost ruined as a result.
Aventa’s website, which Members can look at if they wish to, implies that it is responsible for managing a fund worth £350 million to build UK infrastructure, but Companies House records suggest that it has just £500 in the bank. However, with his £9 million of public money, Mr Carrick decided to buy a specialist motorcycle company based in Buckinghamshire. It was shown in the records as a dormant company until August 2012, after which it sprang into life. By August 2013, it was showing liabilities of £350,000. The losses grew, but when I met Mr Carrick in July last year, he told me that he would soon turn it around, that it would be an anchor business for his site and that it would lead to a Welsh rider winning a Welsh grand prix. A few months later, it was in administration, owing more than £500,000. If Mr Carrick cannot make a success of a small company turning over a few hundred thousand pounds, should the taxpayer be backing him in a venture worth several hundred million?
Mr Carrick’s publicly funded company has also bought the rights to hold the MotoGP championships at Silverstone, but so far he has made a loss on that of around £1 million. Many companies, including some local ones, have done work for the project but have not been paid—they have all done it at risk—but luckily, one supplier has been paid in full, again out of public funds. Mr Carrick decided to appoint a financial consultant to give advice to the scheme, and the company he appointed was Aventa, a company that he 100% owns and controls. In effect, he paid himself nearly £l million of public money to give himself advice. Civil servants in the Welsh Assembly raised concerns about this but were overruled. I have some written material to back all this up, by the way; I have the invoices. Among other things, Aventa spent £35,000 on landscape gardening. Those invoices were made out to the Heads of the Valleys Development Company, but Mr Carrick says that they were paid by Aventa. He also spent thousands of pounds on political events for the Labour party and, he tells me, for the Conservative party, although I do not have those invoices.
When I raised my concerns with Mr Carrick, he told me that he was entitled to spend Aventa money as he pleased and that it had sources of income other than the public money from the Heads of the Valleys Development Company. I asked for examples and he cited GE. I asked him whether he meant General Electric, and he said yes. I then contacted General Electric, which told me that he had asked for money but had not had any from the company. At the same meeting, one of Mr Carrick’s associates told me that BMW was planning to build a BMW world theme park at the site. I checked with BMW, which told me that that was absolutely ludicrous and that it had no plans to do so. Again, I have all this in writing.
Mr Carrick’s lawyers, who are in touch with me frequently, claimed that I had made all this up, but, fortunately for all concerned, I have a high-quality recording of the meeting, and they have now had to accept that all those comments were indeed made. I can share the transcript of the meeting with anyone who is interested, although I cannot share the recording without Mr Carrick’s permission, which he does not seem very willing to give. I asked him about the business plan, and I was told that he would be able to rent out the race track for between £18,000 and £35,000 a day. Industry experts tell me that that is absolutely ludicrous. But even if he did manage to do that, he would be pulling in revenue of only about £13 million a year on a project that is going to cost £430 million to build. I am intrigued as to why the project keeps increasing in cost, from £200 million in 2011 to £250 million in 2012 and to £380 million when I met Mr Carrick in July. Seven months later, it has risen again to £430 million.
I have two other documents of interest. The first is a quote from a construction company, FC, for £180 million for building the track—a project we are told is worth £430 million. Even with a few hotels chucked in, that would take a bit of explaining. The second is a business plan showing a developer’s profit of £13 million.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend for his investigation into this episode. What broader lessons does he think should be drawn from this about Welsh Government Ministers’ attitudes towards the use of public money in the name of economic development?
David T. C. Davies
The first lesson is that nobody should be able to make £13 million on a project before it has even been built. Secondly, this whole thing is an outrage. People are being sold a pipe dream. Politicians who support it are being taken out for lunch, and those who ask difficult questions are being threatened with legal action by a group of expensive City lawyers. Some £9 million of taxpayers’ money has been wasted. The only infrastructure we have seen so far has been the £35,000-worth of work done to Mr Carrick’s mansion in Grantchester, and the only sports car in evidence is the Aston Martin that he drives around in. It is time to pull this project.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the Wales Audit Office is looking into the affairs of that company? Has he contributed his valuable information to the WAO?
David T. C. Davies
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Yes, I have contributed quite a bit to the Wales Audit Office, and I am looking forward with great anticipation to the result. It is time to pull the plug on this scheme. If the Welsh Government want to put £200 million of our money at risk, there are better ways of doing it and better people to be doing it with.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow my neighbour the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies). I hope that he and I will agree on the principle of the importance of investing and creating jobs in the heads of the valleys.
Economic development will be the focus of my remarks, and we have seen good news in recent days. Yesterday, on St David’s day, the Cardiff capital region city deal was signed, which is clearly good news for south-east Wales. However, there are also concerns about Ford workers in Bridgend, which underlines—if there is any need to—the need for a coherent strategy from the UK Government for the years ahead. Whether people voted leave or remain in last year’s referendum, nobody voted to become poorer. We must ensure that structural funding continues beyond 2020. Foreign direct investment, which was at a 30-year high last year, must continue, and the Welsh Government deserve great credit for continuing to attract such investment to Wales. Steel, which is a foundation industry, must also be central to Wales’s economic future.
The priorities are both immediate and long term. Immediately, we must secure tariff-free access to the single market. Indeed, the Welsh Government’s “Securing Wales’ Future” document, which was produced together with Plaid Cymru, sets out the importance of participation in the single market, and a balanced migration policy, given that over two thirds of Welsh exports go there.
In the longer term, we need a vision of what a post-Brexit Wales should look like. The European Union currently has more than 50 free trade arrangements, which will clearly need replacing. The Brexit White Paper produced by the UK Government contains a chapter on “Securing new trade agreements with other countries”. It has 19 paragraphs, but there is no mention whatsoever of Wales’s position or the Welsh perspective on such trade agreements. However, that same document sets out that some of the fastest growing export markets between 2005 and 2014 were places such as China, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. The UK Government must work with the Welsh Government, which already have 14 overseas offices ready to assist with the creation of new trade agreements.
Stephen Crabb
My ears pricked up when the hon. Gentleman mentioned that the Welsh Government currently fund 14 overseas offices to assist with international trade. Given the extensive global network of embassies and high commissions that the UK Government fund from Westminster precisely to assist with international development, why should taxpayers fund these duplicate offices?
Nick Thomas-Symonds
In a sense, the right hon. Gentleman makes my point for me: we need a Welsh perspective in the construction of post-Brexit trade deals.
In the teeth of opposition from Conservative Assembly Members, it was very important that the Welsh Government nationalised Cardiff airport, which is crucial to Wales’ economic future.
The constitutional arrangements of Wales in 2017 are different from those that existed in 1972 when Wales entered the then European Economic Community. When the rules currently set in Brussels on matters such as agriculture, the environment or certain parts of transport are repatriated to the United Kingdom, we must ensure that they are not exclusively returned to this Parliament when it would be more appropriate to base them with the Welsh Government in Cardiff. It is vital to bear that in mind in the debates to come.
There is a broader point, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), whom I congratulate on leading the campaign to secure this debate, put it well when he talked about working now for the 100%. What is in the best interest of the people? Of course it is vital that we retain workers’ rights, environmental protections and consumer protections as we move into a post-Brexit Wales, but let us have the ambition not only to retain those rights and protections but to build on them—to make our consumers better protected, to strengthen environmental protections and to build on the workers’ rights that our membership of the European Union established and deepened over the years.
Our focus on Wales’ economic wellbeing is vital. It is about ensuring that the voice of Wales is heard loud and clear in the negotiations ahead so that we are able to produce the prosperous post-Brexit Wales that we all want.
Byron Davies (Gower) (Con)
I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak in this debate, and I shall focus on a number of key areas for Wales and Gower. One thing on which we can all agree is that we are at a historic point for Wales and the United Kingdom, and we must make all our voices heard to ensure that Wales gets the very best representation as part of the Brexit negotiations.
As part of that, the importance of infrastructure in creating economic growth cannot be overstated. If we do not have the right road, rail, freight and air networks, Wales will not fulfil its great potential. We cannot rely on the UK Government to keep supporting Welsh infrastructure while the Welsh Government sit back. Wales continues to grind to a halt every morning and every evening in a dazzling array of brake lights at Newport. Haulage companies carrying goods from our businesses, workers trying to commute and families going about their everyday lives are all bonded by that most Welsh of experiences: sitting in a car around the Brynglas tunnels or the Port Talbot bypass with the handbrake up as high as it can go.
As opportunities disappear to other areas of the UK, the Welsh Government continue to delay traffic relief for the M4 by engaging in a dazzling spectrum of task and finish groups, reviews and endless committees. I would be a very rich man indeed if I had £1 for every time I heard the phrase “task and finish group” when I was an Assembly Member—I certainly heard it more times than I heard any mention of actually undertaking and completing vital work on our infrastructure.
The overcrowded two-carriage train services that arrive every hour or so, the slow and ageing road network and the lack of bus services mean that many people are unable to travel for work or to create the businesses and commerce of which they are capable because the infrastructure is simply not adequate. We need to be bolder and more daring in our thinking.
Edward Argar (Charnwood) (Con)
My hon. Friend rightly focuses on transport infrastructure, but another key part of the infrastructure that Wales needs is energy infrastructure. He has been a great champion of the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, as have I. Does he agree that it is vital that we keep pressing so that we see the project move forward?
Byron Davies
If my hon. Friend bears with me, I will address that point in a moment.
There are positive points, of course. The Department for Transport has invested heavily in the great western line, and the new intercity express rolling stock, which will shortly be introduced on services to Cardiff and Swansea, will provide passengers on the line with greater capacity, a more comfortable journey and decreased journey times. I have already spoken to the Department, Ministers and others to try to ensure that we look at new solutions to our transport problems, such as greater services to west Wales or a complete reconfiguration of rail services with a Swansea parkway station and other solutions to try to unlock the vast untapped potential in south-west Wales. I implore Members on both sides of the House to work together and lobby so that we can make those positive changes for the people we represent.
On a slightly brighter note, I have previously spoken at length about the benefits of the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, but it really is a huge opportunity for Gower, south-west Wales and our nation. It is a world-first pathfinder project that could put Wales on the map as a world leader in renewable energy and its associated skills base. The tidal lagoon is exactly the sort of game-changing infrastructure project that Wales needs, and I know from my many meetings with Ministers across Government that it is being looked at extremely closely.
On a topic relating to the lagoon, it is vital for productivity and for the future prospects of our young people that, post-Brexit, we invest in and encourage skills development. ColegauCymru/CollegesWales is doing excellent work to provide skills, training and education for a wide age range that can make a real difference not just to individuals but to families and the country. The lagoon could be the catalyst that unlocks a greater level of skills training and development, which could encourage jobs and investment in engineering, thereby enabling companies to invest in other projects in Wales to benefit all our constituents.
Before I finish, I wish to bring up a local issue that has been worked on across party lines. The decline of the cockle industry has lost the economy around £23 million over the past 10 years. It was once an extremely successful industry in Gower that supported the community and was the livelihood of many people; now, 95% of cockles die at around one year old. The problem has existed for around 10 years, and the cockle beds have not recovered since the mortality started in 2005.
In 2000, the area had the best cockles in Europe and exported to France and Spain, bringing tens of millions of pounds into the region, but the cockles are no longer suitable for the high-end market, and there is a limit to how many small cockles can be sold. The local cocklers are unable to guarantee a regular supply of cockles to the processors. The season starts in May but is finished by July, whereas it used to be a year-round business. The local cocklers believe the cockles are being killed by sewage discharge, although the science around the issue remains a mystery. Natural Resources Wales should be working with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, because the problem affects other parts of the UK as well.
There should be further scientific work, and help from the Welsh Government, to save the cockle industry in Gower. Going forward, we can be hopeful about the future of the lagoon and improve skills in science, technology, engineering and maths, but we must not forget the great artisanship of the industries that our communities were built on. Although we face challenges, I firmly believe that by challenging our institutions to do more to find bold projects that will drive Wales forward, and with us elected representatives fighting the corner of our constituents in common cause, we can forge a better and more prosperous Wales that stands ready to embrace the future.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on his opening speech. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies); I am a great fan of Swansea cockles, so I was interested to hear what he had to say. I represent the university constituency of Cardiff Central. We have three universities—Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University, and the University of South Wales—so I shall focus my remarks on the importance of the higher education sector to Wales.
People in Wales have long understood the value of a good education, from the late 19th century, when working men pooled their wages to help to fund some of the earliest Welsh universities, through to today, when our seven universities are thriving like never before. They performed extremely well in the latest research excellence framework audit, when 77% of their submitted research was placed in the top two tiers of world research, and Cardiff University has been judged as the fifth best research university in the whole UK.
Welsh universities now stand at the cutting edge of research into renewable energy, new agriculture methods and new health research. In my constituency we have the brand new Cardiff University Brain Research Imaging Centre, which brings together world-leading expertise in brain mapping with the very latest in brain imaging and brain stimulation. CUBRIC, as the centre is known, plays a pivotal role in the global endeavour to better understand the causes of neurological and psychiatric conditions such as dementia, schizophrenia and multiple sclerosis, and to identify vital clues for the development of better treatments.
The higher education sector now accounts for almost 5% of Wales’s gross value added, generating £1.38 billion itself and powering £1.41 billion in other industries every year. Although universities in Wales are often portrayed as urban, they are in fact based in diverse areas and benefit the whole nation. Of the nearly 50,000 jobs created by the higher education sector in Wales, more than 11,000 are in local government areas that do not have a university based within their boundaries, which highlights how success in higher education helps to deliver success not only for its local communities, but for every community throughout Wales.
We know, however, that success is not inevitable. It has taken an incredible amount of work from teaching and research staff, students, administrators, and university managers and leaders to make our universities what they are. It has also taken a lot of hard cash, a major source of which has been the European Union, not only through research programmes such as Horizon 2020, but more generally through European regional development funding.
I am reminded of that every time I drive past CUBRIC, because without the £4.5 million of European funding that Cardiff University received for the building, the land where the centre now stands would have remained wasteland—a home for rats rather than researchers. Such examples explain why, during the referendum, the Welsh Conservative leader pledged that Wales would not get a penny less in funding after we left the EU, yet the Secretary of State has repeatedly refused to guarantee a replacement of the EU funding currently available to Wales and, by extension, to Welsh universities.
Given the Prime Minister’s quips about Labour cheques bouncing, it would be bitterly ironic for Wales if we discovered that the Welsh Conservative leader had been writing cheques that his boss could not cash. The refusal to offer guarantees to future EU students, the nonchalant attitude to pan-European student programmes such as Erasmus, and the general tone struck towards those seen as different echo far beyond our shores, and Wales is already paying the price.
Applications to Welsh universities from EU students are down by 8.45% on the previous year. Those students put more than £130 million into our universities and local economy. The reduction in the number of applications means that some of the brightest people in the world are now not choosing Wales—that is our loss.
The Government could take a simple step now to halt that decline and reduce the widespread and growing perception that EU students are unwelcome here. They could give a guarantee, as they have done for the 2016-17 and 2017-18 student cohorts from the EU, that EU students who start courses next year will have identical tuition fee status and access to financial support. Last week I heard from representatives of university medical students who are really concerned about NHS workforce planning, because while current medical students have been factored into that planning, many of them are from the EU and do not know whether, when they finish their degrees after we have left the European Union, they will be able to stay and work here.
Our ability to attract and retain the best academic talent is at risk. Some 17% of Cardiff University’s academic staff are EU nationals, which is why it is essential that the Prime Minister shows some leadership now—
Paul Flynn
Does my hon. Friend believe that the amendment passed by the House of Lords yesterday would be very useful, if it is supported by this House, to help the people whom she mentions?
Jo Stevens
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I said, 17% of Cardiff University’s academic staff are EU nationals. Universities across Wales, and indeed across the UK, are concerned that we will lose not only EU national teaching staff, but UK national teaching staff who have EU spouses, because they will leave the UK to work abroad.
The Welsh higher education sector represents everything to which a global Britain should aspire—a world leader punching above its weight, and ready to work with its friends across Europe and the world. We need to applaud this success, but also to recognise that it is not inevitable. We have a responsibility—a positive duty—to provide an environment in which Welsh higher education not just survives, but thrives.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
May I say what a pleasure it is to follow the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens)? I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Byron Davies) and Opposition Members on securing the debate.
As I was thinking about today’s debate, I did a little digging into the life and achievements of St David, and I was amazed by how many aspects I could crowbar into my speech. As we all know, St David was born in Wales, but he travelled widely, visiting Ireland and Jerusalem among other places. However, the “tourist” always returned back to travel Wales more widely, seemingly preferring it to any other place in the world—and why not? Wales is still the most beautiful place to visit in the world, and my area of Brecon and Radnorshire is still the most beautiful place to visit in Wales. This message is getting out into the wider world, too. Visits to Wales are increasing year on year, with a 3% increase seen in the past year alone.
Byron Davies
Does my hon. Friend agree that Gower is also worth a visit as it is the first area of outstanding natural beauty in the UK?
Chris Davies
I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. When one stands on the beautiful Pen y Fan in the mountains of the Brecon Beacons, we look down on south Wales to the Gower, and what a pleasure it is to see it from a distance—or, in fact, from near or far.
The Welsh tourism industry provides excellent employment prospects in my constituency and is a great boost to the local economy, but it is under some threat at the moment. Business rate hikes, should they go ahead as planned, will harm the tourism industry’s small profit margins, and a number of owners have expressed concerns to me that they might have to close altogether as a result. I therefore very much look forward to hearing any measures that the Chancellor can put in place next week for England that can be replicated in Wales.
It is not just the tourist in St David who is well suited to my speech. As many hon. Members will know, St David set up a number of monasteries around Wales. They were very frugal in their operations; once set up, they farmed the land. Thankfully, farming practices have remained, and produce from Wales is now widely recognised as among the finest products available in the world. Welsh lamb is becoming a benchmark for quality, and our beef is second to none. I am therefore pleased that the Government are supporting Welsh farmers by protecting farm payments until 2020. Furthermore, with Brexit, we have the opportunity to free our Welsh farmers from the shackles of the EU so that we can better compete with produce from around the world.
St David was not just a tourist and a farmer; he was also an inspiration to the warriors of Wales—he was recognised as our patron saint at the height of the Welsh rebellion against the Normans. Support for our military is still very visible in Wales. For many years, we have had a vast number of training grounds and barracks for our military right across our nation, and our communities take great pride in welcoming servicemen and women to their towns. I know that from the infantry training camps in Sennybridge and the Brecon Beacons, and from the barracks in Brecon, in my constituency, which once housed soldiers who fought in the battle of Rorke’s Drift, which was made famous by the film “Zulu”. That history of community is very important to local people, so I am disappointed that the Government seek to close the Brecon barracks. I hope that they will reconsider that proposal, see how important the barracks is to the military and the wider community, and keep it open for generations to come.
Following my research, I felt that I could not speak in this debate without mentioning St David’s great miracle. As he was preaching to the crowd at the synod of Brefi, he raised the ground beneath him into a hill that his sermon could be heard from. There are times when I wish for just such a power, because of my height—so does the Secretary of State, I am sure. None the less, I was reminded of the beautiful, rolling countryside of Brecon and Radnorshire.
Stephen Crabb
I am enjoying my hon. Friend’s speech enormously, but I fear that he has made a slight omission. He has not yet referred to the fact that St David was, of course, from Pembrokeshire, the most beautiful part of our fabulous nation of Wales.
Chris Davies
Just as when my right hon. Friend was Secretary of State for Wales, we are delighted to see Pembrokeshire people ruling over us, but we are also delighted to see them go back to Pembrokeshire on occasions, too—[Interruption] Even though he remains a great right hon. Friend.
My right hon. Friend stopped me as I was just about to mention that great institution that we call the Labour-run Welsh Assembly, which is proposing to litter not just Brecon and Radnorshire, but the whole of mid-Wales, with wind and solar farms by imposing measures on Powys County Council’s local development plan. Such a proposal would harm not only the excellent tourism industry that I mentioned earlier, but the attractiveness of mid-Wales for locals and those thinking of relocating there. It looks as if we will need one of those great St David’s miracles to prevent these plans from going through, but I can assure Members that I shall be fighting them all the way.
May I say again what a pleasure it is to see this House focusing on Wales issues?
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman is one of many Conservatives in mid-Wales who do not want wind farms. What alternatives for generating electricity would they like in mid-Wales? Would they like gas power or open-cast coal? What other source of energy do they propose to keep the lights on in mid-Wales?
Chris Davies
We would be delighted to see more hydro, and we are certainly delighted to support the tidal barrage and lagoon down in Swansea. Opposition Members do not seem to acknowledge that the tidal lagoon will benefit the whole of Wales, not just Gower, Swansea or south Wales—[Interruption.] I am delighted to have encouragement and support from across the Chamber for an agreement.
It is a pleasure to see this debate being held in the Chamber today. I look forward to working with the Government to build a stronger Wales long into the future.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and a belated happy St David’s day to you. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies), but he seems to have forgotten that St David’s mother, Non, went to live in Brittany in her later years. I hope that the Government will give some thought to that when they come to the reciprocal arrangements for EU citizens.
As we know, the ground around St David rose so that he could be heard by a crowd. But there is a second David of whom we must speak today: the David who thought that the ground around him would always rise, such was his belief in his great political gift to our country. With what Max Boyce would have called an incredible plan, this second David promised us a referendum on the EU, believing that his promises could never fail. Madam Deputy Speaker, I prefer the first David, our patron saint.
St David was quintessentially Welsh. He was almost always supported by followers, such as Aeddan, Teilo and Ysfael, and of course he also had the support of the great and the good—yes, even in the 6th and 7th centuries we had the great and the good in Wales—such as Deiniol, Dyfrig and the like. Across Wales yesterday there have been eisteddfodau, as indeed there will be today and over the weekend, such as the concert I will be attending in Rhosllanerchrugog tomorrow night, and there will be parades and other celebrations of culture. Let us therefore thank the great work of mentrau iaith, especially menter iaith Maelor across our borderland areas of Wales, for their promotion of Welsh language and culture.
I cannot let St David’s day—it is becoming St David’s week—pass without expressing my pleasure about the introduction of the Welsh language in this House in our Welsh Grand Committee, which is an historic change. I am pleased because I do not believe that there can be any understanding of Welsh political and cultural life that does not include an understanding of Welsh language rights. I am pleased because I think it goes some way towards righting an historic wrong. I am also pleased because I believe in a Wales that looks outwards, that does not beatify its borders—we hear so much nonsense on that subject today—and that does not want to create artificial walls between what is inside the Welsh border and what is Oswestry or the north-west of England. Those communities have been united with ours and there has been a relationship between the communities, not merely for decades, but for centuries. Let us leave the insular wall-building that separates people to the likes of Donald Trump in the United States, because it is so alien to our outward-looking vision of Welshness.
I know that every Member of this House—certainly every Welsh Member—will have in their constituencies heritage projects that should rightly be showcased and celebrated at this time. There are many such projects across the glorious 240 square miles of Clwyd South, but I will refer to only one today, the Brymbo heritage project, which has been set up by the Brymbo heritage group. The industrial village of Brymbo had a steelworks between 1796 and 1990—yes, its closure was another achievement of the great Mrs Thatcher. Today we are seeing the restoration of those buildings, with jobs being created and the community getting involved through volunteering, with oral histories, educational resources and various events.
I am delighted by the support that has been given to that project by the Welsh Government and the local council. I was even more pleased recently to see plans to convert the former steelworks building into a visitor centre, and a grant to fund architectural designs for an ambitious plan to convert a 1920s machine shop and regenerate the site further. I know that industrial sites in north-east Wales are not often what people think of when they think of our Welsh heritage. When we celebrate our Welshness, our culture and the two great languages of our nation, let us also remember the industrial heritage of north-east Wales and celebrate it. I wish everybody a happy St David’s day—I like saying this—Dydd Gŵyl Dewi hapus.
Craig Williams (Cardiff North) (Con)
It was a great privilege to pitch this annual debate to the Backbench Business Committee with the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen)—my friend on this occasion—and the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams). I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Ynys Môn not just for leading the charge on that occasion, but for the tone in which he opened the debate, which I want to echo.
It will not be a great surprise to the House that I will concentrate my remarks on the Cardiff city deal. As the Member of Parliament for Cardiff North in our capital city, I think the deal is a great achievement. This is an appropriate debate in which to talk about it because it needs cross-party and cross-governmental co-operation. Ten local authorities got together this very week to show their commitment of £120 million within the overall package of £1.2 billion. That is a great investment fund for south Wales and for Wales because when our capital city and engine house of Wales—the vast majority of the population live in south-east Wales—prospers, Wales prospers.
We have spoken at great length about tourism and the fantastic places all over the country. I have heard champions for Brecon and Radnorshire, Gower, Pembrokeshire, and constituencies represented by Opposition Members. When tourists arrive at our capital city—the international gateway—through the airport in the Vale of Glamorgan or through Cardiff Central station, which I will touch on in a moment, they come through a great, welcoming capital city that prospers through the research of our three universities. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) for championing the universities that cross our city. Only a couple of weeks ago, I visited the very department she mentioned, and I also call for the continuation of programmes such as Erasmus and Horizon 2020 during the negotiations for us to exit the EU. Those programmes, which prosper in our country, are great collaborations for EU states and non-EU states, which it is important to recognise as we go forward.
I mentioned the Cardiff city deal and the £1.2 billion commitment. That is not talk; it is real investment going into our economy now. The local authorities are getting together and agreeing a delivery framework. We need to hear the word “delivery” a lot more in Wales—not just committees or task and finish groups, but real delivery. The M4 relief road is a good example of where we need delivery. While I welcome the collaboration I have mentioned, we need to bring in the third and private sectors to leverage a lot more money than £1.2 billion to fix our infrastructure needs in south Wales. That brings me on to Cardiff Central station, which is our gateway to Wales.
The station is an incredibly important hub for my constituents who commute in to, out of and around Cardiff on a daily basis. I was delighted to join the Secretaries of State for Wales and for Transport in talking to operators and developers about what we can do there. We need to work together across parties and across Governments to look at the capacity. We are getting new rolling stock. For the sceptics in the House, I do not mean the great Tornado that visited to mark St David’s day yesterday, although steam had its time and it was wonderful to see it in Cardiff Central station on St David’s day. The new rolling stock is being built now and will be rolled out soon, on top of the electrification coming down the railways. That is huge investment with huge challenges. We should recognise that, rather than, as is traditional, bashing each other on the head about such projects, which take a great deal of thought and money.
I end with another great achievement of working together: securing not only the UEFA Champions League final, but also the UEFA Women’s Champions League final. It will be the first time that a city has ever managed to host both events, with one in our magnificent Principality stadium and the other in Cardiff City stadium. We will have the main Champions League final—the biggest sporting function in the world—and the Women’s Champions League final down the road. That underlines our nation’s potential, the incredible pull of Cardiff, and what we can secure and pay back to the economic development of our great country when we work together. Happy St David’s day.
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
I thank the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and for Gower (Byron Davies) for securing the debate, which is just about spot on, because, of course, it follows on from yesterday’s St David’s day celebrations and last week’s welcome announcement that we will be allowed, under certain circumstances, to address Parliament in Welsh. Mae fy nghyd-Aelodau Seneddol Plaid Cymru a finnau yn edrych ymlaen yn awchus at gael siarad Cymraeg am y tro cyntaf yn yr Uwch-bwyllgor Cymraeg. It is all right, there is nothing particularly terrifying in that: I am celebrating the fact that we will be allowed to speak Welsh in the Welsh Grand Committee—that is pretty much a spontaneous translation.
There is merit in embracing small victories here in Parliament, but while there is cause for celebration—after all, “Gwnewch y pethau bychai”, or “Do the little things”, is what St David advised us to do—I cannot help but think that, in the age of big and bold political decisions, Wales needs more than just the little things. By voting to leave Europe’s political union, people in Wales quite rightly voted to uproot the very foundations on which the Westminster establishment has rested so comfortably for so long. Contrary to the long-held small-c conservative belief, people want change—change with a capital C.
On the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, powers will be repatriated to the UK. A determination will need to be made about those powers that are to be in devolved areas. At the moment, there is little experience of shared competence as practised in the EU.
A St David’s day poll revealed that more and more people in Wales are demanding that power lies closer to them, with 44% wanting a National Assembly with greater powers. Brexit offers a unique opportunity for the Welsh National Assembly to satisfy that demand.
Let us take this opportunity to rethink drastically the UK constitution in a changing Europe. It is essential that the great repeal Bill, and measures taken under it at central UK level, give appropriate attention to the devolution settlement. It should recognise the continuation of EU measures already adopted in Welsh law for Wales, as well as the competence of Welsh Ministers to pass secondary legislation reviewing the post-Brexit acquis in devolved areas. The Bill may significantly impact, intentionally or not, on the legislative competence of the National Assembly for Wales. The UK’s exit from the EU must not result in devolved powers being clawed back to the UK Government. Any attempt to do that will be firmly resisted by my colleagues and me.
Managing these newly repatriated policy areas will require much more serious and intensive intergovernmental mechanisms and governance structures than those currently in place—a complete overhaul of the way the nations of these isles co-operate. Let us be frank: the current constitutional structures are already at fault. Dithering on UK infrastructure spend on energy projects, for instance, is serving neither rural communities nor the Welsh economy well. We need to realise the opportunities that await in potentia in such enterprises as tidal lagoons and new nuclear energy, and ensure that the people of Wales are equipped with the skills to make the best of such opportunities.
The Plaid Cymru spokesperson for external affairs in the Assembly, Steffan Lewis, has long been an advocate of transforming the existing Joint Ministerial Committee into a UK Council of Ministers covering the various aspects of policy for which agreement between all four UK Administrations is required. We are pleased that the Welsh Labour Government have adopted our position in the paper we worked on together, “Securing Wales’s Future”.
To finish, I will, like many Members today, return to St David. I urge the UK Government to do not only the little things he so famously preached. I urge them to rise above populist politics, just as St David did on the ground he caused to rise when people struggled to hear him preach. I urge them to rise to the challenge of Brexit in a way that will truly empower the Welsh people.
Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)
On 8 February, Bridgend College received the Association of Colleges beacon award for the development of transferable skills, in recognition of its amazing initiative “Be all that you can be”. That should almost be the motto of people who live in and around the Bridgend constituency, because Bridgend is a beautiful place. It has beautiful countryside; excellent schools; thriving faith communities; an inventive, creative business community; and wonderful people it is a privilege to live among and represent, and I want to talk about some of them today.
I live on the coast in Porthcawl, protected by our lifeboat station, Coastwatch lookout tower and coastguards, who watch the visitors, who do not know how dangerous the sea can be and who do not know its tides, its moods and its strength. Those visitors include the 31,000 who come for the Porthcawl Elvis festival, which brings in an estimated £6.7 million to our local economy over a weekend. I was never a great Elvis fan, but I must say that I am converting. I urge Members to visit the Porthcawl jazz festival in April and, while there, come along and see the Porthcawl museum, which is thriving thanks to a partnership between the excellent Bridgend Council, the museum, and the arts society. According to “The Source”, the museum’s regular newsletter written by Ceri, the carnival and Christmas swim committees, the Rotary club of Porthcawl and Porthcawl Town Council have all contributed money to make sure that the museum is a huge success. I know that the Secretary of State knows the museum well.
Drive out of town and come and meet another fantastic local character who, again, the Secretary of State knows well—Gwyneth Poacher at Sandville. This determined, dynamic woman brings love, compassion, care and hope into the lives of people who are very seriously ill, many terminally ill. She and her volunteers, taking no money at all from the state, make life in an impossible world worth living. My communities of Cornelly and Kenfig Hill are not “chocolate box”, but if people go to the luncheon clubs in the community centres, go to the churches, and go to KPC Youth & Community, they will see how strong and self-reliant these communities are. Come to Bridgend and see the local market. Meet the very wicked stallholders like Martin Nagell and Tim Wood, and see the quality of their goods.
Come to Wildmill and the meet the fantastic youngsters there, who, thanks to First Great Western, have tickets to come up to see this place. Visit my amazing local schools and see the education that they provide, because they are absolutely inspiring. Come to Bridgend because of our low crime. We have the lowest crime rate across south Wales, and the South Wales police force was today rated as “good”. Come for the Urdd Eisteddfod at the end of May, which is expected to bring in 90,000 visitors. Unemployment is low in my constituency: in January 2017, we had 985 claimants. We have a fantastic prison, Parc prison, rated by everyone as turning round reoffending. Reoffending rates among 80 high-risk families have been cut to 10%.
All those things, one would think, would be central to people’s view of Bridgend, instead of which, over the past 24 hours, most people have talked about the Ford plant. I do not underestimate the problems with the Bridgend Ford plant. The fear of job losses there is huge. There are issues that need tackling here in Westminster, particularly in relation to the value of the pound. The exchange rate change has cost Ford $600 million in lost revenue. The issue of tariffs is absolutely essential for Ford. It is vital to make sure that there is tariff-free access into Europe.
Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a very important speech. She will know that the issue of the Ford factory and the prospect of losing 1,100 jobs there will have an impact right across south Wales. Will she join me in urging the Secretary of State to offer Ford whatever assistance he can, including the sort of deal that appeared to be offered to Nissan? Will she further urge him to make sure that we never see World Trade Organisation tariffs imposed on cars going out of the UK, because that would cripple the competitiveness of our car industry?
Mrs Moon
I have had assurances that Ford will have the same deal as Nissan. I have asked today for an automotive symposium that will involve the manufacturers, Ministers here in Westminster, the trade unions, and local Members to see whether we can move this forward. I hope the Secretary of State will support that. There are also productivity issues at Bridgend that we must deal with, and the GMB and Unite unions are working on that with the workforce.
Paul Flynn
We are delighted with my hon. Friend’s comprehensive invitation to Bridgend. However, she has not mentioned the Emmaus centre, which I think is the only one in Wales.
Mrs Moon
I could spend hours giving Members 101 reasons to visit Bridgend. The Emmaus centre is changing lives. It is offering people who thought they had nothing a chance to get back on their feet, to have dignity and to start giving back to society. It is an amazing opportunity, and I am so proud that it is based in Bridgend.
There has been some discussion about alternative sources of heat coming into Wales. Bridgend is one of three local authorities selected to be deliverers of major renewable energy projects, involving the piloting of the latest heat pump technology through the smart system and heat programme. It is valued at £5.2 million and has been sponsored by Wales & West Utilities and Western Power.
Come and see Bridgend. There is so much there to be proud of—so much that exemplifies the best of Wales and explains why people and companies, once they get to Wales, do not want to leave. Our quality of life is amazing and our environment is fantastic, but, most of all, it is our people whom we should be proud of.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
In the spirit of brotherly and sisterly love that characterises this debate, I will advance my main career task of adding to the glittering career of the Secretary of State for Wales. He had the good sense to marry into a family who live in my constituency, which shows that he is a man of ambition.
I urge the Secretary of State to challenge his Cabinet, who seem to use Wales as a kind of Aunt Sally for making comparisons. He could advance his career by promoting some of the great achievements of Wales, and particularly of the Welsh Government. He could start with the Welsh Government’s Bill that introduced presumed consent for organ donation, which has already saved lives and proven to be advantageous. There is a Bill to that effect before this House, and I urge him to persuade the Cabinet of the advantages of introducing the same system in England.
I want to ask the Secretary of State about one of the other great successes of the Welsh Assembly, which was buying Cardiff airport for the bargain price of £52 million. That was derided by some of his friends in Wales, but since the airport was bought it has paid more than £52 million in air passenger duty back to the Government. The hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), who is next to the Secretary of State, took a great deal of time in our debate on the Wales Bill and seemed to give more support to Bristol airport than to Cardiff airport. I say to him that Cardiff airport is another shining success.
In a Select Committee, I reminded the Secretary of State that he was born four years after Wales started paying double tax on the national road system and the Severn bridge tolls, and asked whether his ambition was to ensure that those tolls continued until he retired. That is the way that it is going. By next year, however, the bridge will be all paid for.
I asked the Secretary of State how the toll of £3.70 that he proposed at the time was 50% of £6.70. He and his officials went back to the Wales Office and recalculated, and the next figure I saw was £3. Recently, a question was asked here about how the £3 was calculated. The strange answer was that that was something equivalent to the Humber bridge. We are happy for it to be treated in the same way as the Humber bridge, where £150 million of debt was wiped off. That would give us 10 years at least. Now, the only justification for the tolls is that they are a cash cow, and the Government and the Treasury refuse to give them up.
When the Severn bridge was first opened, Harri Webb wrote a poem:
“Two lands at last connected
Across the waters wide,
And all the tolls collected
On the English side.”
If the ghost of Harri Webb is still about, he might write something along these lines:
“Now all the tolls are collected
The debt is paid in full
But Tory snake oil salesmen
Still rob us with their bull.”
The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) made several interesting observations, and I would like to know how they will be followed up.
David T. C. Davies
Fifty per cent. is better than nothing, and does the hon. Gentleman agree that Mr Webb might have written:
“The Secretary of State
We think no less of him
Because 50%
Is better than dim”—
as they say in Welsh?
Paul Flynn
There is a delightful picture, which I have produced with pride on my website, of the hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State for Transport and the Secretary of State for Wales—a trio of snake oil salesmen—lined up against the background of the bridge, saying “Well, it used to be £6.70. Now, we’re going to make it £3.70.”; “No, we’re not—it’s £3”; and “We’ll charge you each way, so it’s £1.50”. These are the techniques of the fairground.
The charge should be nothing because we have already paid the bill. How many Members were in the House for the Severn Bridges Bill in 1992, when we were told by Wyn Roberts, “This is the end of it”? We have already paid £1 billion of public money. We pay our taxes for every road within the British Isles—we have to pay our share of that—and, in addition, we pay this extra tax to get into Wales. It is a barrier to Welsh life and it should go. I am looking forward to hearing how Ministers came up with the idea of charging £3. There is no justification for it. The largest element of it will actually go on collecting the tolls themselves. This is a totally unfair tax on Wales.
I am sure that the Secretary of State will announce, in under an hour’s time, that this is over and that he will now crusade on the issue and build himself up as the new symbolic or legendary figure of Welsh life, so that when he lays down his political role and joins the choir invisible he can discuss with Harri Webb his verses on the Severn bridge and contemplate the opportunities he has had in life, such as the ones I am sure he will take up after today.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for securing this debate.
On 23 June 2016, the UK, Wales and indeed my constituency of Aberavon voted to leave the EU. I accept and respect that result, but not unconditionally. Brexit must be made to work for Wales. That means fighting tooth and nail against a crippling Brexit on WTO terms. The tariff barriers alone would cost £6 billion a year, destroying the automotive sector and crippling our steel industry.
Indeed, just yesterday, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) said, we heard about the job threats at Ford in my neighbouring constituency of Bridgend. This means that the UK Government must protect funding for Wales, so I call on the Government to commit to securing funds through to 2030, on a pound-for-pound match basis, based on current EU structural funding. The current guarantee up to 2020—the year after we are due to have left the EU—is simply not good enough.
The challenges facing my Aberavon constituency serve to demonstrate why the stakes could not be higher, and how desperately the United Kingdom needs a project of national renewal. Such a project must be rooted in the steel industry, because each steel job supports three others in the local community and the country; because each steel job supports a family and the community; and because each steel job supports a way of life and a way of being.
That is why, two weeks ago, the men and women of Tata Steel swallowed a bitter pill to secure the future of their industry, guaranteeing steel production at Port Talbot and across Tata’s operations for the foreseeable future. The vote to close the British Steel pension scheme, transferring it to a defined contribution scheme alternative, was a hard decision, but it was one for the workforce themselves alone. That is why Plaid Cymru’s crude attempt to score cheap political points, manufacturing conflict between the workforce and the unions with a view to securing votes in May’s local elections, was such a shameful spectacle. There can be no excuse for such political opportunism, and I deeply regret Plaid Cymru’s attempts to play politics with steelworkers’ livelihoods. Thankfully, our steelworkers are far too smart to fall for Plaid Cymru’s crass grandstanding and mind games, and they chose to ignore that ill-founded advice.
The workforce have shown their willingness to make real sacrifices to save their industry; Tata has made commitments to secure the industry; and the Welsh Assembly Government have offered £60 million in support and created an enterprise zone to help with business rates, but the Westminster Government have done nothing. They have done nothing on Chinese dumping, energy prices, procurement or skills retention or training, and nothing to help to secure the deal between Tata and the unions. I therefore ask the Government to commit unequivocally today to heed the cross-party “Steel 2020” report—amazingly, I have a copy here—and to a sector deal for steel.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
My hon. Friend is talking about the Westminster Government’s inaction, but is the position not slightly worse than he suggests, in that when there were calls to reform the lesser duty rule, far from doing nothing, the Government were at the head of a blocking minority, which prevented that reform?
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is right. The British Government are notorious for being the ringleader of a group of member states that consistently blocked the European Commission’s attempts to give the anti-dumping regime more teeth. That is a matter of great regret, which reflects the “China first” policy, rather than a “Wales first” policy, that the Government have pursued.
A thriving steel industry must also be a catalyst for the regeneration and development that will happen if the Government get on and approve a city deal for the Swansea Bay area. That will help to regenerate and manage the impact of de-industrialisation. It also makes sense for the Government to give the green light to the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon, an idea whose time has clearly come. The lagoon would create and sustain thousands of jobs and meet 11% of Welsh energy needs with a clean, green, reliable source of sustainable energy.
The Government’s parliamentary boundary review has rather less support in Wales than elsewhere. It disrespects local communities. It proposes to slice Port Talbot town centre in two, leaving the high street and adjacent shopping centre in different constituencies. It is absurd. The review disregards the 2 million people who registered to vote in the referendum campaign and seeks to stifle the voice of Wales by removing more than a quarter of Welsh seats. All that is taking place while the UK Government seem intent on using Brexit to turn the UK into a European version of the Cayman Islands.
Paul Flynn
With all our constitutional problems—a grossly bloated House of Lords, not enough Members in the Welsh Assembly and the constitutional chaos that will flow from Brexit—is it not astonishing that the Government are interested in only one reform, which will give them more Members here?
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is right—it is a barefaced gerrymander, which we regret.
I urge the Government to take action on steel and economic regeneration, and to rethink the boundary reviews. I wish all hon. Members a happy St David’s day.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
Today I will talk about two issues that I have raised since I came to this place—I have also raised them in Wales—and the reaction to those campaigns: the Women Against State Pension Inequality Campaign, and children’s funerals.
I call upon the Government to stop burying their heads in the sand and do the right thing by all WASPI women. Today I am talking specifically about Welsh WASPI women. Many of them are in work not because they want to be, but because they have to be. Although I agree that working is the ideal situation, the ability to work and the availability of work mean that is not an option for all Welsh women who find themselves in that predicament. As a result, many have to rely on the benefits system. Tens of thousands of women across Wales, including over 3,000 in my own constituency, have been unfairly treated by the changes to the state pension that have led to the birth of the WASPI movement. We on the Labour Benches are a voice for Welsh WASPI women. Indeed, Welsh Labour local authorities are stepping up to the plate and calling on the UK Government to make appropriate provision for the WASPI women. Local authorities such as Caerphilly, Neath Port Talbot, Rhondda, Wrexham and Swansea have all pledged their support for fair transitional arrangements. Many, many more are working towards replicating that pledge.
The Welsh Government give free bus passes to individuals over 60, which puts Welsh WASPI at an advantage in as much as they are able to travel free. This is especially important if they are expected to travel to benefit offices or work trial placements as a requirement of any of the benefits they may have to claim to survive. Talking of buses, next Wednesday the M4 will hopefully be awash with purple as WASPI women from Wales travel to London to join the WASPI demonstration. Women from across the UK will vent their frustration at the Government’s reluctance to engage constructively on this issue. There will be many, many Welsh women in that throng, including a coachful from my own city of Swansea.
The last subject I want to mention is a campaign that is very personal to me: the funding of children’s funerals. I am very proud that since I first spoke in this Chamber about my own son’s passing and the difficulties I experienced in funding the funeral, almost all Welsh Labour local authorities have responded by scrapping fees for children’s funerals. To name just a few whose reaction was extremely swift: my own city of Swansea, Torfaen, Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taf and, just this week, Bridgend.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)
Along with my hon. Friend, I welcome the news that Bridgend County Borough Council, and Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council in my constituency, have cancelled child burial fees. Does she not agree that it is very upsetting for families who lose a child that it has taken individual councils to change these rulings, rather than the British Government stepping up to the plate and providing the money to enable all local councils across the UK to do this immediately?
Carolyn Harris
I certainly do, and my hon. Friend will appreciate that it has been very painful for me to expose myself in this way to get the right thing done.
I believe the commitments of those local authorities have been made with compassion. Until I raised it, many local authorities were unaware that the cost of a child’s funeral was an issue for many bereaved parents. I was able to expose the elephant in the room, which is that the privacy and intimacy of that situation are a social taboo. Very few people will open a conversation with an undertaker with the words, “We will have what we can afford.” Instead, they want a service and a funeral that reflect the depth of their love for the one they have lost. When you lose a child, there is no consideration of anything, including cost. Rational thought and basic common sense leave you as you try to come to terms with your own grief and how to get through each day. I am so grateful to those Welsh local authorities, as I am to authorities right across the United Kingdom.
Mrs Moon
My hon. Friend will be aware that Bridgend not only discounts or removes costs for children’s funerals, but has built a dedicated children’s area in the crematorium so that parents have a private place to go. Does she think that that is perhaps the next step for her campaign?
Carolyn Harris
I would of course want that to happen and I will certainly campaign for that, but at this moment I just want the costs to be covered.
The action of some local authorities does not mean that the Government are off the hook. I urge the Secretary of State to speak to the Chancellor. He has the opportunity next Wednesday to do the right thing: take the message back that Wales is leading on this but that the Government now need to act in the same spirit and establish a specific fund that can be drawn on by local authorities to allow them to waive fees for children’s funerals.
In conclusion, there are many things in Wales from which I derive pleasure and pride. We are a strong nation with a good heart and we always want to do the right thing, so I plead with the Secretary of State to take these messages back and to ask his Cabinet colleagues to do the right thing on children’s funerals: show compassion, show respect and show understanding.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
I again thank the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for spearheading efforts to secure this timely debate. If he will excuse me, however, I want to congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) on her campaign and what she has achieved so far. The work is unfinished, and I hope the Government are listening to her words, but no one can doubt her determination, off the back of a terrible tragedy, to pursue this issue. I salute her for what she has done, as I am sure does everyone across the House.
I had a long list of things to talk about, but time is against me, so I shall touch on them only briefly before talking at greater length about my universities—like the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), I represent a university constituency—in a European context.
I seem always to be talking about broadband in mid-Wales, as does the hon. Member for Ynys Môn. People acknowledge the huge achievements that have been gained through superfast broadband, but according to Ofcom, four of the 10 constituencies with the highest percentage of slow connections, and five of the 10 with the lowest fixed broadband speed, are in mid-Wales, and alas Ceredigion is on both the lists. There is therefore work still to do. It is not just about householders connecting either; it is about ridding ourselves of an impediment to business thriving in mid and west Wales. That is why we need more concerted action.
I have not had an answer from the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport or the Minister about the DCMS future contribution to S4C’s budget. The former Secretary of State promised that the contribution would be frozen pending the outcome of a review, but we still have not had that review. Is there a commitment from DCMS to freeze S4C’s budget in the year ahead?
On transport connections, I will only mention the spirited campaign to reopen a railway line between Aberystwyth and Carmarthen. I am grateful that the Under-Secretary of State for Wales, the hon. Member for Aberconwy (Guto Bebb), met campaigners last week. On business rates, I endorse what the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said about how businesses will be grievously affected unless the UK Government, in addition to the Welsh Government, step in.
Liz Saville Roberts
On business rates, will the hon. Gentleman take this opportunity to ask what is being done about the Valuation Office Agency, which is responsible for the means by which the revaluations are done? It is, of course, a Westminster responsibility.
Mr Williams
Indeed. I am not sure if the hon. Lady is alluding to the structures through which it undertakes its valuations, or some of the weird decisions it is coming up with, but a business in my constituency whose business rates have doubled from £12,500 a year to £25,000—this is in a seasonal tourist area of Ceredigion—would be very sympathetic to her question.
Higher education is critical to Ceredigion. We have Aberystwyth University, of course, and the Lampeter campus of the University of Wales Trinity Saint David. Lots of geographical references have been made to Dewi Sant. When the land rose so that he could deliver one of his great sermons, it was in Llanddewi Brefi, which is famous for other things on television these days, but fundamentally famous for Dewi Sant. Aberystwyth University is one of the top 200 universities in the world for agriculture, English, geography, environmental sciences and politics. Some 95% of our research is of an internationally recognised standard or higher, and the university contributes £250 million to our local economy.
I want to use this opportunity to celebrate the investment that is in place now, which is largely from the EU. Some £20 million from the European regional development fund, which is safe because it will be delivered before 2020, will fund the building of an innovation and enterprise campus at Aberystwyth University. That will provide world-leading facilities and expertise to create market-focused solutions for the agri-tech industry. It will also encourage business and academic collaboration, drawing a link between academic excellence and commercial opportunities. Those are lofty words, but they are valid ones. Academia is often accused of working in a silo—apart from business—but this initiative with Aberystwyth will certainly move away from that.
I particularly celebrate the European money that came in. The project could not happen without Europe and the £20 million from the regional development fund, but it is going to happen. There is no scaremongering—it is going to happen. I celebrate the good work that will take place but, as the hon. Member for Cardiff Central said, there are huge concerns about future research grants, participation in EU projects and, critically, the status of non-UK EU staff. Countless people have come to my surgeries genuinely fearful about whether they should stay and if they should apply for jobs in the future. That is a real concern. We are missing a trick—a fundamental and humane trick—if we do not allow people to come here in the numbers that they have done in the past to contribute to Wales and our economy.
I should also make a more general point about research funding. There has been a historical concern that Wales has not had its share of research funding. I could say a lot about this, but I will just cite Professor Dylan Jones-Evans, who I think is more known on the other side of the House than on my side, who has said that if research had been “Barnettised”, we would have seen an extra £500 million of research funding in Wales over the past decade. That is very important.
Finally, I want to talk about Dewi Sant—the great, compassionate saint. I think that he would have been alarmed by the direction of immigration policy in this country, and not least what has happened with the Lord Dubs amendment made in the House of Lords. I hope that the Government reflect on that. People in my constituency are very keen that more refugees should come to Wales.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am afraid that I now must reduce the time-limit to four minutes.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab/Co-op)
Happy St David’s day, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and others on securing the debate.
For Wales to continue to thrive and meet its potential, we need continued investment in infrastructure. The Welsh Government are right to be investing in transport, and I am glad that there is a focus on plans for both a north Wales and south Wales metro. World-class public transport is vital for the future of Wales. It can provide a sustainable way forward to attract the brightest and the best to our nation. Through the implementation of the south Wales metro, I hope that we will get much-needed improvements to the level crossing in Pencoed and the half-hourly service to Maesteg, and road infrastructure improvements around the town of Llanharan.
I want to focus on two national campaigns that are often raised in this House but are seldom given a Welsh context. First, I want to draw Members’ attention to how much scamming affects people across Wales and beyond. The practice of scamming is on the rise, and each year around 9,000 incidents of fraud are reported to the police. Scamming has an impact on the most vulnerable in society, and at the moment not enough is being done to tackle the problem.
At present, there is not enough recognition of the problem that scamming poses to the most vulnerable in our communities. Awareness of the threat should be more of a priority at all levels of government. If people are aware of the most common scams and the tactics that criminals use, they will be more able to protect themselves, and less likely to be flustered and rushed by scammers. In the coming months, I will be stepping up a campaign in Ogmore to raise awareness of scams, and I encourage all hon. Members to look into doing the same in their areas.
As with any other crime, it is ultimately the police who do most to protect the people of Wales and elsewhere from scams. Police officers face immense danger in their line of duty, and we must do more to keep them safe. According to data from the Police Federation of England and Wales, over a period of 12 months, there might have been more than 2 million unarmed physical assaults on officers, and a further 300,000 assaults using a deadly weapon. The vast majority of these incidents are unreported, however, so official figures show far fewer instances. We must work together with the police in Wales to ensure that they are safer at work, and we must heed their campaigns for better protection.
Forces throughout the UK have begun to use spit guards as a defence against spitting suspects. If forces in Wales choose to use these guards, we should defend them and show our support for that. Spitting is a form of assault that leaves officers at risk of receiving life-threatening diseases, and if our police forces in Wales can see a way of preventing such assaults, we should stand by them.
There will be opportunities and risks for Wales over the coming years. Our departure from the European Union will bring difficulties for each nation of the UK, but I am glad that we have a strong Welsh Labour Government in Cardiff Bay to fight our corner. The Welsh Government are right to focus on the need for continued investment in infrastructure and public services, and I only hope that the UK Government, and particularly the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary, will always continue to champion Wales on reserved matters.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
This St David’s day debate takes place against the backdrop of Brexit and all the uncertainty that that brings, but, like other hon. Members, I want to talk about some of the positive developments that we have seen in the corner of Wales that I represent with my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) in the year since our last debate. On 14 March, it will be 15 years since Newport achieved city status, and it is no exaggeration to say that there is new life in our city centre thanks to the Friars Walk development, which had 8 million people walk through it in 2016. It has brought 1,500 new jobs and attracted £120 million into the city centre. All credit to Newport Council and its leaders, Bob Bright and Debbie Wilcox, for making that happen.
Coleg Gwent is seeking to relocate to a site next to the University of South Wales to create a knowledge quarter on the banks of the River Usk, and work will begin this month on the international convention centre. Last year, the University of South Wales launched the National Cyber Security Academy, which has been part-funded by the Welsh Government and supported by Airbus and General Dynamics. I am really proud that the cyber-experts of the future are being produced in Newport, in the second-largest cyber-security department after Royal Holloway college. These are positive developments, with Newport Council working with Labour in the Welsh Government and with industry to bring benefits to our constituents.
Other hon. Members have mentioned the Cardiff capital region city deal. The leaders from Newport and Monmouthshire were among the 10 leaders who signed that deal yesterday. The key element in this is the metro. We have had debates in which we have asked the UK Government to guarantee the funding for that, post-Brexit. It is an ambitious project with huge potential for improving connectivity.
Nick Thomas-Symonds
The leader from Torfaen also signed that deal yesterday. Does my hon. Friend agree that the crucial element of the deal is its strategic approach to south Wales?
Jessica Morden
My hon. Friend is exactly right, and we look forward to working in partnership.
As the population grows in the areas of Caldicot, Rogiet, Undy and Magor, it is crucial that we have the infrastructure for a new station in Magor, for which a bid has been put in, and better capacity for the commuter services to Bristol and Cardiff. I hope that the Ministers will pursue this with the Department for Transport.
We should also be talking about the Great Western Cities partnership between Newport, Bristol and Cardiff. This is another potential source of growth, and I am keen to hear from Ministers what they can do to engage with and support it. Those great western cities are interdependent and have key areas that could provide economic growth. Initial work has already shown that the economic benefit that could be generated by improving the connectivity between Bristol, Newport and Cardiff would be greater than that generated by similar investment in Leeds, Manchester and Liverpool. This is a huge opportunity and I would like to see Wales Office Ministers engaging with the project. I was going to let the subject of the Severn bridge tolls go, on this occasion—[Hon. Members: “No! No!”] I will just say that the Government have moved some way, following our long campaign, but it is not far enough. We will continue to campaign on that issue.
Finally, I want to highlight some other matters on behalf of my constituents. The first is steel. I have spoken many times about the importance of steel to my constituency, and I have been heartened by the investment being put in by Liberty. The Tata workers in the steel industry have made a difficult decision in agreeing to the pension proposals. They are doing their bit, and it is now up to Tata and the UK Government to ensure that there is a sustainable future for the Welsh sites, including Llanwern and Orb.
The second issue is personal independence payments. The Government’s announcement about the changes to PIPs last week has caused huge anxiety out there among constituents who are already struggling with the process. I cannot be alone in seeing surgeries full of people who are waiting too long for assessments and decisions, and long-term disabled people who are getting turned down, with all the distress that that causes. Last week’s statement will only add to that distress. Many disabled people who I know feel that they are always in line for cuts and that there are no guarantees that those facing reassessment will not see their awards cut. Will Ministers take back to the Department for Work and Pensions the message that, rather than making the process more difficult, what is needed are fewer delays, more consistency in decision making and more discussion with disabled people’s organisations before bringing forward regulations such as these.
Last but not least: the police. Today’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary highlights the fact that the police are struggling with cuts and that their response to the public is suffering. Gwent is rated “good” in HMIC’s assessment, and I am really pleased that it is in the top 10 best performing forces for cases involving domestic violence. However, the police are clearly struggling to do much more—there are more complex cases—with less. The debates that we have had in this place have highlighted that fact, and I would like to see Ministers fighting the corner for Welsh police forces and the service they provide to our constituents, to ensure that they are properly funded and can do their crucial job well.
Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing this important St David’s day debate. He is not only a great ambassador for his constituency in north Wales, but an advocate of all things Welsh—he is not a quockerwodger. I echo his calls for unity and connectivity. I live in the Dulais valley of Neath where the signal falls like rain, but we have so much rain that we call it liquid gold.
I pay tribute to the former Father of the House, Gerald Kaufman. I have great memories of Gerald from when he stayed at my house many years ago and played with my daughter Angharad. I still have the photos, which I showed him when I became an MP. We will all miss him so much.
I must also mention the recent tragic death at age 20 of a young Welsh sports star. Elli Norkett was the youngest player at the Women’s rugby world cup and had gained four Welsh senior caps by the age of 17. Elli started her career aged 15 at Neath Athletic RFC, and I had the fortune of meeting her and was inspired by the charm, wit, and passion of a young woman who touched the lives of so many. Her smile lit up the room.
It is a privilege to be the shadow Secretary of State for Wales and to hear about the many Welsh issues and causes mentioned by Members today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Gerald Jones) for his hard work in his role as my right-hand man—or perhaps that should that be left-hand man. It is great to see the Secretary of State in his place today. He is famous for his sartorial elegance, which is matched only by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami). I must also mention the great outfits worn by Madam Deputy Speaker, but if she needs some fashion advice, she can call on our fashion guru, my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris).
Much has happened since last St. David’s day, and it is important to reflect on some of that today. The hon. Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) brought so much energy to his speech, just as he does when chairing the Welsh Affairs Committee and when I see him in the gym every morning.
My hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds)—my great friend—talked about economic development, saying that funding should continue beyond 2020 and that steel is central to Wales’s future.
The hon. Member for Gower (Byron Davies) spoke about the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project and the encouraging news that Ministers are looking at it closely. I hope that that is positive news, because we really need that project. He also spoke about the decline of the cockle industry, which we must work together to save.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) talked about the importance of the higher education sector to Wales. Success in that sector breeds success across communities in Wales. She also mentioned Horizon 2020 and the Erasmus programme, stating that 17% of staff at Cardiff University are EU nationals, to whom great consideration should be given.
The hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) said that St David travelled widely but came back to Wales. The hon. Gentleman started some sort of contest about who has the most beautiful constituency. Well, it is Neath. He said that he supports the tidal lagoon, but there is no sea in Brecon! One fact that I did not realise until the other day is that St David was a vegetarian.
My hon. Friend the Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones) said that St David’s mother lived in Brittany and urged the Government to think of EU citizens. She also spoke about Welsh language culture, and I congratulate her on securing the ability for Welsh to be spoken in the Welsh Grand Committee.
The hon. Member for Cardiff North (Craig Williams) discussed the Cardiff city deal.
Christina Rees
Again, yes, but he also mentioned Cardiff Central station in his contribution. He pointed out that the Champions League finals for both men and women will be held in Cardiff, but he did not mention the Women’s Six Nations championship, some of which is being hosted at Cardiff Arms Park.
The hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) spoke to us in Welsh, and she assured us that she said nothing naughty. I cannot speak Welsh, so I hope she is right. She spoke about the importance of looking at how powers are repatriated to devolved areas of the UK and about the great repeal Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) spoke in glowing terms about Porthcawl and the festivals. I have attended all the festivals because I used to live in Porthcawl, and it is indeed a beautiful place to live. She also mentioned Kenfig Hill, where I was born, and the benefits that Bridgend County Borough Council is bringing to the area. I was a Bridgend councillor, and not many people know that I was Carwyn Jones’s councillor. I can assure the House that he did not benefit in any way from my being his councillor.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) spoke about the Severn bridge tolls and how they are calculated. He quoted from the poem by Harri Webb and put his own words to it, which sounded really fine to me.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said that Brexit must work for Wales and that the UK Government must protect funding until 2030. He talked about the steel industry, about which he has spoken so passionately in the past, and its importance to his constituency and the UK. He also mentioned the cross-party “Steel 2020” report, of which I have a copy. It is a great report.
My hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East spoke about the WASPI campaign, which she has led so well in Wales. She spoke about the unfairness of the pension arrangements and how we need fair transitional arrangements. She said that most of the buses from Wales will be filled with WASPI women coming to next Wednesday’s march. She also spoke of the very personal matter of the loss of her son and how four councils in Wales have already scrapped fees for children’s funerals.
The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) spoke about the universities in Aberystwyth and St Davids and about superfast broadband.
My hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) spoke about the north Wales and south Wales metro and his level crossing in Pencoed. He also spoke about vulnerable people being scammed and how we should support our police officers, who do a fine job in our communities.
It is 15 years since Newport became a city, and my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden) spoke positively about the great work of council leaders Debbie Wilcox and Bob Bright and their great vision, together with the Welsh Government, to make the city of Newport a fine place.
I thank all the Members who intervened, too. I look forward to working with the Secretary of State for Wales to make Wales a superb place in which to live and work. I am passionately Welsh and always will be.
The Secretary of State for Wales (Alun Cairns)
Rwyf yn ddiolchgar i’r Pwyllgor Busnes—I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for recognising the importance of holding this debate on Wales near St David’s day and for allocating the time. I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen), for Ceredigion (Mr Williams) and for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) and to my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Byron Davies) for securing the debate on this motion on behalf of Members on both sides of the House. I am grateful for the commitment and drive that has delivered this debate.
I welcome the hon. Member for Neath (Christina Rees) to the Dispatch Box, and I look forward to working closely with her in the interests of Wales and of all the people of Wales. I thank her predecessor for her robust scrutiny when she was in post.
I highlight the importance of the Union to Wales. I will cover as many points as I can, but I need to underline that the Union of the United Kingdom is the most successful political union of nations that has ever existed. It is important that we recognise the precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As we leave the European Union, the Union of the UK is more important than ever, and we will seek to strengthen it as the negotiations progress. We want the United Kingdom to emerge from this period of change stronger, fairer, more united and more outward-looking than ever before. We will make sure that no new barriers to living and doing business within our nations are created. That was the spirit in which the hon. Member for Ynys Môn introduced this healthy debate, and I hope it has been underlined throughout.
By being part of the Union, Wales has prospered and developed, and in turn the UK has benefited from the flow of ideas and innovation from our proud nation. Some issues relating to universities were mentioned during the debate, and the hon. Members for Ceredigion and for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) and others talked about the great innovation and expertise in our universities, from which the Union of the UK benefits. Organisations such as Innovate UK have a key part to play in driving innovation and capturing the expertise that exists.
North and south Wales form single economic regions with the north-west and south-west of England. After all, 50% of Wales’s population and 10% of England’s live within 25 miles of the Wales-England border.
I shall address other points later, but first, there was much focus by Members on funding. I hope we can recognise the funding settlement that was negotiated before Christmas. It puts Wales in a strong financial position as we look forward: it will receive around £120 for every equivalent £100 spent in England. That will fall, over a long period, to £115, which is the funding floor. I hope that demonstrates the positive, open relationship that we want. We want to work with the Welsh Government to secure and bind the Union in the best possible way so that we can benefit from the assets, culture and diversity of all the nations in the Union of the United Kingdom.
There is no denying that, as a Union, we are inextricably linked. Companies in Wales have access to help and support from both Governments, and we are keen to work closely with the Welsh Government to secure further inward investment, as well as to develop businesses and the industrial strategy that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is driving forward. He will be in Wales shortly to ensure that Welsh businesses are playing a full part in the consultation on the recent Green Paper.
There are challenges ahead as we exit the European Union, but there are also some great opportunities. We are working with the Welsh Government and discussing the process and progress in the negotiations on our exit from the EU. Reference has been made to the Joint Ministerial Committee on EU negotiations, which brings together the UK Government and the devolved Administrations to seek to develop a UK-wide approach to the challenges we face and the opportunities we can grasp as we leave the EU. At the last meeting of that Committee, the Welsh Government presented their White Paper, which sets out their priorities for our exit from the EU, and we are discussing their proposals.
As part of the discussions, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union met the Welsh Government Finance Minister yesterday, along with officials from my office and the Cabinet Office. We are having parallel discussions on a whole range of issues to ensure that Wales is at the heart of the discussions. We will intensify our work with the Welsh Government on all aspects of the EU ahead of, and following, the triggering of article 50. It is important to remember that, despite political differences, we share many objectives. The Welsh Government’s White Paper was a welcome contribution, and I believe we have significant common ground from which to work.
We all want the freest possible access to the single market. In that context, the Ford plant at Bridgend was mentioned by not only the hon. Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) but several other Members, including the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds). The latter also mentioned steel, as did the hon. Members for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) and for Newport East (Jessica Morden).
We need to recognise that, in relation to Ford, there is the natural life cycle of a product, and that we need to be realistic about where we were expected to be at this stage of development. The hon. Member for Bridgend said that there were challenges in efficiency and productivity that the unions and the plant must face. When I met Ford two days ago, there was optimism about a sustainable future, but also a recognition that we need to win further business for when the natural life cycle of the existing engines ends. It is on that basis that I look positively at the challenges that we face in order to make those jobs sustainable over the longer term.
Some of the information out there has been highly selective, and I do not necessarily subscribe to the way in which it has been presented. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and I have already discussed this matter, and I know that ongoing engagement with Ford is something that we want to pursue.
On the points that were made in relation to steel, I do not accept the criticism that the hon. Member for Aberavon made. He talked about trade defence measures. Although I have mentioned them time and again, he fails to recognise them. The 41 trade defence measures that have been introduced have had an effect. Imports of rebar and wire rod into the European Union are down by 99%, as a result of the Secretary of State, and his predecessor, driving that forward to ensure that we have a fair and level playing field for the steel industry. Rolled-flat products and organic coated steel are similarly down by 90%. The hon. Gentleman will recognise that, as a result of the action taken by the workforce and the responsible approach taken by Community union, the Government and the Welsh Government, the steel industry in Wales and across the United Kingdom is in a much, much stronger position now than it certainly was just a year or so ago. I am optimistic about the future. Yes, there are challenges to overcome, but there is a sustainable future that we need to find for steelmaking in Wales.
There are millions of people across the world looking for the skills, expertise, and goods and services that we have in Wales. Through the Wales Office and the Department for International Trade, we can use our exiting of the European Union to exploit those opportunities that exist. We have landed some significant investments, including GE in Nantgarw yesterday and the F-35 global repair hub in Flintshire. Those are just two examples of our recent significant progress.
I am sorry that I have not been able to cover all the issues, including the points about tourism that were made by my hon. Friends the Members for Brecon and Radnorshire (Chris Davies) and for Gower. They rightly highlighted the value that tourism brings. I recognise the points that they made about the Cardiff city deal. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Craig Williams) drives that project with great enthusiasm. My hon. Friend the Member for Gower is pressing the point on the tidal lagoon. It is only right that we give that matter the time that it deserves in terms of examining the numbers and looking at it fairly so that it is right not only for energy production, but for the taxpayer.
Albert Owen
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. As a Scot representing an English constituency overseeing Welsh affairs, you are most suited to your role. What we have seen today is the eloquence of the Welsh Members who are here today. They have been very passionate and proud of the Welsh dimension of British politics. I had hoped that the Secretary of State would respond to my request that Wales be the first part of the United Kingdom to have the broadband universal service obligation. We can be the pioneers.
It is good to see the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy sitting on the Front Bench for this debate. I hope that he has been able to put pressure on the Chancellor of the Exchequer to announce next week that the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon will be given the go-ahead. That would bring cheers right the way across Wales because we are the pioneers of energy production in this country, and we want to continue to be so in the future. It does not matter whether we are talking about new nuclear, wind, tidal or renewables, we want to be the pioneers in the lead.
On behalf of the Welsh Members, I wish to thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the way in which you have overseen our proceedings, and to thank each and every Member from across the House and from each and every party—it is good to see that the Liberal Democrats have a 100% turnout today from Wales. We work together as a team—Team Wales—and on the closest day that we could get to St David’s day, we will shout from the rooftops that we are Welsh and proud, and the rest of the United Kingdom will sit and listen.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered Welsh affairs.
Changes to funding for 3 and 4 year olds
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the UK,
Declares that the Government’s consultation paper (Early Years Funding: changes to funding for 3 and 4 year olds 11 August 2016) outlined proposals that will leave nursery schools financially nonviable, forcing them to close; notes that this funding will not cover basic costs, let alone staffing with qualified teachers; and further notes that state nursery schools have very good outcomes with regard to closing the achievement gap and supporting children with special needs, and that state nursery schools are legally required to employ highly-qualified teaching staff, who are proven to give young children the best opportunities for academic achievement and enabling social mobility.
The petitioners therefore request the House of Commons to urge the Government to recognise the school status of state nursery schools and fund them accordingly.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002022]
A petition in similar terms has been signed by 304 people.
A6-M60 Relief Road
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to Mr Speaker for granting this Adjournment debate on the need for the A6-M60 relief road. It is particularly appropriate that we debate the issue now, exactly 242 years to the week since residents in and around my constituency first made representations to the House calling for a similar road to relieve local congestion on what was then known as the London road, which is now the A6.
Records in the Library show that on 27 February 1775, a petition was presented to the House from
“the Inhabitants and Owners of Houses and Lands, within the Town and Township of Stockport…Setting forth, That the town of Stockport is very populous, and a Place of great Trade and Business”—
just as it is now—
“and the Inhabitants thereof, and Persons resorting thereto, suffer great Inconveniences…and that the great public Road from Manchester and other adjacent Towns, to the Metropolis, lies through the town of Stockport; and that several Streets and Passages, within the said Town, through which the said public Road runs, are too narrow, and are very incommodious.”
It was
“Ordered, That the…Petition be referred to the Consideration of a Committee”
and that a certain Mr Egerton and Mr Crew were to meet
“To-morrow Morning, at Nine of the Clock, in the Speaker’s Chamber”.
Quite what happened in the Speaker’s chamber the next day is anyone’s guess.
Fast forward nearly 250 years and the inhabitants of Stockport and surrounding towns—including Hazel Grove and Bredbury, both of which are in my constituency—are still suffering the inconveniences of incommodious roads that cause travel and commuting misery for tens of thousands of residents. Of all Greater Manchester boroughs, Stockport has the highest number of daily commuting movements in and out of the city of Manchester. The largest commuting flow between the districts is a broadly north-south movement between Stockport and Manchester, and the largest equivalent flow across the Greater Manchester boundary is a north-south movement between Cheshire and Stockport. Much of this traffic is made up of journeys that start or finish within the borough of Stockport, mostly either accessing local areas off the A6, or using the A6 to access the M60 and the wider motorway network.
More than 30,000 vehicles a day pass through the residential and commercial areas of Hazel Grove. On a daily basis, there are high volumes of slow-moving traffic. Average peak hour vehicle speeds are less than 10 mph. That makes the road network one of the worst congested, if not the worst, in the country. Journey times on this arterial route are longer than in all other large urban areas across the UK, including London. There are particular congestion problems along the A6 and in the urban centres, including Bredbury, Hazel Grove and Offerton. We are at the point where congestion is causing poor and unreliable journey times, and that is becoming a constraint to economic growth.
What is urgently needed, therefore, is a road between the M60 at Bredbury and the A6 at Hazel Grove, following the once proposed alignment for the A6(M). The A6-M60 relief road would remove unnecessary traffic from the A6 through Stockport and Hazel Grove, allow for better connection to the M60, and directly facilitate these two largest commuting movements to support the Greater Manchester economy.
Thankfully, there has been significant consideration of such a relief road since 1775. In 2000, the then Government undertook a thorough study into the travel and traffic issues facing the south-east quadrant of Greater Manchester, in partnership with Stockport Council and its neighbouring local authorities. The south-east Manchester multi-modal strategy—pithily known as SEMMMS—reported in September 2001. It recommended three new highway schemes, including the A6-M60 relief road. Since then, work is being undertaken on the first two schemes, supported by funding from a range of sources, not solely central Government: the new airport road is under construction; and the Poynton bypass is in its planning stages, with construction expected to start in 2018. The A6-M60 relief road is thus the final highway component of the SEMMMS strategy yet to be actioned.
I would like to outline briefly the design and benefits of the A6-M60 relief road scheme. If it is given the go-ahead, it will provide 5 miles of new two-lane 50 mph dual carriageway on a north-south route from junction 25 of the M60 at Bredbury to the A6 near Hazel Grove. It will also provide a short link road to improve access to Stepping Hill hospital.
It will come as no surprise to at least one Member of this House—namely, my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley)—that the present scheme is very close in layout, route and objectives to an earlier proposal for a Stockport bypass, and this time that proposal is from a period during my lifetime, albeit when I was a mere 18 months old. Rooting through some old files, I came across a letter from one of my predecessors, Sir Tom Arnold, to a constituent. It declared:
“Go-ahead to End Traffic Chaos.”
Attached to it was a Department for Transport press release from June 1989, which quotes my hon. Friend, who was then the Minister for Roads and Traffic, as saying:
“Good road connections encourage industrial and economic expansion...This further investment for the North West and for South East Manchester will be a major help in encouraging the growth of enterprise.”
In his covering letter to his constituents, Sir Tom added:
“It is our firm conviction that the Bypass will have a profound and beneficial impact upon the future quality of life and the environment in Hazel Grove”—
I could not agree more. Construction of the A6(M) bypass around Stockport was due to begin in 1992; alas, it was never started. As we have seen that improvements to, or a bypass of, the A6 have been proposed in 1775, 1989 and again in 2001, we are now fully up to date with the history.
In the 2015 Budget, the Treasury granted £350,000 to undertake a contemporary review of the case for the road. Stage 1 of that feasibility study concluded that the travel and traffic congestion problems that existed at the time of the SEMMMS publication are more acute than ever. The study found that the A6-M60 relief road would bring about significant improvements in congestion, thereby not only making people’s lives easier, but bringing about significant economic benefits. By removing congestion from local roads, the scheme would also contribute towards enabling a better integrated public transport system by improving the reliability of bus journey times. Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure that you, like other Members of the House, are still composing yourself after the thrilling excitement of yesterday’s Second Reading debate on the Bus Services Bill.
As well as considering direct local benefits, it is important to think about the road in its wider regional and national context, and the context of the Government’s overall aims. The scheme aligns with several national policy objectives. In recognition of the large increase in traffic on the strategic road network that is forecasted, Highways England is prepared to invest in local road infrastructure improvements that will help. The scheme would also provide improved access and more reliable journey times to Manchester airport not only for airline passengers, but for heavy goods vehicle freight. The scheme would therefore support the Government’s freight policy. Furthermore, providing better access to Manchester airport is identified as one of the key components of the northern powerhouse.
Regionally, the A6-M60 road would directly contribute to the delivery of two elements of the Greater Manchester transport strategy 2040: supporting sustainable economic growth; and improving quality of life. The scheme also forms part of the wider SEMMMS, as I mentioned, and would complement the two other road network schemes that are already under way. It is important to note that once the new airport link road is finished, the amount of traffic using the A6 is predicted to increase, which makes the need for the A6-M60 relief road ever more pressing.
I have outlined the benefits of the scheme as I see them, as supported by the feasibility study. However, I am aware that, as with any large infrastructure project, there are important environmental considerations, and a number of my constituents have sincerely held concerns about the environmental impact of the proposed road. I stress that I am not blind to these concerns; this is a major new road scheme that is set to run through some areas of countryside. However, I note that the 2003 environmental assessments found the wider SEMMMS to be acceptable in principle, subject to appropriate mitigation. The environmental impact should be fully examined as part of the process of progressing the business case, and it should accord with environmental protections and legislation. By relieving congestion, the new road would help the environment by improving air quality, which is currently affected by emissions from slow-moving and stationary traffic.
Population growth was identified as a factor in the feasibility study. I am clear that the road is required to deal with the already congested and overstretched infrastructure in the area. It should not be viewed as a catalyst or justification for the drive for excessive residential development that is envisaged in the Greater Manchester spatial framework.
In summary, the problems identified in 2001 are still present. Indeed, worsening traffic conditions mean that the need for intervention that was identified by the original SEMMMS is as great as ever. The scheme would address issues around peak hour congestion, air quality and connectivity. It would also increase the reliability of public transport. It is consistent with national, regional and local transport policies, and the growth aspirations of Greater Manchester and the national Government.
The Government have supported feasibility studies regarding the road up to this point. We now need the stage 2 study to develop a strategic outline business case for the scheme in line with Department for Transport guidance. Further work will be required, based on new traffic forecasts, to take account of the airport link road and environmental assessments, and I will work closely with Highways England on that.
Will the Minister confirm the Government’s commitment to investing in road infrastructure as a means of relieving existing congestion and driving economic growth? Does he appreciate and share my frustration, and that of local residents, about the length of time that the scheme has been in the proposal, draft and study stages, and the amount of appalling traffic, congestion, delays, inconveniences and pollution that people have had to put up with during that time? Can he suggest how I might best work with him and others to ensure that this project remains high on the agenda? Does he support progression to the stage 2 feasibility study for the business case? Will he give an indication of when the time for studies and reports may come to an end and the building of this vital and long-anticipated road can begin?
The case for this road has now been made and studied in three separate centuries—the 18th, 20th and 21st—and I am pleased to have been able to make the case yet again today. I hope that the time for studying will soon end and that the time for construction will begin. I look forward to the Minister’s answers, for both he and the Government should know that on this issue, much like the traffic in my constituency, I am not going anywhere.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Andrew Jones)
May I start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg) on securing this debate about the proposed A6-M60 road scheme, also known as the Stockport north-south bypass? I have to say that 242 years as a local issue is a record in my experience of transport. However, as ever, my hon. Friend demonstrated his passion for the area and his knowledge of it.
I will address my hon. Friend’s questions, but I just want to put in a degree of context the underlying point he was making about the importance of transport investment. Transport investment is hugely important to Greater Manchester, as it is, indeed, to our whole country. We agree with local partners that it is essential for growth, and that is why we are investing significantly in it. That includes record spends on rail and road, with £38 billion on rail—excluding High Speed 2—£15 billion on our strategic road network and £5 billion for local schemes through the local growth fund. That investment is designed to drive the economic growth we all want, as well as to relieve communities and the wider economy of the effects of congestion, as was so eloquently highlighted by my hon. Friend.
Through our devolution deals, we are putting Greater Manchester at the heart of the northern powerhouse. As my hon. Friend knows, we are committed to creating that northern powerhouse to rebalance our economy. That is part of our longer-term economic plan, and one we share with the north. We have created Transport for the North to develop and drive forward transport plans that support economic growth. We will invest £13 billion during this Parliament to better connect the region, so that our towns and cities can pool their strengths and work together to create a single economy.
Greater Manchester is right at the heart of this. As my hon. Friend knows, it is a centre for innovation, education, industry and culture. The population is 2.7 million and rising. Greater Manchester generates £48 billion of gross value added—a 4% share of our national economy. It is the UK city region outside London most likely to be able to increase its long-term growth rates, with its access to international markets and its strong connections to the rest of the world, so there is real scale and real opportunity in the Greater Manchester economy.
South Manchester, with key assets such as Stockport and Manchester airport, is a critical element of that success. The airport is the UK’s third largest, employing over 20,000 people, and it indirectly supports a further 25,000, contributing £1.8 billion per year to the economy. In addition, the airport city enterprise zone promises to create between 7,000 and 13,000 jobs. That is tremendous news for not just the north and the northern powerhouse but Greater Manchester and my hon. Friend’s constituents.
However, to make that growth happen, we need transport infrastructure in place to support it. That is why we are heavily investing in the area. SEMMMS highlighted the significant problems we all know everybody experiences in south Manchester. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend that the proposed solutions have sat on the shelf for too long—I was unaware that it has been over 240 years, but I think we can all agree it has been too long.
That is why I am delighted that the Government have been able to approve the first of the schemes recommended in that study—the A6 to Manchester airport relief road. The road is currently under construction, and it is due to open at the end of the year. It is an important scheme, and it will not just bring significant benefits to the residents of south-east Manchester, including those of my hon. Friend’s constituency, but have much broader benefits. It will certainly make access to Manchester airport much easier, which will help to drive economic growth, therefore benefiting the whole area.
As my hon. Friend said, initial approval has been given to the second of the three schemes in the SEMMMS report—the Poynton bypass. That is subject only to Cheshire East obtaining the necessary legal permissions and showing us that the scheme is value for money. The funding is available for this scheme, and we want to see it in place.
That leaves the third scheme—the Stockport north-south bypass, which is the topic of our debate. This scheme would build on the other two. It will clearly bring additional benefits to residents of Stockport and Hazel Grove, primarily through the much needed and long-awaited relief from the congestion on the A6 and other roads in the area. Residents will also benefit from airport access and economic growth. My hon. Friend highlighted his concerns about the time it has taken for the scheme to get to this point. He is clearly correct. As the scheme is not on the strategic road network, it is the responsibility of local partners, and decision making rests with them. It is possible that the high cost of all the SEMMMS schemes, and the many other improvements in the area that have taken place right across Manchester from a transport perspective, will have been a factor in local partners’ decisions on which schemes to prioritise for delivery.
I understand—my hon. Friend articulated this with great sensitivity—the concern about the possible adverse effects on the green belt and the local community that could occur with the housing that may be developed in the wake of this scheme. Indeed, he raised this issue with the Prime Minister last week. I would echo the commitment that the Prime Minister made. The Government are very clear that the green belt should be protected. Boundaries should be altered only when local authorities have fully examined all other reasonable options. Any changes should be balanced with improving the quality or accessibility of the remaining green-belt land so that it can be enjoyed. Green belt is a critical part of the protection of our local environments, and I think we are all passionate about seeing it protected.
I am aware that Greater Manchester Combined Authority has recently consulted on its draft spatial framework and that this has stimulated much debate. It will be for the local planning authorities to make sure that the much needed housing will be situated in ways that limit any effect on the green belt. It will also be for the road scheme’s designers to be sensitive to the area through which it will pass. I commend my hon. Friend for his work in seeking his constituents’ views on how the construction of the A6 to Manchester airport relief road has affected them, and on what lessons Stockport Council and the construction company can learn for future projects. It has to be accepted that there will be some adverse effects on residents while these new transport schemes are built, but every opportunity should be taken to minimise these problems and learn lessons for the future.
My hon. Friend asked whether we support the proposed scheme. Yes, we have shown our support for it by providing Greater Manchester Combined Authority with £350,000 to fund a feasibility study for the route. That study, I understand, is due to be completed in May this year. It will then be for the combined authority and Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council to decide what to do next. They could decide to fund the scheme from their own or from third-party sources, or they could seek access to Government funds. If the study is sufficiently detailed, they could bid for funding from our large local majors fund—the vehicle to support schemes like this through the Department for Transport. That fund is designed to help councils to build transport schemes that are too large to be funded through the usual source of funding—the local growth fund—but not big enough to be classed as of national strategic importance. However, I have to warn my hon. Friend that this fund is very popular and likely to be oversubscribed—and this scheme will be an expensive one. Nevertheless, our support for the scheme shows that we are serious about working with local partners to deliver a world-class transport network to improve the lives of local people.
I should highlight the fact that we are investing in many other parts of the local transport network. Transport in Greater Manchester is being transformed. Indeed, I have spoken at conferences where colleagues from Transport for Greater Manchester have said that this is a golden age for public transport and investment in Greater Manchester.
On the strategic road network, we are investing £1.5 billion in the north-west to provide the biggest increase in capacity to be delivered there since 1971. It includes an upgrade to strategic roads serving south Manchester, such as the smart motorway on the M60 and the M62; and the A556 Knutsford to Bowdon scheme, which also improves the main southern access to Manchester. Those are live schemes in the plan.
We are also looking at future projects. We are running studies of the case for building a trans-Pennine tunnel between Manchester and Sheffield, and for improvements that could benefit the area of the M60 north-west quadrant and therefore the whole M60 route. The process is now under way to set the next road investment strategy, which will cover the period post 2020.
We are working closely with partners in Greater Manchester and Transport for the North to determine future priorities. I am sure my hon. Friend, with his customary diligence, has raised the matter with them, but I will certainly mention this debate next time I meet Transport for the North and highlight my hon. Friend’s concerns, to make sure that they are firmly on its radar.
We also have the biggest programme of railway modernisation since the Victorian era. The north of England rail infrastructure upgrade programme will transform rail in the region. Work has begun, and we are seeing real progress. The first phase of north-west electrification enables electric trains to run from Manchester Airport to Glasgow. Journeys are faster following the completion of track improvements and electrification between Liverpool and Manchester, and Liverpool and Wigan. Particularly topical is the significant progress made on the Ordsall chord. That included last week the lifting into place, using two of the largest cranes in this country, of the world’s first asymmetrical network arch railway bridge. That attracted a lot of attention, and some quite good time-lapse photography shows the bridge being inserted into position.
Those are positive developments, but there is clearly much more to be done. Our programme of more than £1 billion includes a substantial electrification programme and other track, signalling and station improvements. They will all increase capacity and the number of services, making journeys faster and more reliable. We will certainly see transformative change through the Northern and TransPennine Express franchises, which will deliver high-quality services to passengers. The residents of south Manchester will see benefits, which will include significant increases in capacity into Manchester in the morning peak; more trains to a range of major destinations across the north; new and refurbished trains; and—if my hon. Friend’s constituency is like mine, this will be particularly welcomed—the disappearance of the outdated Pacers.
Looking to the future, HS2 will be coming into south Manchester—it will go straight through to central Manchester, too—and will be a huge boost to the whole region. It will bring with it jobs, growth, and magnificent regeneration opportunities. Those are big schemes already under way, in planning or in study form, all of which will have an impact on the north-west.
We are not just talking about big national schemes; we are also looking to improve our local public transport network. We should be celebrating the achievements that we have made, which include improvements at Cheadle Hulme and Hazel Grove railway stations; priority bus routes into central Manchester from south-east Manchester; extensions to the Metrolink system—I congratulate Greater Manchester on the opening of the second city crossing this week—and new transport interchanges in Altrincham and Wythenshawe. In addition, £115 million of local growth fund is being invested to improve transport access in Stockport town centre. Those have all received contributions from central Government, so our support for the area is significant at a strategic and a local level.
I hope that I have been able to demonstrate that this Government are committed to improving transport in Manchester as a whole, including in south Manchester and in my hon. Friend’s constituency. We have shown that support by providing significant funding for a wide range of improvements, as well as the specific funding for a feasibility study of the A6-M60 scheme. He has made a great case—I would expect him to do so, as a local champion for his area—highlighting the benefits very clearly and showing great sensitivity to environmental concerns. I very much look forward to receiving a copy of the report once it has been completed. Once the promoters have looked at the study, I expect it—should they choose to seek our support—to arrive in the Department, where it will be considered and given a very good hearing.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Sovereign Grant Act 2011 (Change of Percentage) Order 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
General CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 10 / Noes: 2 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (Simon Kirby)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Sovereign Grant Act 2011 (Change of Percentage) Order 2017.
May I start by saying what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone? As announced at the last autumn statement, the royal trustees—the Prime Minister, the Chancellor and the Keeper of the Privy Purse—carried out a review of the sovereign grant and concluded that it should increase from 15% to 25% of the Crown Estate’s profits two years previously. That will fund both the Queen’s official duties and the urgent 10-year overhaul of Buckingham Palace. The order will implement that change. The Sovereign Grant Act 2011 is the mechanism through which the state gives the royal family the funding they need to carry out the services they perform on this country’s behalf and to maintain the royal palaces.
Buckingham Palace is an important historic property and one of London’s top tourist attractions, so it is clearly important that the royal estate is properly maintained. Prior to the royal trustees’ review, a series of detailed technical assessments were undertaken to examine the material state of Buckingham Palace. They concluded that elements of the palace’s essential services were significantly beyond their maximum useful life and required urgent replacement, unless the palace is to be at serious risk of fire, flood or safety incidents. It was concluded that the most cost-effective way to do so is to undertake a phased programme of works over 10 years, starting from April 2017. The palace will remain occupied and fully operational as the works are carried out wing by wing, preventing disruption to major public events such as the changing of the guard and the trooping of the colour.
The order provides for that urgent overhaul to be taken forward. It will increase the sum by reference to which the grant is calculated each year. Primary legislation will be introduced to amend the 2011 Act to allow for a reduction in the grant once the renovation of Buckingham Palace is completed. The vast majority of the Crown Estate’s profits will still be retained by the Exchequer. This temporary increase in funding will ensure long-term benefits: the palace will be rendered more efficient, more cost-effective and better fit for the next generations of the monarchy.
There will also be a significant increase in the number of people visiting the Palace, with increased access for schools. It will also offer an opportunity for a new generation of construction professionals to work on an historic building through apprenticeships and graduate programmes. The order will provide the necessary uplift in funding to safeguard buildings that are part of our heritage and to ensure that our royal family may continue to perform the services that they undertake for the sake of this country.
Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. This matter has been debated on a number of occasions, and people have indicated that they are unhappy that Buckingham Palace has fallen into its current state over the years. That prompts us to ask why that has happened, but we are where we are. The fact that it has not been picked up before now, when perhaps it should have been, is a different kettle of fish. I am sure that those responsible for such matters will give careful consideration to that and ensure that this sort of thing does not happen again.
We cannot periodically push up, from 15% to 25%, the percentage of Crown Estate profits given to the sovereign grant. We have to put in place a coherent, cogent and long-lasting system, so that this type of event does not happen again. I do not want to sound as though I am finger-wagging too much, but we are in an age of austerity. We have to be clear that every penny of public expenditure is appropriately accounted for and that we should not have to spend money in the short term because of long-term decline. Although we are not over the moon at the situation, on this occasion we shall not object to the proposal.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone.
We cannot support the statutory instrument, or the taking of this decision at this time and in this way. Let me be clear that my remarks are not a criticism of or challenge to the monarchy or the royal household. Nor is there a suggestion that Buckingham Palace is anything other than an historic asset of the country that needs to be invested in and protected.
What we are concerned about is using a variation to the sovereign grant to fund such a major item of capital expenditure. That goes against the conventions of public financing. In any other sphere we would not conflate revenue and capital expenditure in that way. If a major investment of £400 million in the infrastructure of Buckingham Palace is needed, it seems to me that that should be treated as a separate capital project, and properly budgeted for, rather than being funded out of the sovereign grant, which is meant to fund the revenue expenses—the day-to-day and year-to-year expenses—of the royal household and the maintenance of its duties. The proposal is similar to saying that the works that need to be undertaken to this place should be funded by doubling MPs’ salaries and asking them to make a contribution to the contractor doing the work. That is not, of course, how we would do it.
The hon. Member for Bootle is right to say that we need to be aware of public perceptions. Yesterday there was a demonstration outside Parliament by people with disabilities who are campaigning against an imminent cut of £30 a week in the employment and support allowance, amounting to £1,500 a year. That is a paltry sum set against the figures under discussion, but it could literally mean life or death to the people in receipt of the benefit. I think that the public would find it hard to understand how, when the public finances are in such dire straits that we need to implement such cuts that affect the poorest members of society, there is apparently no problem in simply finding the money to undertake major works at Buckingham Palace.
I suggest that the matter should be debated fully by the entire House and that we should divide on it. It is not something to be relegated to a Committee and dealt with in a matter of minutes on a Thursday morning. I think that many hon. Members on both sides of the House would want to participate and they should have that opportunity.
In conclusion, when the proposal was made to change the civil list to the sovereign grant, I do not think that this is what those who drafted the legislation had in mind. Of course, there could be variations in the percentage of Crown Estate revenue that goes to the sovereign grant, but that should happen only when a predicted or known increase in the revenue budget is required for the funding of the royal household. It should not go towards capital works on a new roof, new wiring or whatever works are needed at Buckingham Palace or any other royal palace. That should be treated separately; otherwise we shall be in a bizarre situation whereby we will have to come back here year after year, depending on what capital works are required to the royal estate, to consider such variations.
That does not seem to me to be a good way to do business, so I am afraid that we cannot support the statutory instrument. We shall seek a Division and we look forward to a debate on the Floor of the House.
Simon Kirby
I thank the hon. Member for Bootle for raising some thoughtful, interesting and sensible points, and for his support. In response to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East, I remind him that the whole point of the 2011 Act was to bring together the different funding streams and provide for the very eventuality that has arisen.
This country’s monarchy is worth some £57 billion. Every year, millions of people come to look at Buckingham Palace, tens of thousands visit it and hundreds of thousands attend functions where our great monarch, the Queen, is able to be present.
Tommy Sheppard
I understand and accept the popularity of Buckingham Palace as a tourist attraction, and as a visitor attraction for people who live in this country. Would it not therefore be reasonable to consider whether the commercial dimension of Buckingham Palace as a venue and an attraction might provide an income stream to fund ongoing capital works to maintain its current quality?
Simon Kirby
The hon. Gentleman raises an interesting point. That is exactly what we are deciding today. There will be 115,000 more visitors each year, because there will be increased access. Some 30,000 more children will be able to visit the palace—only 1,500 can currently do so. There will be an additional 110 events every year. This is a long-term solution. The hon. Member for Bootle was right to say that previous Governments of all colours should perhaps have considered this more carefully, but we are where we are and this is a sensible way forward.
George Kerevan (East Lothian) (SNP)
Is it the Minister’s intention, once the money has been used to refurbish the palace, to come back and change the Act and reduce the 25%?
Simon Kirby
It is. That is clear and I am happy to restate it.
Question put.
Westminster Hall
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Support for the Bereaved
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Ninth Report of the Work and Pensions Committee of Session 2015-16, Support for the bereaved, HC 551, and the Government response, HC 230.
It is a pleasure to debate under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, not only because of past campaigns that we have joined in together, but because I know you can put aside partial affections and chair our debate properly, fully and impartially. The debate has been called to take note of the Work and Pensions Committee report on bereavement benefits; to give Members an opportunity, from their experiences in their constituencies, to bring the report up to date; and to invite the Minister to tell us, as I hope he will, how Government thinking has progressed. I know that this is not his brief so I, and I am sure all Members who participate in the debate, will be more than happy to have any detailed replies given to us in correspondence afterwards.
Debates such as this give me the opportunity to thank a number of people who are often not thanked. I only too willingly thank the Select Committee staff, on behalf of all the Committee members, for producing a whole series of reports that have tried to influence—and, indeed, are influencing—Government policy and beyond. I am naturally thankful that we have been able to call this debate, which gives us the opportunity to which I have referred. I stress that our Committee’s topics are all decided democratically by Committee members, so this one was not brought down from on high by the Clerks or—heaven forbid—just by me as Chairman.
Yesterday in this Chamber, we debated the nature of poverty in Merseyside. Today, we are debating how one aspect of that operates across the whole of our country. We are talking about how poverty can stab at the most vulnerable when they are at their most vulnerable. I have had examples in my constituency of families being unable to claim the ashes of a family member because they could not complete the payment of the funeral bill, and of bodies being frozen as families club together to try to get the sums that would satisfy the undertaker that a funeral could take place.
As I do, I asked Ed in my office what cases of this harrowing topic had been in this week. He reported on a constituent who lost her husband last September, having left work to care for him in the final year of his life. She had never claimed benefits until she left work, but a period of depression in her husband’s final few months led her to claim employment and support allowance. All her savings were used in those final months, and she has a mortgage to pay.
After my constituent’s husband died, she arranged for the most basic, low-cost funeral to take place. There was never any question of her thinking of having anything else or planning for anything else. She was not informed at any point about bereavement benefits or other sources of support, such as the social fund funeral payments. Even then, she could not afford the low-cost funeral, so her daughter stepped in to pay what she could, but £1,000 is still owed on the funeral bill. The social fund payments are about £700.
It is almost a year to the day since the Select Committee published our report on bereavement benefits, so this debate is opportune not just because of the constant ticking over of similar horror stories from constituents in all of our constituencies, but because, a year on, the Government have been given a real chance to take measure of the proposals we put to them. We were concerned about bereavement benefits and the reforms the Government are making to them, of which we are supportive, as well as social fund funeral payments, which have remained at £700 since they were last reset in 2003.
Before I put questions to the Minister, which is the basis of my contribution, the latest information we have on pauper funerals—although they have been renamed local authority funerals or public health funerals, everyone locally knows they are pauper funerals—shows that on average our local authorities pay £900 to cover them, yet the Department’s grant is of £700 social fund funeral payments, linked to those 2003 prices.
I welcome the Minister and thank him for stepping in at the last moment to respond to the debate for the Government. My questions to him are as follows. One of our recommendations was that the Government should negotiate a reasonable cost for a simple funeral with funeral directors, with the social fund funeral payment reflecting the cost of that total package. We do not think it an unreasonable request for the Government to spearhead those negotiations with the industry. Therefore, what progress have they made in negotiating to get funeral directors and the funeral industry to be much more open and transparent on a decent, average or simple funeral, or whatever euphemism we wish to use for the very minimum of funerals?
Secondly, we recommended that the Department introduce an eligibility checker for social fund funeral payments so that people would quickly know how to make a claim. The Department has said that that is not a road it wishes to go down, but my constituent—the live case I cited from this week that Ed in my office is dealing with—was given no advice about what might be available from either the social fund or, as importantly, bereavement benefits, which she could have claimed in addition to her ESA payments. Has any progress at all been made in giving legs to the idea of some simple tracker mechanism, so that people can quickly see what they are eligible for?
I stress again the important point—I know I do not have to do this for the Minister or for anyone else in the Chamber—that as soon as the phone is picked up to the funeral director, the clock starts ticking on what will be charged to the family. Often, it is quite a long way down the road before they realise the expenditure to which they are already committed and whether they would have faced that expenditure had they known what help—if any—was available.
A third recommendation was to take a leaf out of the Scottish Government’s book and see what could come from the Government conducting a cross- departmental review of burials, cremations and funerals. What information out there could we use to simplify this complicated world that families have to negotiate at a time when the vast majority of them are at their most vulnerable?
The Select Committee noted the lack of protection in the funeral market for bereaved customers, particularly for poor families in our constituencies. We heard evidence that funeral directors’ fees vary dramatically, and that many funeral directors are reluctant to display their funeral prices without it being shoehorned out of them. It is not good enough to have huge variations in the price of a basic funeral—of 200% or even 300% between providers in different areas and regions—and for there to be no way of getting that information to vulnerable families.
The Committee also made recommendations on bereavement benefits. We welcomed enormously the Government’s changes on that and thought they were absolutely the right moves. We made two recommendations in particular. The Government accepted one, which was that bereavement payments should not cease one year after the death of the person whose death triggered the eligibility, but should go on for at least 18 months. I very much welcome the Government’s decision to adopt that recommendation.
The Government said that they did not intend to make money from the reform, but that the package of reforms will save in the region of £100 million. Why is it then that they have not agreed to our second recommendation on bereavement benefits? Why have the Government not used some of those savings, which they said they never intended to make, to deliver an extension of bereavement benefits to people in similar situations to marriage, such as those in civil partnerships or who are cohabiting? That would make the benefit more broadly and, I would argue, more accurately reflect everyday life in our constituencies. People’s lives are not in old-fashioned, neat little boxes, but come differently. It is a pity that the Government have not used this once-in-a-generation reform of bereavement benefits to bring their eligibility on a par with how people live their lives today.
To conclude, I will again pile the questions on to the Minister. As I said at the beginning, given the circumstances under which he appears before us, we will be happy with written replies if the answers we want cannot be provided now. Do the Government have any plans to extend bereavement benefits to what the rest of us would call “families”, even though they do not fit the legal requirement of being married? What plans do the Government have to update the value of, and access to, social fund funeral payments? Are the Government satisfied that a pauper’s funeral—for people whose family cannot begin to bury them, who have been deserted or who have no one to bury them—now costs more than what the Government offer through social fund funeral payments? Is that acceptable, particularly when the reforms are making money?
After interviewing a range of funeral directors with the Select Committee, I do not underestimate for one moment the difficulty for the Government in trying to get agreement among funeral directors on what a simple or basic funeral could or should consist of, and what to charge for that around the country. I know that is an immensely difficult task. The Committee has powers of compulsion to bring people together. I know that the Government do not have to use such powers, but I do not underrate the difficulty of getting the industry to meet and to be transparent about their costs and about how, sadly, a number of them rip off our most vulnerable constituents when they are least likely to have the mental energy to fight back.
My final point to the Government is that our report made a strong plea for families to be able to know very quickly whether they are eligible for the social fund funeral payment and, equally importantly, what that payment will and will not cover. In those circumstances, every family wants the very best for the loved ones they are burying or cremating, but one cautionary note ought to be made: while families will strive for the best and will club together and do all sorts of things, they ought to be clear very early on what the social fund funeral payment pays for and what it does not.
I am grateful for the opportunity to present our bereavement report; it has given me the opportunity to update the Select Committee’s thinking and present it to the House. I also welcome other hon. Members, who clearly have a passion for what is happening in their constituency, and I welcome the Minister, who will reply and say where the Government’s thinking has got to.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I am delighted to take part in the debate. I would normally have been in the Chamber for the debate on International Women’s Day, but I am here to speak about widowed parent’s allowance on behalf of two of my constituents in particular. They are here today, and their voices need to be heard in debates such as this.
Theirs are the voices of women who never wanted to be in the position they are in and who never expected to claim widowed parent’s allowance—one is not, which I will come to. Tragedy struck their families in the most cruel and horrific way, and their partners were taken from them. The strength and courage they have shown in campaigning on the issue has inspired me as their MP, so I am proud to be here to talk about their experiences and why they should be heard, instead of taking part in the debate on International Women’s Day. There are so many challenges when it comes to inequality and we must fight them all. What is happening with widowed parent’s allowance feels to me like one of the most basic examples of that and of the unintended consequences of the Minister’s and the Government’s thinking. In reading into the record some of my constituents’ experiences, I hope the Minister will think again about some of the choices the Government have made and the devastating consequences they are likely to have.
I will talk first about Ros. Her husband sadly died in 2014. He had been ill for some time before that, so Ros had given up work to support her children as their father deteriorated. That is an horrific experience for anyone to deal with at a young age. To then have to deal with the financial consequences only compounded her family’s grief. Ros suddenly became a single parent to two children and found that widowed parent’s allowance was, as she described it to me, a lifeline. The work that she did, in the theatre, was not easy to combine with being a full-time carer for her young children, and she was struggling with the grief of losing her husband.
Ros has done the calculations for what the Government’s proposed changes in the scheme would have meant for her and her family. The Minister claims that this is not about making money, but is a fair change in the system. When I look at the figures and how Ros is affected, I do not think that that is the case. I think this is clearly a cut in the budget designed to save the Government money, but it is a short-term saving with a long-term loss.
Ros and her family would, under the new scheme, have lost out on more than £100,000 over the lifetime of her children. That money allows her to look after her children, keep her family and household going, be a mother to two children who are grieving for their father and start to put her family’s life back together again. When she looks at what the new scheme would mean, she points out that the new lump sum would probably have been taken up by the funeral costs straight away. That is not a more welcome situation.
The pressure of not having a consistent income and worrying about what would happen after 18 months would have consumed her. As she says, after six months she was still drowning in paperwork relating to the death of her husband and trying to cope with the impact on her children. Grieving does not stop at 18 months, so why should the support that we offer to families affected by this sort of tragedy?
As Ros points out, these payments are a recognition of the contribution her husband made to the system when he was alive, through his national insurance payments. Indeed, as she points out, that creates quirks; a friend who has four children gets £50 less a week than Ros because her husband was 10 years younger. If we accept the principle that these payments are based on what the partner has paid into the system, surely what matters is whether those payments have been made and whether the partner was part of that relationship.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) supports terminating the support at 18 months. I disagree with him. I do not understand why 18 months is an appropriate cut-off date.
Stella Creasy
I am happy to. I was about to say that I do agree with my right hon. Friend on some other things.
Frank Field
The Government’s original proposal was to stop the support after a year, and I thought 18 months was better than a year.
Stella Creasy
I understand that. I hope to make the case that we should support families who are in grief. We should not ask them to take on poverty and possible debt on top of dealing with grief, and we should not put a time limit on grief in these sorts of cases. We are not talking about hundreds of thousands of families, but we are talking about families facing one of the most horrific, soul-destroying experiences one can have. I agree with my right hon. Friend about the need to update the way in which our welfare system works.
The second case I want to talk about is, I hope, familiar, because I have written to the Minister before about this lady. Joanna has two beautiful young girls. I am lucky enough to see their pictures on Facebook and feel as if I am watching them grow up vicariously. One of her daughters was born, sadly, after her partner suddenly died. Joanna had to fight to get her partner’s name, David, on to the baby’s birth certificate because they were not married. They were clearly in a loving relationship. They had been together for a long period and had chosen not to be married. That should surely be their choice. The state should not use that to penalise Joanna and her family yet, as far as I can see, over the past couple of years we have penalised Joanna in many different ways. She had to pay £1,500 for a DNA test to prove that this gentleman was the father of her daughter and to have his name on the birth certificate. She does not receive a penny in widowed parent’s allowance, despite her partner paying into the system, just as Ros’s partner did. They are no less a family because they do not have a piece of paper.
In 2017, surely we should recognise those children’s need for the support that widowed parent’s allowance would provide to their family. That money would help not only to keep a roof above their head but to remove the pressure of debt, so that Joanna could be a mum to her two lovely daughters and start to put their lives back together following the sudden death of their father. It is those sorts of real issues and real people that our welfare system has to be able to work with. The cuts that the Government are making, particularly when it comes to widowed parent’s allowance, make no sense to me at all because they do not see the people behind these cases.
I have been lucky enough, through the organisation Widowed & Young, to see other examples that are similar to the stories of my two constituents, Ros and Joanna. Their cases are no less compelling. Will the Minister reconsider this 18-month bar and look again at the actual people behind the statistics by meeting them and hearing their stories, to understand the reality of being widowed at a young age and what impact that has on a family? Will the Minister ask again how we can do what we all want the welfare system to do—to support people and be a lifeline at a critical time, to help get these families back on their feet?
The changes that the Government are making, I fear, will not simply not help; they could actually make things worse for these families. They could bring debt, because the fear of what will happen will force people who are still grieving after a mere 18 months to make decisions that may be against the best interests of their family because they are short of cash.
As Ros said, this money has been a lifeline for her. She is one of the lucky ones because she qualified under the old scheme, but none of these people are lucky, because after all, they have lost a loved one. That is what we are trying to get at here. Ros, Joanna and all the women and men involved in this campaign deserve better from us. I hope that the Minister will at least commit today to meet them, to understand better the situation they will be in when these changes are introduced.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I want to begin by thanking the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this debate. I know, and very much appreciate the fact, that he has a long-standing interest in this issue.
It is quite easy for me to sum up today, because unfortunately we have not had many speakers. The reason I wanted to become involved in this debate is that I grew up the youngest of eight children, and my father died when I was a baby; I was nine months old. My mother was widowed with no support whatsoever. That was partly because her and my father had come over from Ireland in the 1950s, and she had no knowledge or awareness of the benefits system. Even if she had, she probably would have assumed it was not for people like her, because at that time the UK was not a place that was always very welcoming to immigrants—even Irish ones. She would no doubt have assumed that such a system excluded people like her.
I am not saying, “Woe is me!” When I was growing up, I had no idea that we were poor, and that is a huge testament to my mother. Everybody around me was poor, but because of that, nobody realised they were poor. It was not until I went to university in Glasgow and met different kinds of people from different backgrounds that I appreciated, in hindsight, the difficulties and the struggles that my mother had gone through and how very poor indeed we were, but I had no sense of it growing up.
Today, unfortunately, the world is much smaller, and when people are poor, they are profoundly aware of their poverty, even as children. Looking at this issue objectively, we can understand as human beings, even if we have not experienced the loss of a spouse, how frightening and how lonely that must be. We do not need to experience it to understand it. We do not even need to have children to imagine what it is like for the bereaved who have children.
We can appreciate how difficult and challenging it is for someone who has children and is bereaved, often suddenly and unexpectedly. Every single day, despite the awful event and the despair, terror, uncertainty and instability, they have to keep putting one foot in front of the other to make life as normal as possible for them and their children after such a tragic loss. That was set out for us in very human terms by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), who told us about her constituents Ros and Joanna.
The hard-headed reality is that when such a loss occurs, the bills still come in. The rent or mortgage still has to be paid. When everything else in the family or household has been thrown into confusion and up- ended in the most profound way imaginable, especially in cases of sudden loss, financial stability—strangely enough, despite the grief—becomes more important than ever.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead pointed out that the Scottish Government have done much work to assist those most in need with regard to funeral costs, but that is really only the beginning, even though meeting those costs is a struggle for so many people. I wrote to the Secretary of State about my concerns over the proposed changes to payments for the bereaved. I am quite alarmed at the so-called streamlining of those benefits, because we know that that will hit families hardest. Disappointingly, the Secretary of State’s response has not allayed my concerns at all. In fact, the letter, detailed though it was, merely restated Government policy.
The fact is that those who are grieving need support, and unless that support is adequate, the social fallout could be quite significant. I would like the Minister to consider the consequences for children—the potential detrimental consequences for their emotional and mental wellbeing, as well as their educational outcomes. There is little point in trying to be penny wise and pound foolish. The bereaved need time, which varies from person to person, to emerge from the fog of bewilderment, shock and disbelief, as well as the pain of grief, that the loss of a loved one brings with it, and how much worse is that for children? With cash payments being limited to 18 months, grief has been given a sell-by date. If only grief were like that.
At such times, parents need to be around to support, listen to and help their children to make some sense of the irreplaceable loss that they have suffered. That is where bereaved parents want and ought to be—not stuck in the office or on the shop floor, having to put in extra hours to make up the income shortfall due to the death of their spouse, and hoping that friends and neighbours will step in.
Make no mistake: the new bereavement support payment regime will disproportionately affect women. Working-age women are more likely to claim bereavement allowance, with 70% of claimants in 2014 being female. Despite bereavement being one of the main causes of financial difficulty, according to research, that support is to be cut. That will directly affect thousands of people throughout the United Kingdom and 40 to 50 newly widowed parents in North Ayrshire in my constituency next year.
Those with children will be hardest hit by the changes, and some families could lose up to £12,000 a year. A working-age parent with children could lose even more—approximately £23,500 on average. Let us imagine the impact that such a financial loss will have on those suffering, and living with, grief. The Government insist that the changes are not about saving money, but the Department for Work and Pensions forecasts savings of £100 million a year because of them. If the changes are not about saving money, why not redistribute those savings to ensure that fewer families are worse off? Currently under the changes, 75% of families will be worse off.
Another concern is that the link between bereavement payments and inflation will be broken, despite the benefit being intended to support people with the additional costs of bereavement. That cannot happen if it gradually loses its value over time. I feel strongly about this issue and urge hon. Members present to sign my early-day motion 959, because it is important to express our alarm in whatever way we can.
Let us not forget—this was mentioned by the hon. Member for Walthamstow and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—that unmarried, cohabiting couples are not recognised by the DWP, although 21% of couples with children are unmarried, according to the Office for National Statistics in 2016. Not to recognise cohabiting couples is short-sighted and illogical. Children will lose out financially because their parents decided, as they had every right to do, not to marry. There is a problem, because the state treats unmarried parents as a couple for other means-tested benefits or tax credits when both parents are alive. Perhaps the Government can explain why such relationships are dismissed when one of the cohabiting parents happens to die. I would be most interested to know why that distinction has been drawn in this case.
I will end by simply saying that bereavement support is not a benefit that anyone wants or expects to claim, but when these circumstances arise, it is necessary and extremely important. The savings that the Government expect to make are not worth the misery and the appalling sell-by date that they stamp on grief and cannot be worth the way they punish those in the throes of grief or the potential social fallout that they inflict on families and society. Of course I welcome the simplification of the system, but there are wider concerns, as the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Lady so eloquently pointed out. I urge the UK Government to look at this matter again and to listen to the concerns expressed by so many in this Chamber and so many more outside it. There is concern about the impact on grieving spouses and on families and concern about the lack of financial recognition for bereaved parents who chose not to marry. I urge the Government to listen.
Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) on securing this important debate. I also thank the people who have come down to Westminster today to make the case and, in particular, the Childhood Bereavement Network, Widowed & Young and the Good Grief Trust for the work that they do to raise awareness. They do so not for themselves, but for the people who come after them, so it is particularly worth while that they would do that.
My right hon. Friend made a very clear speech and asked specific questions. I hope that the Minister can respond to them all. My right hon. Friend spoke about the real hardship that people go through and described the shortfall between the average cost of a pauper’s funeral paid for by a local authority and the social fund funeral payments—a difference of £200.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) spoke with real passion on behalf of two of her constituents in particular. Ros had described receiving the widowed parent’s allowance as an absolute lifeline. My hon. Friend also talked about the injustice that Joanna had suffered; she spoke about the difficulty that Joanna had experienced in getting her deceased partner’s name on the birth certificate and the injustice of unmarried couples being treated differently from married couples.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) told her personal story and spoke compellingly about the human costs of what we are discussing. She also spoke about the illogicality of the Government’s position in not recognising people who cohabit in the same way as they do those who are married.
The Work and Pensions Committee report, published back in March 2016, raised a number of important issues and made considered recommendations. In June 2016, the Government responded to the report, with commitments to look at some of the recommendations more closely. Many months have passed since the Government responded, and six weeks ago we saw a written statement from the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery, in which the Government committed to laying regulations to introduce the bereavement support payment. It is therefore vital that we are having this debate today to clarify whether the Government have progressed that agenda and what exactly their plans are for the future.
The Work and Pensions Committee report raises a number of issues regarding social security support in the event of a bereavement that I would like to address. If I may, I shall use my contribution to focus on the adequacy of the social fund funeral payment, the new bereavement support benefit and the need for a strategy to improve the operation of the market.
First, the Select Committee rightly pointed to the increasing gap between the average cost of providing a simple funeral and the support available from the state to do so. The report “Cost of Dying 2014” by the insurer SunLife found that the average cost of a funeral now stands at £3,500. However, figures from the Department for Work and Pensions show that the average award made through the social fund to help to meet the costs of a funeral during 2015-16 was £1,400.
The entitlements available through the social fund funeral payments include provision for meeting the full cost of some services, such as burial and cremation, with other expenses, such as funeral directors’ fees and the cost of a coffin, being met up to a capped limit of £700. The capped limit for funeral costs has been fixed at £700 since 2003, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead explained, and has therefore been significantly eroded by inflation over the more than 10 years since then.
With the average award now running at less than 40% of the average cost of a funeral, it is clear that the adequacy of the support provided by the social fund now requires urgent review if we are to act to reduce funeral poverty. That has been raised repeatedly in the exceptional campaigning by my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who has courageously shared her own experience.
The Select Committee recommends that the Government revalue the assumptions that underpin the cap, which should then rise with inflation. That appears to be a very sensible approach and is in line with the usual practice in the wider social security system. The Government responded to that proposal by suggesting that they should not prescribe
“what a claimant should expect as part of a funeral”.
That is a deceptive answer and it does not address the issue directly. The point is that the cap is now insufficient for even the most basic of funerals. This is not a question of choice or expectation as the Government imply; it is about respect for those who have passed away through the provision of a simple ceremony and proper burial or cremation. Will the Minister agree to look again at the question of cost and indexation, given the overwhelming evidence of there being insufficient support?
There is, of course, the question of the operation of the market that underpins the adequacy of social security support to meet funeral costs. Sensibly, the Work and Pensions Committee suggested that the Government look at the issue through a cross-departmental review of the inflation of funeral costs. The Committee has also sent its evidence to the Competition and Markets Authority in the hope of pursuing that proposal. The Government suggested that they would “consider this recommendation” in the context of discussions they were already having with stakeholders. Will the Minister update us on whether a review will be brought forward? If the Government are now planning a belated review, perhaps they will state when it is scheduled and outline the terms of reference.
Clearly, one issue with the market for funerals is that people suffering a bereavement are often in a vulnerable position and can therefore find it more difficult to take the sort of steps necessary to take fully informed decisions, as they might under other circumstances. That is currently exacerbated by the Government’s numerous failures to provide clear and accessible information in that regard. The Committee made a number of recommendations, including an online eligibility checker, signposting to funeral homes accredited as part of a fair funerals scheme, clearer information on application forms and Government leaflets being distributed more widely. The Government seem strangely reticent about providing people suffering a bereavement with clear and helpful information about how to access funeral provision.
I was particularly shocked to see the Government’s claim that an online eligibility checker could only supplement a telephone or paper application and never act as an application in itself. Surely our Government, which placed so much emphasis on “digital by default”, must be technologically advanced enough to build a system under which an eligibility check can contribute to an online application? After all, that is possible in almost any other aspect of life. Can the Minister please clarify that?
I turn now to the bereavement support payment. In her written ministerial statement, the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery announced regulations providing for a single, new payment to replace bereavement payment, bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance for those whose spouse or civil partner dies on or after 6 April this year. The Government argue that it will increase simplicity for those who are bereaved and seeking support. We do not support the reforms, which amount to a cut for bereaved children.
Although the Government have responded to criticism from the Social Security Advisory Committee and the Work and Pensions Committee by extending the period in which the bereavement support payment can be accessed from 12 to 18 months, that is still much less than the period of eligibility available under the current system. We therefore have serious concerns about whether it is long enough. Analysis by the Childhood Bereavement Network, for example, suggests that 91% of widows will be supported for a shorter period under the bereavement support payment than under the current system. That really is not acceptable. The network also suggests that 75% of parents bereaved after April will be worse off in cash terms under the new system, some by as much as £17,000. A study by J. William Worden, which is considered the most robust longitudinal survey available, found that the availability and consistent, nurturing presence of the surviving parent was one of the strongest predictors of bereaved children’s emotional health and behaviour.
Under the current system, the median claim is between five and six years. What evidence have the Government drawn upon to find that 18 months is suddenly sufficient? Would it not be better for the length of potential provision to be extended to ensure the best possible outcome for the child in such a tragic and distressing situation? Is it not the case that the current system is more comprehensive in that regard? I await the Minister’s response to that point.
Parents who are not married or in a civil partnership are not eligible for the old widowed parent’s allowance or the new bereavement support payment, meaning that children lose out on support because of their parents’ marital status. We believe that that is unjust and a relic from a past society that, thankfully, we have progressed beyond. It is also the case that those with young children will be disproportionately affected, as they can currently claim for longer. That means that young children are being hit hardest by this cut in the tragic event of the death of a parent.
Finally, for some seemingly unjustifiable reason the Government have decided that bereavement support will not be uprated in line with inflation. That can only be a further way of saving money at the expense of the bereaved, just as we have seen with the social fund funeral payment that I described earlier. What possible justification can the Government have not to uprate this measure, as is standard practice across most of the social security system? This reform appears simply to cut support to those grieving the loss of a loved one; it is, in effect, an attack on those who are already suffering quite unimaginably. Will the Minister commit to publishing a regular, fully updated impact assessment of the changes being made or, better still, follow Labour’s lead and commit to scrapping this reform and establishing an independent review of the sufficiency of support for the bereaved?
To conclude, the Government’s inaction in supporting the bereaved has gone on for too long, and what little action there has been appears to be to those people’s detriment. So far, their action has amounted to a cut in the support on offer to the bereaved—a really horrendous attack that we stand against. I do not envy the Minister the task of trying to justify this so-called reform, so I urge him and the Government to think again about the plans.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions (Richard Harrington)
As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this debate; it is not the first debate he has instigated that I have answered on behalf of the Government this week, but as usual the comments in his speech, together with those in the Select Committee report, were very serious and well-reasoned. I also thank the other speakers: the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy); the hon. Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), who spoke for the Opposition; and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who spoke on behalf of the Scottish National party. I would like to make it clear that I listened very carefully to everything that they said, and my remarks may be quite long as a result of that. If they feel that their questions have not been adequately answered, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead said, I will be able to write to them.
I want to pass on the apologies of the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery. Ironically, she is not here today because she is attending a funeral. I have attended many meetings on this subject and agreed to step in for this debate. I thought I would make that clear just once; that is the reason why she is not here and I hope that hon. Members, together with the people in the Public Gallery, will accept that.
The Government are very aware—as any of us are as constituency MPs, or just as human beings with our own family and friends—that bereavement is a very difficult time. It is probably one of the toughest experiences we face. Many of these points have been responded to because the same issue was discussed here in Westminster Hall last September. It is perfectly correct that we return once more to this debate, which is about how Government can best support vulnerable people going through bereavement with the practical challenges it can create.
The hon. Member for Walthamstow specifically referred to two of her constituents. I will respond to the other points that she made, but I would certainly be very prepared to meet those two constituents, and I know that I can say on behalf of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery that she, too, would be prepared to meet them. We can arrange that as soon as possible after this meeting if the hon. Lady contacts us, or I will happily contact her office.
All of us have seen the vital support that funeral expenses payments provide; therefore I fully understand, personally as a constituency MP as well as on behalf of the Government, the importance of providing the right support at the right time. Since the debate last September, a lot of work has taken place on funeral payments and support for the bereaved. In responding to hon. Members’ points, I hope also to outline what we have been doing. I will mix responses to their points with a general response on the developments since then.
First, on funeral expenses payments, I wish to put on the record the support that my Department provides for vulnerable people at a difficult time. We make a significant contribution to the costs of a simple, respectful funeral for loved ones of applicants in receipt of qualifying income-related benefits. We meet the full, necessary costs of a burial or cremation, which we know can vary, including the purchase of a grave, necessary burial or cremation fees, the cost of any medical references or the removal of active implanted medical devices for cremations, reasonable costs if a body has to be moved for more than 50 miles and travel costs for the applicant to arrange and attend the funeral. In addition, as has been mentioned, we meet other costs up to a maximum of £700.
In 2015-16, nearly 29,000 funeral expenses payments awards were made—worth more than £40 million—in Great Britain. The average payment has increased by just under 40%—from £1,019 in 2003-04 to £1,410 in 2015-16—reflecting the rise in necessary costs, but not in discretionary costs. That is why in 2012 the Department made interest-free social fund budgeting loans available for funeral costs, in addition to the funeral expenses payments. Last year the average award for all budgeting loans was £418. It is important to emphasise that we made those payments available in 2012, and that they are interest-free. Those loans are crucial for supporting people at a difficult time by removing the need for bereaved families to turn to high-cost lenders and the worry of meeting a funeral director’s bill.
Furthermore, it is worth noting that we provide the most generous support for funeral expenses when we are compared with other European countries—we can still compare ourselves with them for the moment, but that is another debate. Providers of funeral services, including the church, funeral directors, local authorities and crematorium owners, all play a role in ensuring that funerals are accessible to everyone. The Government believe that when a family can take part or all the responsibility for the cost of funeral arrangements, they should. However, there are obviously times when state support is appropriate, and we know that we can do more. Having taken time to set out the facts of what we do, I will turn now to the issues that have been raised during the debate.
On costs and claims, when considering the level of support for other costs, a balance needs to be struck. We do not want the funeral expenses scheme to influence or inflate the prices charged by the funeral industry for a simple funeral, and it must not undermine personal and family responsibility for meeting funeral costs. We have to ensure that the system not only is fair to taxpayers but supports the most vulnerable people. We have been working closely with the funeral industry to discuss how it can improve the transparency of its information about costs and choices. That would help people to make more informed choices and encourage competition within the industry. We remain committed to listening to our stakeholders, as we have been, and to working together to find solutions that are in the interests of the most vulnerable.
For that reason, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery convened a ministerial round table earlier this year, with stakeholders such as the National Association of Funeral Directors, the National Society of Allied and Independent Funeral Directors, representatives from different faith groups and organisations representing bereaved people—in fact, my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) was also present. A lot of topics that are relevant to issues raised today were covered, including transparency and the costs of funerals in the industry. The Under-Secretary of State asked stakeholders to share news and good practice about how they plan to be more open with their online pricing to support vulnerable claimants, and how they can support the rest of the industry to do the same.
We are carrying out a thorough review of the social fund expenses payments and have created a small working group of stakeholders to work with us to identify where regulation can be amended to help to address and tackle funeral poverty issues. We have also improved information about the scheme so that it is easier for people to understand whether they are eligible. That is available online with the application form, as well as through our dedicated bereavement service telephony line, which hon. Members have mentioned.
We know from research that people prefer to speak to someone on the phone when they have suffered a bereavement, instead of using online tools. We have therefore provided a specialist telephony service with staff who are fully trained to support people sensitively. The service has received positive feedback. It includes an eligibility checker, which has been mentioned—I will come on to that in a moment—and we are taking steps to ensure that claims are processed and that decisions can be made more quickly. Our recent improvements include reviewing all claims on the day that they are received to identify those requiring further evidence; and gathering further evidence by telephoning and texting applicants to speed up the process—[Interruption.]
Richard Harrington
Yes. Thank you, Mr Stringer. I was able to take a deep breath while the right hon. Member for Birkenhead attended to his electronic device.
Let me get back to the rising cost of funerals. We do not believe that the Government should be mandating or promoting a specific form of funeral provision for benefits claimants. Although my Department does not have responsibility for regulating the funeral industry, we are encouraging it to be more open and transparent in the way that I have explained, because people have to make informed decisions.
A number of low-cost alternative options are emerging in the funeral industry, such as direct cremations and municipal funeral arrangements offered by several local authorities. We recognise that those are not geographically widely available yet, and are not relevant to all religious and cultural practices. However, when it is appropriate, the industry should signpost people to direct cremations schemes and other low-cost alternatives so that bereaved people know they have the choice. We believe that improved pre-planning for funerals is just one way of helping individuals to focus on planning for a life event that is not always considered in advance.
Hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Wirral West, discussed the £700 limit. We know that some people need help with short-term needs, such as funeral expenses. Our priority has been to ensure that the scheme meets the full necessary costs of a cremation or burial for such people. The average payments have increased year on year to meet the necessary costs in full. Although we have had to make difficult choices about welfare spending, we have protected the £700 limit for other funeral costs, and we have continued to give people a choice on how they can spend that money on funeral expenses. However, the majority of funeral cost claims exceed the £700 limit, which is why, as I explained, we make interest-free social fund budgeting loans for funeral costs in addition to the funeral expenses payment.
The online eligibility checker was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—I think in his second question—and by other hon. Members. As I have explained, the dedicated bereavement service telephone line already offers an eligibility check and research shows that that has been well received by callers. We believe—I accept that hon. Members may feel differently—that an online checker could cause confusion. User research has identified that individuals would rather speak to an individual during these times—that is based on user research, not on cost. At these very difficult times—at one of the most traumatic times in their lives—they would rather speak to a well-trained human being than deal with a website.
We have been working closely with the bereavement service to ensure that the scripts and messaging are incorporated and updated for funeral expenses payments and to ensure that the staff can adequately offer support to a bereaved person or funeral provider when they access our services.
Margaret Greenwood
As well as talking about funeral costs, will the Minister get on to the continuing support that bereaved people need?
Richard Harrington
I hope it will satisfy the hon. Lady to know that I will. I apologise if I have been going into too much detail about other things, but it is important for hon. Members, and others throughout the country and here today, to understand generally what the Government are doing about these issues, in response to the Select Committee’s report. Please be patient with me; I will do my best to answer her questions. If not, I know that she will question me afterwards, but I hope that that will not be necessary.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead raised the issue of increasing awareness of the scheme. Information on the eligibility criteria is clearly presented and detailed on the gov.uk website and in the information accompanying a funeral payment application form. The current eligibility criteria ensure that the scheme is administered quickly without additional complex means testing and used solely for funeral expenses payment purposes.
We have received positive feedback from industry representatives on how helpful the bereavement service telephone line is in guiding callers through the application process and their eligibility, and on changes that we are introducing to the application form. We are discussing with third parties such as registrars and funeral directors how we can improve the way in which the Government engage with the bereaved to ensure that information is in the right place and in the right form.
The right hon. Gentleman asked what we were doing to negotiate a reasonable cost for a simple funeral with the funeral industry, as his Committee recommended in its report. We have been engaging with the industry and different lobbies, as I have explained, on how they can make costs more transparent, but we do not believe that the Government should mandate or promote a specific form of funeral provision for benefit claimants. We have encouraged the industry to be more open and transparent about its pricing structure so that individuals can make informed decisions and shop around.
We have engaged with stakeholders to build strong links so that we have the relevant expertise at hand for the first phase of the review, which will visit what parts of the social fund regulations can be amended to help address and tackle funeral poverty issues. We also continue to improve, review and monitor the application process. All that work is being done with the funeral industry and groups that advise bereaved people. In November last year, as I explained, we launched the shorter application form, and we are open to ideas about how we can review the system, in particular the application form for the social fund funeral expenses payment. It has been simplified as much as possible.
On support for child funerals and bereaved parents, I pay tribute to the efforts of the hon. Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who is not here; I suspect, knowing her, that she is at the debate in the main Chamber. I speak to her regularly, and she put on record her views on the subject in an Adjournment debate, as I recall, on children’s funerals.
Frank Field
Just to put it on the record, she very much wanted to speak, but is in the other debate.
Richard Harrington
I was absolutely certain of it, as the right hon. Gentleman knows.
I confirm that we assign priority to applications received for children’s funerals and aim to process them without delay. We have listened to stakeholders’ concerns about the need to support bereaved parents of children, and we are currently considering how we can introduce a separate application form and system to help simplify the process in those tragic circumstances. We are keen to know how else to support individuals who require support for children’s funerals. The view of most funeral industry representatives at the round table that I mentioned was that the vast majority of funeral directors already waive fees or offer significant discounts for child funerals, although there are no industry-wide arrangements and there is no guidance in place. The National Association of Funeral Directors offered to do a survey of its members on current practice.
Moving on to bereavement support payments, I will respond to the points made by the right hon. Gentleman and others. As has been stated, both Houses of Parliament have approved, under the affirmative procedure, the Bereavement Support Payment Regulations 2017. The new bereavement support payment, which is due to be launched in April 2017, will replace three current bereavement benefits: the bereavement payment, bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance.
Losing a spouse or civil partner is obviously tragic, and bereavement benefits provide vital support during this distressing time. Previous reforms have tended to be limited and made in response to specific pressures. No one had really considered how bereavement support fitted in with wider changes to the benefits system, and indeed to the social landscape as a whole. The aim is to provide targeted financial support at the time when it is needed most, without affecting access to additional forms of support that are available through other parts of the welfare system.
Stella Creasy
The Minister just said that the reforms are designed to provide targeted help when it is needed most. On what evidence has the concept of “most” been based, in his calculations? What does he define as a time when less help might be needed, as opposed to the most help? It would be helpful to understand the Government’s thinking.
Richard Harrington
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I used the word “most” to refer to the most critical short-term time, which is what I was discussing, but I am prepared to accept her point, without getting into a competition about when “most” is most. It is all the time, and I am happy to say that, but that is not the context that I was referring to.
I hope the hon. Lady will agree that the old system could be unfair and complex, and could act as a trap preventing people from readjusting. Reform is essential to simplify and modernise the system. The history of bereavement benefits is rooted in the Widows’, Orphans’ and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act 1925. The way that people thought in those days was that most women were wholly dependent on their husband’s income. If a woman was widowed, her sole source of income would disappear completely, so it was considered necessary to provide a replacement income for her to survive.
Today, women as well as men actively participate in the workforce, and many households now benefit from dual careers and dual incomes. That is why we are modernising bereavement support into a simple, uniform and easy-to-understand benefit that better reflects society. We listened to the recommendation of the Work and Pensions Committee that there was merit in considering the length of the new bereavement support payment. For that reason, the bereavement support payment is now payable over 18 months.
Patricia Gibson
The Government have said that this is not about saving money but about, as the Minister has said, rationalising the system, bringing it into the modern era and so on. However, the Work and Pensions Committee told us that the changes to bereavement support payments will save £100 million. If this is not about saving money, will that £100 million be reinvested in helping the 75% of people who will lose out under the new measures?
Richard Harrington
If the hon. Lady will be patient with me a little longer, I will mention the financial point that she has made. I am sure that she will intervene to castigate me if I do not.
The new bereavement support payment restores fairness to the system and focuses support during the 18-month period after a loved one dies, when people need it the most. I accept the view of the hon. Member for Walthamstow that “most” can mean a lot of things. If I said “when people need it” without “the most”, it would still mean the same thing. People need it in those 18 months. The support is not taxed and is subject to a disregard for income-related benefits. The idea is, hopefully, to help those on the lowest incomes. Those who are least well off will gain the most, as for the first time they will be able to receive payments of bereavement benefit in full alongside any other benefit entitlements.
In her case studies, the hon. Member for Walthamstow mentioned the duration of payment and interactions with universal credit. We do not believe that the period of payment could or should be equivalent to the period of grief following spousal bereavement. As I know from the experience of many people known to me, grief can go on for one’s whole life. The payment is not designed for that; it is designed to support people with the additional costs associated with bereavement, rather than providing an income replacement. That is probably the contradiction with the points that she made.
Stella Creasy
I thank the Minister for trying to clarify the Government’s thinking, but as he goes along, he is making rather a different case. He says that the changes needed to happen because women are now entering the workforce. The old system was taxed, so if he is concerned that women might have additional income, continuing the old system might deal with that challenge better.
The Minister talks as well about people needing it most, but surely he recognises that although the loss of a partner is emotionally difficult, the practical financial concerns are paramount here. Does he recognise that the picture that he is painting of the issues is slightly askew from the reality of what the issues are for these women?
Richard Harrington
Obviously I do not agree with the hon. Lady’s subjective point that I do not recognise the reality of the situation. We are not trying to replicate the period of grief with this benefit. As I have said, it is designed to support people with the additional cost associated with bereavement, rather than providing an income replacement. Her view, from what she has said, is that the support should be an alternative to the other income support systems.
Stella Creasy
Let me be absolutely clear: the support is predicated on the contributions that the partner will have paid into the national insurance system, just as they might get a pension from their partner. We are talking about fairness to the children so that they benefit from the contributions that their father made and about the impact on the family’s income. Actually, it is not about replacing income support; it is about the fact that the father has paid in a contribution that should be recognised to the children’s benefit.
Richard Harrington
What the hon. Lady talks about is not really what I am talking about, but I accept what she has said. I was actually talking about the bereavement support payment, which is a lump sum payment.
We believe that income-based benefits are more suited to providing longer-term assistance with everyday living costs. Unlike bereavement allowance and widowed parent’s allowance, bereavement support payment will be paid in addition to any other benefits the recipient is entitled to, thus ensuring that the least well off receive the extra cash in their pocket to help with those extra financial strains brought about by the unexpected loss of a spouse or civil partner of working age. Long-term ongoing income-related support will be provided through universal credit, which better targets support to those with the greatest need.
The regulations make no changes to conditionality, which has been mentioned. Like the bereavement benefits it replaces, the bereavement support payment sets no work-related conditions. Any obligation to participate in any work-related activity will come from claiming other benefits. That said, it is well known that long periods out of work can have a negative effect on an individual’s prospects of future employment. That is why the Government think it is important that people are encouraged to maintain, as much as they can, a link with the labour market.
Recipients of bereavement support payment who also receive universal credit will therefore be able to access Jobcentre Plus support on a voluntary basis from three months after bereavement. They will then not be subject to conditionality for a further three months. Those exemptions from conditionality will also apply after the death of a child or partner, even where there is no entitlement to the bereavement support payment. At the end of the six months, advisers will use their discretion to ensure individuals’ capability and requirements are taken into account. That is the best way of ensuring that the support we give is tailored to the individual.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead and others mentioned the extension of the bereavement support payment to cohabitees. That was discussed in detail during the passage of the Pensions Act 2014. Marriage and civil partnerships are legal arrangements that are associated with certain rights, including inheritance and recognition in the tax system. Extending eligibility to cohabitees would not only increase spend, but be complex to administer. Having to prove cohabitation could be a lengthy, complex process, which could cause distress at a time of bereavement.
Many critics have suggested that it is unfair that those who choose not to formalise their relationship are treated as a couple for income-related benefits, but not for contributory benefits. Income-related benefits serve a different purpose, however: they are for the ongoing day-to-day needs of a household, irrespective of whether the relationship is formal. When assessing entitlement to income-related benefit payments, the state rightly assumes that couples, whatever the legal status of their relationship, have joint outgoings and share resources such as earnings or other income.
The position with bereavement benefits is different, because they are contributory. The founding principle of the contributory benefit system is that all rights to inheritable benefits derive from another person’s contributions. That is based on the concept of legal marriage, which has extended to civil partnership in recent times. Unmarried or non-civil partnership couples will, of course, have access to a full range of income-related benefits and will benefit from the removal of conditionality requirements in exactly the same way as those in a legal marriage or civil partnership.
Richard Harrington
I am not trying to suppress the hon. Lady’s comments, but I was about to explain about widowed parents under the new system, which, if I may boldly suggest it, was probably what she was going to ask me about.
Stella Creasy
I was simply going to ask whether the Minister will clarify whether he considers children to be a joint outgoing. If he does, the contributions that a partner would make to a household would also be eligible. The idea that if people are not married, their relationship to those joint outgoings somehow stops at their death seems rather misplaced, does it not? I have certainly heard that children are expensive.
Richard Harrington
I can personally verify the latter part of the hon. Lady’s comments on the expense.
The new bereavement support payment restores fairness to the system and focuses support just on that 18-month period after a loved one dies, when it is most needed. It is not taxed and will be subject to a disregard for income-related benefits, helping those on the lowest incomes the most. Widowed parents will no longer lose their benefits if they decide to remarry or repartner. We do not believe that the period of payment could or should be equivalent to the recovery period following spousal bereavement. I am sure most people would agree that that is a totally different amount of time.
Unlike with the widowed parent’s allowance, claimants of the bereavement support payment will be entitled to receive all the other benefits at the same time. Disregarding bereavement support payment in the calculation of other benefits will ensure that the immediate additional costs of bereavement are met. Those requiring support will be able to obtain it from other areas of the welfare system, and I cannot stress that enough. Its purpose is better placed to provide longer-term, means-tested financial assistance.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead, the hon. Member for Walthamstow and other Members made a reasonably cynical, but well-made point about the changes to the bereavement benefit. They basically said that it was just an austerity measure, delivering savings of £100 million to the Treasury after two years. Over the first two years of the reform, we will actually spend an additional £45 million, but any savings, like in anything else in the public finances, will be for future Governments to reinvest as they choose. I therefore cannot undertake, as I have been asked, to ensure that savings are reinvested in this field.
It is important to emphasise for the record that nobody in receipt of the current bereavement benefit stands to lose out as a result of the reforms. Recipients of the current benefit will continue to receive it for the natural lifetime of their award. Furthermore, households with dependent children will receive higher payments in recognition of that fact. Analysis shows that more people stand to gain than to lose from the changes. That is particularly so for the least well off, because—I have made this point several times—bereavement support will be paid on top of any income-related benefits that the household receives.
The Government have been asked here and elsewhere to extend the duration to three years and make the BSP cost-neutral. If we did that, we would have to fund it by reducing other elements of the payments. There seems to be little rationale for reducing the monthly payments for parents to make extending the duration cost-neutral. It would reduce payments to a token amount, which would not meet the intention of dealing with the immediate costs relating to bereavement.
With the introduction of the bereavement support payment, short-term financial support will be provided based on six months of national insurance contributions. The amount and duration of the award will be clear from the outset, allowing people time to plan ahead. Those requiring further support will be able to obtain it from other areas of the welfare system that are better placed to provide longer-term, means-tested financial assistance.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran made a point on uprating. Any decisions on future changes will be taken as part of the annual process in the context of the wider public finances. I cannot say much more on that, other than that section 150 of the Social Security Administration Act 1992 provides for the rate of BSP to be reviewed annually. The Government committed to review the bereavement support payment reform in the impact assessment of 2013, but we cannot do that until sufficient evidence is available to assess all aspects of the policy, including its effectiveness and the impact on different groups of claimants.
The hon. Lady also made a point about the consequences for children of bereavement support payments. She said that, as a result of the shorter duration of payments, 75% of new claimants with children will be worse off. No one in receipt of the current bereavement benefits stands to lose out as a result of these reforms. As I said, recipients of the current benefits will continue to receive them for the natural lifetime of their award. Furthermore, for those households where there are dependent children, a higher level of payments will be made in recognition of that fact.
In conclusion, let me reassure hon. Members that the Government are absolutely committed to supporting the bereaved and ensuring that individuals have the opportunity to access the funeral expenses payment scheme. Our priorities remain to improve the funeral expenses scheme, to raise awareness of the scheme and to ensure that we are doing what we can to offer a provision of support for vulnerable claimants.
Frank Field
I am grateful to have had this debate and thank those who have participated. I am also grateful to those who have not participated, but who are a very real part of the debate.
I leave the Minister with one thought. Despite his abilities and his charms, the Government are struggling with this brief. It is simply not good enough for him to say that the promise that the reform would be cost-neutral was made by a previous Government—it was made by a Conservative-dominated coalition Government.
When he reports back to his colleague at a departmental meeting, I plead with him to say that this brief is in some ways easier than others that the Government have. We all assumed that the Government were committed to introducing this reform at nil cost. We have heard about how it does not meet needs. I ask the Minister to say that the Government do not wish to present this harsh face to the public; that they have up to £100 million to spend in this area; and that they did not wish to make these changes to save money, but to bring the benefit up to date. I ask that he and his colleagues at some date soon report how that £100 million will be spent, so that the needs of the two heroines that my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) raised can be met. We are not asking the Minister to conjure up new money or to take money away from somewhere else. We are just saying that we agree. By all means, let us modernise this benefit, but let us do it in a way that spends the full budget and in a way that meets need most.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Ninth Report of the Work and Pensions Committee of Session 2015-16, Support for the bereaved, HC 551, and the Government response, HC 230.
Backbench Business
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Torture and the Treatment of Asylum Claims
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered UK policy on torture and the treatment of asylum claims.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for making time for this important debate. I also thank the co-sponsors of this debate, the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Members for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron). I am appreciative of the cross-party support for this debate. This debate on the UK’s policy on torture and the treatment of asylum claims is particularly important and critical right now.
Only last weekend we heard from the Home Secretary and from Max Hill, QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, that the current terror threat is severe. As we are all aware, that will probably continue for some time. My concern about our current level of terror is that there may be a concomitant rise in the idea that torture has a place and a use in our society. That came about, as people know, in January when the President of the United States was heard to comment on what is a deliberate near-drowning technique, also known as waterboarding. He declared his personal views, but used the phrase “fight fire with fire” and entertained the idea that torture can work.
I was therefore grateful that the Prime Minister very shortly and quickly afterwards stated that
“we do not sanction torture and do not get involved in it.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 291.]
That is a clear statement from this country and its Government. The next day, the Leader of the House also made a clear statement about the Government’s position, when he said the Government were “resolutely opposed to torture”. Again, it is important right now that the Government are clear and frequently reiterate that. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity today to reiterate our very clear position.
We are leading the way on standards against torture, but our standards can be higher. That means being against torture and all cruel, inhuman or degrading treatments and punishments.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I agree absolutely with what the hon. Lady says. Does she agree with me, however, that there have been occasions in the not-so-distant past when we have allowed our standards to slip? The Government could demonstrate their bona fides for future intentions by taking a more open and transparent approach in settling cases such as the Belhaj and Boudchar case.
Dr Mathias
I thank the right hon. Gentleman very much for that intervention. I am aware of Supreme Court cases, but I do not want to mention specific cases today because I want to find as much common ground as possible with the Government, and I do not want to presume judgment of any particular cases, but I absolutely agree that the present statements by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House do not match our historical cases. That is why it is important today to be absolutely sure of where our standard is. I absolutely agree that in the past we have not lived up to our standards.
In view of the current global situation, I still believe we are the leaders, whether we choose to be or not. We absolutely need transparency about the past. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I am looking closely at the court cases. However, we must recognise that today we are not only the place to be against torture, but the place that can diagnose torture. People can get the best treatment for torture and can be rehabilitated to return to the community as fully participant members of society. That is the ultimate aim, and I do believe we lead on that.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
Is there not a further test for us as a country? Not only should we have the higher standard in terms of rejecting torture and having the best treatment, as the hon. Lady said, but when an asylum seeker comes to this country and alleges torture, it is our duty to take that case particularly seriously. Is the hon. Lady aware of concerns that people from Sri Lanka who have applied for asylum, alleging torture, have perhaps not had their cases inspected as rigorously as they might?
Dr Mathias
Again, I will not comment on individual cases. In my constituency of Twickenham in south-west London, I have come across the Tamil community. I have worked abroad in many countries, so I am aware of countries that have particular cases. I want the people of Sri Lanka who seek asylum to get the gold standard level of investigation and, if they seek asylum here, the best rehabilitation. I hope that answers the hon. Gentleman.
Historically, we have been at the forefront. After the second world war, we were a signatory to the universal declaration of human rights, which includes article 5 against torture. We signed up to the European convention on human rights, which led to our Human Rights Act 1998. We are also a signatory to the UN convention against torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, which the UK ratified in 1988. I thank the Library for pointing out that in our common law we also have what is pertinent from section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. On torture offences, we state:
“It is immaterial whether the pain or suffering is physical or mental and whether it is caused by an act or omission.”
We have signed the European and UN declarations, but our case law also sets a high standard. I said that historically we have done well. The late Lord Bingham mentioned that 300 years ago the English Bill of Rights stated that punishment that is cruel and unusual should not be inflicted. So our history goes back more than 300 years and has been at the forefront.
However, as the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland has said, our past has not always been adequate and may not be the standard we should attain now. Although the Prime Minister has said we do not sanction torture and do not get involved in it, I want the Minister to be clear today that we do not sanction complicity and are not involved in it. I want the Minister to say, “We do not sanction rendition and do not get involved in it”—I use the present tense because I do not want to influence the ongoing court cases.
Whether we like it or not, we lead globally against torture. That is important, because about a month ago I met a diplomat from another country and I talked about a torture case that is known to Amnesty International. When I mentioned the torture of sleep deprivation, I was corrected and told, “This is not torture. This is mistreatment.” Then I realised that although our law sets us against such treatment, whether physical or mental, or act or omission, we need to make it clear to other countries that we are absolutely and wholly against using such things as prolonged sleep deprivation, degrading treatment—the case I have referred to involved a fellow doctor in prison being made to eat his own faeces, while another prisoner was stripped naked and asked to crawl on all fours—and mental torture, such as when someone’s relative is executed or subjected to a mock execution in front of them. We must recognise such things as torture and not say that there are sub-levels of torture, or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. We oppose it utterly and will lead in that field. I want the Minister to be clear about that.
Historically, we have done well at recognising and treating severe cases of mental and physical trauma. More than 100 years ago, we became specialists at treating soldiers who were victims of shellshock or who had been buried alive. Our medical specialists became adept at treatment and rehabilitation, and enabling people to be full members of the community. We led in that field. The late Helen Bamber was also a leader, with regard to knowledge of and respect for people who suffered torture, and their treatment and rehabilitation. There was a centre in Denmark, and Helen Bamber made our country one of the leaders in the field. Today we have specialist organisations, such as Freedom from Torture, which specialise in recognising the signs of torture, rehabilitating people who have experienced it and enabling them to be full members of the community. We have many success stories on which to build.
I therefore regret that although the Government have made clear statements against torture, which show the lead we are giving, they can and need to do better with respect to handling asylum cases involving evidence of torture. The Minister and the Secretary of State will be aware of the report “Proving Torture”, released in November, which contained a small number of clear instances where the decision to reject an asylum application, accompanied by a medico-legal report, was overturned by a higher tribunal because, worryingly, of the mishandling of specialist medical evidence. I understand that the Home Office may have done its own sample study. I am sure I have the Minister’s attention, as such instances are a waste of taxpayers’ money; however, the worrying thing is the additional distress caused to people seeking asylum who have been tortured, whether physically or mentally.
Whether the Minister refers to the clear cases presented by Freedom from Torture, or the cases that I believe have been looked into by the Home Office, he will recognise that there is a problem in the system, and that every caseworker needs some training on cases where torture may be involved. It is perhaps somewhat akin to the situation of general practitioners: they are not specialists, but they need knowledge of every specialty to be able to give adequate treatment and make a referral.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I shall cover my hon. Friend’s points in more detail when I sum up, but I wanted to point out that just because an appeal or further legal process can overturn the original decision, it does not necessarily mean that that decision was made wrongly on the basis of the facts. It may be that new facts come to light, and the decision can be based on better available information.
Dr Mathias
I appreciate what the Minister says, but I have seen a handful of cases—confidentially, without the names—and, without being a specialist myself, have talked to one of the doctors involved with the charity. From the small number I have seen, the decisions have been overturned not because of extra evidence, but because the evidence presented to the first caseworker was not handled adequately. On appeal, the information given was found to give sufficient grounds for granting asylum. It is not my field, but I have some relevant background and have had some experience in different countries of the simple treatment of people returning to a community having been tortured, so I have a great deal of respect for the specialty. I cannot believe that without training a non-medical caseworker would be able to understand the medico-legal report with respect to the need for asylum. In the 21st century, a specialist is needed to diagnose the invisible mental scars.
I gave an example earlier of the torture of one prisoner of conscience. For me, even saying the words “mock execution of a family member” upsets me. However, if the Home Office is talking about using specialist caseworkers, it must watch out that the specialists do not become hardened by having to hear and read such material day in, day out. Again, there is a similarity to what happens in therapeutic counselling, in which I do have a background. There are models in other fields and professions. It is mandatory for therapeutic counsellors to have regular supervision to check their bias and their own mental health. I do not believe that the Home Office is giving sufficient weight to the needs of the Home Office caseworkers. The great thing is that we have the expertise. Freedom from Torture, a UK-based organisation, is one of the global leaders in the field. The training programme has already been agreed by the Home Office, but just not rolled out for all caseworkers.
Mr Gareth Thomas
I support what the hon. Lady is saying, and it will be interesting to hear the Minister’s response. According to the Freedom from Torture report for this debate, in many of the torture-related asylum cases it examined, where a refusal was overturned on appeal, the immigration judge specifically referred to the strength and high quality of the medical evidence. That suggests that the hon. Lady is right and that if the Home Office asylum caseworker had handled the case better, there would have been no need to go to appeal.
Dr Mathias
I thank the hon. Gentleman and hope that Freedom from Torture and all the staff involved have heard his words. Again, I believe that we are leading. The specialty is a difficult one, so we should be proud that excellence has been attained in it. Asylum seekers should have confidence in our system. However, to refer back to the cases that I saw, without the names, it is depressing when a caseworker questions expertise on that level, with respect to understanding how distressed someone might be as a result of a particular mental torture. I would not question a specialist in that way if I were not in the field. The hon. Gentleman’s point was well made.
Better training is needed for all caseworkers. I am sure that the Minister is aware that many asylum cases do not initially present with evidence of torture, especially if the scars are invisible. It would be advantageous for the Home Office if training were rolled out for everyone. If it wants a specialist unit, it must be very careful about how to protect the members of staff from fatigue and maintain excellence. It takes time to do those small samples, and where the Home Office and Freedom from Torture did some, I believe that the quality assurance and the audit for these cases is lacking.
I fear that in the 21st century the number of cases is not going to decrease, so the Home Office needs to up its game. We have a 300-year history of being leaders on this issue. Right now there is a vacuum in the world for setting the standard. We have to fill that vacuum, because we are able to, and we have shown that historically. We should be transparent when we let ourselves down—it is not just letting down the people who have suffered; it is letting down the United Kingdom. I want the Government and the Minister to reaffirm our position as heading the world in standing against torture and all cruel, inhuman and degrading punishments.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Adrian Bailey (in the Chair)
Order. I intend to call the Front-Bench spokespersons at 4 o’clock, if not earlier. Other speakers should bear that in mind when making their contributions. I remind Members that the principle of parliamentary privilege does not prevail over the requirements of the sub judice rules if they are referring to current court cases. I ask them to take that very seriously in their remarks.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) and for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) for securing this debate on a hugely important topic. I commend the way in which the hon. Member for Twickenham introduced it.
I have the privilege of representing a significant number of residents who were born in Sri Lanka. Over the years, a number of them, particularly those from the Tamil community, have contacted my office or visited my advice surgery for help with their claims for asylum. A number of them have alleged that they have been victims of torture in Sri Lanka. Freedom from Torture has informed me that Sri Lanka remains its top country both for those receiving therapy and for medico-legal reports on torture in custody. That reflects a trend that it has seen over several years. How we treat the asylum cases of people from Sri Lanka who make allegations of torture is surely one of the key tests for how the Minister and the Home Office more generally handle asylum cases involving torture.
In its 2016 annual report, Amnesty International stated:
“Torture and other ill-treatment of detainees—including sexual violence—continued to be reported and impunity persisted for earlier cases.”
That is in relation to Sri Lanka.
“Suspicious deaths in police custody continued to be reported. Detainees died of injuries consistent with torture and other ill-treatment, including beatings or asphyxiation. Police claimed suspects committed suicide or in one case drowned while trying to escape.”
That is a 2016 Amnesty International report describing the situation in Sri Lanka.
In 2012, Human Rights Watch published a report about allegations of torture and other ill-treatment in Sri Lanka. It documented a number of cases of refused asylum seekers who were returned from this country to Sri Lanka to face ill-treatment and persecution. Indeed, the family member of a constituent of mine was returned to Sri Lanka, where he was subjected to torture.
The context underlines the point that it is vital that any claim for asylum must be assessed fairly and thoroughly, given that the stakes are so high. I pay tribute to those who work for the Home Office on asylum cases—it is far from a glamorous job, but it is hugely important to this country—and maintain the integrity of our borders and this country’s reputation as a place that takes allegations of torture seriously. We want to continue to be a place where those who have been tortured and have applied for asylum are taken particularly seriously. Thankfully, there has been some political progress and improvement in human rights in Sri Lanka since that 2012 report, but it is not yet enough.
I want to ask the Minister a number of questions about the way asylum claims are processed. The Freedom from Torture report that I referred to when I intervened on the hon. Member for Twickenham certainly fits with the experiences of some of my constituents. At the crux of any claim for asylum is an assessment of the claimant’s credibility. To be granted refugee status, asylum claimants need to show that there is a “reasonable degree of likelihood” that they will face persecution if they return to their country of origin. That is significantly lower than the standard of proof in criminal cases. Evidence of past persecution, and particularly of torture, is likely to be a strong indicator of the risk of future persecution, but asylum seekers are unlikely to be able to gather documentary evidence methodically as they flee, so medico-legal reports are among the most persuasive evidence available for the assessment of their claims. However, I have seen cases in which the evidence of a medical expert has been dismissed or questioned by a caseworker who has little or no clinical expertise. I have also seen cases in which one part of the claimant’s story is not believed, and is used to argue that their whole claim should be dismissed as incredible. The injuries documented by a medical expert are explained away as having occurred some other way.
Freedom from Torture described five ways in which medical experts work, which are not always considered properly by asylum caseworkers. It is concerning that caseworkers currently receive only a very short, one-hour slot in their induction training on handling medical evidence of torture. That clearly is not enough, given the problems in decision making that Freedom from Torture identified and that others in the House are aware of. Will the Minister respond to the first recommendation in the Freedom from Torture report and explain why the full-day training module that has been developed has not yet been rolled out for asylum caseworkers? Will he confirm that it will be rolled out as soon as possible?
Getting the decision right first time is clearly better for the claimant and is surely better for the taxpayer, too, as it spares the expense of a costly appeal. Crucially, it allows the claimant to get on with their life. Will the Minister give his view on whether the changes to legal aid in the previous Parliament have affected asylum seekers’ access to the legal advice that they might need to obtain a proper medico-legal report?
About 10 years ago, a pilot scheme was set up to try to improve the quality of asylum decision making. It involved closer collaboration between asylum caseworkers and legal representatives at an early stage in the process to ensure that a decision is make after all the facts of the case have been considered. I understand that it was followed up by the early legal advice project under the coalition Government. Will the Minister give his view on why those measures were not pursued further and whether that type of approach may be beneficial when considering asylum claims involving an allegation of torture?
Next week is International Women’s Day and so I want to ask the Minister for his views on how claims involving allegations of rape and sexual violence are considered. Does more need to be done to protect some of the most vulnerable asylum claimants, in particular in light of a number of disturbing revelations from Yarl’s Wood detention centre in recent years?
Furthermore, it is well known that anxiety disorders or post-traumatic stress disorder are triggered by distressing or frightening events of the sort that the hon. Member for Twickenham outlined, and that they can cause problems with concentration and memory, which may well affect sufferers’ ability to present their case properly in an asylum interview, in particular as they are asked to relive and relay those traumatic experiences. Is that proper consideration in the asylum decision-making process? Does more need to be done to give adequate training to decision makers?
Finally, on human rights abuses and torture in Sri Lanka specifically, I ask the Minister to take this away to colleagues at the Foreign Office. At the height of the conflict in Sri Lanka, Britain led the way in Europe on the removal of Sri Lanka from the GSP plus trading arrangements under the generalised system of preferences. GSP plus is granted only to countries in the developing world that have made significant progress on human rights. The European Commission’s removal of GSP plus from Sri Lanka signalled Europe’s concern, very much including Britain’s, about reported human rights abuses and, notably, the use of torture.
Last year Sri Lanka applied to access the GSP plus scheme again. Earlier this year the European Commission found that in its view Sri Lanka now met the criteria. As I said earlier, there has been some progress in addressing human rights concerns in Sri Lanka, in particular following the election of President Sirisena, but significant concern remains that human rights abuses including torture are ongoing in parts of the country and that, in particular, there will be no independent international involvement in the judicial process to examine allegations of such abuses and torture that have already taken place, especially at the end of the 2009 conflict.
Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and indeed the Foreign Office’s most recent human rights report all state that concerns about human rights abuses in Sri Lanka remain. I will be grateful if the Minister gives his view of what support for Sri Lanka’s re-entry to the GSP plus scheme says about Britain’s commitment to tackle torture throughout the world, in particular at a time when others, notably our friends across the Atlantic, seem to be stepping back from their leadership on the issue.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am grateful, Mr Bailey, that you have found time for me to make a brief contribution to this important debate. I very much welcomed the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), who spoke eloquently on many of the matters that I might otherwise have covered.
In the United Kingdom it is not new for us to be talking about torture. In fact, we have been talking about torture in this House for much of the past 1,000 years—although we were ordering much of it for an awfully long time, too. Various people including, most famously, Guido Fawkes were taken from inquisitions to appear before politicians, often in the Star Chamber, and ended up being tortured in places such as the Tower. We have long experience of torture in this country.
From bitter experience, however, we know that torture does not work—people get the answer they want, or think they want, rather than the answer they need. That is why sensible countries, ones that realise that the rule of law is about discovering the truth and not about exacting punishment, do not practise torture. I am proud that our country set the model on that through two Acts: the Bill of Rights; and the Treason Act 1708, which included Scotland—I say that for the benefit of the Members representing Scotland, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) of the Scottish National party and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) from those various islands of our wonderful country.
Those fundamental Acts set out what we now think of as a universal right under the United Nations or European conventions, which is the right not to be tortured. Unlike other rights, that right is completely unqualified: there is no situation in which torture is possible; there is no situation in which a country may derogate from that right; and there is no situation in which torture is ever tolerable. Even the right to life, we admit, is not absolute. If it were, the intervention to prevent people dying would be absurd, or a battle to protect our nation’s interest would be impossible. Torture is not like that; torture is an absolute, and it is so because it violates the very principles of a free and democratic society. It violates absolutely the integrity of the individual. It violates totally the right to life and the principles that have grown up in various ways from Judaeo-Christian and Islamic tradition. That is why it is so utterly abhorrent to us.
I am glad that we are holding this debate because it allows us to reinforce those views of torture and, I am sure, for the Minister to reinforce them on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, and to remind ourselves why they matter. Those views are not simply about carrying a banner of principle for us to wave at others in some sort of virtue-signalling way. That is not what they are about. Our views of torture are about protecting ourselves. The reason why we do not torture is not only a moral but a selfish one. We do not torture because it is wrong to do so, and because it leaves us more vulnerable and not better protected. Torture would leave us more exposed and in greater danger. That is why we do not do it.
The debate today is focused on asylum; that is not only about people coming to us but about stopping people needing to come to us. It is about nations with whom we very often and in many ways have good relations, whether in trade, culturally or historically—we often have very good relations with countries that practise torture. Part of our duty as a responsible, free and democratic state is to help our partners and, yes, even our friends to understand that torture is wrong, not only for moral reasons but because it is bad for them. Torture promotes violence, instability and the very unrest that many countries are seeking to prevent.
I will leave it there, except to pay tribute to some organisations, such as those that the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) mentioned when talking about the forms of torture that often are not recognised or are overlooked. I also pay tribute to an organisation that has done a lot to promote human rights—that is not to say that I agree with every one of the cases it has brought, because I certainly do not. The AIRE Centre—Advice on Individual Rights in Europe—did an awful lot of work with some of the new accession states to the European Union and with some of the states newly freed from Soviet tyranny to help them understand what rights are, why they matter and, in that context, why torture is always wrong. There are such organisations out there, and I very much welcome the work of Her Majesty’s Government to support them. I am glad to see cross-party support in the debate on such an important issue that is fundamental to our democracy and our freedom.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
I, too, express my gratitude to the members of the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the time to debate this subject. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) for her leadership in securing the debate. I note that, in a minor way, the pronunciation of the constituency of the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) risks becoming, for some people, an instrument of torture in itself.
The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) posed some very relevant and pointed questions to the Minister regarding the training of caseworkers in the Home Office. I will not repeat them, but they were pertinent and ones with which I would very much wish to associate myself.
Like others, I place on the record my appreciation for the many non-governmental and campaign organisations that work in this field. Freedom from Torture was mentioned, and I was present in November at the launch of its most recent piece of work, “Proving Torture”. I have been associated with Reprieve for many years and have campaigned with Amnesty International in different parts of the world over the years, principally on the abolition of the death penalty but also on human rights concerns more widely.
Whenever I have been in other parts of the world, it has struck me that however much we may beat ourselves up about our past misdeeds, foreign policy failings and other things, we are still seen, by and large, as a force for good in the world. That goes to the point that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) made about the counterproductive nature of torture. It also touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Twickenham that we are a world leader in this area, and it is more important now than ever that we maintain that position.
At Foreign Office questions some time ago, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether he had raised the possibility of sharing intelligence with the Trump Administration in the event that they reverted to the use of torture, such as waterboarding or, as the President said during the campaign, something
“a hell of a lot worse”.
In the House, the Foreign Secretary said that that was an operational matter that he would not comment on —I think it is more a matter of policy myself—but in later correspondence he returned to the quote that the hon. Member for Twickenham offered us from the Prime Minister, who said that
“we do not sanction torture and do not get involved in it. That will continue to be our position.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 291.]
Those sentences should be on the desk of every Home Office and Foreign Office Minister. I would like to hear a more express statement about the possibility of sharing intelligence with any country in the world that uses torture, both because of our leadership position and because we must atone for some of our quite recent failings in this area.
Tom Tugendhat
The right hon. Gentleman heard me speak, I hope very clearly, about my views. I merely caution that we should use slightly more modified language than, “We share no intelligence with anyone who uses torture.” That would exclude so many people with whom we need a relationship built on trust. In many ways, our intelligence services, rather than NGOs or diplomats, are some of the best people to preach the message of freedom from torture.
Mr Carmichael
That is a fair point. I put it in those terms—I know the hon. Gentleman’s background—because we have some damage to repair.
I am mindful of your strictures about the sub judice rule, Mr Bailey. We now have the final Supreme Court judgment in respect of the Government’s preliminary points in the Belhaj and Boudchar case, which I referred to earlier. I will not talk about the substance of that case, because that would clearly be inappropriate and I would be ruled out of order, but it is a matter of public record that the Government so far have spent £750,000 pursuing those unsuccessful preliminary points. The case will presumably go through the courts to whatever conclusion is reached, but it is worth reflecting that we have got this far at the cost of £750,000 but we are just back at the starting line, and a lot more could still be spent on that case. The plaintiffs have offered to settle for £3—£1 each from the Government, the former Foreign Secretary and Sir Mark Allen, whose involvement in the case is fairly well documented.
The al-Saadi case, which was very similar, was settled out of court without any requirement for the case to be taken. More significantly, Belhaj and Boudchar want an apology as well as their £3. No apology was made in the al-Saadi case, but it cost the British taxpayer some £2.2 million. That is why it is important that as we enter a new phase of international relations with a new Administration in the White House, rightly or wrongly, we should have concerns about their approach to torture and put out there the highest possible standards. We should not forget—the Crown Prosecution Service has already said this—that Sir Mark Allen sought political authority for his actions in the al-Saadi and Belhaj cases, so it is difficult for us as a country to deny any knowledge or complicity in them.
Freedom from Torture’s “Proving Torture” report contains several highly concerning statistics from the sample of cases that it examined, and I will remind the House of some of those. Some 76% of the cases that Freedom from Torture studied in preparing that report eventually resulted in successful appeals. I take the Minister’s point that new information is sometimes provided on appeal that was not there in the first instance. Appeals may succeed for any number of reasons, but the fact that 76% of cases resulted in asylum being granted on appeal should concern Home Office Ministers. I suspect that if a judge sitting in a sheriff court in Scotland or perhaps a Crown court in England had 76% of his or her cases overturned on appeal, the Lord Chancellor would look carefully at the way that judge went about his or her business.
There is more context in that report to support my contention that the 76% figure is concerning. In 74% of the cases examined by Freedom from Torture, asylum caseworkers substituted their own opinion for that of clinicians, and in 30% of cases, asylum caseworkers disputed or queried clinicians’ qualifications or expertise. Those things should cause concern. They give context for the 76% of successful appeals that I referred to and relate to the points raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West.
The hon. Member for Twickenham was absolutely right to say that the Home Office has a duty of care towards people who do such enormously difficult and taxing work, from which significant political pressure is never far away and which is done in the professional context of an occasionally toxic debate. I worked as a public prosecutor for some years a long time ago. No one was supposed to work for more than six to 12 months at the very most on cases involving the sexual abuse of children, because they were such difficult and taxing cases, and the people who were involved in that sort of work ended up being burnt out. For that reason, I suspect that rotation among caseworkers who do asylum work should be taken a bit more seriously than it appears to be.
I am mindful of your strictures about time, Mr Bailey, so although I could probably say a great deal more about this subject, I shall conclude my remarks and allow others to take part.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (SNP)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I extend my appreciation to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), who, along with other Members, was responsible for securing this important debate. I thank everyone who has taken part in it.
I should begin by stating my party’s position. The Scottish National party believes that asylum seekers and refugees must be treated humanely, fairly and with dignity, and that their rights must be upheld at every stage of the asylum process. Indeed, Freedom from Torture has welcomed the SNP’s efforts to put pressure on the UK Government to influence immigration and asylum policy to protect survivors of torture across the whole of the UK. We will continue to use our position in Westminster to influence policy areas across the whole of the UK.
Asylum seekers are among the most vulnerable groups in society. Having fled their home countries, often they will have left all of their possessions behind. They may have been subjected to torture or witnessed their loved ones being killed, or sometimes both. Often, their health and wellbeing will be seriously affected. The findings of the recent Freedom from Torture report “Proving Torture” make for tough reading. The organisation’s expert clinicians provide in-depth evidence, in line with international standards, documenting torture scars and psychological trauma as part of a torture survivor’s asylum claim.
Bureaucracy and poor decision making mean that torture survivors can be wrongly refused asylum and experience months—often years—of disbelief and uncertainty. When a survivor of torture is wrongly refused asylum, they experience unimaginable distress. For many people, it is life or death. They know that when the wrong decision is made, they could be forced to return to their torturers. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) mentioned that, after being denied asylum, some of the Sri Lankans who have been returned have faced ill treatment, abuse or worse back in Sri Lanka. Legal appeals are harrowing for these people and, as has been mentioned, let us not forget that they are costly to UK taxpayers.
The precise number of torture survivors seeking protection in the UK is unknown. The Home Office does not collect statistics on the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations. A recent study suggests that 27% of adult forced migrants living in high-income countries such as the UK are survivors of torture. Perhaps when the Minister responds he could expand on why those statistics are not routinely collected. I am very concerned that our system is letting down extremely vulnerable individuals.
What survivors of torture need is safety and access to rehabilitation. That cannot even begin until a sound decision is made on their claim, yet the report found that survivors seeking asylum in the UK can find it almost impossible to prove to the Home Office that they were tortured.
As we have heard, many of the report’s findings focus on the role that caseworkers play. I take on board what was mentioned by the hon. Member for Twickenham and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) that caseworkers should not become hardened to the stories of asylum seekers; indeed their physical and mental health should be monitored regularly.
There appear to be so many failures when cases are assessed, with some of the charges being levelled including: failure to apply the correct standard of proof for asylum claims; caseworkers replacing the expert opinion of a clinician with their own; and taking the wrong approach to medical evidence when assessing the credibility of the asylum claim. That will likely come as no surprise, unfortunately, to any Member who has dealt with an asylum case. There certainly seem to be failings in how asylum seekers are dealt with. I appreciate that there are some fantastic people working for the Home Office, dealing with incredibly difficult histories and vulnerable people. From my experience, however, there certainly seem to be occasions when the process is lacking in fairness and dignity. At the core of the problem seems to be bad practice. I certainly hope that the Minister will seriously address that when responding.
The chief executive of Freedom from Torture has said:
“Most of the bad practice revealed in our research clearly contravenes Home Office policy guidance for asylum caseworkers on the correct treatment of medical evidence of torture. The Home Office has an excellent training programme to help caseworkers implement this policy correctly but has never rolled it out.”
Home Office employees should be adequately resourced to carry out their duties in a humane manner and training should be the cornerstone of that. That training is crucial if guidance is to be appropriately followed.
In a joint letter to the immigration and border policy directorate, signatories from several organisations including Medical Justice, Liberty, the UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group and Women for Refugee Women expressed concern that, in their experience, Home Office caseworkers do not regularly or properly apply the full rigour of guidance in relation to the “very exceptional circumstances” for detention of vulnerable individuals. Those detained individuals are being failed by the system.
The SNP shares the Scottish Refugee Council’s concerns about short-term holding facilities
“which have consistently received poor inspection reports by HM inspectorate of prisons and have been deemed unsafe for women.”
Perhaps the Minister in response would care to address that point and the application of guidance in that regard.
The SNP believes that the Home Office also needs to drop its proposals on the definition of torture for asylum seekers, which further erode safeguards for torture survivors, and institute a process that properly protects vulnerable detainees. The fact that the most recent change in the Home Office rules on definition of torture in December was rejected by the courts after 21 days is yet another example of the Government’s disregard for the treatment of asylum seekers in their pursuit of toxic policies toward refugees.
It is utterly shameful that that was introduced despite mounting criticism of the welfare of vulnerable people in detention, including in the Shaw report, which the Government have yet to respond to. The direction of travel is particularly worrying; the detention of vulnerable people used to happen only in very exceptional circumstances, but now there is guidance that the Home Office should seek to balance risk of harm in detention against the individual’s immigration factors. Again, the principles of fairness and dignity appear to have been all but discarded.
In summary, I would appreciate it if the Minister could address the following. Why are statistics on the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations not available? Will the Home Office commit to rectifying that? An investigation needs to happen on the allegations of bad practice among Home Office caseworkers. Will he also address the reasons why the training programme has not been rolled out and the Home Office’s intentions in that regard, and the issues with applying guidance on detention of vulnerable individuals?
As the hon. Member for Harrow West stated, the UK takes allegations of torture seriously. It would be good if the Minister would consult with his Foreign Office colleagues on torture happening around the globe and ask them to use their influence positively to try to change the thinking of some of the worst perpetrators of torture throughout the world.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) on the persuasive case she made at the start and on bringing the subject to the House today. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), the hon. Members for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) and for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) on their speeches, too.
As we have seen in the debate, all political parties are united in their complete rejection of torture and mistreatment. Torture is illegal and it is internationally banned. When allegations are made, it is vital that they are fully investigated and that the public have confidence in the process and its outcome. In this Parliament we have seen the pressure mounted by the British Parliament contribute to Shaker Aamer’s release. It is therefore vital that, while we preach that there is no place for torture or mistreatment of detainees abroad, that applies at home to people on British soil. We have moral and legal obligations to asylum seekers. In order to stop torture from happening around the world, it is crucial that Britain sets an example as a country that respects and upholds its human rights commitments.
While the Opposition have a proud record of standing up for the rights of everyone, there are certain slightly worrying developments in the current Government that make their commitment to human rights look a bit more questionable. When the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office appeared before the Foreign Affairs Committee, he said that human rights were
“not one of our top priorities.”
That is quite a frightening statement; ethics should be on the Foreign Office’s map. I think that he was attacked by the hon. Member for Reigate (Crispin Blunt) for making that statement. Britain’s voice in the world is a reflection not only of our economic prowess but of the moral leadership that we demonstrate on human rights. If they are no longer a top priority, we cannot lecture the rest of the world about the rule of law and freedoms and rights that every human being is entitled to.
I am relieved and pleased that the contract between the Ministry of Justice and Saudi Arabia to build a prison was cancelled in the end. I understand that the then Foreign Secretary, who is now the Chancellor, accused the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) of being naive on that matter, which gives the impression that perhaps some Government Members do not want to prioritise human rights, which, by extension, include subjects such as torture.
Dr Mathias
I was very happy with the cross-party support at the November presentation of the “Proving Torture” report. I give credit to the Queen’s Counsels from the hon. Lady’s party, who were arm in arm with similar Members from my party. I believe that this has cross-party support from both Back-Bench and Front-Bench Members.
Dr Huq
I do not doubt the hon. Lady’s commitment to human rights, given everything she has said on them in the Chamber. The Home Secretary is due to visit Saudi Arabia later this month; it will be interesting to see if she will use that opportunity to challenge one of our “closest allies” on some of the less palatable aspects of its record on human rights and torture. At a recent Prime Minister’s Question Time, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister to condemn President Trump’s comments on torture. He has supported things like hooding, which is sensory deprivation, stress positioning and waterboarding, which the hon. Lady mentioned. President Trump seems to have a gung-ho attitude to those and does not equate them with torture. I would like to hear stronger statements from our Prime Minister condemning those comments.
Dr Huq
I have limited time and the hon. Gentleman spoke at length earlier; I will be happy to speak to him afterwards. I think any special relationship should also be friendly. We can be a critical friend to countries and point these things out; maybe not holding their hand but holding them to account in some way. We are debating the UK asylum system and not any of these other people, so I will get back to that.
We all seem to have seen the same figures from Freedom from Torture’s “Proving Torture” report. Other Members have made those points very graphically. We have to consider the moral dimension to this, as well as our legal obligations; we are talking about protection for the most vulnerable in our society. The statistic just quoted was that 27% of adult forced migrants living in high-income countries have survived torture in their country of origin, yet we continually hear stories of their humiliating treatment when they seek to prove it. The standard of proof seems to be very high, and it is often confusing when they have to prove what happened to them. It is a chicken and egg situation. There is little other than medical evidence to prove their torture, but it is nigh on impossible after the fact to prove that it was torture, even when extensive medical evidence is presented; we hear that medical evidence is often disregarded, mistreated, misinterpreted or ignored by the Home Office. It would be good to hear the Minister clarify how that can be tightened up.
Hon. Members also quoted the fact that 76% of such cases that are unsuccessful are overturned on appeal, which is alarmingly high when compared to just 30% of standard asylum cases and indicates a serious problem in the Home Office’s handling of asylum claims. As the hon. Member for Twickenham pointed out, that requires correction by a judge in a specialist immigration tribunal, which comes at considerable cost to the public purse—UK taxpayers.
Not only is it International Women’s Day next week but apparently March is also International Women’s Month, so it is worth pointing out that rape is shockingly not recognised as torture for women asylum seekers. I think that will come as a surprise to many hon. Members. Women remain particularly vulnerable to deportation. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West referred to legal aid for asylum cases; I know that that is probably another debate for another day, but I flag it up as it is connected to this debate. I have also had constituents from Sri Lanka pressing me. There was a debate in this place last week that I was unable to attend, but I am glad that my hon. Friend expressed his concern about the Sri Lankan Government’s torture record and that we should treat asylum seekers from that country with the respect that they deserve.
I wanted to be brief, but while I am here I will flag up my concern that we may be led out of the European Court of Human Rights; I believe that the plan has been shelved for this Parliament, but it could still happen. It is a live policy.
Dr Huq
I have said that I will press on without interventions on this occasion. The ECHR is one of the most effective torture prevention tools in history, and it was drafted by British lawyers, including Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, then a Conservative Member of Parliament. Having our own, unilateral British bill of rights seems to send the signal to countries with questionable human rights records, such as Russia and Turkey, that international human rights obligations can be shirked or are an optional extra. It also undermines the Government’s foreign policy objective of championing a rules-based international system.
I know that the Minister has received a lot of questions from other hon. Members, but I have one for him. I think the systematic decision-making errors that we keep hearing about in these cases are a matter of quality control and auditing. Will the Minister reaffirm the UK’s position as a champion for the absolute ban on torture? I am optimistic that he will. Will he also implement immediate measures to improve decision making in asylum claims made by survivors of torture to address those weaknesses?
We live in tumultuous times of turmoil and turbulence, when the only predictable thing is unpredictability. The UK has a proud history of standing up for human rights and taking care of people in need, and it has never been more important to reaffirm that commitment and make sure that it works in practice.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Robert Goodwill)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) for raising these important matters. It is a subject that she rightly says is a global issue, and one which, aside from the academic and clinical debates, has profound human consequences for individual survivors of torture. I am proud to share this Chamber with all colleagues who have spoken today, although I take exception to the use of the word “toxic” by the Scottish National party spokesperson when describing the Government’s policy; I certainly do not recognise that.
I will restate the Government’s position: torture is one of the most abhorrent violations of human rights and human dignity, and we unreservedly condemn its use as a matter of fundamental principle. The Prime Minister and the Leader of the House have made that point quite recently. The United Kingdom Government will continue to raise concerns about such flagrant abuses of human rights with relevant foreign Governments at every opportunity. I commend the work of organisations that support survivors of torture, and I believe our policy on handling asylum claims based on torture provides effective protection to those who need it.
All asylum claims lodged in the United Kingdom, including those involving claims of past torture, are carefully considered on their individual merits. Decision makers are fully aware of the importance of making the right decision and the consequences of refusing those who need protection. I assure hon. Members that such decisions are not taken without full consideration. Our published policy on considering asylum claims in which torture is raised and, in particular, when medical evidence is also provided is very clear and requires decision makers to approach such cases with sensitivity, to allow reasonable time for medical evidence relevant to the decision to be provided, and to carefully consider such evidence to reach an informed decision.
Mr Gareth Thomas
Is the Minister satisfied that all asylum caseworkers in the Home Office at the moment have received the full appropriate training for judging whether or not torture has occurred and therefore whether asylum should be granted?
Mr Goodwill
In an area such as this, one can never be satisfied, because that sounds like complacency. Indeed, staff development and training is something we constantly have under review. Some of the points made in this debate show that we do not always get it right. Tribute was paid, I think by the hon. Gentleman himself, to the staff who do this work. It is often a thankless task, and they do it with a degree of professionalism that we can all admire.
Mr Thomas
The Minister will be aware that I referenced a full-day training module that was rolled out to some asylum caseworkers, but not all, when the last asylum policy instruction was issued in 2014. Will he now instruct the relevant civil servant to ensure that all asylum caseworkers benefit from that full-day training module?
Mr Goodwill
I absolutely agree that it is important that staff get the relevant training. It is also important that staff with the most experience are directed to the cases where their experience can be most brought to bear. I will continue to engage with officials to ensure we are doing that as well as we can. I take this very seriously indeed.
When considering asylum claims made in the UK, it is absolutely right that we offer protection to those who face torture on return to their country. However, that does not mean that all survivors of past torture will automatically qualify for protection. An individual needs to show there is a real risk of serious harm or persecution on return to their country. In some cases, the situation in a country can become normalised and change. We welcome it when conflict finishes or particular situations are resolved in countries around the world.
I appreciate concerns about decision quality and how we consider medical evidence in practice, which was highlighted in the Freedom from Torture report published last year. However, I would point out that the sample of cases in that report represents less than 1% of all asylum decisions made last year, and some of the cases used are nearly three years old. That does not mean that I do not take those individual cases very seriously. I must stress that Home Office officials are committed to approaching cases involving allegations of torture with the utmost sensitivity.
My officials have also recently met Freedom from Torture representatives. While we believe the findings in the report are not representative of the wider asylum system, we are nevertheless taking steps to further improve the decision-making process. That will include forming a specialised team who will review and sign off all cases where a medical report is provided. We are also reviewing the training programme delivered to new decision makers. I can assure Members that we are committed to getting decisions right the first time and to working with expert organisations such as Freedom from Torture to ensure that survivors of torture get the support they need.
Mr Alistair Carmichael
I am pleased to hear about the engagement with Freedom from Torture, and I encourage the Minister to consider that. I think that Freedom from Torture acknowledged when it launched the report that it was a small sample of cases. Its finding that 76% of asylum cases involving torture were granted on appeal is something that the Minister’s Department should be able to confirm or contradict. Is he able to do so?
Mr Goodwill
I will see what stats we have on that. I am aware that where there are judicial reviews against us in such cases, we win virtually every one—I think the last figures I saw showed that we have lost 45 cases out of 18,000. It is not always the case that cases brought to us are successful.
The right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) mentioned medical reports from specialists. We do not restrict who can provide a medical report for the purposes of submitting evidence in support of an asylum claim. There are accepted international legal standards, as set out in the Istanbul protocol, “Manual on the Effective Investigation and Documentation of Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment”, which applies to the documentation of torture. We believe it is appropriate that, as a minimum, those guidelines are followed in preparing reports.
All asylum decision makers receive extensive training on how to consider asylum claims. That includes vicarious trauma training for caseworkers, to guard against hardening. We are well aware of how people can become—dare I say—used to hearing stories such as these, which is really worrying. As previously highlighted, we are committed to continuous improvement.
Let me be clear: torture has no place anywhere in the world, and we must do all we can to stamp it out. The UK Government consistently raise concerns about the use of torture, enforced disappearances and alleged police abuses, and will continue to do so. I am sure Members will be aware that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), regularly raises human rights concerns in his dealings with overseas Governments and officials.
My hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham raised the position of the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister’s position is clear: the UK stands firmly against the use of torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, and so-called enhanced interrogation techniques. In no circumstances would we consider approving a request from a foreign Government to conduct an extraordinary rendition through the UK or one of our overseas territories.
Mr Gareth Thomas
I appreciate the Minister giving way again. Does he accept that torture is still a significant problem in Sri Lanka?
Mr Goodwill
That question is probably better directed to the Foreign Office. I know that the situation is much improved in Sri Lanka, which we welcome, but the hon. Gentleman might have evidence that he wishes to make available to Foreign Office Ministers, so that they are aware of it. I am not fully briefed on the situation in Sri Lanka. I know things are improving, which is good news, but from the points he has made, we know there is still some way to go.
We must support those in need of protection to claim asylum in the first safe country they reach. That is the fastest route to safety. International obligations under the refugee convention do not require us to consider claims made outside the UK, but we continue to support refugees in-region through our substantial aid contributions and resettlement schemes.
I will say a few words about the background of our “adults at risk” policy. The adults at risk in immigration detention policy came into force on 12 September and was accompanied by detailed caseworker guidance, following the laying of statutory guidance in Parliament. The policy is based on balancing the risk of considerations against immigration factors and on detaining vulnerable individuals only when the immigration factors outweigh the immigration considerations in any given case. It is part of the Government’s response to Stephen Shaw’s review of the welfare of vulnerable people in detention.
Measures put in place under the Immigration Act 2016, along with a new policy on adults at risk in detention and other improvements to casework processes, represent a comprehensive package of safeguards for all vulnerable detainees in the immigration system, including pregnant women. Those measures have been developed in response to Stephen Shaw’s independent review of detainee welfare. Indeed, I have made a point of visiting some of our immigration removal centres to see the conditions there. I am well aware that many people associate detention with the torture they have had inflicted upon them, and therefore there is a concern that people will see detention as bringing back the terrible experiences they have had.
Mr Goodwill
Certainly. We get a number of requests. I know there has also been some discussion with the Home Affairs Committee, and we are particularly keen to prioritise that visit if we can, because it is important that the Committee sees that as part of its work. However, I will look at that request and see what we can do to accelerate it.
I want to make it absolutely clear that where people are detained, it is for the minimum time possible. The dignity and welfare of those in our care is of the utmost importance. I would like to leave a few minutes for my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham to sum up, so I will make a final comment. We are clear that the claims of those who seek asylum in the UK will be carefully considered by well-trained and conscientious decision makers, who are expected to take into account all available evidence to reach an informed decision.
Margaret Ferrier
I would like to repeat the question I asked earlier about the number of asylum claims involving torture allegations. There is no log of that at the moment. Will the Minister give a clear guarantee that he will look at that and put in place a log, so that we know how many asylum claims involve torture allegations?
Mr Goodwill
Interestingly, I have asked the same question myself, and the answer is not quite as simple as it may seem, because in some cases multiple reasons are given for an asylum claim, and in other cases in which asylum has been refused on one ground, a new ground has then been put forward. Sometimes the figures are not quite as easily come to as perhaps we would like. I will certainly see what I can do, but I have been asking the same question myself and have been told, “It isn’t as simple, Minister, as you would like to think.” There are often quite complex cases involving a number of different reasons that may have been submitted at different times during the legal process.
Mr Alistair Carmichael
I sense that the Minister is perhaps trying to get to his peroration, but if I may, I shall take advantage of the time remaining. In the course of my remarks, I referred to the Belhaj case. I am mindful of all the strictures on that, but does the Minister agree that it is in the national interest now, given the judgment of the Supreme Court, that we have an early resolution of it?
Mr Goodwill
I am always very cautious about commenting on specific cases. The right hon. Gentleman is smiling, probably because he is getting the answer that he expected, but he has certainly raised the issue, and it is particularly important that we ensure that all the legal processes that we are involved in are conducted in the best interests of the taxpayer and the best interests of those who are vulnerable and need our support.
We are clear, as we make these informed decisions, that those who would face torture if returned will be granted protection here in the UK. I believe that our current policy delivers on these important goals: it supports those genuinely in need of protection in the UK because they are at risk of torture if returned, and it is absolutely consistent with our international obligations.
Dr Mathias
I thank everyone who has taken part for such a wide-ranging discussion. I appreciate every single contribution.
I express particular thanks to the Minister for his sensitivity and clarity. I note that, on behalf of the Government, he unreservedly condemns the use of torture. I am very grateful to him for being clear about not using even British overseas territories for rendition. I am sure that we will get equally clear statements from the Government about complicity.
The Minister said that the published policy was clear. I hope that he will take back to the Department the information from all hon. Members present that we feel that, in practice, it is lacking. That is a cross-party message. I applaud the fact that the Minister will continue to engage with officials and that he is concerned about the quality of decision making. I reiterate what was said by other hon. Members and, in particular, the point made by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) that we need an audit. We need quality assurance in the Department, and an audit.
Mr Goodwill
I would not go so far as to say I was concerned. I was just making the point that there is always room for improvement in this type of process.
Dr Mathias
I appreciate the Minister’s clarity and I urge the Home Office to do a proper audit of asylum claims in which torture is involved or suspected. I am glad that the Minister acknowledges the issue of case hardening, but a strategy needs to be in place. There was mention of claims made outside the UK. The point is that we can be a global leader. We might be able to send our experts and, hopefully, Home Office caseworkers; if they improve their expertise, we can then also guide other countries.
I pay credit to the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), who expressed concern for constituents with a background in Sri Lanka, which is still of exceptional concern. Unfortunately, I do not believe that we have heard today that the full day’s training has been rolled out; that does not appear to be the case.
I appreciate the words of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat). I absolutely agree that the right to be free from the experience of torture is an unqualified right; indeed, it is an inalienable, non-derogable right. The point was very well made that we realise in this country that torture actually makes us more vulnerable.
I do not know how serious the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) was, but I think it was a good point that on every desk in the Home Office and Foreign Office should be the words: “We do not sanction torture and are not involved in it”. I agree with him on that. He raised a very important point about the ethics of, and clarity about, sharing intelligence with countries that practise torture. I think that shows that we need more time for this debate—I am sure that the Backbench Business Committee will take note of that today. Again, we need auditing; we need statistics.
As the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) said, Foreign Office statements should be clear. I do have some disagreements with the hon. Lady. I do not believe that we should be lecturing the rest of the world; I believe we should be engaging with them and leading. I have really valued the cross-party tone of the debate and I value the Minister’s sensitivity. I am sorry, because I have a lot of respect for the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton, but on these policy matters, I do not believe that we will be successful, as a House of Commons, by trying to exacerbate any divisions. Apart from that contribution, I think we have power in this debate.
My final point is to show how the UK leads in this world where torture exists. We beat torture by rehabilitating people and making them full members of our community. I pay respect to those in the Public Gallery. You will not be able to know which one of those people has been tortured, because they are a full member of, and contributing valuably to, our community.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered UK policy on torture and the treatment of asylum claims.
Written Statements
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Modern Languages/Biblical Hebrew
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)
The Government are tomorrow publishing subject content for AS and A-levels in a range of languages with smaller cohorts. This fulfils the commitment made in 2015 to work with the exam boards to ensure the continuation of these qualifications.
The reformed GCSE content for modern foreign languages, published in 2014, is suitable for all the modern languages which have been redeveloped as part of the GCSE review process. These are: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Japanese, modern Greek, modern Hebrew, Polish, Panjabi, Russian, Spanish and Urdu. The exam boards have either already developed specifications for these GCSEs, or are currently doing so.
At A-level, we have worked with the exam boards to develop specific content for modern languages with smaller cohorts. These languages are named in the content as follows: Arabic, Bengali, Gujarati, modern Greek, modern Hebrew, Japanese, Panjabi, Persian, Portuguese, Polish, Turkish and Urdu.
The content for modern languages with smaller cohorts is largely identical to the reformed A-level (and AS) content which applies to French, German, Spanish, Chinese, Italian and Russian. This was developed by the independent A-Level Content Advisory Board (ALCAB), appointed by the Russell Group to meet the expectations of higher education, and was published in 2015.
This content for modern languages with smaller cohorts addresses the risks associated with examinations for smaller numbers of candidates, including the challenges of recruiting specialist examiners. The requirement to demonstrate speaking skills is not included in the content, which is consistent with current AS and A-level qualifications in the relevant languages—with the single exception of Urdu (in which speaking skills are currently examined). We have, however, included a clarification that specifications should encourage the development of speaking skills, although those skills will not be formally examined. To secure a level of rigour which is comparable for all modern languages, the Government are introducing a new requirement for modern languages with smaller cohorts. The proposed content requires students to apply language skills (reading, writing and listening) in combination, by responding to spoken and written sources addressing common subject matter.
The A-level (and AS) content for modern languages with smaller cohorts will apply to courses beginning in September 2018. The current specifications for these languages will remain available for courses beginning in September 2017.
The Government are also publishing tomorrow revisions to the ancient languages subject content, at both GCSE and AS/A-level. This was first published in 2014, to apply to all ancient languages. For Biblical Hebrew, however, it has become evident that certain aspects of that content could not apply directly, or would be inappropriate at this level of study. To clarify how particular requirements will apply to Biblical Hebrew, and whether any requirements will not apply, we have worked with independent subject experts and others with a close interest in the subject. The revised content maintains the overall level of demand of the content while ensuring clarity as to how certain requirements should be met in Biblical Hebrew specifications.
[HCWS515]
Agriculture and Fisheries Council
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
The Agriculture and Fisheries Council will take place on 6 March in Brussels. I will represent the United Kingdom.
As the provisional agenda currently stands, the primary focus of the Council will be an exchange of views on a regulation establishing a multi-annual plan for small pelagic species in the Adriatic sea.
There will also be an exchange of views on the future of the common agricultural policy post-2020.
There are currently five items scheduled under “any other business”:
Our Ocean conference —An Ocean for Life (Malta, 5 and 6 October 2017) (tabled by the Commission).
G20 Agriculture Ministers’ conference (Berlin, 22 January 2017) (tabled by the German delegation).
European Solidarity Corps (tabled by the Commission).
Dual quality foodstuffs (tabled by the Slovakian delegation).
Update on the animal welfare platform (tabled by the Commission).
Until exit negotiations are concluded, the UK remains a full member of the European Union and all the rights and obligations of EU membership remain in force. The outcome of these negotiations will determine the future shape of a new UK-EU partnership.
[HCWS513]
General Affairs Council
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Mr David Jones)
The General Affairs Council (GAC) on 7 March 2017 is expected to focus on: resolutions, decisions and opinions adopted by the European Parliament; preparation of the March European Council from 9 and 10 March 2017; European semester and; inter-institutional agreement on “better law-making”.
Resolutions, decisions and opinions adopted by the European Parliament
The presidency will outline the resolutions, decisions and opinions adopted by the European Parliament (EP) at its plenary sessions of 13-16 February 2017.
Preparation of the March European Council from 9 and 10 March 2017
The presidency will present its draft conclusions on the agenda for the March European Council. The agenda will include: jobs, growth and competitiveness; external security and defence; migration; and external relations, focusing on the western Balkans. There will also be two procedural items on the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) and the election of the President of the European Council.
European semester
The presentation on the European semester is expected to cover: the priorities for the 2017 semester; the implementation of reforms undertaken by member states in response to their country-specific recommendations; and the endorsement of recommendations on the economic policy of the euro area.
Inter-institutional agreement on “better law-making”
Information is expected on the “joint declaration on inter-institutional priorities” signed by the Presidents of the European Council, European Commission and European Parliament in December 2016. The presidency will also present an overview on legislative programming and the latest on Commission proposals regarding delegated and implementing Acts.
[HCWS514]
Foreign Affairs Council
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
My right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and the Secretary of State for Defence will attend the Foreign Affairs Council (Foreign and Defence Ministers) on 6 March. The Foreign Affairs Council will be chaired by the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini. The meeting will be held in Brussels.
Foreign Affairs Council
The morning will start with a joint session for Foreign and Defence Ministers on defence. The foreign policy agenda will feature western Balkans, migration, Egypt and the middle east peace process.
Defence
Ahead of the joint session, Defence Ministers will discuss the strategic outlook for the EU’s common security and defence policy (CSDP). EU Foreign and Defence Ministers will then review the implementation of the December European Council package on defence. The discussion and conclusions will cover: improving the functioning of non-executive military (training) missions through the establishment of a military planning and conduct capability (MPCC); permanent structured co-operation (PESCO) for better joint capability development; and the proposed co-ordinated annual review on defence (CARD).
Western Balkans
Ahead of discussion on the western Balkans at the March European Council, HRVP Mogherini will brief Ministers on her forthcoming regional tour and update the Council on the EU-facilitated Kosovo-Serbia dialogue. In her 17 January speech, the Prime Minister identified the western Balkans as a region in which the UK has played and will continue to play an active role in promoting European security.
Migration
There may be a discussion on migration following the Valletta senior official meeting on 8-9 February which reviewed progress against the Valletta action plan. The UK used its chairmanship of the Khartoum process in 2016 to encourage implementation of the Valletta action plan to tackle unmanaged migration flows from the horn of Africa. The UK provided a total of £4 billion in aid for Africa in 2015-16, with an increasing focus on jobs and livelihoods.
Egypt
Foreign Minister Shoukry will attend the lunch discussion where Ministers will discuss Egypt’s relationship with the EU and role in the region. Discussions are expected to cover Egypt’s political and human rights situation, including the growing restrictions on civil society. Ministers are also likely to discuss how the EU can best help strengthen Egypt’s internal security, co-operate on bringing stability to Libya, and work together on combating illegal migration in the region.
Middle east peace process
Ministers will discuss developments on the middle east peace process (MEPP) and are likely to discuss obstacles to peace, including incitement, terrorism, demolitions and recent settlement announcements.
[HCWS516]
Policing
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Brandon Lewis)
I want to update the House on work by the police to improve transparency on how they use force and on their use of conductive energy devices, commonly known as Taser.
In October 2014, the former Home Secretary commissioned the then national policing lead for conflict management, Chief Constable David Shaw, to carry out an in-depth review of the data that should be recorded and published every time significant force is used by the police. This formed part of a range of work focused on improving the way the police interact with people, in particular vulnerable people, those with mental health issues, and black and minority ethnic groups. A key driver has been to ensure transparency and accountability on the police use of sensitive powers.
I am pleased to update the House on the significant progress made, supported by a diverse range of partners including Amnesty International and BMH UK. Chief Constable David Shaw’s review made a number of recommendations, which set out that the police should publish a range of key information in respect of every serious use of force, including the ethnicity, age, location and outcome. The information should report on the situations when physical restraint is used, as well as the type of equipment, such as handcuffs, batons, sprays and conductive energy devices.
The recommendations made by Chief Constable Shaw were agreed by the former Home Secretary, and work has since been undertaken to ensure all police forces are ready for a new data collection system beginning on 1 April 2017. All forces will publish the data recorded locally on a quarterly basis, with a subset of the key information collected provided to the Home Office as part of the annual data requirement for 2017-18.
This data collection will be a significant factor in improving public trust and confidence in the police use of force. Improved transparency will contribute to delivering a real commitment on behalf of the police to respond to the genuine concerns raised by the public.
For the first time, these data will allow meaningful comparison across the range of techniques and tactics used by the police, and this should in time directly influence and strengthen police training, and operational decisions around the most appropriate tactics and equipment available where needed. It will allow scrutiny of why force is being used, which will provide invaluable insight, particularly in respect of minority and vulnerable groups, and in locations of concern, such as hospitals, mental health institutions and custody cells.
The wide range of data collected will also include information on injuries suffered, by the subject and also by the officers concerned. Our police forces deal with volatile and potentially dangerous situations every day, and these data will allow us to better understand the need for appropriate, justifiable use of force, as well as providing evidence of the tactics and techniques that may be more or less likely to result in injury in different circumstances.
This work is a real step forward. I am particularly pleased with the progress made to ensure the police and the public have the information needed to rightly scrutinise how the use of force is deployed and I am proud that this level of reporting is unmatched anywhere in the world.
This is particularly fitting today as I would also like to inform the House of the Home Secretary’s decision to authorise a new conductive energy device (CED), Taser International’s Taser X2, for use by police forces in England and Wales. This decision is in response to the formal request from the national policing lead, DAC Neil Basu, on behalf of the police in England and Wales following the end of production of the existing authorised device, the Taser X26, and an open and transparent procurement exercise to identify a replacement.
This Government are committed to giving the police the tools they need to do their job effectively, and where modern specialist equipment like CEDs are used, to ensure our officers have access to the best and most appropriate technology. The decision to authorise the Taser X2 follows stringent consideration of strategic, ethical, operational and societal issues, including an assessment of environmental factors. As part of this process, a full technical evaluation of the Taser X2 has been carried out. The results of this evaluation, as well as user handling trials, and training and guidance materials, were submitted for independent medical assessment by the Scientific Advisory Committee on the medical implications of less-lethal weapons (SACMILL). The Committee has provided a medical statement on the Taser X2 and which confirms that when used by trained operators in accordance with UK policy and guidance, the medical implications of the Taser X2 are in line with those expected of a less lethal weapon of this type.
The decision to authorise the Taser X2 for use by the police also marks the award of a commercial contract with Taser International’s UK distributor, Axon Public Safety Ltd. A new national framework agreement will shortly be in place, subject to a 10-day standstill period.
A copy of the use of force data review can be found in the Library of the House, and I will ensure that SACMILL’s medical statement is placed there and on gov.uk.
[HCWS517]
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for Employment (Damian Hinds)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council will take place on 3 March in Brussels. I will be representing the UK.
The Council will be invited to an orientation debate on the proposal for a regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council amending regulation 883 on the co-ordination of social security systems and regulation 987 laying down the procedure for implementing regulation 883. The Council will also be invited to a policy debate on the European semester and the implementation of country-specific recommendations.
The Council will be invited to adopt draft Council conclusions on the 2017 annual growth survey and joint employment report, and to adopt the draft joint employment reports. As part of this, the Commission will also present the 2017 country reports, published 22 February. The Council will be invited to adopt the draft Council conclusions on enhancing the skills of women and men in the EU labour market.
There will be a joint presentation by the Commission and the presidency on the tripartite social summit.
Under any other business, there will be information from the Commission about the communication on modernisation of the EU occupational safety and health legislation and policy, and information in follow up to their recent communication on investing in Europe’s youth. There will be information from the presidency on the state of play of the legislative proposal on posting of workers. The Chairs of the Employment Committee (EMCO) and the Social Protection Committee (SPC) will provide information on their respective work programmes for 2017. There will be information from the European Institute for Gender Equality on the key findings of their study titled “Economic benefits of gender equality in the EU”. The Portuguese delegation will provide information on the upcoming UNECE international conference “A sustainable society for all ages: Realising the potential of living longer” (Lisbon, 21 and 22 September 2017).
[HCWS512]
National Employment Savings Trust
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Pensions (Richard Harrington)
From 1 April 2017, changes to the National Employment Savings Trust Order 2010 and to the National Employment Savings Trust (NEST) rules will allow individual and bulk transfers into and out of the scheme in prescribed circumstances. These changes will help people who wish to consolidate their savings with NEST or with other pension providers, which is critical to reducing costs in pension schemes and avoiding large numbers of small scattered pots, often forgotten about by savers and hard to trace.
I can now confirm the charge structure that will relate to such transfers. Under the determination made by the previous Government, the trustee of NEST makes an annual charge on funds under management. This has been set by the trustee at 0.3%. In addition, to help cover the set up costs, the trustee makes a charge on contributions into the scheme from both employers and employees. This has been set by the trustee at 1.8%.
Introducing a new type of charge for transfers in would add complexity for members and be inconsistent with the Government’s policy on charges. Therefore the existing contribution charge and annual management charge will apply to funds transferred into NEST. The trustee will set the level of these charges as they apply to transferred funds.
Levying a 1.8% contribution charge in these circumstances would be punitive for members and would discourage pot consolidation. Charges on transfers in are the exception in modern pension schemes and our policy is to discourage such charges. Therefore, I expect the contribution charge that will apply to transfers to be less than 1.8% and place no lower bounds on its level, which is to be set by the trustee with due regard to the impact on members and scheme finances. The trustee will also be able to set a minimum transfer value.
In the case of bulk transfers, the trustee will also have the option of recovering the costs of administering the transfer from the employer.
The Government aim to achieve a balance between delivering good value to NEST’s members, managing impacts on the wider pensions industry and ensuring affordability for the taxpayer. I have been assured by the trustee that, in setting the level of the charges to apply to transfers, it will take into account its target market and public service obligations and am putting in place arrangements to enable me to keep this under review.
[HCWS511]
House of Lords
Short-Term Letting for Holiday Purposes
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of short-term letting of residential flats for holiday purposes contrary to the terms of the lease; and whether they plan to introduce measures similar to the restrictions introduced in New York and Berlin.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and declare my interest, which is in the written register.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, the Government support the shared economy and have no plans to introduce a blanket ban on whole-property listings. London boroughs can already apply to the Secretary of State for consent to restrict short-term letting in a particular area where necessary. We welcome Airbnb’s recent decision to amend its systems so that entire-home listings in London are not available for more than 90 nights in any given year without appropriate planning permission.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes
I thank the Minister for that reply, but is he aware that many—possibly even most—Airbnb lettings are of properties which are not allowed to be let on a short-term basis, as they are in long-term residential blocks of flats? In New York, these short-term lets are no longer allowed in any block which is long-term residential, because of the degree of disruption. Is he further aware that seven London boroughs have called for legislation on this issue?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, taking up the very relevant last point first, London boroughs have the power—indeed, the responsibility—to enforce that in their areas. The matter rests with local authorities if hosts and tenants are breaking the law on the 90-day limit—not 90 consecutive days but 90 days in any given year; they have that power. There are restrictions in New York, but it is still possible to operate there, albeit within different limits from those in London.
Lord Clark of Windermere (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister realise that the short-term holiday lets referred to in the Question are distorting the longer-term letting market in not only heavily urbanised areas but in some of the most attractive parts of the country? Is he aware how attractive this is? A modest house without a view of a lake or a hill can be let in high season for more than £3,000 a week in the Lake District National Park. There is no incentive for landlords to rent out houses to local people or people who want to work in the area on a long-term basis.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I am aware that outside London there are undoubtedly many possibilities for the sort of let the noble Lord describes. He cited the Lake District, and there are other areas such as Bath, the Cotswolds, Oxford and Cambridge.
I am meeting Airbnb to discuss its response to the concerns expressed, which has been favourable. There are other providers as well, which I will be seeking to speak to. There are provisions in leases that can be enforced by landlords; where appropriate, there are provisions on statutory nuisance and private nuisance; and I come back to the point that within London, although not outside, the boroughs can act themselves.
Lord Tope (LD)
My Lords, I am pleased that the Minister is going to meet Airbnb, which is, I guess, the market leader. Is he aware that this is a significant problem in parts of central London? For instance, research by central London amenity societies shows that 20% of housing stock has been lost; indeed, in some blocks of flats the figure is as high as 80%. Is the answer a tough licensing regime which includes data-sharing, an opportunity to call out on problems and so on? Will he discuss all these issues when he meets Airbnb and report back to the House on the outcome?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, as I have indicated, within London, which the noble Lord cited, there are restrictions already, so I do not believe that this is distorting the market in the way he suggests because there is that 90-day limit. I will certainly be discussing these matters when I meet Airbnb, and in all fairness to it, it has responded to concerns and ensured that its listings make absolutely clear what the law is and that it is operating within it. I do not think we can ask for more than that.
Baroness Hooper (Con)
My Lords, regarding the tourist industry, is it not unfair that hotels and other licensed premises are subject to business rates, which are due for a great rise, whereas Airbnb premises and, I understand, Uber escape them? Are the Government planning to adjust this situation?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, as my noble friend will be aware, we discussed business rates yesterday and we are looking at the position of businesses that have had steep increases. Many hotels around the country have not had steep increases and, indeed, some will have experienced a fall in business rates. In answer to the general point, we also need to be aware that many consumers benefit from this. This is very popular, as is evidenced by the fact that it throws up some concerns. We have to consider the matter in a balanced way.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
What steps does the Inland Revenue take to collect tax from the owners of properties that are let out on this basis, including capital gains tax, where a property is disposed of after such use?
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, the taxation rules would apply in the normal way. Where there is a capital gain, the owner of the property would be responsible for that in the normal way, subject to reliefs, and the owner would be responsible for schedular income tax in the normal way.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
The Minister said that local authorities can enforce the law. These cases cost thousands of pounds. Why should the council tax payer pick up the bill? Surely there has to be another solution.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, under the Deregulation Act there is responsibility for enforcing this against a particular owner of a property. Initially, of course, there would be a discussion—I do not suppose that the first thing that happens is that it ends up in court—but for those defying the law, there is potentially a £20,000 fine on summary conviction and an unlimited fine on indictment, which would be a considerable incentive to obey the law. That is what we are finding in the great bulk of cases.
Baroness O'Cathain (Con)
My Lords, surely the great growth element in our economy is tourism. Families coming from abroad have much more opportunity to see things in London if they can get reasonably cheap bed and breakfast or Airbnb. To bring a family of three children and their parents to London for a week would cost an enormous amount, whereas this way, they can at least have reasonably priced accommodation and then spend the money in other areas.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very material point. I have certainly spoken to people from overseas who have used Airbnb in London and had fantastic experiences. Largely, it operates very effectively and without concern. There are some concerns, which I understand, and I know my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes has been relentless in pursuing some of the issues. However, I come back to the point that there are means of enforcement—through the local authority, statutory nuisance provisions and provisions in leases—and I encourage tenants to get on to their landlords, where appropriate, to make sure they are enforcing their leases.
HMS “Queen Elizabeth”
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Touhig
To ask Her Majesty’s Government on what date the aircraft carrier HMS “Queen Elizabeth” will begin sea trials.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)
My Lords, HMS “Queen Elizabeth” is currently undertaking harbour trials as part of her test and integration phase. Sea trials will begin on successful completion of this phase.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, we were told in the review of the SDSR that the carrier HMS “Queen Elizabeth” would begin sea trials in the spring. Alas, in the words of Ella Fitzgerald, “spring will be a little late this year”, because Ministers now say that that will happen in the summer. But lo and behold, just two weeks ago, when my noble friend Lord West of Spithead asked whether summer was,
“defined as … from the summer solstice to the September equinox, or … June to August”,
he was told by the Minister that summer “was not defined” and that rather, it was a,
“broad indication of the likely timetable”.
This milestone in Britain’s maritime history is turning into a farce. I invite the Minister to come clean, tell us what has caused the delay and give us a firm date for the sea trials.
Earl Howe
My Lords, perhaps I can clarify the timetable a little bit. “The summer” means “a little later than shortly”. To address the substance of his question, this is about the need to test systems. The Queen Elizabeth class carriers are the largest and most complex warships ever built in this country. It is essential that we thoroughly test the ship’s many complex systems before she begins sea trials. None of the issues now being tested will affect acceptance of contract of HMS “Queen Elizabeth” later this year. The work is within the tolerance that we had anticipated in the contract schedule.
Lord Spicer (Con)
When the carriers have been sorted out, can we have a Spithead review so that we can see for ourselves the size and might of the new British Navy?
Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)
I had the privilege of seeing the Queen Elizabeth class carriers at Rosyth last week, and the “Queen Elizabeth” was doing her harbour trials. My question relates to the aircraft that are meant to go on the carrier. Will the F-35s be available when the “Queen Elizabeth” is set to sail, or are the delays to the carrier simply to enable the F-35s to be delayed as well?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the 2015 strategic defence and security review set out our intent to have two front-line operational F-35B squadrons by the end of 2023, and we plan to buy 138 Lightning aircraft over the life of the programme. To date we have taken delivery of eight F-35B aircraft, with a further six, currently in production, to follow very shortly. The next annual production contract is scheduled to be let next month, and we intend to order a further three under that part of the contract.
Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)
In her visit to Washington, the Prime Minister made the highly significant statement that we would stop trying to change the world in our image. While this will come as a considerable relief to the 22 countries we have not invaded at some time or other, does the Minister agree that the Prime Minister’s important statement should lead to a reassessment of foreign policy and a possible defence saving?
Earl Howe
My Lords, I cannot give the noble Lord that precise assurance. I say that because we are clear—and I am sure that most noble Lords in this House are clear—that NATO must remain the cornerstone of this country’s defence and the defence of western Europe. It is very important that we remind ourselves of the significance of NATO in that context.
Lord West of Spithead (Lab)
My Lords, the first thing to say is that we should be extremely proud of these carriers. They are going to be a force for stability and good all around the world. They are the only conventional capability we have with true strategic global significance, and that is why the Americans are so keen that we should have them. My question is similar to that of the noble Baroness. We last lost an aircraft carrier in 1942, and she did not have her air group with her. It is actually very difficult to find and kill an aircraft carrier, but she did not have an air group. When HMS “Queen Elizabeth” sails on her first operational deployment, particularly if it is east of Suez, will she have a full air group of Sea Lightnings, Crowsnest and the supporting ships—frigates, destroyers and nuclear submarine—which make a carrier battle group? The group I took to Hong Kong had 14 ships. Will we be able to do that, looking at the pressure on resources at the moment?
Earl Howe
My Lords, the initial operating capability for carrier strike, which is scheduled for no later than December 2020, will consist of one carrier, one squadron of Lightnings and Crowsnest. As the noble Lord will know, the carriers will operate as part of a maritime task group which will be tailored to meet the required task, so the precise number and mix of vessels deployed will have to depend on the operational circumstances of the time. We will be able to draw from a range of modern and highly capable vessels to support the carriers, such as the Type 45 destroyers, Type 23 frigates, Astute class submarines and, in the longer term, Type 26 frigates.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, given that the Royal Navy is fully deployed on standing tasks, can the Minister explain from where these extra ships will come to form a carrier task force, should HMS “Queen Elizabeth” be deployed?
Earl Howe
We have many of these ships at the moment. We have the Type 45 destroyers and the Type 23 frigates; the Astute class submarines are coming off the production line, so we will have those; and as I say, in the longer term we will have the Type 26 frigates. The plan is to cut steel for the first one this year.
Police National Database: Facial Images
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Scriven
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the storage of the 19 million facial images uploaded onto the police national database is compliant with data protection legislation.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, legislation gives police the power to take and store facial images from arrested persons. There has been no successful legal challenge to the retention of images on the PND on data protection grounds, but the Government acknowledge that there are privacy issues. The custody images review has now been published and makes recommendations for improvements to the retention regime.
Lord Scriven (LD)
I thank the Minister for that Answer. She will know that the review published last week into the 19 million images held on the police national database was in response to a High Court case of 2012 that found that treating the images of convicted and non-convicted individuals the same was unlawful. How do the new rules in the review make it lawful when it states that the images both of convicted and non-convicted individuals can be stored and used on the police national database for 10 years?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My Lords, there is a presumption of deletion in certain categories—certainly for the under-18s, for those not convicted, as the noble Lord said, and for people who have been convicted of a non-recordable offence. These can all request that their images be deleted, but there are exceptions which I think are reasonable—if there is a substantive reason to believe that someone is linked to terrorism, if they are dangerous or if they are linked to organised crime. Otherwise, there is now an arrangement whereby people can request deletion.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I am surprised that there are so few photographic records available to the police. I should have thought that there was a good case for all passport photographs to be available to the police. Does my noble friend agree that given a conflict between fighting serious crime, particularly terrorism, and privacy, the British people would almost certainly regard the former as having priority?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
My noble friend talks about privacy. If everybody was required to put their passport photographs towards a national database there might be a real issue with privacy. What the Government are trying to do, and my noble friend alluded to it, is to have images on record of people previously convicted of a crime. The custody image review is attempting to get rid of the facial images of those who are not convicted—and I include myself in that. If you have a passport but have not been convicted, I am not sure what benefit your photograph could be to the police national database.
Lord Mackenzie of Framwellgate (Non-Afl)
Is this not a matter of balance? Does the Minister agree that the keeping of an innocent person’s image on a database is of far less consequence than being the innocent victim of a violent crime?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right: it is a question of balance. It is a balance between enabling the police to do their job and to have a good database of criminals and those who have been convicted but also, as he says, if you are an innocent person, of not having your face on the database.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, can the Minister explain why the police are apparently not going to identify and remove the photographs of innocent people that are currently on the database? If there is a name and a date of birth connected with each photograph, why cannot that be run against the police national computer? If the Government are saying that the police can develop a national identification database, why do they not say so? At least the Labour Party is being honest that that is what it wants. Why cannot the Government?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
I am not sure I entirely get the tenor of the noble Lord’s question. If you are not convicted of an offence and your image is on the database you can request that it be—
Baroness Williams of Trafford
From now on; the noble Lord is absolutely right. However, if your face is currently on the database, you can say, “It has been on there for 10 years and please will you remove it?”.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
As has been said, the review has just been announced by the Government in a Written Statement of 24 February. Interestingly enough, the Statement managed to make no reference to the fact that the review arose from a judgment against the Government in 2012—which begs the question of why that was not included in the Statement—and we will have to wait to see whether the arrangements now proposed will lead to another legal challenge. Since the recommendation for a review, which is being adopted, is that “unconvicted persons” can,
“apply for deletion of their custody image”—
that is, they have to take the initiative to apply, which is the point that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is making, but I do not wish to repeat the question that he asked—what steps will the Government take to ensure that widespread publicity is given to the fact that millions of unconvicted peopled can now apply for deletion of their custody image? What form will the Government’s advertising and publicity campaign take, since the 2012 judgment was in a case against the Secretary of State? How much money do the Government intend to spend on their advertising and publicity campaign to advise millions of people of their right in respect of deletion of their record?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Lord is absolutely right that the Government recognised that the 2012 judgment said it was contrary to Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and that has now been addressed through the custody images review. I assume that there will be something on GOV.UK about publicity regarding innocent people whose faces are still on the database, but I will get back to the noble Lord on the precise steps that we will take.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
Can the Minister say whether, beyond the UK data protection and legislative issues, the Americans, through their Patriot Act, have any form of access to the police national database?
Baroness Williams of Trafford
Generally, the presumption is that anyone concerned with crime, and fighting crime, will have access to the PND. As to which countries will have that access, clearly there are international arrangements for the sharing of data, and I am sure that that includes America.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I still do not understand how an innocent member of the public will know that their image is on the database. Surely it would be easier for the police just to delete those innocent people without putting them to the trouble of applying. It would be more work for the police that way.
Baroness Williams of Trafford
The noble Baroness has a point, but in fact it is a manual process and would be incredibly resource-intensive. There will be people who do not mind their image being there. If my image were on the PND, although I do not think that it is—[Interruption.] If the noble Baroness’s is, I would expect her to request deletion immediately.
Turkey: Selahattin Demirtas
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Balfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what representations they have made to the government of Turkey following the sentence of imprisonment imposed on Selahattin Demirtas, co-leader of the HDP party.
Lord Balfe (Con)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw attention to my membership of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Turkey.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)
My Lords, we expect Turkey to undertake any legal processes against MPs fairly, transparently and with full respect for the rule of law. We follow developments in Turkey closely and underline the importance of the rule of law and the protection of freedom of expression. The Prime Minister raised human rights at the highest level when she visited Turkey in January, as have the Foreign Secretary and the Minister for Europe during their visits there.
Lord Balfe
I thank the Minister for her reply. Many of us of course have deep concern about the coup that occurred last year. In the events that followed, it appears that the Turkish Government have considerably overreacted, with mass dismissals and interference in the judiciary; and now a number of opposition politicians are in prison. Noting the concern of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe and of the Venice Commission, will the Government do their best to work internationally to bring home to the Turkish Government the need to abide by international norms in the way that they treat their opposition?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
I can indeed give my noble friend that assurance. I welcome the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe’s continued engagement on Turkey. I pay particular tribute to my noble friend’s work, both on PACE and on the Venice Commission. I can update noble Lords on something that happened yesterday, when Her Majesty’s permanent representative to the Council of Europe had an exchange of views with the Turkish Minister of Justice at the Committee of Ministers and stressed that, although we welcome Turkey’s moves to address the Council of Europe’s concerns on the state of emergency procedures, including the establishment of its own commission to review dismissals, it is important that that operates on the basis of the European Convention on Human Rights and that Turkey should continue to co-operate with the Venice Commission.
Lord Kinnock (Lab)
Does the Minister agree that the accession of Turkey to the European Union has always been decades further away from reality than was claimed, falsely, by Brexit campaigners last year? Will she tell us what the reply was from President Erdogan when the Prime Minister raised the issue of human rights in her conversations with him?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
I have given answers several times at the Dispatch Box about the accession of Turkey to the European Union and made it clear that, since progress toward accession means abiding by international and European standards of human rights, Turkey has much progress to make. My right honourable friend the Prime Minister indeed raised the matter of human rights with President Erdogan. Given that that was a private conversation I cannot report it, but I assure the noble Lord that the conversation was amicable—and it was a conversation.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, Turkey is such an important partner to this country in terms of trade and the relations that we have had for hundreds of years, and is an important member of NATO. Is the Minister aware that, after what happened last year in the Brexit debate—as the noble Lord, Lord Kinnock, just referred to, Turkey as a country was demonised because of its aspirations to join the European Union—the majority of the public there do not now want to join the EU? In fact, any taxi driver one comes across will have a photograph of the poster claiming that 78 million Turks—all criminals—are coming to this country. What we have done, really, has made Turkey drift further away. What possible influence can we have to ensure that Turkey’s internal structures and democracies are much sounder and, for example, that Mr Demirtas, the leader of the third-largest political party, should not face 20 years’ imprisonment?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, our influence is directly related to our ability to gain access to the highest levels in Turkey, which is exactly what has happened with the visits of my right honourable friends the Prime Minister, the Foreign Secretary and Sir Alan Duncan—he has paid three visits there—as well as to our work through the European Union, where we joined in a joint statement at the end of last year expressing our concerns about the way in which the judicial processes had gone forward against certain Members, such as Mr Demirtas. With regard to the wider issue of accession, it really is a matter for the people of Turkey to determine whether they wish to join. The noble Baroness has pointed out her perceptions of the current state of mind of some of the Turkish people.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, given that the HDP is in alliance with the Kurdish Democratic Regions Party and is a pro-minority party, can the noble Baroness reflect for a moment on the implications of this arrest for the position of minorities inside Turkey? Can she also reflect on the way that Turkey deals with minorities in places such as Sinjar and Nineveh in neighbouring Iraq when it comes to determining its policy towards a self-governing area?
Baroness Anelay of St Johns
My Lords, as the noble Baroness just mentioned, we are talking about a country that faced a significant threat to its democracy last year. We have to recognise that this was a violent attempt at a coup. Against that background, one has to have a proportionate response, which is something that we have stressed, and judicial processes may have to be followed. However, the noble Lord is right to point out that, in carrying out responses to violent assaults on the Government, one has to consider very carefully the implications of one’s actions on minorities and how they can fester further violence in the future.
Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That, in accordance with Private Business Standing Order 69 (Appointment of Examiners of Petitions for Private Bills), Mr James Cooper be appointed an Examiner of Petitions for Private Bills in place of Mr Peter Milledge.
Procedure
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That the 2nd Report from the Select Committee (Revision of the Companion to the Standing Orders; Private Business Standing Orders: minor revisions) (HL Paper 100) be agreed to.
The Senior Deputy Speaker (Lord McFall of Alcluith)
My Lords, I will also speak to the Motion making amendments to the private business Standing Orders.
The report proposes a number of minor amendments to the Standing Orders relating to private business. These amendments are intended to make improvements to the workability of the private business Standing Orders following the passage through Parliament of the High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill, otherwise known as the HS2 Bill.
The reason for each of the minor amendments is set out in the text of the report. If the House agrees to the report, I will then move the consequential Motion to make the necessary changes to the text of the private business Standing Orders, as set out on the Order Paper. It is expected that, once this House has approved these amendments, the House of Commons will be invited to agree the amendments to its private business Standing Orders, which would have a similar effect.
The report also sets out for information the approval given by the committee to a new edition of the Companion to the Standing Orders. This will be published in the next few weeks.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, perhaps I may come in briefly on this, having been involved in several private and hybrid Bills. I welcome the changes that have been made. They clarify many things and should make it easier for the next stage of HS2 and any other Bill that comes before your Lordships’ House. However, I question why the committee has decided to remove information about radii of curvature of tracks, gradients and junctions. It is very easy for a promoter to put that information into the document. When it comes to helping petitioners, as I have done on many occasions, I am aware that it would be much better if they had that information officially in the document, rather than having to work it out for themselves and having a big debate. Perhaps the noble Lord and the committee could consider that when they next look at revising the document.
Lord McFall of Alcluith
Sure. This was done as a result of HS2 and the petitions that we had. In fact, we are engaged in a wider bicameral review. Only the other day the Chairman of Ways and Means in the other place and I were up to our eyeballs in embankments, gradients, rail curves and whatever else. No doubt I will become a real expert on that subject and come back to the noble Lord. Perhaps if he has any questions outwith this Chamber, we could agree those, remembering that this is a wider bicameral review. I beg to move.
Standing Orders (Private Business)
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That the standing orders relating to private business be amended as follows:
Standing Order 1A Deposit of documents etc. at offices of government departments and public bodies
Line 3, after “deposited” insert “or delivered”
Line 3, after “with” insert “, or by reference to,”
Line 5, after “deposited” insert “or delivered”
Line 19, leave out paragraph (3) and insert—
“(3) The provisions of these orders which contain such references as are mentioned in paragraph (1) above are—
(a) Standing Order 27(8),
(b) Standing Order 27A(1),
(c) Standing Order 29,
(d) Standing Order 30,
(e) Standing Order 30A(1),
(f) Standing Order 31(1),
(g) Standing Order 32,
(h) Standing Order 33,
(i) Standing Order 34,
(j) Standing Order 37,
(k) Standing Order 39,
(l) Standing Order 42,
(m) Standing Order 43,
(n) Standing Order 45(3), and,
(o) Standing Order 47(2)”
Standing Order 10A Publication of notice relating to works bill
Line 15, at end insert—
“(2) It shall be sufficient compliance with the requirement in paragraph (1) that notices shall be displayed for two consecutive weeks for the promoters to use reasonable endeavours to secure that the notices are so displayed.”
Standing Order 12 Posting of notices in case of tramway, etc., bills
Line 13, leave out sub-paragraph (b) and insert—
“(b) not later than 20th November notice of such proposed alteration or disturbance shall be posted in, or where that is not reasonably practicable, in some conspicuous position as close as is reasonably practicable to, every such street or road in the manner directed by the said authority, or—
(i) if no directions have been received from the said authority within seven days after the said application, or
(ii) if the directions received cannot reasonably be complied with,
in some conspicuous position in the street or road, or where that is not reasonably practicable, in some conspicuous position as close as is reasonably practicable to the street or road;”
Standing Order 31 Deposit of copy of plan, etc., in case of bill affecting tidal lands
Line 20, after “shall” insert “, if the plan is not based on an ordnance map,”
Standing Order 32 Deposit of copy of plan, etc., of bill affecting fisheries
Line 11, leave out paragraph (2) and insert—
“(2) A copy of the said portion of the deposited plan and section shall also—
(a) be delivered on or before 20th November, or
(b) be sent by registered post, having been posted on or before 17th November,
to the recipient or recipients specified in Standing Order 1A.”
Standing Order 33 Delivery of copy of plan, etc., affecting banks, etc., of river
Line 7, leave out from “affected,” to end of line 11 and insert-
“shall—
(a) be delivered on or before 20th November, or
(b) be sent by registered post, having been posted on or before 17th November,
to the recipient or recipients specified in Standing Order 1A.”.
Line 15, after “and” insert “, if the plan is not based on an ordnance map,”
Standing Order 38 Deposit of printed copies of bills in Parliament Office
Line 32, at end insert—
“(see also Standing Order 201 (Time for delivering notices and making deposits))”
Standing Order 42 Delivery of copies of bills affecting watercourses to Environment Agency
Line 5, leave out from “thereof” to end of line 11 and insert—
“shall—
(a) be delivered on or before 4th December, or
(b) be sent by registered post, having been posted on or before 1st December,
to the recipient or recipients specified in Standing Order 1A.”
Standing Order 43 Delivery of copies of bills affecting rivers or estuaries to Environment Agency.
Line 5, leave out from “river” to end of line 12 and insert—
“shall—
(a) be delivered on or before 4th December, or
(b) be sent by registered post, having been posted on or before 1st December,
to the recipient or recipients specified in Standing Order 1A.”
Standing Order 47 Deposit of statement as to houses and persons on land to be acquired
Line 8, leave out from “shall,” to “deposit” in line 10 and insert “in relation to any area to which this order applies,”
Standing Order 48 Description of plan
Line 31, leave out paragraph (3) and insert—
“(3) Where a viaduct or tunnelling is intended the same shall be marked on the plan, the latter to be shown by a dotted line.”
Standing Order 50 Particulars in case of railways and tramroads
Line 4, leave out from “plan” to end of line 15
Standing Order 51 Particulars in case of diversion of roads, etc.
Line 6, leave out from “plan” to end of line 8 and insert—
“(2) In the case of a bill by which it is proposed to authorise the diversion of any public footpath or bridleway, the course of such diversion shall be marked upon the plan, and where it is the intention of the promoters to apply for powers to make any lateral deviation from the course of the proposed diversion of any public footpath or bridleway, the limits of such deviation shall be defined upon the plan.”
Standing Order 55 Section
Line 18, leave out from “tunnelling” to end of line 20 and insert “or a viaduct is intended, the same shall be marked on the deposited section.”
Standing Order 57 Section of railway or tramroad
Line 9, leave out from “each” to end of line 12 and insert “end of a section of railway or tramroad with a constant gradient; and that gradient shall also be marked.”
Line 26, leave out paragraph (4)
Standing Order 59 Cross sections of roads, etc.
Line 4, after “tramroad” insert “and such works are not works for which a section has been drawn in accordance with Standing Order 55”.
Business of the House
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Lord Privy Seal
That, in the event of the Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill being brought from the Commons and read a first time, Standing Order 46 (No two stages of a Bill to be taken on one day) be dispensed with on Thursday 9 March to allow the Bill to be taken through its remaining stages that day.
Higher Education and Research Bill
Baroness Buscombe
That the amendments for the Report stage be marshalled and considered in the following order:
Clauses 1 and 2, Schedule 1, Clauses 3 to 11, Schedule 2, Clauses 12 to 16, Schedule 3, Clauses 17 to 27, Schedule 4, Clauses 28 to 57, Schedule 5, Clauses 58 to 62, Schedule 6, Clauses 63 to 69, Schedule 7, Clauses 70 to 86, Schedule 8, Clause 87, Schedule 9, Clauses 88 to 111, Schedule 10, Clauses 112 to 118, Schedules 11 and 12, Clauses 119 to 121, Title.
Economic Growth (Regulatory Functions) Order 2017
Baroness Buscombe
That the draft Order, draft Regulations and Guidance laid before the House on 6 and 12 December 2016, and 18, 19 and 30 January 2017 be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 28 February.
Motions agreed.
Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties and Public Authorities) Regulations 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Williams of Trafford
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 18 January be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 28 February.
Motion agreed.
Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority Order 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the draft Order laid before the House on 23 January be approved.
Relevant document: 24th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, the draft order that we are considering, if approved and made, will establish a combined authority with an elected mayor for the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area. It will also confer important new powers on both the mayor and the combined authority. The Government have, of course, already made significant progress in delivering their manifesto commitment to devolve far-reaching powers and budgets to combined authorities in England that choose to have directly elected mayors. Since the first devolution deal with Greater Manchester was agreed in November 2014, we have passed the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016, which provides new powers for the Secretary of State by order to devolve to a combined authority a Secretary of State function, and confer on a combined authority any functions of a public authority.
I remind noble Lords that Parliament has approved orders establishing combined authority mayors in Greater Manchester, Liverpool City Region, Sheffield City Region, West Midlands, the Tees Valley and, most recently, the West of England. Parliament has also approved an order conferring additional functions on the Greater Manchester Combined Authority covering planning, transport and skills. Furthermore, orders conferring functions on other combined authorities have been laid before Parliament, to be considered imminently.
This order gives life to the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough devolution deal, agreed between local leaders and the Government. We are taking forward this deal with seven constituent councils, these being: Cambridge City, Cambridgeshire, East Cambridgeshire, Fenland, Huntingdonshire, Peterborough, and South Cambridgeshire. The deal means that the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough area will receive: control over a new £20 million a year funding allocation over 30 years, to be invested in the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough single investment fund to boost growth; control over a £100 million housing and infrastructure fund and an additional £70 million over five years ring-fenced for Greater Cambridge to meet housing needs; powers over strategic planning and the responsibility to create a non-statutory spatial framework for the area; and a devolved transport budget and responsibility for an identified key route network.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I should draw attention to my registered interest as chair of the Cambridgeshire Development Forum. I am also, of course, a resident of Cambridgeshire.
Cambridge and Peterborough are two of this country’s fastest-growing cities. They are complementary in their industrial character, but, together, they offer the potential to be one of the leading locations both for high-technology investment and for related value-added activity. To enable this, the county requires more infrastructure, more sites for investment, more housing and commercial development and more skills. All these can and should be more effectively promoted by means of a combined authority taking hold of significant additional investment for housing and infrastructure from the Government, equipping it with local powers and budgets, and seeking a multiplier effect through partnerships with the private sector. I support devolution—and this order. It can have a significant effect in creating and delivering a driver for growth in our area.
In particular, I supported the Government’s initial plan for a three-county devolution deal—that is, Cambridge, Norfolk and Suffolk. Why? In my view, the real potential long-term for East Anglia is to secure Cambridge’s structural relationship to its wider economic hinterland. In reality, that extends into Bedfordshire, Essex and Hertfordshire, as well as Suffolk and Norfolk. That is especially so given the focus on life sciences as a global hub south of Cambridge.
Devolution did not, and would not, fit neatly to the economic geography of the Cambridge economic region so the wider scope of devolution and, for now, that more ambitious approach have been dropped. That does not reduce the need for clear and active strategic co-ordination across several counties in the east of England. I urge the mayor and combined authority to look for those strategic relationships with their neighbouring counties—as I know they will. That, as much as anything, should encourage those working towards devolution deals in neighbouring counties—I know Suffolk is considering exactly this—to seek to create further openings in future for ambitious infrastructure plans on a wider footprint. Investment in Cambridge is strong and sustainable in itself but the long-term economic benefit to the United Kingdom will be maximised only by realising scale and opportunities for supply-chain and linked investments related to Cambridge’s remarkable high-tech pull.
I support the combined authority as set out in this order, but I must be clear that this order sets up a combined authority. Where I live, as a consequence of this, after May I will be represented by a parish council, a district council, a county council and the combined authority. That is certainly one tier, and arguably two, too many. Locally, there is an unwritten assumption that in time the combined authority and the upper-tier responsibilities of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough should be managed in one organisation. Indeed, there is already a single chief executive for both Cambridgeshire County Council and for Peterborough. That process should be taken forward—and quickly. The cost of the combined authority in itself is not large, but the complexity of four tiers of local government could mean that the vision, delivery and progress we make are nothing like as much as they should be. I also urge Ministers to work with the combined authority and local councils to bring the Cambridge city deal, which is important in the management particularly of transport and congestion issues in Cambridge itself, within the scope of the combined authority.
Further, I draw attention to paragraph 4 of the schedule, as noble Lords may not have had occasion to look at that. It implies that no decision of the combined authority can proceed without the mayor’s agreement but also that no budget or transport plan of the combined authority can proceed without a two-thirds majority. In practice, four councils can form a blocking minority, even in relation to a budget or transport plan the mayor supports. Of course, this implies that the combined authority, local authorities and mayor must work collaboratively, and they have shown themselves capable of doing so in bringing the order and this plan into being. However, legislation is like a contract. It must be robust when things go wrong and define what happens when people do not agree. I am far from happy that this is yet the case for the new combined authority. The mayor will have a mandate. The role is about vision, leadership and delivery. The mayor should not readily be able to be blocked. With that caveat, I support this order and I look for ambition in Cambridgeshire to be realised in the years ahead, not least through the mechanism of this new combined authority.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, surprised me the other week by making a favourable reference to me in relation to another matter. I reciprocate by thanking him for clarifying an issue that I have mentioned from time to time: it seems we are facing over time a reorganisation of local government on unitary lines without any involvement on the part of local communities. It is a back-door way of reorganising local government. As the noble Lord indicated, there may be a case for doing that, but it sits at odds with the protestations about local democracy and people being involved for it to be conjured up through delegated legislation of this kind.
Moreover, there has been a very interesting exchange of correspondence between the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee—the initial report of which was really quite damning about the process that has been adopted here—and the Minister, Mr Andrew Percy, on its 25th report, which emerged just last week. In particular, there was reference in the initial report to dissatisfaction on the committee’s part relating to claims of popular support for the notion of having a combined authority—not a unitary authority. In reply, the Minister referred to the point that had been raised. He said that the committee’s Explanatory Memorandum,
“quoted that under the online poll 47% were opposed to the transfer of powers and funding to a Combined Authority. I accept that it did not record that 59%”—
a majority—
“were opposed to a mayor; our intention had been to include this but due to an error whilst the drafting was being refined, this was omitted from the final text”,
for which the Minister apologised. I am sure the committee was very grateful for the apology. I wonder what action has been taken against the unfortunate civil servant who apparently just overlooked that issue. The Minister went on to say:
“I believe it is right to refer to the comment made by the councils that the online survey results ‘aren’t representative of the population as a whole’ and represent a ‘self-selecting sample’”.
Any vote at an election represents a self-selected sample. What is the difference in principle that should apply to a response to the report? It seems an absurd justification.
I find myself deeply suspicious of the Government’s approach to this and other mayoral elections. The history is recent: there was a referendum as to whether there should be a Mayor of London. Later, the coalition Government ordained that there should be referendums in a number of authorities. My own authority of Newcastle—I remind the House I am a member of Newcastle City Council and one of several honorary vice-presidents of the LGA—is one of the authorities that was forced to have a referendum. Most of the referendums resulted in a rejection of the notion of an elected mayor. Through this process, the Government are getting round the verdict in so many places without having the courage—that is all it requires—to seek again the opinion of people who made their position very clear some years ago. The Government would be in a position to argue that they are offering more than just a chance of having a mayor. They are offering the chance of a mayor with enhanced powers, a combined authority with enhanced powers and all the rest of it, but they have deliberately chosen not to offer that opportunity to the people on whom they imposed a more limited version of the process a few years ago. I find that inconsistent and, frankly, rather disgraceful.
I wish the citizens of these two authorities well. I hope that the combined authority works out well and that the mayor works well, but we are seeing an erosion of local involvement in these matters and in areas that have expressed clear enough reservations. Bath was the last one we discussed in this Chamber; it was quite clear that Bath did not wish to have an elected mayor as part of the combined authority. The Government really should look again at their processes in connection with this issue.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has encouraged me to say a brief word about Huntingdon. The Minister will not know that I spent my early years in Huntingdon, a very important historic town which has always been subsumed within other authorities, especially Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. In view of what the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has just said, I would just ask the Minister how far the consultation extended to Huntingdon. Is there a record of what the population said and whether it was in favour of this combined authority? To me, it is just another case of some of our traditions being overwhelmed by the convention of creating these combined authorities.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Lansley characteristically spoke a lot of good sense about the reorganisation of local government in East Anglia but also exposed some of the difficulties there. For example, I share his concern that there should be, going forward now, four tiers of local government. It seems just a little too many. I just wanted to make plain, as a resident of Bury St Edmunds, our determination not to be caught up in this aggrandisement of East Anglian government. We are pretty content with the way we run things locally ourselves and would really like to be left alone to do things in our own way. We have a very effective council with some very effective ways of getting the savings that can come from collaboration without going through the nonsense, if I may use the word, of legislation to combine authorities.
There is no reason why they should not work from the same headquarters or have the same chief officer in more than one authority. There is no reason why you should not be able to go, as I can in Bury St Edmunds, to your local government headquarters and immediately be put in touch with the official who is responsible for the matter that concerns you and sit down together and sort things out. It also enables them to have, in that headquarters building, people responsible for different parts of the authority’s functions: for example education and services for younger people. Those officials have developed the habit of meeting together in the canteen there, and discussing matters and understanding them fully. Sometimes, informal good governance is rather more effective than finding ourselves with four tiers of government through statute.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)
My Lords, I apologise for coming in slightly late, as the lifts were running slowly. I was inspired to speak because although I seldom agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, I very much do on this occasion, for which I am sure there is rejoicing around the House. I wanted to challenge, or comment on, the position of the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. I speak as a resident of the city of Norwich, of whose council I was formerly leader, and as someone with strong relationships within that city. I was therefore involved in the discussions—at one remove, obviously and properly—on the inclusion of Norfolk and Suffolk in a greater East Anglia authority. The problem for us, which I regard as a very unfortunate legacy of the noble Lord, Lord Heseltine, is the imposition of the requirement of an elected mayor to be concomitant with a combined authority.
In Norfolk, there were several, rural Conservative authorities—and I am sure it may also be true for many in Suffolk—which were very happy to have a combined authority with an elected mayor who would be Conservative, for ever and a day, representing, to some degree, lower-rate and lower-services authorities. That is their choice. That is not the same for urban authorities such as Norwich, which are effectively regional capitals with the revenues of a rural district council, which have always provided services from leisure to employment—half the jobs in Norfolk are in Norwich—for the whole of the county. We would worry about having an elected mayor over one county, or two counties, of a permanently different, rural complexion—being Conservative would worry me less—running the cities. Those medium-sized cities are the core of economic growth in this country, now and to come.
Secondly, we have a strong sense of place; I believe that some of the alienation that we have seen in politics is because we are losing that sense of identification with place, which the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, referred to. Norwich was for 800 years a unitary authority and then, at the stroke of a pen in 1974, that was abolished, with no respect for place, history or local opinion. Many of us are still fighting to get a more sensible, coherent, democratic, accountable and effective local government system. I have a plea to the Minister, following what the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, said. Yes, we are working well in LEPs, which shows that authorities of different persuasions can work together, but we do not want an elected mayor whereby one person, presumably male, will be able to override the views of perhaps 300 elected councillors, at whatever tier of government, who are in touch with their communities in a way that one person cannot be. One person speaking for two counties—which are some 120 miles long—would be absurd and inappropriate.
What we need in Norfolk—it may be true for Suffolk; I cannot speak for Suffolk—is transport connectivity. It is something that the rural authorities want and something that Norwich, King’s Lynn and Great Yarmouth also want: to build decent economic infrastructure. We cannot get that if an elected mayor does not necessarily share those ambitions, because they come from a very different local heritage. I respect the rights of those rural district councils to have a different perspective on what they and their communities want from local government. What I fear is that, by insisting on an elected mayor over a county, or even two counties, as the price of a devolution package including transport connectivity, we will not get the focus on economic productivity and growth that, bluntly, only the cities—whether Southampton, Portsmouth, Norwich, Plymouth, Exeter or whatever—can provide.
That is why I beg the Government to disassociate combined authorities from the imposition of the Heseltine elected mayor. We do not want grand leadership; we want collaboration and working together in consensus. That is the best done—in the very words of the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit—by local authorities, councillors and staff working together in a collaborative way. The way that the Government are going is not healthy for local government, for a sense of local place or, ultimately, for democratic politics, which should grow from the bottom up. That bottom-up approach is now being undermined by back-door reorganisation in ways that do not fit the needs, views and wishes of local communities.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, I follow the noble Baroness with trepidation—I think that, on the whole, what we are looking at today is a practical outcome of the decisions that have already been made in principle. I ought to declare my interest as a councillor in West Yorkshire and an LGA vice-president. While I obviously support the decision of the local, democratically elected councils in the relevant areas of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough to go forward with this devolution deal, I draw the House’s attention to what appears to be a lack of support—or certainly a contradiction over whether there is support—from the residents in those areas. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, has drawn attention to the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which highlights the lack of transparency—I think those were the words in the report—and certainly a seeming discrepancy between the two surveys undertaken at the time.
The Government ought to reflect on the final paragraph of the report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which says:
“The picture of local views painted by the Department for Communities and Local Government in the Explanatory Memorandum is incomplete and at times self-serving. We look to Government to present a fuller and more accurate account of such matters”.
With that fair comment on what has gone on in the consultation, I will make some remarks about the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley. He drew attention to the fact that a mayor who was elected will have a mandate. However, the whole way in which the combined authorities with elected mayors have been established is to have some sort of stop on the mayoral mandate so that they are not people making decisions alone, and quite rightly too. There should be an opportunity for local councils to say, “We disagree with what the mayor is doing” and to veto it. That is an appropriate way to work, given that local councils are allowing some of their powers to be drawn upwards to the combined authority and to the mayor.
In many ways, it is wrong to view the mayors of these combined authorities in the same way as the Mayor of London. First of all, there is no assembly to scrutinise, and secondly, the mayor does not have the same functions: hence the need for a veto in the hands of local councils. This ensures that any decisions which will have enormous impact on local people have the support of those democratically elected councils.
I now turn to the discussions that we have had so far in this debate about layers of democratically elected councils. In my area, there is just one layer. Until the Conservative MPs in Yorkshire stop trying to prevent West Yorkshire from having a combined authority, we have only one layer of local government. It is significantly harder work for those who are elected there than if we had district or parish councils to support much of the work done.
I am a great believer in having layers of councils as long as their functions are very well identified. It enables the places to have a view. One of my concerns is that democracy is moved further and further away from the people whom we represent, so having more councils at real local level to hear views and complaints and to do something about them is the safety valve that many parts of this country are lacking. That is one reason why we are having quite a difference of opinion across the country at the moment: those safety valves are disappearing.
Having said that—because I have concerns about elected mayors that your Lordships might have heard—I will raise one or two questions about this set of powers being acquired by the combined local authority in Cambridge and Peterborough. There is going to be a power of general competence for the combined authority and the mayor. I am concerned as to whether this will be at variance with the power of general competence that the constituent local authorities have, and how those separate interests might resolve themselves if there is a difference of opinion there. My second point is about the scrutiny arrangements, which are not described here. I would guess that they are part of an earlier order and I am concerned whether they are the same as for previous combined authorities. The third point is that there is a suggestion somewhere in the report that further powers are yet to come, which rather puzzled me as I thought they would all be laid out in one go. Why are these not yet identified and what possible additional local powers might there be?
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, if I may first make a number of declarations, I refer Members to my entry in the Register of Lords’ Interests and declare that I am a locally elected councillor and a vice-president of the Local Government Association.
The order before us is one of a number that we have considered in this House in recent weeks. As we have heard, it proposes to establish a mayoral combined authority, with that authority having control over a number of areas including transport, economic development, regeneration, housing and planning. It also provides for the governance arrangements to include a directly elected mayor. I am not opposed to the order per se but I have a number of comments and a few questions for the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth.
I hope that the new arrangements will deliver better joint working between the authorities. Bringing them together in this fashion may foster stronger partnerships in other areas as well and in the wider East Anglia area, to which the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, referred. In general, however, I would be interested to hear from the Minister where the Government are going in respect of devolution. The order seems a little confusing and not very strategic at the moment.
I am not clear in general how the Government see these devolution deals going forward. I would be particularly interested in the response to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, in respect of having four tiers of local government. He made a compelling point for the Government to answer there. I am also in full agreement with the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, on the points he made in that respect, and with my noble friend Lady Hollis of Heigham. She made the point about having to have a directly elected mayor to get the transport powers, which is an issue for a number of local authorities.
When Manchester became the first combined authority it got much wider powers than we see here today, as it has powers in respect of the NHS and the police. Is that sort of deal off the table for the future or is some sort of back-door reorganisation being suggested? It really is not clear. I am not sure whether the sort of patchwork that we are getting all over the country is the right way to operate. Perhaps we could hear a little more about what the Minister thinks could happen after May. There appears to have been some change in attitude in respect of these deals with the change of government.
The report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee raises a number of concerns, as my noble friend Lord Beecham and others have said. One or two of them are becoming recurring themes, which is not a good place for the Government to find themselves in. A concern raised before on other orders is the question of consultation done over the July and August holiday period. Whatever it is you want to get back, that is not the best time to consider consultation. Often people, especially those with families, will go on holiday once the children are off school and come back some time before September. If you want a meaningful response—a good number of responses—that is just not the best time to do it. I do not understand why the department insists on conducting consultations over that period; I suggest that we should never hold consultations then.
Will the Minister respond to the comments in the report about what would appear to be the selective approach to reporting results of the online survey? That is a serious criticism for the committee to raise. What does he say to the other criticism in the report, which compares the views taken by the department of this order and of the West of England Combined Authority Order? It turned that whole question on its head when it suited it in respect of this order. That is also a serious point for the committee to raise, not one the Minister should be happy about and something that he should not allow to happen in future.
It is probably not fair to say that there is a democratic deficit here, but it is fair to say that democracy is getting out of step with the services being delivered. There are four tiers of local government, it is not clear who does what, we have a patchwork around the country and there is the question of locally elected councillors and a mayor elected over a very wide area. That does not give continuity between the elected members and the services delivered.
With those contributions, I will leave it there and look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have participated in the debate on the draft order in relation to Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. I will do my best to cover the points made, and will take the contributions in the order in which they were made.
I turn first to my noble friend Lord Lansley, whom I thank very much for his support. I take his point about broader working outside the combined authority with, in this case, Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire, Essex and so on. That is incumbent on the authority concerned and I am sure it will bear that very much in mind. There was a recurrent theme picked up first by my noble friend about the various tiers of local government. It is certainly something that we need to watch like hawks. The point subsequently made by my noble friend Lord Tebbit about shared offices and shared officers makes a lot of common sense. I know that a lot of local authorities do that and is certainly something encouraged by the department and the Government at large. It makes a lot of sense, and I am sure that this authority and others will bear it in mind.
I turn to my noble friend’s point about paragraph 4 of the Schedule and the balance of power in a combined authority between the mayor, officials and elected members, a point subsequently raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I think the balance is right. The mayor does not have an overriding right to say, “We will do this”, but the mayor’s vote has to be included in the majority. That is carefully crafted: balances on these things are important.
I turn to the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, who raised some strategic issues about the operation of combined authorities. Indeed, they operate in a strategic way. They are not in competition with local authorities, they are looking at issues of strategic importance. He will know that the Government are not imposing these authorities on people. That is not borne out by practice or even by the contributions to the debate. He will know from the experience of his authority that it can walk away from this. That is why Northumbria—Newcastle, Tyneside and Durham—does not have a combined authority. Some people did not want an elected mayor; there were differences of opinion between different parts of the area. The point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, illustrates this: Norfolk walked away because it did not want an elected mayor, for whatever reason.
Baroness Hollis of Heigham
The reason was that we do not want a swagger mayor of the 1970s Heseltine model. We want greater collaboration in the same way as, when Great Yarmouth was under stress, our chief executive in Norwich worked as chief executive for Yarmouth as well. That is the sort of collaboration we want—by consent and bottom-up—that will allow us to build the sort of economy that is to the advantage not just of the region but the country as a whole.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I appreciate what the noble Baroness is saying, but I am not sure that that was the result of a thoroughgoing consultation—picking up points made by other noble Lords. Whatever the reason, it illustrates the point that the Government are not in a position to impose these deals.
The noble Earl, Lord Sandwich, made points about Huntingdon—a gem of a town; I know Huntingdon and Godmanchester very well. Of course, it had to be a part of this process. If Huntingdonshire, as an authority, had not wanted to go ahead with this, it would not have been a part of it, and I suspect the deal may well have fallen apart. I shall say something later in relation to points made by quite a few noble Lords about the consultation exercise.
My noble friend Lord Tebbit made some telling points about the common sense of having shared officers and shared officials and ensuring that we are getting value for money where we have more than one authority. I am sure that that makes a lot of sense and that his cogent and authoritative voice in Bury St Edmunds will always make sure that that authority’s interests are taken account of, as they will be, I am sure, in any devolution deal.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hollis, is obviously in close liaison with my noble friend Lord Tebbit. I shall be watching them for shared coffees on these issues as they go forward. I take the point she makes that an elected mayor is not something that all local authorities want, but it is not something that is imposed. Some authorities have come forward without an elected mayor model, Cornwall being the example to look at. The Government are not saying that there have to be mayors in all situations. Where people do not want mayors, they do not have mayors.
I will write more fully on the Explanatory Memorandum, which has been raised in relation to the consultation and other matters, and I shall write to all noble Lords who have participated in the debate and place a copy in the Library. I shall not go into all the details of the consultation that took place, except to make two points. This has been the best response to consultation of any that we have had so far. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. He knows what I have been saying in relation to the Neighbourhood Planning Bill about best practice when consultations take place. This consultation took place over six weeks, so it was not the normal short planning period of 21 days. It was a more thoroughgoing consultation, and some of it was online. Those are factors which have to be borne in mind, but I will cover the points about the results. There were two polls: an Ipsos MORI general poll—the main poll, as it were—and an internet poll. Without pre-empting what I am going to say in the letter, I think the internet poll would be a little self-selecting, whereas the other poll may not be. I will try to cover that in the letter that will come round.
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, raised an issue about general competence. I think this would mean general competence over the designated functions that they are receiving. She also asked about other issues that may be coming forward. There may well be some others. Housing, for example, is not covered in this order, and that generally finds its way into orders of this type, so that may well be coming forward, but I think the bulk of the transfer of functions is in this order.
I think I have covered the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. He always starts off by saying how much he supports something and then comes with a long list of reasons against it, which is like wanting his cake and eating it. I suspect the Labour Party says, “You’ve got to be in favour”, but the noble Lord thinks of all the things he wants to say that indicate concerns about it. I understand them, but overall he seemed to be saying that this is a good thing. It is not imposed. I think it will be successful. No doubt as we go forward there will be lessons that we can learn. With that, and picking up any points that I have missed, particularly on the Explanatory Memorandum, I commend this order to the House.
Tees Valley Combined Authority (Functions) Order 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the draft Order laid before the House on 23 January be approved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, the draft order which we are considering this afternoon, if approved and made, will confer important new powers on both the Tees Valley mayor and the Tees Valley Combined Authority. We have just had a thorough-going debate on the order that brings to life the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough devolution deal, and we now turn to the separate devolution deal for the Tees Valley—this order continues our journey with the Tees Valley Combined Authority.
The draft order follows the devolution deal which the Government agreed with Tees Valley on 23 October 2015, the establishment, by order, of the combined authority in April 2016, and the making of the order last July that will see a mayor for the Tees Valley elected on 4 May this year. This draft order, if approved and made, will enable the establishment of a mayoral development corporation in the South Tees area by summer 2017, if the mayor and the combined authority wish to see this. We are also seeking to confer further powers on the mayor and the combined authority on a slightly slower track, and we laid a further order before this House on 6 February to do this.
Before laying this draft order before Parliament, the Secretary of State has considered the statutory requirements in the 2009 Act. The Secretary of State considers that these requirements have been met in relation to the functions being conferred on the combined authority. In short, he considers that conferring these functions on the Tees Valley Combined Authority would be likely to lead to an improvement in the exercise of the statutory functions across the Tees Valley. In this consideration, the Secretary of State has had regard to the impact on local government and communities. Also as required by statute, the combined authority and the five constituent councils have consented to the making of this order. As required by the 2016 Act, we have in parallel with this order laid a report before Parliament which sets out the details of the public authority functions we are conferring on the Tees Valley through this order.
If approved by Parliament, the order will come into effect the day after it is made. It will confer on the combined authority a power to be exercised by the mayor: the ability to designate a mayoral development area. This is a necessary step in advance of the creation, by order, of a mayoral development corporation. The order also includes transitional arrangements to allow the combined authority to act in place of the mayor before the Tees Valley mayor is elected on 4 May.
The functions being conferred are corresponding functions to those held by the Mayor of London in relation to the Greater London area. The order confers these functions with appropriate modifications to reflect the conditions in the Tees Valley. These functions include: a power to designate mayoral development areas, after which the mayor is required to notify the Secretary of State of the designation, who in turn is then required by order, subject to the negative resolution procedure, to establish the mayoral development corporation; a power to transfer property to mayoral development corporations; a power to decide that the mayoral development corporation has certain functions, in particular whether the mayoral development corporation is to be a local planning authority; and a power to appoint members to any mayoral development corporation.
The modifications reflect the different conditions in the Tees Valley from those of Greater London. These modifications are: substituting the mayor of the combined authority for the Mayor of London and substituting the combined authority for the London Assembly; requiring combined authority members to consent to the designation of a mayoral development area, if their local authority area contains any part of the area to be designated; requiring combined authority members to consent to the transfer of planning functions, if their local authority area contains any part of the area in which the mayor proposes to exercise the planning functions; and requiring the consent of the North York Moors National Park Authority, if the national park’s area contains any part of the area in which the mayor proposes to exercise the planning functions. This condition was added following discussions across government and with the national park and local area. It is intended to maintain the status and powers of the national park, and to ensure it is fully involved in any decisions about growth in its area.
The order also provides for the necessary funding arrangements to support the mayor and the combined authority in delivering the functions. It includes transitional arrangements that will allow the work to continue at pace to create a mayoral development corporation in the Tees Valley. I can provide more on these if noble Lords would like this.
Noble Lords may find it helpful for me to summarise what the process for establishing a mayoral development corporation in the Tees Valley would be as a result of this order. The mayor would designate a mayoral development area if the mayor considers the designation will further the economic development and regeneration functions of the combined authority, the mayor has consulted on a proposal for a mayoral development corporation and has had regard to the consultation, the mayor has published a proposal which the combined authority has not rejected within 21 days and the mayor has received any necessary consents from combined authority members and the North York Moors National Park Authority. Once the mayor has made the designation and notified the Secretary of State, the Secretary of State must make the order to establish the mayoral development corporation. If the mayor has yet to be elected, the chair of the combined authority takes the place of the mayor.
Noble Lords may be aware that the combined authority is currently consulting on what is in many ways the nub of the issue: a proposal for a mayoral development corporation to cover the SSI former steelworks site and the wider 5,000-acre industrial site adjoining it. That consultation began on 23 December 2016 and is running for 11 weeks; it is still running, and closes on 10 March 2017.
In conclusion, this order devolves brand new powers to the Tees Valley Combined Authority, giving effect to a significant devolution deal commitment and putting local people and business leaders in a strong position to drive economic growth and regeneration. I commend the draft order to the House.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
My Lords, I have a few points for my noble friend on the Front Bench. The first is that, when the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reported on this, as it did on the previous Motion, I think a sense of unease comes through its report—a feeling that things have not been done entirely properly and a feeling of business undone. Indeed, again, there was a consultation period of only six weeks, from 11 July to 22 August last year, about these important changes. I draw attention to one comment in particular: among 200 respondents who referred to “wider governance issues”, one of the issues they raised was,
“whether Tees Valley was an appropriate geo-political area”.
Having worked on Teesside for many years and still living close by, I think that that is a very relevant consideration.
The first point is a small point: the area is not a valley. Certainly, Cleveland has nothing to do with being a valley. It used to be called Teesside. I want to record for the Minister’s benefit that, if you live up there and you are an ordinary citizen, you still call it Teesside; you do not call it Tees Valley. In thinking about Teesside, there are three authorities—Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool—and they are not contiguous. What is in between them is County Durham. If I start thinking about an integrated strategy, connectivity and all the things that are supposed to happen, I find it very difficult to believe that it is right that County Durham has looked north towards Newcastle, an effort which is not proving entirely easy as time goes by, when it is very arguable that its best interests and the interests of everybody in the north-east of England would be much better served if it looked south. Have there been any discussions about whether County Durham should be looking south rather than north?
It is as well to remember, of course, that Darlington, Hartlepool and Stockton-on-Tees were all part of County Durham once, so the history is entirely in favour of County Durham joining this combined authority. Indeed, I shall live on in the hope that it will decide, and the other authorities will accept, that it would be a good addition to this combined authority. These are very long-established cities and towns. Darlington is very long-established because of the railway and the Great North Road. Hartlepool and Stockton are very long-established because of the fishing industry and the wool, way back, and subsequently shipbuilding and, as has been mentioned, steel. Here I should declare a rather sad interest: I was a director of the company that built the Redcar blast furnace. That furnace should be working for another 30 years at least; it certainly had a life that would have gone on for that long.
I welcome the order, but I think it is incomplete. The thinking that has gone into it, and the Government’s approach, are not as detailed and thorough as they should be. And I have a final reservation. I cannot help half-thinking that some of these authorities go into these arrangements because there is some money at stake.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, the north-east in particular is in desperate need of regeneration, inward investment and higher-skilled jobs to bring prosperity to the local area, and Tees Valley is no exception to that. Given that backdrop, I am very supportive of a proposal that enables the local elected representatives to take account, take charge and have the vision and ambition for their own local area; to respond to the challenges of the loss of the steelworks and glassworks in the north-east and the ensuing large area of industrial dereliction; and to themselves be responsible for the challenge in bringing in new businesses, new life and new hope to local people. Noble Lords can tell from that that I am supportive of the notion of that happening. However, I have a couple of questions to explore with the Minister.
First, although the planning functions are critical to the whole idea of a development area, the reports do not make clear how much of the planning responsibilities the constituent councils will pass over to the development corporation. For instance, I think it would be appropriate for major site applications to be the responsibility of a planning authority within the combined authority but that the details, particularly of housing design and so on for the smaller applications, should still be the responsibility of the constituent councils. Those are the sorts of things that strategic bodies do not pay enough attention to. Enabling local councils to take on that responsibility would seem to be the right split of functions. I hope that that is part of the thinking behind the proposal, although it is not clear to me that that was the case.
The second big issue for me is the level of scrutiny that will be applied. Will there be a separate scrutiny function for the mayoral development corporation? I think that such a function would be appropriate, given the significant powers that will be in the corporation’s hands to reshape a considerable area of the north-east. There ought to be a separate scrutiny function to ensure that decisions are appropriately made. With that, I support the order.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)
My Lords, I start my remarks by making the usual declarations of interest that I have made in previous debates.
The Tees Valley Combined Authority order brings into force, as we have heard, the agreement reached between the Government and the local authorities in the Tees Valley area. The Minister might be pleased to hear that I support the order, although I have one or two points to raise.
I noted from the report of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that there were concerns about the creation of a mayoral development corporation, particularly if it covered part of the North York Moors National Park, but was pleased to learn that an agreement was reached whereby the functions and powers will be transferred only with the agreement of the national park authority. I think it is important for the Government to try generally to get an authority’s agreement when it can be brought into the sphere of an area.
I also note the imperative to establish quickly a mayoral development corporation in the South Tees area and that a shadow board has been established. I certainly wish that body well in its important work. Will the Minister say a bit more on what is envisaged and how he sees that body working with business to bring in inward investment? In particular, how will the body relate to the elected Members of Parliament for the area covered by the mayoral development corporation? The area has suffered a serious blow, and everything possible must be done to secure a successful recovery. A close working relationship with local and national government and business and elected representatives at every level is important to ensure that there is a recovery.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I endorse my noble friend’s approach to this matter. He has referred to the very different views of the department in relation to local opinion in this case. When we were discussing the previous order, the Minister in the other place said that the consultation was effectively inadequate, unreliable and unrepresentative. On this occasion, he, or at least his department, have had the grace to acknowledge that the “vast majority”—to use the phrase reported in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, published yesterday—opposed the mayoral element in the order. Nevertheless, the Government obviously intend to go ahead, given that we are discussing the matter today, with creating a mayoral authority.
The Government are assuming the posture of Henry Ford. Noble Lords will recall that one could have any colour of car as long as it was black; here, people can have any local deal as long as it is mayoral. That is not a choice. Frankly, it is little short of political blackmail. If you do not take this structure, you are not going to get the support. That is not the normal way that Governments of any political colour have operated. It is deplorable that the clear view on that aspect of the deal by the “vast majority” of residents in this area, as the Government acknowledge, is going to be overridden. The Government say, “You have a choice”, but that is not a choice. It is putting the authority and its people in a completely unacceptable, invidious position. The Government should be ashamed of requiring that condition to be met, given the scale of need that the noble Baroness, in particular, mentioned in relation to this area.
Clearly, the order will go through; but the Government ought not to be adopting that stance in relation to this issue.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords who have participated in this debate on the Tees Valley combined authority order. Notwithstanding the final comments of the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, I thank them for their general support—there was certainly support from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, from the Labour Front Bench.
I shall try to address the points that have been raised. First, I had read the comment of my noble friend Lord Eccles that this is not really a valley. I should know that myself because as a child I lived for some time in Hartlepool—indeed, my brother was born there—so I empathise with that. Nevertheless, I am tied by following the title of the document.
It is perfectly true that Darlington, Stockton and Hartlepool are not contiguous. I note what my noble friend Lord Eccles said about whether Durham should look north or south. Of course, we have had the experience of parts of County Durham—certainly South Shields and Gateshead—not wanting to be part of the deal for Newcastle or Tyneside, and that runs contrary to the assertion that this is being imposed by a wicked Government. They had every right to walk away from it, and I keep coming back to that point. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, shakes his head but it is not mandatory for local authorities to have these arrangements. If they do not want them, they do not have them.
There are presumably advantages in them because we have had a welcome for the order from the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. In general, he thinks that this is a good thing and he is supporting it—with caveats, which I understand is the role of the Opposition. However, if a local authority does not think it is a good idea, it has every ability to walk away from it. That is what some have done and it is their right to do so. I understand that, but this proposal was in the manifesto and nobody should have been taken by surprise by the Government’s support for the elected mayoral system.
I turn to the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, and thank her very much for her generally supportive approach. I think that this arrangement will operate in Tees Valley a little as it does in London, where it has operated in relation to the Olympic park, for example. It is about the strategy there. In the case of Teesside, presumably it will involve things such as the siting of businesses, help for business and transport links, whereas, as the noble Baroness indicated, more detailed and less strategic matters will be decided elsewhere.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, in all seriousness for his generally supportive comments, particularly in relation to the North York Moors National Park Authority. We have had discussions there and think that those concerned are very content with the arrangements. I agree with the noble Lord about the need to involve all levels of government. That is certainly what happened when the steel task force was set up—I remember going to its meetings. The task force was very productive across parties and different levels of government in seeking to do the best for the Redcar steel plant and, indeed, for steel more widely, where other issues were also involved.
I take the noble Lord’s point about the consultation. It is not ideal that it should happen over the summer, although, rather counterintuitively, I think I am right in saying—I will correct it in correspondence if I am wrong—that the best-responded-to consultation was the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough one, which took place at the same time. Nevertheless, I take the point that has been made: it is not an ideal time.
I say in all seriousness to the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that some valid points were made but very often the Opposition’s response is to be against the policy, which I can well understand, and they seem to be against the policy for elected mayors. As I said, I shall be happy to pick up in correspondence any points that I have missed.
Lord Beecham
I make it clear that the difference between us is that, if there is to be a mayoral system, it should have the support of the local electorate. That is the only difference between us.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
I am relieved that it is the only difference, but it is a difference as to how that is expressed. We believe that it is expressed through the support of elected members of the combined authorities. The noble Lord does not agree. I think I am right in saying that certainly a majority of these authorities would be those with a Labour majority. If these authorities did not want that, they would have every right to say so and not to be part of the system.
Lord Beecham
I regret having to say this but the noble Lord seems to overlook the fact that when eight referendums were held several years ago, they were held on the instructions of the Government. The local councils were not invited to say whether they wanted an elected mayor and to have some sort of consultation, as with the process here. They were instructed to have a referendum. That principle was adopted before. Now it has been abandoned because most of those referendums, from the Government’s perspective, went the wrong way. It is not the noble Lord’s fault because he was not in the Government at the time. The noble Lord, Lord Young, might have to accept some of the responsibility, collectively. But this is a different case.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
This is indeed a different case because they were single authorities. These are combined authorities and the expression of the democratic view is given by combined authorities. It is a policy difference. The noble Lord does not like that policy, but it is the Government’s policy.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I return to the issue of consultation. If we look at the order before us today and some of the ones we have seen recently, it appears that we have a kind of hokey cokey attitude to consultation, in that the Government go in and out depending on what they want. Actually, largely, they ignore what the consultation says. If they agree then that is great and if they do not they say, “Well we are sorry about that”. I am not sure if this is the right thing to do. I suggest that the noble Lord goes back to the department and the department comes back with some consistency in how the Government address consultation. It is all over the place at the moment, and even some noble Lords on the Bench behind the Minister think that it is not the way to operate.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, there is a great difference between a consultation and a plebiscite. This is asking not a simple yes/no question but a variety of questions. Of course we look at the consultation, but it is not a plebiscite on whether to go ahead or not. The noble Lord has not raised this point before and has supported such things. I am not sure whether he is now suggesting that the consultation should be regarded as a plebiscite.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I am not saying that. The point I am making is that these orders come before us quite frequently and sometimes the Government say, “Oh, isn’t it great that we have everyone fully behind us?”, and the next time they say, “Oh, sorry about that”, and they do not mention it. There seems to be an inconsistency in how the Government address consultation and whether they take it on board. That is my point and I suggest that the noble Lord goes back to the department and has a look at it. The way the Government use consultation seems odd. There is an inconsistency, and the department should look at that.
Viscount Eccles
My Lords, I want to return to the issue of consultation. I am entirely on the same side of the fence as the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy. Two very serious things emerged from the results of the consultation. One is whether this is an appropriate geopolitical area to achieve all the things that it is hoped combined authorities will achieve. The other is the history of local government in the area, which I did not refer to before but I refer to now.
Many changes have come about during the well over 60 years in which I have lived in the north-east. Those changes, in general, have not worked. The area has a very long and different history. In 1820, Middlesbrough was nothing but a hermit’s chapel on the banks of the Tees. Areas that are not contiguous and have very different histories will have to be pulled together. That is what mayors are supposed to be for. I urge my noble friend to watch very carefully what happens. I said this regarding the previous order and I say it again: I welcome what is being done, but I am uncertain as to whether it will succeed.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
I have one further point. I accept entirely that this is not a plebiscite, but I ask the Government, what is the point of consultation? Is the noble Lord saying, “Yes, of course we will consult on these things, but at the end of the day it will not make any difference: we will do what we are going to do”? If not, what is he saying?
Baroness Pinnock
On a separate point entirely, I asked earlier in the debate whether a specific scrutiny system would be established for the development corporation. If it is successful, as I hope it will be, it will make a huge difference to the area. A scrutiny system should be set up to investigate what decisions are made and how.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I will write in full on the issue of the consultation and on the points made by my noble friend Lord Eccles— which are somewhat different from those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—about the geopolitical nature and history of the area. I apologise to the noble Baroness: she has indeed raised the question of scrutiny at least twice, and I will write to her on that. A scrutiny system is certainly in place. Whether it operates across the whole combined authority or is specific to the strategic development corporation, I am not sure, but I will write fully to her on the issue.
I commend the order to the House.
Claims in respect of Loss or Damage arising from Competition Infringements (Competition Act 1998 and Other Enactments (Amendment)) Regulations 2017
The Earl of Courtown
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 20 December 2016 be approved.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, these regulations implement key aspects of the EU damages directive. The damages directive aims to make it easier for consumers and businesses to bring private action claims for damages. It applies only where there has been a breach of European competition law, which may or may not be accompanied by a parallel breach of national competition law.
Among other things, the directive covers a range of issues affecting a claimant’s ability to have access to compensation, including access to the relevant information to support their claim; the time within which a claim must be brought; and incentives aimed at encouraging businesses to settle a claim early. The directive also offers protections for small business defendants, cartel leniency applicants and defendants’ commercially sensitive information, all of which help make the regime robust and fair to both consumers and businesses.
The United Kingdom has long been at the forefront in Europe on providing access to damages for breaches of competition law. The directive recognises the strengths of UK law in this area and is closely based on it. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 introduced changes to the law to help consumers and businesses bring private actions. The Act widens the jurisdiction of the Competition Appeal Tribunal and promotes collective proceedings and settlements.
As this directive is being implemented so soon after the changes implemented by the CRA, we are conscious that we should try to avoid unwelcome confusion and disruption. In our consultation with stakeholders, we initially proposed the usual “copy out” approach to implementation to ensure full compliance. However, respondents highlighted the risk that this carried the potential for undermining important, established UK case law and creating confusion. The Government’s approach therefore relies as much on case law and changes to court rules as on the introduction of new regulations.
I now turn to “gold-plating” in respect of the single regime. The damages directive applies only where a business has caused harm following a breach of European competition law or both national and European competition law in parallel. It does not apply to harm resulting from a breach solely of national competition law. However, owing to the close relationship between the United Kingdom and EU competition regimes, the Government intend to apply the provisions to cases following breaches of UK law even when no parallel breach of European competition law exists. This is technically gold-plating, but it will provide for a simpler and more transparent regime and limit the amount of satellite litigation about which regime applies in a particular case. At consultation, stakeholders supported this approach.
I want now to set out the way in which the Government plan to handle the transition from the old regime to the new. The directive states that its substantive provisions should not be applied with retrospective effect, whereas procedural provisions can be backdated. The directive does not designate measures as substantive or procedural. To ensure clarity, the regulations distinguish substantive provisions from procedural.
Substantive new rules will apply only to claims where both the infringement and harm occurred after the coming into force of the implementing legislation. Procedural provisions will apply to proceedings which begin after the commencement of the implementing legislation and may apply to cases where the harm or infringement took place before the coming-into-force date. All provisions of the regulations are substantive save for the provisions on disclosure and use of evidence.
I will now run through the Government’s approach to some of the key provisions of the directive. The regulations introduce into UK law for the first time a presumption that cartels cause harm and a ban on the award of exemplary damages. The directive sets out provisions to tackle the passing-on of overcharges by a business which has been a victim of, for example, a cartel. Claimants may be several steps removed from the infringing company which is ultimately responsible for paying damages. If an infringement has caused price increases which have been passed along a distribution chain, those who suffered the harm in the end can claim full compensation.
In addition, the directive provides a defence where the claimants have passed on the whole or part of an overcharge. Well-established principles of tort law establish the right of indirect purchasers and the principle of passing on. The recent judgment of the Competition Appeal Tribunal in the Sainsbury’s v Mastercard case explicitly set out both the rights of indirect purchasers and the validity of the passing-on defence. Therefore, we are not legislating for these provisions. We are, however, using the regulations to set out who has the burden of proving that there has been passing-on and what must be established in the different circumstances.
It is important that SMEs are held accountable for their actions as part of a cartel. It is also important that any damages that an SME pays are proportionate to its role in the cartel. The regulations therefore ensure that an SME is liable only for the loss or damage caused to its direct or indirect customers. The protection applies only where the SME held less than a 5% share of the market for the duration of the offence or where paying damages would make the SME economically unviable. If an SME was the ringleader of a cartel, coerced others to join or had previously breached competition law, it would not be protected.
The regulations also limit the liability of successful applicants to a cartel leniency programme. As is the case with SMEs, a cartel leniency applicant is liable only for the loss or damage suffered by its direct or indirect customers, unless claimants cannot gain full compensation from other cartelists. To further protect the UK’s important cartel lenience regime, the regulations also ensure that leniency and settlement submission are protected from disclosure.
Part 5 of the regulations deals with the limitation periods, or prescriptive periods in Scotland. These are the periods during which a claimant can make a claim. The Competition Act 1998 already establishes a stand-alone limitation regime for competition private actions in the UK. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 amended this regime to bring it closer to the Limitation Act 1980 and similar legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Limitation periods already meet the requirements in the directive that they run for “at least five years.” They will remain six years in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and five years in Scotland. The limitation or prescriptive period starts when the competition infringement has ceased and a claimant knows or can reasonably be expected to know the identity of the infringer; that an infringement has occurred; and that harm has occurred arising from the infringement. The regulations ensure that the limitation period is suspended in various circumstances—for example, where a competition authority in the UK or the European Union is investigating the behaviour to which the complaint relates.
The regulations introduce a requirement that a defendant who settles a claim should be protected from contribution claims by co-defendants. This will protect the incentives for defendants to settle early, providing them with confidence that they will not be subject to multiple further claims once they have settled with affected parties.
What I have set out today is what this Government believe is a full implementation of the directive which retains important aspects of the UK’s current regime and will work for UK consumers and businesses in the long term. I commend the draft statutory instrument to the House.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations were laid without Her Majesty’s Government taking the opportunity to bring forward proposals for a regulatory structure which will maintain public trust and confidence in the provision of funding for third party litigants.”
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his explanation of this legislation. I know that he has been landed with it at the last minute and he has taken on this pretty technical subject with his usual verve and aplomb. Despite being technical, the subject is nevertheless important in that it has at its core the important issue of the protection of consumers.
Turning to the legislation, my noble friend drew attention to the fact that this is a twin-track approach. We have taken the whole EU directive but maintained a good deal of existing UK law and practice alongside it. He referred to it as gold-plating but, as he equally fairly pointed out, the approach was approved of and supported by the practitioners. In those circumstances, who is to complain about that? My concern about these regulations is that the Government have not taken the opportunity to bring forward, or at least signal their intention to bring forward, proposals to make sure that sufficient transparency and accountability exist for a regime by which funding is provided by third parties otherwise completely unconnected with the action to enable competition and other cases to be brought before the court. This process is known as third-party litigation funding.
Before going any further, I must remind the House that in my registered interests I am a non-executive chairman of a company that provides analytical services to companies involved in third-party litigation funding. The company is not party to the actions, it merely provides services and has no direct involvement. That having been said, I shall get back to the background.
The growth of third-party litigation funding has been prompted by two important developments. First, there is the general increase in contingent fee litigation, where any damages awarded do not go exclusively to the injured party but can be shared with others, including those who provided the means to bring the case to court. This increase has arisen in large measure following the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, which in turn implemented the measures recommended by Lord Justice Jackson in his 2010 report on the costs of civil litigation. That is the first big driver of growth.
Secondly, there has been the change brought about by the Consumer Rights Act 2015, referred to by my noble friend in his opening remarks. This made the important change of abandoning the traditional approach of opting in to a case—you had to indicate your wish to be involved in order to participate—in favour of an opt-out approach where unless you say, “I do not want to be part of the case”, you are assumed to be in. As a result, huge and potentially hugely profitable cases have become easier to lodge. The numbers are huge. The Mastercard case now before the courts, again referred to by my noble friend, has been brought on behalf of 46 million individual consumers and alleges damages of £14 billion. Importantly, an external funder put up £40 million on terms that are not entirely clear to bring the case to court.
It is important that my remarks today should not be seen as an attack on the concept of third-party litigation funding. It has a useful role to play in intercompany disputes and in helping to bring consumer cases. Many third-party litigation funders are entirely respectable and open their activities to public scrutiny. At least one company is listed on the Stock Exchange. However, we have an iceberg problem. What is going on with that part of the industry operating below the water line? As an industry in the United Kingdom, third-party litigation funding is virtually unregulated. The Association of Litigation Funders, the ALF, is a voluntary, self-governing organisation. I understand that there are currently seven members but anecdotal evidence suggests that there are more than 20 firms operating in this field in the UK, so less than half belong to the association. It has a code of conduct but lacks any real enforcement capability. The maximum fine it can impose is £500—trivial given the nature of the sums we are discussing—and the maximum penalty is expulsion from the association. That would not prevent the particular firm continuing to provide funding for third-party litigation.
Moreover, funders have benefited from a loophole in the law. When the Jackson proposals on contingency litigation were brought in with the LASPO Act, they included various restrictions on insurance companies and legal practices involving themselves in funding third parties. I imagine that Lord Justice Jackson’s purpose was to inhibit the growth of a litigation culture. However, no such inhibitions have been placed on the work of third-party litigation funders, who have thrived commensurately.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for outlining the regulations and to my noble friend Lord Hodgson for his contribution to the debate and for drawing my attention to this opportunity to alert Her Majesty’s Government to what I believe is a highly significant development in the funding of litigation in the United Kingdom. He speaks as someone with experience of business and I speak as a practising lawyer.
As a law student I was introduced to the rather mysterious rules concerning barretry, maintenance and champerty. These rules meant, as I understood them, that it was only the parties to litigation who should finance or benefit from it. For a recent and authoritative discussion of the issue, I recommend the lecture delivered by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Neuberger, as President of the Supreme Court at Gray’s Inn in May 2013.
At the heart of the problem is that the law is expensive and yet it is important there should be access to justice. Yet there was a historical prohibition on litigation funding by third parties, based in part on the acknowledgment that the law could become an instrument of oppression and injustice. Parliament itself, in setting up the legal aid scheme post war, provided an exception to the principle, one which was broadly welcomed. Similarly, insurance-funded and trade union-funded litigation made significant inroads into that prohibition.
Things moved on with the gradual restriction on what was an extremely expensive legal aid scheme with the development of conditional fee arrangements. After a modest beginning in 1990, they were extended through the Access to Justice Act 1999 but eventually got out of hand. What had once been a scheme intended to help indigent litigants turned out to be a bonanza for lawyers and oppressive to defendants, including government bodies such as the NHS.
Sir Rupert Jackson was invited to investigate the matter and the result was legislation in the form of the LASPO Act, which has done much to rebalance the CFA system. CFAs are not as profitable now and thus less likely to be employed. Damage-based agreements, which are in effect contingency fees as opposed to conditional fees, allow lawyers to a certain extent to share the fruits of litigation with their clients but they have not had very widespread take-up.
Although CFAs were primarily funded by insurance companies, there has now developed, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson said, a substantial third-party litigation funding market. There is, as I understand it, very little hard evidence as to the extent of the market and the evidence is anecdotal. But it is becoming increasingly clear that large-scale litigation is now regularly funded by third-party financiers.
The Civil Justice Council has had some engagement with the issue and has helped develop the code referred to by my noble friend but I wonder whether the Government have any idea how extensive this market is. The code is voluntary and the penalties for failing to follow it are derisory so that in effect this is a large and unregulated market. There is a real risk of abuse. Of course, even conventional litigation presents challenges to those involved. A lawyer’s interests may not always be entirely congruent with those of his or her client. But where the litigation is an investment, and those running the case are not regulated, as are solicitors and barristers, the risk of a wholly commercial approach to issues of justice is worrying.
Once a party knows that the other side has third-party funding, this can bring about a form of bullying in relation to the non-funded party. The temptation not to be straight with opponents is considerable. Accepting offers early because of external financial pressures nothing to do with the litigation can distort the process. Commercially driven pressures from expert serial litigation funders on lawyers themselves can result in, to put it gently, ethical challenges. These challenges are compounded by the innovation of alternative business structures. The explosion of litigation following the Access to Justice Act 1999 resulted in the evolution of a number of parasitic organisations, not least claims management companies. Although these are increasingly regulated, many lawyers doubt they need to exist at all or that they have much to do with the interests of justice.
What should the Government do? I respectfully suggest that the Government should get a real grip on what the market is doing. I am aware that the Ministry of Justice is reviewing the LASPO Act in terms of whether it has resulted in a loss of access to justice. This will mean considering the availability of legal aid and how the new post-LASPO CFA system is working. This would also provide an opportunity for the Government to consider third-party funding of litigation generally.
I do not expect my noble friend to respond in detail to these points. He may well say that this statutory instrument is concerned with consumer rights and it needs a little time before the Government decide how well matters are working. But experience shows that this is a vigorous market which reacts quickly to economic pressures. America is not a good example of a satisfactory litigation system. For the Government to make any meaningful interventions, they need to know what is going on. Should they not require far more information to be provided by litigants about the source of their funding than is currently the situation? All government departments are, to some extent, affected by litigation and there is room for some cross-departmental work. I hope my noble friend will alert other departments to this troubling phenomenon.
Finally, I remind the House that personal injury litigation has just got a great deal more profitable. This week, the Lord Chancellor altered the discount rate. This will affect the NHS and every motorist in the country. It may help to fan the flames of third-party funding. It is time the Government seized the initiative.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Earl for introducing the substantive subject of our discussion—the regulations before us—but we have also been treated to a masterclass in other areas. The combined effect of the speeches from the noble Lords, Lord Hodgson and Lord Faulks, has been to raise what might be a very serious issue. The whole House owes them a debt of gratitude for doing so, even if they had to be inventive in trying to work out the main points they wished to make within the constraints of this instrument.
I was going to say very much the same things as the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, but in a much more workmanlike way, since I lack his legal and other experience. I sense in this the beginnings of a scandal that will affect the way statutory measures before us and others will be taken. These speeches gave us the benefit of the business perspective—it is clear that this is an ongoing issue—and the legal dimension, where the ethical issues raised will have to be addressed. The ongoing review of LASPO gives the Government an opportunity to move quickly on this. The noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, said that this needs to be nipped in the bud quickly if it is not going to run out of steam, particularly in the light of the changes announced on personal injury. I back what has been said and hope the Minister will be able to respond positively.
We have no particular objections to the statutory instrument itself, which is a sensible way forward based on existing UK law. The point has been made that the model derived under the Enterprise Acts and various legislation that has gone through this House in recent years has been used to bring forward a model for the whole of Europe.
I will make three or four minor points. It was good to hear during the tail end of today’s debate on consultation that consultation does work in certain instances, and that the consultation responses—albeit mainly from the professionals, not consumers—went for a rather more gold-plated result that would simplify the work being done. There is nothing wrong in that. It is good that a loophole has been closed that could have been exploited through different jurisdictions operating in different ways in Europe and in the UK.
The Minister made a good attempt to resolve an issue that might still cause problems further down the line: the rather ill-defined difference between procedural and substantive issues. I do not expect him to deal with that today, but he might reflect on how this will play out in a letter. The Explanatory Memorandum is simply a list: it does not give a sense of how the litigants or those affected will respond in practice. I would be grateful if he explained that.
There is one other point it would be interesting to have more detail on. The approach taken to SMEs is right in principle, but it is surprising to learn that the SMEs caught up in what might be regarded as cartel issues, and which therefore might be subject to penalty, will be limited to those with a 5% share. The problem is that a 5% share of market limit, presumably on a UK basis, will not deal with what happens in the real world of SMEs’ engagement with very local areas. A small business will be small in its reach, as well as in terms of employees and turnover. Therefore, there may be local effects that would not be caught by the 5% share limit. I do not expect a response on this today, but it would be interesting to hear in due course what the Government’s response would be.
I have two final points. Any response from this side of the House to a statutory instrument from this department usually asks why common commencement dates have not been followed. The Minister knows that, because I have raised the issue with him before. An account is given of why it is not necessary to wait until 6 April on this occasion, but it does not explain why the delay occurred. I do not want an answer today, but at some point it would be interesting to know what held back this provision. As the Explanatory Memorandum anticipates, people want to use it immediately. It came into effect this time last year, but it has taken since then for the statutory instrument to come forward. That is probably to be regretted.
Finally, the debate that led to the introduction of the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, was prompted by a clause in the Consumer Rights Act, with which the House engaged this time last year, relating to opt-in and opt-out arrangements. He explained that third-party litigation funding has had a chance to thrive and grow. He could have mentioned that when we discussed this, we were also interested in the possibility of an alternative dispute resolution approach to a number of the issues that were raised. If there was an ADR approach we would not be seeing so much of this going into the courts, so there would be less third-party funding. Again, I am not looking for a response to that, but it might be noted by the department.
We have a deficiency here. The proposal in the directive was that every sector of our economy should have adequate ADR systems in place. The Government, for their own reasons—we pressed them hard on this—have not gone down that route, so appropriate ADR solutions do not exist in all sectors. Where they exist they have been encouraged, but where they did not they have not been put in place. In retrospect, that might have been a better solution, although of course one can say that in hindsight of many things.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate: my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Hodgson, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson. I will deal with the points he raised first—in particular, the procedural issue. I will write to him on that; likewise on the SME 5% share point.
The noble Lord is well known to me regarding commencement dates and such like, as he said, but as far as the directive being implemented later is concerned, in our consultation we proposed to follow standard practice and copy out the directive. Respondents to the consultation highlighted the risks this presented to the UK’s established case law. We listened to these concerns and changed our approach. The regulations do what they need to do to supplement the court rules and case law in order to implement the directive in full. Drafting these regulations has been complex. We wanted to get them right rather than rush them through.
I understand the concerns of my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Hodgson. I welcome their questions on whether the Government could have used the implementation of the directive to bring forward proposals for a regulatory framework. The damages directive does not include measures relating to third-party litigation funding. Taking any action through these regulations would be going beyond the powers we have to regulate. The Government are not persuaded that any changes to the regulation of third-party litigation funding are warranted at this time. However, the Government will keep this matter under review as the market for third-party funding develops, and are ready to investigate further should the need arise.
My noble friend Lord Hodgson mentioned that the introduction of opt-out in private actions has led to the increase in third-party litigation funding. Opt-out collective actions were introduced to encourage more consumers to seek redress. During the introduction of these actions, the Government put in place measures to deter claims at the Competition Appeal Tribunal whose aim was to make money for litigation funders.
My noble friend also mentioned that there are no safeguards in relation to third-party litigation under the CRA. The Competition Appeal Tribunal has powers to ensure that, first and foremost, consumers have access to damages awarded following opt-out competition claims. For example, under CAT controls, the assumption is that residual money that is not claimed by the consumers will be given to charity.
I thank my noble friends Lord Faulks and Lord Hodgson for raising their concerns about the impact of third-party litigation funding. The last Government accepted the recommendation of Lord Justice Jackson that a voluntary code of practice be agreed. This work was undertaken by the Civil Justice Council, and the code came into force in 2011. Although the Government have not done a formal review of the effectiveness of third-party litigation funding, they have said that they will keep this under review, as I mentioned earlier. If noble Lords have particular concerns, I urge them to set these out in writing and I will ensure that they are passed on to the Justice Minister.
The Government are committed to reviewing the operation of the regime covering private actions for competition damages by the end of March 2019. I have heard noble Lords’ concerns, but the government position is clear, and it would not have been possible to use the damages directive as a vehicle for this issue. I ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment to the Motion.
In closing, I stress that, as I mentioned in my opening speech, the statutory instrument contributes further to the recent major reforms to consumer and competition law introduced through the Consumer Rights Act 2015. It will make it easier for consumers and businesses to bring private actions for damages where they have suffered loss as a result of breaches of the competition prohibitions set out in Chapters 1 and 2 of the Competition Act 1998 and in Articles 101 and 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. I commend the draft statutory instrument to the House.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Faulks for his expert legal advice and insights into this problem, which align with my experience, and the noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, for his general support regarding the dangers we face. I also thank my noble friend for replying. It is good to know that a review is ongoing and that in March 2019 we may be slamming shut the door of the stable—assuming the horse is still inside. He is perfectly right, of course, that as far as competition cases are concerned, the Competition Appeal Tribunal controls the gate, which may provide some ability to slow things down.
All I had hoped to do today was to warn the House, and through the House the Government, of what I see as some substantial difficulties and dangers that may lie ahead. If nothing is done and difficulties do ensue, I promise my noble friend that I will try to avoid saying, “I told you so”. But in the meantime, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Bill
Thursday 2nd March 2017
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2017 View all Supply and Appropriation (Anticipation and Adjustments) Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text
Building More Homes (Economic Affairs Committee Report)
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Hollick
That this House takes note of the Report from the Economic Affairs Committee, Building More Homes (1st Report, HL Paper 20).
Lord Hollick (Lab)
My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to introduce the report of the Economic Affairs Committee entitled Building More Homes, which was published last July—things move quite slowly in the housing policy market. I thank all members of the committee who participated, our terrific support staff, Ayeesha Waller, Ben McNamee and Oswin Taylor, and our specialist advisers Professor Geoff Meen and Professor Christine Whitehead.
The committee examined this topic in depth over six months. We heard from more than 50 witnesses and received scores of written submissions. What was revealed was a dysfunctional market beset with long-term failures, leading to a chronic shortage of supply and worsening availability and affordability. The committee concluded that the housing market needs bold and radical measures if it is to be reformed. Today’s debate affords the House the opportunity to consider the Government’s recently published White Paper, Fixing our Broken Housing Market, and see how it matches up to our report’s challenge to build more homes.
The cost of a broken market in human terms is considerable. The supply of affordable rental accommodation, in particular social housing, is inadequate and the availability of affordable starter homes is severely restricted. This forces many young families to live in insecure private rental accommodation, supported by a rapidly increasing housing benefit bill, which in 2015 amounted to £27 billion. The lack of availability of affordable housing prevents movement of labour to areas—particularly London and the south-east, and other major metropolitan areas—where there are job opportunities. The price people are paying for our failed housing policies is a crushing financial and emotional burden for many families.
The lack of housing supply forces house prices up, with the latest annual increase to December 2016 at 8.2%. Those buying their first homes are now older and wealthier—indeed, they have to be wealthier. Unaffordability has increased the cost of the private rental sector, such that tenants in London spend 60% of their income in rent, as opposed to those owning their own home, who spend 19% of their income.
How many new homes do we need to build each year? The current level of supply is gradually recovering from a sharp decline following the financial crisis but still falls far short of what is required. Our findings were that, if we are to meet the current annual demand and catch up on the hangover of unmet demand from the past, we need to build 300,000 homes each year. This higher rate of construction will need to be sustained over many years to have a moderating effect on prices.
The White Paper acknowledges that between 225,000 and 275,000 homes need to be built each year, but it does not commit to that target. The Government appear to be continuing to stick to their current target—the target of the last Government—of 1 million homes in the lifetime of this Parliament. Would the Minister please confirm in his reply what the Government’s current target is?
The last Government chose to prioritise the expansion of home ownership at the expense of homes for social and affordable rent, where demand from low-income households is high and unmet. We were told that opportunities to boost institutional investment in the private rental sector are potentially being undermined by the very policies designed to assist owner occupation.
The committee examined the long-standing and persistent reasons for failing to build enough homes, and proposed solutions to each of them. I will focus on three key failures.
The Government have very much relied on the private sector to build the homes needed, and the private sector has failed to do that. The private market is, we learned, uncompetitive and distinctly oligopolistic in character. The number of SME builders has fallen dramatically following the financial crisis, while the large builders and land agents hold significant land banks. A third of planning permissions are not used, and estimates of the total number of unused planning permissions vary from 445,000 to more than 600,000. That variance highlights one aspect of this market, which is that the statistics are often rather elusive.
From the builders’ economic perspective, they are behaving quite rationally, as they are seeking to maximise profit and minimise exposure to risk; they therefore manage for margin rather than volume. So the economic incentives need to be changed. We recommended that local authorities be given the power to levy council tax on land not developed after an agreed period of time. The Government recognised the problem, but their response is to decrease slightly the length of time before builders have to start work. It is doubtful that this measure is strong enough to tackle the problem.
The second failure is the almost non-existent level of public sector building. A central finding in our report is the conclusion that the UK has only built—and, in our view, can only build—enough new homes when local authorities play a substantial role in housebuilding. In the decade to 1979, local authorities built more than 1 million new homes, but in the decade to 2015, they built just 9,000.
We were impressed by the ambition of local authorities, particularly large metropolitan authorities, wanting to get back into the business of building houses, but they are unable to access the funding required to support their ambitions. The restrictions on the ability of local authorities to borrow to build social housing are both arbitrary and anomalous. The restrictions that, for example, allow them to borrow to build a leisure centre or a swimming pool but not to build houses should be replaced and reformed. They should be allowed to borrow under the prudential borrowing regime to build all types of houses, in particular, social housing.
In London and elsewhere, local authorities have shown an entrepreneurial spirit, entering into partnerships with housing associations, institutions and private sector builders to develop multi-tenancy sites, where the development profits can be used to help the local authority to fund future developments. The success of the partnerships will hopefully encourage local authorities to consider investing some of their sizeable reserves in housebuilding.
The Government have made a welcome pledge of £2.3 billion over the next four years to the housing infrastructure fund, targeted at the areas of greatest housing need. The fund will pay for infrastructure projects, such as transport and utilities, to enable local authorities to unlock new housing projects. This is a good start. The White Paper introduces a further potential source of government funding, through bespoke housing deals with local authorities in high-demand areas to deliver genuinely additional housing. The Government are prepared to use “all the levers” at their disposal to support these bespoke deals, but the White Paper gives no indication of the funds available. Can the Minister please let us know the amount of money available to support this interesting initiative?
The third failure is the low level of homebuilding on public land. The committee heard evidence that over 3 million homes could be built on public land. Public land in total is 900,000 hectares, or 6% of all land. In London, it is estimated to be 20% of all land. Public land presents an opportunity to build the kind of homes the market is not willing to support and also, very importantly, to support the revival of small and medium-sized builders through direct commissioning. This would bring additional, much-needed competition to the marketplace.
The Government must be commended for taking action to release land, but, as the National Audit Office has pointed out, the promised houses have not been built on that land. The Government expect that, by 2020, nearly one-third of their housebuilding target—assuming it is 1 million—will be built on public land. We recommended that the National Infrastructure Commission be charged with overseeing and monitoring the number of homes actually built, so that we know what is going on. The Government acknowledge the problem and commit, somewhat feebly, to “work harder” to make public sector land available, but they are silent about how progress is to be pushed ahead and monitored.
We also recommended that the release of public land could be achieved, in part, by extending the flexibility of local authorities to dispose of land for housing at less than best consideration and not be forced—as is the case now—to sell that land suitable for housing at higher prices to commercial developers. The Government agree with this and acknowledge that the availability of public land is essential if we are to provide the boost to building low-cost homes in areas of high demand.
On planning, we called for local authorities to be able to increase planning fees if the extra revenue is invested in planning departments. Indeed, many developers told us that they were very happy to pay more if the underresourced planning departments that they had to deal with could use the funds only to beef up their staff resources to speed up the planning process. The Government opposed an amendment along these lines to the Housing and Planning Bill, but have now had a change of heart and included this proposal in the White Paper, which is to be welcomed.
Our report also drew attention to the negative effects on the housing market of regular policy and fiscal changes. Intervention in one part of the market can all too easily disrupt another part of the market. For instance, the changes in stamp duty land tax, which have proved to be a bit of a boon for the Treasury, appear to have deterred people from moving to smaller homes, thus creating a barrier to the best use of the current housing stock. This has also slowed the development of the vibrant buy-to-let market.
As he carries out his extensive consultation process on the White Paper, Gavin Barwell, the Housing Minister, is emphasising that he wants government policy to be held steady and settled for a period of years. This will be widely welcomed in the industry, but will the Treasury agree? It is of course the Treasury that sets the rules for local authority borrowing which so constrain the ambitions to build. Unless the Treasury takes the bold step to free local authorities to borrow prudentially to build homes, it is doubtful that the White Paper’s commendable ambitions can be delivered. I beg to move.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and I just take a few moments to pay tribute to the excellent way in which he chairs our committee. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, in one of these BBC programmes, suggested that this is something of a daycare centre—it feels more like a workhouse under the leadership of the noble Lord: we have produced a report on electricity, we are working on a report on the labour market, we have finished off this housing report, and I believe we are doing something on student loans. We used to meet on Tuesdays; we now meet on Tuesdays and Wednesdays—and Thursdays, sometimes—and, in addition to that, the sub-committee now meets two days a week. So let us have no more talk about how this House is not properly employed.
I found this subject something of a challenge; housing is not an area where I claim any expertise. The last time I thought seriously about housing was when I was on Westminster City Council, which is nearly—gosh, it cannot be that many years ago; it is quite a long time, anyway. I was quite struck when, just after new year, I arrived by train in Glasgow. It was pouring down with what was almost sleet, on a horrible cold night. I went to get a taxi, and sitting in a sleeping bag in the wet was a young girl with a cup wanting money. Around London today we can see more and more examples of people in this desperate situation. Everyone in the taxi queue walked past, pretending not to notice her—if she had been a Labrador, everyone would have patted it, but she was a person and very few people put any money in the cup. It is not just with homelessness that we have a problem; we also have the problem of professional couples earning in good jobs who, in some parts of the country—most notably in London and south-east—cannot afford to get into the housing market. I was very proud to be a member of the Government in which my noble friend Lord Lawson led us with considerable success towards the idea of the home-owning democracy. The fact is, home ownership is falling and our ability to house those on the lowest incomes is non-existent.
If people do not have time to read the report, the only thing they have to look at in it is Figure 1. It shows the housebuilding that has occurred in the various sectors, and outside the private sector—as our chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, has pointed out—it is failing to meet demand. The demand has increased remarkably. I was quite struck by the numbers reported by the noble Lord, Lord Green. He said that we had to build a house every 15 minutes to meet the demand that was arising simply from immigration. However, it is not just immigration that is increasing demand: it is also rising incomes, the change in the nature of households and the availability of cheap mortgages because of quantitative easing.
Central to this problem, as the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, pointed out, is the supply of land. One of the recommendations in our report is that we should create some incentive. There is no incentive for a health authority or a transport body to make land available for housing if they do not get to keep the proceeds. That would make a difference, but, as we say in our report, there does not seem to be anyone in central government making sure that that land is used effectively.
We had a private session with the Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell, and I found him the most extraordinary Minister. He has been around the country and is absolutely on top of these issues. He understands them and that is very much reflected in the White Paper. That session was, therefore, very cheerful. We were very cross with him at one stage, however, because the Government took a very long time to respond to our report, and produced a response that was, to say the least, derisory. We were cheered, however, to find out that the probable reason for that was that many of our ideas were being incorporated into the White Paper, for which we were extremely grateful. Again, it shows that, in the Housing Minister, we have someone who is listening. I know he spends his time going around the country talking to local authorities. The key thing here is that this is not a singular problem. It varies from region to region: in some parts of the country, it is perfectly affordable for people to buy homes, but in other parts of the country it is not.
Now we come to the bit that I found ideologically challenging. The great thing about this House is that we operate—certainly our committees do—on the basis of the evidence put before us. The evidence was absolutely overwhelming: we cannot rely on the private sector to provide all the housing that we need and the different categories of housing that we need, but it was also reassuring to find that the old kind of statist ideas were also not going to deliver. We need a rented sector, but this term “affordable housing” is like something out of double-think. Affordable housing turns out to be something that you have to be very well-off indeed to be able to afford. There is little in the way of supply for those people who are on very low incomes and do not have very much money. The conclusion that we came to is that we must find a way of enabling local authorities to provide low-cost housing for people who need those facilities.
Where I was cheered, in recognising that there needed to be more reliance on public sector housing, was that this would also enable us to save a great deal of taxpayers’ money. The noble Lord, Lord Hollick, pointed out that we were spending £27 billion on housing benefit. If we had more housing at lower rents provided by local authorities or housing associations, or local authorities in partnership with the private sector, we would not have to provide the housing benefit on such a level. It does not seem a very effective use of taxpayers’ money to simply use housing benefit in a market where the rents are going up and up and neither the taxpayer’s situation nor the availability of housing is improved.
I should, perhaps, declare an interest as chairman of Secure Trust Bank, because one aspect of the Government’s policy is clearly to encourage the building of more houses. They have set a target—I think it is a target—of a million houses, which, as the report points out, will be insufficient. The clear conclusion of our report, described by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, is that the big housebuilders are something of an oligopoly. Actually, if you look at the business models of the big housebuilders, they are entirely rational in taking up the land, getting planning permission, creating a land bank, and then restricting the supply of housing that is coming on to the market to maintain the price, get best value and plan for the economic cycle. They are being entirely rational and you would not expect them to do anything else, but that is not consistent with what the Government need to do to meet their policy objectives.
Encouraging the small and medium-sized builders, which the Housing Minister says is a priority, means that they need availability of finance and labour. That has implications for our immigration policy when we finally get control of our own borders, but it also has implications for finance; so what on earth is going on when the Bank of England, in setting the capital requirements of the banks for lending, is actually making it cheaper for them to provide mortgages to people who have a low loan-to-value requirement and more expensive for the banks to provide money to developers to build housing? In the last few months, it has increased the capital weighting required for smaller banks, which are the main sources of revenue for small and medium-sized builders, from a 100% risk weighting to 150%. That means that it is 50% more expensive for the banks to provide loans, and it also means that there is less capital available and less ability for the banks to provide that.
On Friday, a report was published by the PRA with a statement from the Treasury Minister, saying that it wanted to increase competition and that it was going to address these issues. However, when you look at the detail, it is making the situation—certainly on my cursory glance—not better, but marginally worse.
I appreciate that we have lost a bit of time this morning, so I will bring my remarks to a close. On housing for rent, we need—as I have already indicated—rental properties available for people on lower incomes. We also have to recognise, however, that we need to have some means of securing rental tenures that are longer and more secure for people with families. We cannot go back to having a regulated housing market—we are certainly not recommending that—because we know where that will end: it will end with even less supply. We can, however, encourage the development and funding of building for rent in the private sector, where the terms of tenure are longer, to meet an obvious demand as we move forward.
Finally, I should like to say what a pleasure it has been to serve on this committee, and how much I appreciate that the White Paper has picked up on some of the ideas. The Housing Minister told us that everyone wanted a silver bullet. The White Paper is not a silver bullet; there is no silver bullet. We will solve this problem with a combination of policies on the capital and other rules that apply to the banks, on housing benefit, on welfare and on immigration. We need government as a whole to put their shoulder to the wheel on this. In our report, we said that there should be a senior Cabinet Minister who is in charge of driving this policy; my recommendation is to make Mr Barwell a senior Cabinet Minister.
Lord Sharkey (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I enthusiastically endorse his comments about making a Cabinet Minister of Gavin Barwell. I too am a member of your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee which, under the exemplary and firm guidance of the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, produced the report we are debating.
The report’s conclusions were in fact straightforward: that the housing market is obviously in crisis, and has been for a long time; and that the crisis is getting worse. In many areas of the country, people have no realistic prospect of being able to buy their own home. The UK-wide ratio of house prices to average income stands at 8:1 and prices continue to rise, last year by 7%. This morning, the IFS forecast that average incomes will not in fact increase at all over the next two years. It is not surprising that home ownership levels are in steep decline, especially among young people. As others have pointed out, the key reason for this is the lack of supply. There is not enough private housing, not enough housing association housing and effectively no local authority housing.
The committee’s report examined this failure to build and other aspects of the housing market. We concluded that it was vital that local authorities returned to building at scale and across all types of tenure. We made other recommendations to do with the planning system, the use of public land and the use and taxation of existing housing stock. These were all important and, we believed, helpful recommendations but we were clear that:
“Local authorities and housing associations must be incentivised and enabled to make a much greater contribution to the overall supply of new housing”.
We then said:
“Without this contribution it will not be possible to build the number of new homes required”.
Since the early 1960s, the private sector has on average built around 150,000 new homes annually. We saw no reason for the private sector as currently incentivised to increase its output. The builders made it clear to us in evidence that they are margin maximisers and not volume maximisers, for entirely understandable reasons, as the noble Lords, Lord Hollick and Lord Forsyth, have explained. This means that there is a significant supply gap that must be filled by the public sector. Housing associations can and do build around 50,000 new homes in a good year, which means a gap in supply of around 100,000 homes if we are to reach the recommended target of 300,000 per annum. That gap will have to be filled by the public sector.
The Government’s response to our report came in two parts, as the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, has mentioned. The first was a preliminary and rather sketchy response; the White Paper was the substantive response to our report and it has a promising title, Fixing our Broken Housing Market. That blunt title and its acknowledgement that the housing market is broken were encouraging signs and so were the forewords by the PM and the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State said:
“Soaring prices and rising rents caused by a shortage of the right homes in the right places has slammed the door of the housing market in the face of a whole generation”.
That is true. The Prime Minister said of the proposals in the White Paper:
“We’re giving councils and developers the tools they need to build more swiftly”.
That is less obviously true and skirts around the crucial question of volume. Speed and volume are not necessarily the same thing. The White Paper says that:
“The consensus is that we need from 225,000 to 275,000 or more homes per year to keep up with population growth and start to tackle years of under-supply”.
If the private sector and housing associations between them manage to build 200,000 homes a year, the Government have a deficit on their own figures of between 25,000 and 75,000 homes a year. Who will build these required homes, and how? It has to be local authorities. The committee took that view.
We also noted the keenness of some local authorities to build and the obstacles in their way, the chief of which was money. We have the very odd situation where borrowing on the general revenue account is limited only by the well-understood prudential principle, but borrowing on the housing revenue account is generally not available or much more restricted. This means, as others have noted, that local authorities can borrow to build swimming pools but not to build houses—a ludicrous situation, given the gravity of our housing problem. We recommended allowing local authorities to borrow to build social housing, as they can for other purposes. We saw this as the surest and simplest way to increase housing volume. I think that the Government have rejected this proposal, chiefly by ignoring it. They agree that local authorities have an important role in delivering new homes but, in the absence of the ability to borrow on the housing revenue account, this relies chiefly on joint ventures financed through the general account. There is nothing wrong with that; in fact, there is a great deal to like about joint ventures through the general account, as we said in our report. Again, the question is one of volume.
These schemes have so far been disparate and sometimes very small-scale. What volume do the Government think will emerge? How have they modelled this number? What confidence can we really have that this kind of venture will produce the required 25,000 to 75,000 new homes each year and what similar schemes can the Government point at to show that this kind of scheme produces volume results in a reasonable time? These are important questions. Without these additional homes from local authorities, the Government’s housing plan will fail. I would be grateful if the Minister could address these questions when he replies.
The White Paper contains many other proposals, many of them important improvements on the current housebuilding regime. In particular, it recommends a proper assessment by local authorities of forecasting housing needs and requires a plan to show how these needs may be met. This is a very good idea in principle—at least the first bit is, even if I thought that local authorities were already in fact obliged to do exactly that. The second bit, showing how the need may be met, may prove very difficult given the current budget cuts under way if borrowing requirements are not relaxed and joint ventures are the only significant tool available. I welcome in principle, though, the notion of a new housing delivery test. Speaking of local authorities, the White Paper says that,
“where the number of homes being built is below expectations, the new housing delivery test will ensure that action is taken”.
In paragraph 2.49, it goes on to give some detail. The remedy for underperformance seems to be that,
“the presumption in favour of sustainable development in the National Planning Policy Framework would apply automatically”.
That really is quite opaque. Can the Minister explain how this would actually work to remedy a shortfall in building homes?
The section of the White Paper entitled “Helping People Now” reprises the problems with the housing market and recites the grim statistics that we have heard already this afternoon. It goes on to offer help and lists a range of demand-side schemes, which it says will help more than 200,000 people to become home owners by the end of this Parliament. We have seen such schemes before; they have been, in one form or another, a prominent feature of government tinkering with the housing market for a long time. All these schemes have two things in common: they do not address the fundamental flaws in the housing market, and typically help people who are already near the threshold of home ownership over that threshold. On what basis do these schemes provide value for the taxpayers’ money spent? Does not their narrow focus and inflationary effect mean that the money could be better spent on improving supply rather than increasing demand?
All in all, the White Paper is a bit of a disappointment or at least a curate’s egg. It contains some good things but they are all essentially second-order good things. It is not radical; in fact, it is rather timid. We have had a dysfunctional and socially harmful housing market for a long time and it is getting worse. It needs lots of reform, and there is some in the White Paper, but it needs radical reform if we are to bring real and sustainable improvements. What it needs is a lot more building by local authorities. The easiest, most obvious and most reliable way to do this is to relax the restrictions on borrowing on the housing revenue account. It is a pity that the Treasury seems to have prevented that solution going forward. This is a simple measure. It would work and greatly reduce the £9 billion of the housing benefit payment that currently goes to the private rented sector. Without the scale of local authority building that this measure would allow, it will not be possible to build the number of new houses required. That is a missed opportunity and it risks the perpetuation of a huge and socially damaging housing problem.
Lord Turnbull (CB)
My Lords, let us start by giving credit where credit is due. First, the White Paper is candid in acknowledging the multiple failures in the housing market. Secondly, it recognises that the current target of 1 million homes over five years is too low. Although we are told that it remains in force, it has been completely airbrushed from the documents, presumably because it is clear that housing starts have already fallen behind the asking rate.
Thirdly, it adopts much of the thinking of the Economic Affairs Committee—for example, that the problems will be solved only by action by all players and on all types of tenure. It makes a major move away from the almost exclusive focus of recent Governments on promoting home ownership and recognises that there are severe pressures in the rental market. Indeed, in my view, it is the rental market that is the epicentre of the crisis, where hardship is greatest. I agree that much of the credit for this fresh thinking should go to the new Minister for Housing, Gavin Barwell, and I wonder whether he will eventually enter the pantheon of those who have held this portfolio with distinction—notably the then Sir George Young and Nick Raynsford, who between them held it for about 15 years.
Fourthly, it acknowledges that the so-called volume builders will never want or be able to build enough. Thereafter, things go downhill. A new range is suggested, although whether it is a target or just the consensus is unclear—I hope that its status can be clarified. The bottom end of the range, 225,000 homes per annum, may not even be enough to match emerging demand. The top end of the range, 275,000, may not do enough to catch up the underprovision of the past decade. For that reason, our report recommended 300,000 per annum.
The main failing of the White Paper is that, despite an extensive range of measures, there is no assurance that the Government will deliver the numbers required—indeed, no attempt is made to reconcile the two. Finally, there is a serious omission: the tax issues which distort the housing market are simply not addressed. That is the gist, but let me develop some of these points.
I do not need to go over the main failings. Most of the things that the Government want are not happening or, worse, are going in the wrong direction. A major factor in these failings comes from the excessive focus on home ownership to the neglect of the rental sector. Simple economics tells you that if, as the Government claim, they have helped 200,000 people into home ownership but the supply has not increased, house prices will rise to price out a different 200,000.
The recognition that renting needs to be promoted is a huge advance. The share of the private rented sector has doubled from 10% to 20% in the past 15 years, but much of the sector is in poor condition, badly managed and, as has been said, tenancies are insecure, so families cannot even be sure where their children will go to school.
The Prime Minister’s foreword itself acknowledges that 2.2 million working households on below-average income spend a third or more of their disposable income on housing. As has been said, that figure is greater in London. Today, it would take a low or middle-income family saving 5% of their wages 24 years to reach an average-sized deposit. This is all massively unfair, as the White Paper reveals that housing costs relative to income are substantially lower for owners than for renters.
As the main housebuilders build almost exclusively for sale, it follows that if rental provision is to increase, new players have to be mobilised. Historically, local authorities and housing associations played that role, and they need to be brought back into play. My estimate is that we need to find an additional 100,000 homes above those provided for sale.
There is a lot in the White Paper about local authorities, but most of it is about their role as planning authorities. The requirement to produce plans which meet local need is very much to be welcomed, as is the fact that they are to be given extra resources to speed the planning process. However, while paragraph 3.27 states:
“They also have an important role in delivering homes themselves”,
there is no sign of the relaxation of the housing revenue accounts that we have called for.
This is followed by a masterly euphemism in paragraph 3.32:
“We will work with local authorities to understand all the options for increasing the supply of affordable housing”.
This ranks alongside Hirohito’s:
“The war … has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage”.
The picture is not much better with housing associations. Paragraph 3.26 raises hopes, stating that the Government will,
“set out, in due course, a rent policy for social housing landlords … for the period beyond 2020 to help them to borrow against future income”.
Hopes rise further with:
“Our aim is to ensure that they have the confidence they need about their future income in order to plan ahead”,
but then reality comes crashing in:
“The Government also confirms that the 1% rent reduction will remain in place in the period up to 2020”,
together with the damaging restrictions imposed by the Housing and Planning Act.
Great hopes have been expressed about the entry of institutional investors, who allegedly have billions of pounds ready to go, but I have heard all that before. Those investors now find themselves constrained by the ill-thought-out Solvency II directive.
So it continues to the end of the document: encouraging aspirations not backed by the resources or the freedoms to develop them. There are lots of bits and pieces of schemes, many of them worthwhile, including one to deal with great crested newts, but nowhere is there a table which draws all the contributions together to demonstrate that the plans for more housebuilding can be achieved.
Then we come to the serious omission: the way that the tax system distorts the housing market. This is dramatically illustrated in the White Paper, which states:
“In 21st century Britain it’s no longer unusual for houses to “earn” more than the people living in them”.
This is a shameful admission, but nothing is offered to remedy it. While pay is subject to income tax and national insurance contributions, there is no tax whatever on the increase in the value of the house: no income tax, no CGT, no extra council tax, only, eventually, inheritance tax, where the allowances are currently being increased. It is not surprising, with returns on financial assets low and taxed, that investment in bricks and mortar, whether a second home, a buy to let or simply a loft extension, is proving so popular, thereby taking home ownership further out of the reach of many.
In our report, we criticise the working of council tax. We have a situation where the grandest mansions, some no doubt owned by Members of this House, could never pay more than three times the tax of the humblest dwelling. This is a much shallower gradient than the old rates system. The property values are still those of 1991, so those living in the areas where values have risen most have not been asked to contribute more.
In practice, the Government recognise the argument that high-value properties are not paying enough, but their response is to impose very high rates of stamp duty at the top, so those who move pay astronomical sums, while those who stay put, like me, pay nothing. Evidence is beginning to emerge that this is proving counterproductive, causing such a slowdown in turnover that revenues have declined. Far better to return stamp duty to more reasonable levels and then recoup the money by raising council tax, so that all property owners pay a little more every year.
To conclude, the White Paper starts promisingly by introducing some fresh thinking, but it fails to convince that it is capable of making the step change that is required.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I warmly welcome this excellent report from the Economic Affairs Committee. My conversations with local authorities, housing associations and chamber of commerce colleagues in the north-east have endorsed the power of its analysis. The report demonstrates the complexity and long-standing dysfunctionality of the housing market with a terrifying clarity.
Recognising that my six months working in an estate agents in the early 1970s will not quite cut the mustard, I will not attempt to speak to the many technical aspects of the report and the White Paper, which I also welcome. I will leave that to the many noble Lords who are far more qualified than I am to do so. I want to speak about the crucial significance of this issue to human dignity and flourishing, and the kind of society we aspire to build.
One of the greatest social thinkers in recent history was Archbishop William Temple, Archbishop of York for 12 years and then Archbishop of Canterbury during the Second World War. He wrote:
“Every child should find itself a member of a family housed with decency and dignity, so that it may grow up as a member of that basic community in a happy fellowship unspoilt by underfeeding or overcrowding, or by dirty and drab surroundings”.
With those words before me, this afternoon I want to focus on the importance of building homes and communities, not just houses. If we are to do this, we need homes that people want to live in in places where they need them. We need communities in which people want to put down roots. The first key factor is the need to have an increase in access to home ownership, particularly for young people, so bringing new people and young families into the community. Communities cannot be built on transient private renters. The Government are to be congratulated on their efforts in this regard—for example, the Help to Buy scheme and the proposals for starter homes—but more needs to be done.
Just how much was brought home to me on a delayed train on the east coast line a couple of weeks ago when I had a chance to have a conversation with a young woman who lives in Stockton. She was excited because the following day she was going to move into a house she was buying. She was a nurse in her mid-20s. She had been able to buy the small house in Stockton, which is a low-price housing market, because she had stayed at home while she was at university and her parents had subsidised her living and she had a small legacy from a grandparent. That it had taken her, a nurse in her mid-20s, that much effort and that long to be able to achieve a modest house in Stockton demonstrates that it is almost impossible for many of our young people to achieve the same thing. For young people who do not have access to the bank of mum and dad, a 10% deposit, even in less expensive housing areas, can be an insurmountable barrier.
There is also some evidence, which surprised me, that many young people are not aware of the possibilities of home ownership and do not know what the options are. Research by the North East England Chamber of Commerce suggested that just one-third of the students and young people questioned knew what a mortgage was. Nine in 10 were unware of starter homes, and only half were aware of the Help to Buy scheme. I wonder whether our higher education institutions and employers can do more in terms of financial education for our young people.
The second key factor in building homes and communities, not just houses, is the key imperative of having genuinely affordable housing to rent for local people, as has already been mentioned. Home ownership and social housing, particularly local authority social housing, are all too often posed as alternatives. People often have an ideological commitment and pose a false dichotomy between the two kinds of provision. We cannot afford that false dichotomy. We need both kinds of provision. We need home ownership and genuinely affordable housing that provides safe and stable accommodation for those on the lowest incomes. Providing this is something we have not got right in recent years. Affordable housing completions are at their lowest level for 24 years.
The recent White Paper’s shift in focus towards rented accommodation is welcome and needed. In Newcastle and North Tyneside, there are encouraging signs that our local authorities are doing their best to respond to this need. North Tyneside Council is committing to build 3,000 affordable homes by 2023, and Newcastle City Council delivered 1,000 homes last year. Building More Homes and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, made the point that initiatives such as this would be encouraged by the lifting of local authority borrowing caps. Will the Minister confirm whether the White Paper commits the Government to looking at this? I did not find this point quite clear when I read the White Paper.
We also need to support the work of our housing associations. In my conversations with some of them, they stressed the need to be able to sustain a commercial business case, and they are particularly concerned about the impact of the 1% rent reduction in social housing. Will the Minister comment on that point?
Finally, building homes and communities, not just houses, also means providing homes for people in every walk of life. We need a strong supported-housing sector so that young people, especially those on the edge of care, can find a safe home. We need supported housing for the elderly and disabled so they and we will benefit from their inclusion in communal life, which will add to the rich diversity of local communities. I shall make one point on that: Newcastle City Council, like the housing associations, is finding that the 1% rent reduction in social housing has had a particularly negative impact on the supported-housing sector.
Back in 1941, it is very likely that the heart of Archbishop William Temple would have been warmed by this excellent report. That is certainly the case for this bishop today.
Baroness Eaton (Con)
My Lords, I start by declaring my interest as a past chairman and current vice-president of the Local Government Association. It is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate and to hear of the implications for families of the shortage of homes, the very subject we are here to address.
We all know the personal security that comes from having a safe and decent home, and that is why I am pleased to be able to participate in today’s important debate. Getting more people on to the property ladder and improving social housing are key priorities for this Government, and I welcome the report of the Economic Affairs Committee, which makes a valuable contribution to this debate.
It is clear to us all that our housing shortage cannot be met by one housing sector alone. The private sector, local authorities and housing associations all have a valuable and very necessary part to play. Housing associations offer £6 of private investment for every £1 of public money and they provide flexibility in the way they use their existing resources and a guarantee that all profits are reinvested in homes and communities. The Government recognise the need to incentivise housing associations to build more homes and have allocated an additional £1.4 billion of funding, which will allow housing associations to build more homes of every tenure.
For decades we have not been building enough homes, and that has resulted in house prices growing faster than incomes and rising rents affecting people throughout the country. The availability of land for housing development is clearly a key factor in our housing crisis, and I therefore particularly welcome the proposals in the White Paper relating to the land release fund. As the success of the one public estate programme has already demonstrated, the release of surplus public land can provide a significant opportunity to boost housebuilding. I am pleased that the Government have committed to consultation on relaxing the requirement on public bodies to achieve best value on the sale of land. This could make a big difference, as the availability and affordability of land are some of the biggest constraints on increasing housebuilding.
The National Infrastructure Commission’s launch of the housing infrastructure fund at the Autumn Statement, as well as the connection it made between the supply of new homes and the infrastructure needed to support them, are welcome recognition of the link between housing and infrastructure. The Local Government Association has consistently argued that council planning departments need to be sufficiently resourced to fulfil their part in delivering more housing. Specifically, the LGA has highlighted the fact that councils have been forced to spend in excess of £450 million to cover the cost of planning applications over the past three years.
Currently, taxpayers are subsidising 30% of the estimated cost of processing all planning applications in England, because nationally set planning fees do not recover the full cost. The planning fee is usually a tiny proportion of the overall development costs and is not generally seen by either developers or property owners as a tax on growth. This is evidenced by the fact that a number of major developers are currently proactively involved in planning performance agreements with councils which see them voluntarily paying a higher fee in return for a guaranteed standard of service with transparent agreed timescales. I am delighted that the White Paper recognises this issue and is allowing councils to increase planning fees by 20% from July, if they commit to investing the additional fee income in their planning departments. I know that the LGA also welcomes the greater flexibilities in relation to the delivery of starter homes that are outlined in the White Paper.
It goes without saying that communities are most likely to support new development when it is accompanied by necessary infrastructure. We have already seen recognition of this with the introduction by the coalition Government of the new homes bonus to encourage councils to grant planning permissions for the building of new homes in return for additional revenue. Building on this, the introduction of the £2.3 billion housing infrastructure fund is to be strongly welcomed.
As a former council leader, I know that councils through their planning departments are playing their part in addressing the housing crisis, with nine out of 10 planning applications being approved. Despite this, research from the LGA shows that a record 475,647 homes have been given planning permission but are yet to be built. It is for this reason that I welcome proposals in the White Paper to allow councils to make greater use of compulsory purchase powers to unlock stalled development sites, and measures that will require starts within two years of planning permission being granted. I am, as your Lordships would expect, a strong supporter of local government. When faced with challenges, local government can be at its most creative, and today there are many examples of local authorities being creative and innovative with schemes that serve the needs of their communities. Some are very small-scale, but they show the flexibility of thinking and how councils can work within what appear to be constraints.
I give a small example. Ashford Borough Council, in recognising the need to assist older people, has developed a policy to allow exception sites to be used for specialist accommodation. The council made available land in its ownership on a long lease of 125 years for a nominal rent to Housing & Care 21. In July 2016, the doors were opened on 33 flats, 17 for affordable rent and 16 for shared ownership. That may be only small beer, but it shows that the council was prepared to use its own land in that creative way for what the community actually needed.
Supported housing is a vital part of the nation’s housing need. I welcome the Government’s decision to protect the level of funding for the supported housing sector. However, I am sure my noble friend the Minister is aware of the concern of the housing association movement: for it to continue developing new supported housing schemes, it needs much more certainty of funding.
Increasing the housing supply, getting people on to the property ladder and improving social housing are objectives that we can all surely support. These are the driving principles behind the report of the Economic Affairs Committee and the White Paper. I hope that through this debate we can work constructively with the Government to deliver more and better housing for the people of this country.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chairman of the Woodland Trust and president or vice-president of a range of wildlife and conservation organisations. I very much welcome this report from the Economic Affairs Committee—particularly the focus on enabling local authorities to retake their place as providers of social housing for a range of tenures, including rent. Then there is the proposal that local authorities are given the power to levy council tax on developments that are not completed in a set time period. The report is very much complementary to the report of a year ago by one of the ad hoc Select Committees—the Select Committee on National Policy for the Built Environment, on which I had the privilege to sit. I do not know whether we had slightly longer than the Economic Affairs Committee to wait for a response from government, but it was 10 months during which I reminded the Government pretty well monthly that time was ticking away—but it came.
I want to raise two economic points germane to both these reports. First, I echo the contribution of the right reverend Prelate on the need for houses but not at the expense of quality. The report on the built environment stressed that the quality of our housing and other development is vital in creating places that foster health and well-being that are environmentally sustainable. If we do not achieve that, we could fail to get value for money and we could build ourselves economic and other problems for later years.
There is a lot of evidence to be worried about on quality. First, new homes in the UK are now smaller than anywhere in western Europe. I used to visit friends in the Netherlands and think secretly, when they were showing me great hospitality, “I could not live in these little boxes”. In many cases, those are now our little boxes. I suspect when I look around that noble Lords are old enough to remember the Pete Seeger song in the 1960s about,
“Little boxes made of ticky tacky”.
According to the RIBA, half of homes built in the UK fall below the Government’s space guidelines. That is particularly so the further north you go in England. I welcome the commitment in the housing White Paper to review space standards, but we cannot continue in a situation where they are to all intents and purposes voluntary. Can the Minister comment on the prospect of statutory space standards?
Another example of worries about quality is with design and the process of design review, which is faltering and patchy as local authority resources diminish. Inadequate care has been taken to ensure access to green open space, which the evidence increasingly shows is good for physical and mental health and cheaper than the NHS. The Government’s Natural Capital Committee estimates savings of £2.1 billion in reduced health treatment costs if adequate green open space access is provided. That committee has also calculated that if 250,000 additional hectares of woodland were planted in and around towns and cities, it could generate net societal benefits of £500 million per annum. So the evidence is there that the quality of settlement and design is fundamental to value for money. We have heard in the news recently about the quality of build of some developers, which really does reinforce the worry that they are all “made of ticky tacky”. I am sure that many of them are not, but we need to make sure that we maintain the quality of build. It was distressing to hear about poor experiences of the NHBC in helping house purchasers who had bought substandard houses.
A common theme in the evidence that we received during the built environment inquiry—I am sure that it was the same with the Economic Affairs Committee—was how under the cosh local authorities feel, faced with the need to deliver plans for ever rising housing allocation targets. This can result in poor location decisions, as local authorities grasp thankfully at large greenfield sites which offer big numbers of houses but raise major questions about transport infrastructure, access to jobs and sustainability, and eat away at formal or informal green belt. I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to the green belt in the housing White Paper but open countryside is also at risk. My overall point on quality is that we must not, in the dash for much-needed houses, make the mistake of building small, mean houses of patchy quality which are poorly located and create places which have no quality of place, do not promote well-being, are not sustainable and rapidly become the slums of the future. Will the Minister indicate how the Government can avoid the “stack ‘em high and sell ‘em cheap” philosophy?
That takes me to my second, linked point, which, again, chimes with the Economic Affairs Committee’s conclusions on planning reform. Time and again during the built environment inquiry we heard from planners, local authorities, developers and practically everybody about local authority cuts resulting in the loss of planning resources and expertise. We heard of planning departments struggling with few or no specialist resources such as heritage experts or ecologists. Two-thirds of local authorities now have no ecologist in their planning department. I very much commend the committee’s proposal that local authorities should be allowed to set and vary their own planning fees. I welcome the housing White Paper’s announcement of a 20% increase in July and the consultation on a further 20% incentivisation to local authorities which are actually delivering homes. However, we need something beyond this one-off hike and I would be grateful if the Minister would indicate whether there are long-term plans to give further flexibility to local authorities. The strength and expertise of planning departments is vital if we are to see well-thought-through local plans, good support to neighbourhood planning and swift, effective development decisions.
If there was one overriding message throughout the evidence we heard from all sides during the built environment inquiry it was this: although many development proposals start off excellently, proposing quality places with good contributions to mixed housing, infrastructure and open space, there would then be a falling back. Developers would subsequently use the viability test to row back considerably from delivering these collateral benefits to simple housing numbers. Developers would come back wringing their hands and saying that they simply could not make the value proposition stack up to deliver all the promised goodies that secured the planning permission in the first place. Struggling planning departments, we were told time and again, would simply cave in, unable to challenge the viability test arguments of the better resourced developers with sharp suits and shiny consultants. The result was that the initially proposed quality of development simply disappeared. So we need strong, expert planning departments. Encouraging housing development must not be at the expense of quality of place or we will achieve poor value for money and many people in this country will live to regret it.
Lord Kerslake (CB)
My Lords, I am pleased to be able to contribute to this debate on the excellent report of the Economic Affairs Committee. First, I declare my interests as chair of Peabody and president of the Local Government Association. I was also chair of the IPPR commission into housing in London and recently did a peer review of the north Essex garden communities project.
I say that the report Building More Homes is excellent because of the clarity of its analysis and the good sense of its conclusions and recommendations. It forensically examines the reasons that this country has failed to build enough homes for a long time and puts forward some bold proposals to address this. I can honestly say—and it is rare that I can say this—that there is nothing in it that I disagree with.
At the heart of this debate is the scale of the challenge we face in delivering new housing supply and our willingness to take the steps necessary to address it. I share the report’s view that the goal here is not the number of houses that we manage to build in one Parliament, but achieving a step change in the rate of build and, as the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, said, sustaining it over a long period of time. Housing should be seen as a vital part of the country’s infrastructure that is planned for the long term, going well beyond one Parliament. In this respect, I would go further than the report and make it a core part of the responsibilities of the National Infrastructure Commission. It is only by moving away from short-term fixes and taking a holistic, long-term view that we will we have any chance of delivering the homes this country needs.
Since the report was published in July we have, of course, had the Government’s White Paper Fixing Our Broken Housing Market. I have to say that there is much in this White Paper that I welcome, too. I share the positive view held by the new Housing Minister, Gavin Barwell. The Government have recognised the scale of the problem. They have set out the need—if not a target, as we have just heard—for somewhere between 225,000 and 275,000 properties a year to be built. Crucially, they have recognised that this can be achieved only by building homes of all types and tenures, including affordable rented homes, and have moved away from the previous obsession with home ownership.
If the White Paper had done nothing other than break with the utterly unfair and unworkable policies of before, it would have been worth doing for that reason alone, but it also contains a good number of practical and sensible improvements to the current arrangements. I shall give three of these: the objective assessment of need for local plans; the diversification of the market by growing the SME sector; and the increase in planning fees for local authorities. I also note in passing that paragraph 4.16 of the White Paper effectively adopts the flexible approach to the delivery of starter homes that I and others advocated during the passage of the Bill last year and on which we had such a heated debate. Taken with the dropping of pay to stay, this represents a real change of heart, on which I congratulate the Government.
Notwithstanding the positive features of the White Paper, the key question is whether it will be enough. Here, I fear that the answer is less positive. Much more will be needed if we are to deliver the 300,000 homes proposed in the Select Committee report. We have already heard about many of the areas where changes are needed, including in a very powerful contribution from my noble friend Lord Turnbull about the taxation issues involved, so I would like to finish my contribution by highlighting just five areas where I think gaps still lie.
The first is the role of local authorities and the need for greater devolution. The Select Committee report rightly recommended lifting the borrowing caps on local authority capital spend to enable them to do more direct development. This does not need to be in competition with housing associations: there is plenty of work to go around. In many ways, local authorities working in partnership with housing associations and the private sector is the way forward, as I have seen in the Sheffield Housing Company.
The desire to do more direct development goes across the political spectrum of local authorities. I recently met the cabinet member for housing in Guildford, who is passionate about that council building more social housing. I strongly encourage the Minister to meet him and hear about the barriers they experience in doing this. Local authorities in high-growth areas such as Essex, for which I recently did a peer review, as I mentioned, need more capacity to enable them to develop their plans and secure much-needed infrastructure before major housebuilding starts.
The importance of the leadership role of local authorities in place making cannot be overestimated. Without the creation of great places, new housing will not get local support. To do this, local authorities need new skills and more capacity. They also need greater powers, which is why I support the proposal that devolution deals should always contain a housing supply element.
My second issue is that the Government need to do more to harness the power of housing associations. I have said in other places that the sector now has the policy alignment that it has been asking for, and it must step up to the plate and deliver. Peabody will play its part, including our very ambitious plans for Thamesmead. We are also proposing to merge with another housing association, Family Mosaic. One important reason for that is that it will enable us to build more homes. The National Housing Federation has set out an ambition for the sector to deliver 120,000 new homes a year by 2033, half of the Government’s target. This could be helped enormously if the Government were to consider either rent flexibility or at least very quickly moving to rent stability to address the issues that were raised with the changes in 2015. There are also other proposals, such as that by ResPublica for the creation a £10 billion renewable building fund, that I believe are seriously worth exploring.
My third issue is that the Government should allow a more localist and flexible approach to building on the green belt. The IPPR report on housing in London found that this could play an essential part in securing the 50,000 new homes a year that London needs. In reality, councils up and down the country are already looking at the issue of the green belt. The Government can do more to support them in this. I understand that this issue was the subject of some intense debate between the department and No. 10 Downing Street. I sincerely hope that the department will stick to its guns and keep going on this.
My fourth issue is the need to address the concerns of the private housebuilders on labour shortages and the future of Help to Buy. Ensuring a good supply of skilled labour has moved from being an issue for the private housebuilder to being, in many cases, the issue. Noble Lords will be pleased to hear that I will not rehearse again the issues that we talked about yesterday on Brexit. However, we have to do much more than we are at the moment on growing an indigenous skilled workforce. We have only scratched the surface of this issue. Help to Buy has played a key role in underpinning demand for new housing, but we need quickly to resolve what happens to the scheme after 2020. If we do not, housebuilders, faced with a softening market, will scale back their delivery.
Fifthly and finally, we still have some unfinished business from the Housing and Planning Act, particularly the deeply divisive forced high-value sales policy. I sincerely hope that the Government can find a way of pushing this even further into the long grass. I would welcome the Minister’s view on each of those five points when he comes to sum up.
Delivering the new homes that this country so desperately needs should not be regarded as mission impossible. The Select Committee report has pointed the way forward as to what is needed. The Government have responded but need to go further. The sector itself, public and private, must also step up to the plate and deliver its share of the task.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
My Lords, my thanks go to the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, for tabling this Motion and giving us the opportunity to discuss the Building More Homes report. I am grateful also for the contributions from a number of members of the Economic Affairs Committee, which have been both helpful and enlightening.
My right reverend friend the Bishop of Newcastle has already set out some of the concerns from these Benches but I want to echo her comments, particularly the concerns she raised about the supply of social housing, and the key issue of whether we are building communities or just bricks and mortar. That is a fundamental issue for us and we need to remember some of the hard-learned lessons of the past. Like some others in your Lordships’ House, I am particularly keen to see the Government lift the restrictions on local authorities’ ability to borrow to invest in new social housing stock. I hope that the Minister will be pursuing this issue with the Government.
The Building More Homes report was prescient in a number of ways and, as has already been pointed out by a number of Members of your Lordships’ House, including the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, it is to the Government’s credit that many of the points raised by the Economic Affairs Committee have been taken on board in the recent White Paper. I am particularly glad to see that concerns about starter homes, which were expressed in the report and here in this House, have to some extent been calmed. The Government’s decision not to implement the requirement for starter homes at this time will help local authorities sustain a mix of affordable housing tenures, while the decision to extend restrictions on the onward sale of starter homes to 15 years will help protect starter home affordability.
I want to say a few things about rural housing. Housing supply is one of the greatest challenges facing rural communities, and here I must declare an interest as president of the Rural Coalition. Rural affordable housing supply is critically low, while much of the existing housing stock tends to be unaffordable to the vast majority of local people. One of the continuing problems is that many new properties built in the countryside are often unsuited to the needs of rural communities. There are simply too many large, expensive houses being built that do not reflect the needs of those local rural communities. We are not good at building three-bedroom family homes at a price that means that people such as teachers, nurses and other skilled workers can stay in rural communities as their families grow up. This is a fundamental issue of rural sustainability: how we can ensure that our rural communities are living communities. Neither are we good at building the small, one or two-bedroom homes that enable local people to downsize when the time is right, as the Building More Homes report rightly points out.
I hope that in this regard, the Government’s proposed reforms in the White Paper will be beneficial. A more accurate housing needs assessment and more detailed local plan should facilitate the development of housing that is more suitable to local needs. Plans to give local authorities greater powers to encourage developers to build, hence preventing land banking, are also to be warmly welcomed, even if they do not go as far as the committee report proposed in permitting the levy of council tax on uncompleted sites.
For some of the most significant proposals in the White Paper, however, the devil will inevitably be in the detail. I am thinking particularly of the proposed review of Section 106. While simplifying the process by which planning authorities and developers decide on affordable housing contributions is of course desirable, it is vital that this review improve the tools local authorities have to bring forward affordable housing, rather than hindering them. I would hope that in the course of this review, Ministers will pay particular attention to the use of Section 106 in rural communities, where smaller developments yield much smaller Section 106 contributions—that is, if they yield any contributions at all. Recent planning policy changes to exempt smaller developments from Section 106 requirements seriously imperil the already limited supply of affordable rural housing, and I for one am not convinced that the Government have quite appreciated how serious this problem is.
When it comes to rural affordable housing, I am also still not convinced that the Government understand how policies such as starter homes and right to buy could affect the provision of land for real affordable housing. If the affordable housing built on rural exception sites is liable to be eventually lost to the open market, the incentive, for example, for a philanthropic landowner to provide land for homes for the local community will be lost. This is not a theoretical concern. I know a number of landowners who have talked specifically about this problem and I hope that Her Majesty’s Government will take steps to address it. Regardless of those outstanding concerns, however, the Government have been bold in accepting many of the recommendations of the Economic Affairs Committee and are rowing back on some of the more contentious proposals included in the Housing and Planning Act. I pay tribute to them for that and hope that we will continue to move rapidly in the same direction.
Baroness Wheatcroft (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to follow the right reverend Prelate. I sympathise with his compassionate comments, particularly on rural housing. As a member of the Economic Affairs Committee I would like to echo the words of others in thanking the staff for the extraordinarily good work they did and also the chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, for his skilful chairmanship.
The debate has been wide-ranging already and many of the topics that were in our report have been addressed, so I will restrict myself to just two issues. First, the government White Paper accepts that we need to build more homes, faster. Much has been said about more, but not much about faster. We need to make sure that planning permissions are developed speedily. There is far too long between permission being granted and housing being built—not that it is always built, given that about one-third of planning permissions are never fulfilled. The Government have to look at how to get planning permissions turned into real developed houses in the shortest possible time. That may mean some sort of penalty, which the committee certainly thought was worth investigating.
However, there is another aspect to building houses faster that we should be doing more about: modern methods of construction. Some of those have been going on, but not nearly enough. We need to get momentum going if that is to take off. It could make a huge difference to our housing situation. The Building Societies Association has said that MMC could be a game-changer, but that it will not happen unless the Government really get behind it. There is too much nervousness among consumers and a lack of knowledge among lenders. We need to get enough of those houses built to demonstrate that this is the way forward. The current method of housebuilding, bricks and blocks, has been unchanged for virtually 100 years, and of course it is very vulnerable to the weather. Fabricating large parts of a house in factories and then moving it to site could make huge savings. The steel construction industry reckons that 75% of the labour costs could be taken out if we got MMC working properly. As the Building Societies Association said, we need to see the Government backing this. Major projects such as Northstone, where there are plans for 10,000 houses and the Government are taking the lead, would be the perfect place for MMC techniques to work. The big housebuilders have projects under way and are investing in factories, but much more needs to be done. I would very much like to hear from the Minister his plans for putting government support behind MMC.
My second point concerns spending by local authorities and their ability to borrow to fund public sector housing. In our report we called for the cap to be loosened. Local authorities told us over and over again that they wanted to be able to borrow more. They said they thought it a nonsense that they could borrow to build swimming pools but not the housing that is so badly needed in so many parts of the country. The Minister told us in our private meeting that there is a little more flexibility in that area now, but as the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, pointed out, it is nowhere near enough. Yet while these local authorities are being restricted in what they can borrow to build housing, they are having a high old time borrowing to buy commercial property. In recent years councils have become really big players in the market, outbidding private sector investors in many cases. They have been buying shopping centres, bingo halls, service stations, hotels, offices—you name it, councils are now the proud owners. The biggest deal so far was Spelthorne Borough Council, which spent £360 million of largely borrowed money buying BP’s office complex at Sunbury-on-Thames. It is very pleased with the deal—but just think how many houses it could have built for that much.
The explanation for this hunger for commercial property is that local authorities are trying to bridge the gap between what they have now and what they have lost in the government funding that has been taken away. By buying property at low interest rates and letting it at higher rates, they hope to pocket a sizeable margin that they can use to spend on other things—which is fine for as long as the margin persists. They are able to do so because of the low interest rates at which they borrow. We may wonder how they manage to do that. A recent article by John Plender in the Financial Times explains exactly how it works. Councils are borrowing from the Public Works Loans Board, a very low-cost lender with average loans last year of 3.2%. It has plenty of money to keep on lending, too. In March last year it had loans of £65.3 billion outstanding, but its headroom goes up to £95 billion; so councils with an appetite for funding have plenty of it to go for. The Public Works Loans Board is run by the UK Debt Management Office, which is controlled by the Treasury—the very same Treasury that will not allow our local authorities to borrow large amounts of money to build the council housing they need. There seems to be a bit of a contradiction. I can see why local authorities are doing what they think they need to do, even though they would like to borrow to build social housing; they ought to be given more options.
Is it not somewhat strange that, just last year, Portsmouth City Council bought shops in Redditch, a ferry terminal, a Mercedes showroom in Southampton and a warehouse near Gloucester? It may be that Portsmouth has lots of information and knowledge about the commercial property market; we can only hope so. That goes for all the other local authorities that have been building up these vast portfolios. I am prepared to believe that local authorities know a lot about social housing, but I am not convinced of their knowledge about Mercedes showrooms or ferry terminals. Therefore, I would like the Minister to tell me, if he can, whether he is comfortable about the investments—I hope they are investments—these local authorities are making, or whether he can see a way to make more of that money available to invest in the social housing we so badly need.
Lord Layard (Lab)
My Lords, as a member of the committee, I too thank our great leader, sitting in front of me. As has been said, the starting point for our inquiry was a very remarkable estimate that is widely accepted—that, simply to stop real house prices and rents from rising further, we need not 200,000 homes a year but 300,000, just to stop things getting worse. However, surely we want things to get better, so we need more than 300,000 homes a year to make the target of an affordable housing sector a reality. That means a massive housing boom over 15 years, as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, has said—that is what we have to generate. We have to ask ourselves what conditions could generate a continuing housing boom—not little tinkerings but the fundamentals for generating such a boom. However, I do not think that we will get the answer to that unless we understand the fundamentals of our present situation, which is really quite remarkable.
Real house prices and rents have trebled over the last 30 years—it has been said that that is completely out of line with the experience in the rest of the world—yet the number of houses built by the private sector is the same as it was 30 years ago, so there is no response. You would have expected those extraordinary prices to generate an extraordinary supply response but that has not happened. If you look for explanations, you can find little ones that might apply in one year or another, but surely the fundamental explanation must be the planning system. The planning system determines the supply of land on which the houses are built and, if the supply is restricted, the real price of land goes up. So what has happened to the price of land? It has more than quadrupled. In fact, in terms of the constituents of the price of housing, the whole increase is due to the increase in the price of land. Therefore, I would like to talk about land and planning.
There is only one way that we can describe the present situation, which is that it involves a major disregard of human need. For example, if a hectare of land is worth £2 million when it is used to provide homes for people and with its existing use it is worth only £20,000, that simply disregards the simple evidence of human need. What is the value of the land to society with one use as compared with another? The only exception to that being an outrage would be if one could show that the amenity value of the land with its existing use was as high as the price of the land if it provided homes. That might be the position sometimes but certainly not in an awful lot of cases at present.
How can we improve the situation and unleash the energy of the housebuilding industry? The key is to make it easier to get planning permission. It is that simple and, unless we face up to that, we will not start from the central analysis of how we have reached where we are. In particular, we have to make things easier for small and medium-sized builders, who have been pushed out of the market mainly by the complexity of the planning system. We have to get them back in to create this boom. Therefore, I want to make two suggestions for liberalising the planning system and generating the boom.
First, there has to be in the system more presumption in favour of development. I think that the Government have used that phrase sometimes but it has to be made real. One possibility is to focus on areas where the price of land is very high and therefore the evidence of human need for houses is very strong. You could say that in areas where the value of land was above £2 million, there would be a presumption in favour of development, and the local authority could refuse it only if it could persuade the inspector that the amenity value of the existing use exceeded the value of the land if it were used to provide houses. I would not suggest that as a universal arrangement, and certainly not in areas of the green belt that were open to public access, for example, but I shall make a few suggestions as to where you could start.
One obvious starting point that has been suggested in some reports is on land near railway stations. I think it has been suggested that if we could build up the areas within two miles of railways stations in commuter reach of big cities, we could have an awful lot more homes. Another suggestion would be parts of the green belt lying inside the M25 but without public access. There is an awful lot of land without public access inside the M25. I do not know whether your Lordships know this extraordinary fact but if only 10% of the green belt inside the M25 were developed, this would provide 1 million homes. It is important to get these things in perspective.
Baroness Young of Old Scone
I have recently chaired a conference on the green belt for Greater London. It was startling to see just how the proposition that my noble friend is putting forward works in practice. The reality is that, if we are to make London liveable in the face of climate change, we need to maximise the benefits of the existing green belt to deliver heat reduction, water protection, flood risk management and access to open spaces, otherwise we will see the heat impacts on London of increasing temperatures from climate change. As far as I am concerned, the secret is not to build lots of houses on the green belt but to get the green belt to work for its living in all these aspects. Two-thirds of the green belt being inaccessible to the public is something to change, but it does not need to be built over.
Lord Layard
I am grateful for that. I am a bit more hopeful about dealing with climate change by electrifying the economy with clean electricity rather than by failing to give people homes. I think that we can make progress without expecting people to go into ever more expensive properties. I was very encouraged by what the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said about the green belt. It is true that attitudes are changing, and that is very helpful.
Of course, we understand that local authorities have political reasons for not wanting to give planning permission. We always remember how Aneurin Bevan got the National Health Service set up by stuffing doctors’ mouths with gold. It still seems to me that we ought to allow local authorities to have a higher fraction of the financial uplift that occurs when they give planning permission, and we should then insist that they use that for housing purposes. My colleague Professor Cheshire at the London School of Economics has suggested a levy on the final value of a completed development, combining that with the change in presumption that I referred to earlier. There are many areas in which these ideas can be explored. The committee took no view on these issues but it made a clear recommendation that the Government should examine these proposals. I hope that the Minister can confirm that his admirable colleague Mr Barwell will be doing that.
We should recognise that we are suffering from a self-inflicted wound. We have inflicted it on ourselves mainly through the way in which we have operated the planning laws. Other countries have much less of a problem because they have not done what we have done. It is a case of the triumph of the few over the many. The distributional impact of the planning system is one of the most powerful sources of inequality in our society, and I think that we will satisfy the needs of the many only if we are honest about the origins of our present situation.
The Earl of Lytton (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to be able to speak in this very important debate. I declare my interests, which in this instance include being a private rented sector landlord and a commercial landlord. Probably more appropriate in this instance, I also declare that I am a practising chartered surveyor with direct involvement in the development process and the employee of a practice dealing with both building cost consultancy and construction management. I am also a vice-president of the LGA and the National Association of Local Councils.
The committee’s report is very welcome for its range and depth of analysis and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and his team on that. It is to the credit of the committee that a lot of its points appeared in the housing White Paper. The basic premise is sound: we need more homes and we are not delivering enough of them. But that masks a complex raft of issues, as we have already heard. I am not sure I subscribe absolutely to the idea of a broken housing market. I think the housing market is probably performing as we might expect, given all the tinkering around that has gone on over many years. But I am not an apologist for those shortcomings, which are fundamentally significant and affect potential home owners. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said, there is no silver bullet.
The Government have started to try to simplify things. There is no question that the consistently flagged-up point is the sheer complexity of the system in getting from a greenfield site to a completed development—the very high costs and risks involved in that and which confront those engaged with it. The Government have made a start and are trying to address a number of issues. However, in some areas, analysis and policy still appear less coherent. I will therefore deal with a few of the barriers as I see them working in the particular sector that I occupy.
Housing provision is a pipeline that needs constant feeding. The more you try to chop and change things as you go along, the worse things get. The planning system itself has become quite labyrinthine in its complexity. It has become a legalistic, adversarial exercise played for very high stakes. That applies to development sites of any size, large or small; we consistently hear that it takes no more effort to get a large site under way than a small one. That cannot be quite right.
To prove deliverability, it is necessary to jump through a whole series of hoops, regardless of whether there is any objective need. I have no problem with the need to demonstrate ecological compliance, but proving a negative in circumstances where there is no evidence—and there turns out to be no evidence—of the presence of, for instance, great crested newts or whatever it may be is a cost that is built in and then feeds into the eventual cost of housing. It causes substantial delays, and provides a barrier that militates against smaller applicants, who do not have the vast teams of experts that the larger boys have. There are liabilities in terms of legal tripwires of many sorts, and for one person to understand the ramifications is pretty difficult.
Huge inconsistencies are evident within and between local planning authorities. But as the noble Lord, Lord Layard, said, the system is not of their creation. It has been created by the rest of us—by society. I do not impugn the integrity of overworked planning officers, elected local government members or, for that matter, applicants in general, but I adhere to advice once given to me by my late father’s lawyer: where there is uncertainty, muddle and confusion, dishonesty comes close behind. That may range from the overexuberant application of a particular set of rules at one end of the scale and, at the other, some rather sharp practices. I have experience of all of those. Local planning authorities have to deal with some aggressive and bullying tactics in the course of their business.
The lack of adequate staffing at planning authority level is well known. Noble Lords should try finding an authority with any in-house heritage competence, for example, or for that matter willing to pay an outside provider for it. I and colleagues have experience of pre-application advice turning out to be a complete waste of time. It is almost as if the officers dealing with the thing are operating on separate agendas. But I do not think that is a criticism so much as a demonstration of inexperience, diffidence and self-protection. However, it results in inordinate delays, so I support the point made to the committee that much more resource needs to be put into local authority planning, and if fees are to increase they must be hypothecated to the planning administration budget and not be capable of being vired to some other account. I do not treat as entirely apocryphal the account that reached me of a developer being asked by an authority if he would fund the employment of an additional planning officer needed to deal with his own application.
The practice in which I work regularly comes up against significantly drawn-out timeframes, particularly on reserved matters approvals. I know that the Government also have that in focus. Once a resolution to grant is made, it can be many months, stretching into years, before you can get the remaining issues resolved. Some requirements are patently absurd, such as one that a colleague recounted to me where an ecological receptor site was required to accommodate an unlimited—it was specified as unlimited—number of reptiles and to be maintained in perpetuity. Maybe the officer was being overprotective, but, whatever the reasons for that sort of thing, it creates needless delays and adds to costs.
On democracy, local authorities are of course political animals and they seek to reflect the desires of an electorate who often do not want to take on board the wider needs of the nation’s requirements in housebuilding—still less those of an adjacent constrained authority, possibly one of a different political colour. I have seen attempts to dump—to use an unparliamentary word—development on the periphery of an authority area or an area where voters’ politics differed sharply from those of the controlling party on the council, and so on and so forth. There are potential mismatches between the neighbourhood aspirations and the perceptions of the potential ability to assimilate new development as compared with the obligations placed on principal authorities by a Government and the Homes and Communities Agency requiring them to do better.
Politics mixed with planning creates friction and drag in the system, seemingly in direct proportion to the respective parties’ belief in their powers of veto. A word of warning here: to pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about the quality of what we produce, if we enforce fast-track development, the risk is that we do not get the highest quality that we ought to have. We need to be careful about that.
The bigger issue is that if we want democracy and set out to expand that to communities, which I support, speed and efficiency may well suffer, particularly if participants do not understand the basic policy or principles behind it or do not wish to engage themselves in the financing of neighbourhood plans, for example. Resources need to go into that. The question is often asked, “What does this development do for the people of our municipality or community?”. In reality, the question should be the one once suggested to me by a Liberal Democrat aspiring parliamentary candidate which is, “Where is it most convenient and appropriate for people to live, work, have their recreation and travel about sustainably?”. Development needs to be looked at in a reworked 21st-century version of how medieval settlements came into being. They were strategic. They had communications and they were defensible positions. There was access to food and materials and all the other things that were needed. We need a reworking of that because that is part of the desire line that will make these communities not just some other shell that takes 40 or 50 years to bed-in socially, but somewhere that is cherished and invested in for the longer term.
I could raise many more issues, but I will foreshorten my comments to just touch on a few myths that seem to be doing the rounds. The Government seem to be blowing hot and cold on the balance between the private rented sector and the home-owner market. They cite that investors and home owners are in direct market competition. But they have not provided any credible evidence that I have seen to back that up. I noticed that the bar chart in figure 5 of the committee report, which is borrowed from another source, on the percentage of household income spent on rent as opposed to mortgage repayments, does not seem to be a comparison of like for like. I am sure that it was not lost on noble Lords that matters of insurance, repairs and maintenance, which are not typically reflected in a mortgage repayment, would skew the results of that, never mind the parallel issue of proving creditworthiness and raising the necessary deposit to obtain a mortgage in the first place. Some of the disadvantages meted out in recent Budgets to the private rented sector that seem hypothecated on that sort of premise are not well targeted and will cause damage. Although the sector could justifiably be expected to perform better—I do not doubt that there could be better landlords about—it is none the less an important sector which needs to be nurtured and cherished, along with all the other things that the Government are doing.
One statistic coming from government was that those now approaching retirement were home owners by the age of 30 in a much greater proportion than pertains at present. I suggest that mortgage finance, lifestyle choices and other relevant matters were quite different in the late 1980s. Certainly, the example of my children has been that, as young adults, they live highly mobile lifestyles, often flitting between jobs or even between different localities within a country or between countries. The last thing they appear to want is to be geographically fixed and lumbered with a mortgage or indebted to parents for an otherwise unaffordable deposit. To this should be added some very substantial transaction costs that have now been built into the system and particularly affect the London market.
I live in a part of Sussex where there is a lot of demand for short-term lettings— people between houses, on short-term placements and so on—but we have also in the past, and do so currently, let to families with children who have been with us for a decade. The children come along as four and five year-olds and leave as teenagers. If that is not sufficiently long-term, I do not know what is, but it is wrong to try to constrain the market. One problem is that if people feel that they cannot let short-term, they will not do it at all, or they will set up a holiday let or something like that. There has to be removal of some of the impedimenta that mean that people feel threatened and that they do not have a ready exit from a longer-term situation.
There are many issues involved in this area of activity. I commend the committee on an excellent piece of work. I do not agree with absolutely everything that is in there, but it is a very workmanlike approach and I hope the Government are listening.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I add to the plaudits raining down on the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, and his colleagues on the committee. It was forensic in its analysis and commonsensical in its conclusions, and the report was remarkably well written by the standard of such reports. It also received in this debate today the ultimate accolade: the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, said that he could not find a single thing to disagree with. Those of us who have listened to the noble Lord on housing over the months will recognise that that is the ultimate compliment. The report also cheered me up, because it came out in July at the tail end of that prolonged period, that endless night, when we discussed the then Housing and Planning Bill. It contained many good things, but it also contained—my noble friend on the Front Bench is now looking at me rather pointedly—some rather dubious things; indeed, in some areas, it seemed to point decisively in the wrong direction.
Since then, much water has flowed under the bridge. We have a new Government with a new Prime Minister, a new Chancellor of the Exchequer—very important in this context—and a new Minister, Gavin Barwell, who is not only an outstandingly able politician, as my noble friend Lord Forsyth alluded to, but happens to be the MP for a Croydon seat next to my old constituency of Orpington and therefore understands the problems of London housing which are at the epicentre of the housing difficulties we face. I am delighted that he is there. We have also had the dafter ideas in the Housing and Planning Bill dropped along the way, or at least not appearing as we go on. We have also had a modest Neighbourhood Planning Bill, which I think has been generally welcomed, an Autumn Statement which led to more financing for housing associations—which I very much welcome—and, finally, a recent White Paper which had many good things in it and got housing policy pointing fundamentally in the right direction. Whereas previously it focused far too much on tenure, it now focuses on supply—which is what the committee thinks it should do; therefore, we are at one on this.
The problem—I am afraid there is a “but” in all this—is that policy is hopelessly underpowered. It is like a Rolls-Royce that has a Mini engine and is therefore unlikely to catch up with the traffic around it and to make progress at the sort of speed we will need if we are to meet the target not only of 200,000 houses a year but the 300,000 houses a year which the committee says is necessary, and may well be so. In that respect, I give two examples. First, as the committee said—my noble friend Lady Wheatcroft also alluded to it graphically—we need to take the cap off local authorities. We need to take the constraints off their ability to use their surplus resources, which I know they have—my noble friend cited Bromley; Portsmouth, I know about. They have a lot of resources which could be used. We should incentivise local authorities to be entrepreneurial in a way they are not allowed to be at the moment. By curious chance, the Government should look across the Channel to France, where local authorities do not have such restraints and build more than 300,000 houses a year, a lot of them social housing. That is precisely because they are encouraged to be entrepreneurial. I remember the famous story of President Bush saying, “The trouble with the French is that they do not have a word for entrepreneur”. It is rather amusing that the French should be being entrepreneurial in their council housing and we are being markedly less so. It is also quite astonishing.
The other issue is the one raised by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who has disappeared from the Chamber momentarily. It was brought home to me at the breakfast meeting this morning organised by Shelter to promote its idea of new civic housing. The noble Lord, Lord Shipley, was there along with others. In a nutshell—as he might agree—Shelter said, “It’s the land, stupid”. That really is the fundamental problem. If we allow land to be priced out at its maximum value in every possible circumstance, we will not get enough housing. We will get poor-quality housing and poor infrastructure as well. Unless we tackle that problem we are really going nowhere. I am pleased to note that the Government say, rightly, that they wish to consult on this issue and begin to have some ideas about it but we know what to do. It is a question of whether we can do it.
I see that Gavin Barwell is now going round the country talking to people about our housing problems. Apparently, he is meeting very large audiences. Perhaps some people think he is Gary Barlow and not Gavin Barwell; I gather that is a bit of a problem. However he is getting his audiences, he is going to the people in different parts of the country and I welcome that. My noble friend Lord Forsyth said, rightly, that he should be a Cabinet Minister. My noble friend may have been thinking of the famous case of Harold Macmillan, who was a Housing Minister in the Cabinet and therefore able to produce, with his particular authority as a Cabinet Minister, more than 300,000 houses a year—a famous part of Tory history which we all remember.
If that happens, Gavin Barwell should employ the noble Lord, Lord Hollick—just as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is employed by the Government—to help achieve this task. I would diplomatically suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, that that might be a better use of his time than trying to renovate the Labour Party, which is a rather Herculean task at the moment. Whatever the Government do, they should get together and, given that we all know what needs to be done, get on and do it.
Baroness Blackstone (Lab)
My Lords, I must declare an interest as I chair the board of Orbit, a large housing association. I want to focus on the supply-side issues that the Select Committee identified as being of crucial importance in rectifying our housing crisis but that have been neglected by successive Governments. I was a member of the committee when we undertook this inquiry. It was a great pleasure, not least because the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, and I agreed on both the nature of the problems and the solutions—surprising as that may seem.
The spiralling rise in house prices was central to the committee’s concerns. Following nearly 40 years of stability in these prices, they have risen dramatically since the 1970s and particularly fast in recent years. In London, the average price of a house is nearly £500,000 and in the rest of the country £220,000. As my noble friend Lord Hollick said, rents have also increased vastly. Private renters spend 43% of gross income on rent; in London it is 60%. In the past, many couples could save to put down a deposit and buy a house within a decade. Today, many will never be able to do so. Aspirations are dashed and increasing numbers of families live in poor accommodation and in poverty because of its high cost, greatly affecting the quality of their lives.
We are in this mess because for many years we failed to build anything like as many houses as are needed to meet demand. The starkest of statistics is that between 1955 and 1975 local authorities built 2 million homes, but between 1995 and 2015 they built just over 12,000. As other speakers said, including the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, the private sector completely failed to replace local authority housing construction. Moreover, the three biggest builders have 200,000 plots in short-term land banks and more than a third of new houses granted planning permission between 2010 and 2015 have not yet been built.
The Select Committee set out these shocking statistics which demonstrate that the housing market is not working. The Government have been too slow to acknowledge this and not so long ago came up with policies that were no solution. Indeed, they stoked up demand resulting in further house price increases and made the problem worse. I congratulate the Government on moving away from those policies and for stating categorically in the White Paper that the housing market is broken. I welcome this change of direction.
However, like many commentators, I am sceptical about whether the Government will meet their target of 250,000 new homes. Moreover, it is doubtful whether this target is large enough to deal with the enormous backlog and continuing population growth. As my noble friend Lord Layard said, the committee estimated that at least 300,000 new homes are needed annually for the foreseeable future to stop things getting worse. Why is the Government’s own target quite a lot lower than the committee and independent experts calculate is needed?
As chair of a housing association that is also one of the largest housebuilders in the sector, I am acutely aware of the struggle to find suitable land, which many speakers in the debate referred to. The committee’s report advocates a more aggressive approach to the release of public land. Some government departments and their agencies hoard land for which they have no current use. In their response to the committee’s report, the Government were vague, saying just that they would work harder to release this land. In the White Paper, they are much more specific, mentioning the 160,000 homes they plan to build on public land. Can the Minister tell the House what mechanism the Government propose for monitoring progress in reaching this target and how the release of public land will be co-ordinated across government? Perhaps the great Mr Barwell, who has received so many accolades today, can be asked to take this on, but he needs support from the top to make this happen.
I welcome the fact that the White Paper proposes consultation on allowing local authorities the flexibility to dispose of land to be used for housing,
“at less than best consideration”.
Can the Minister also say what the Government’s plans are to deal with the hoarding planned by land traders? I welcome the Government’s determination to improve the planning process and their decision to consult on much-needed increases in density in areas where demand is high. We lag behind many of our neighbours in Europe in this respect. The £45 million land release fund to help local authorities identify surplus land for housing is welcome, although given the size of the problem I wonder whether this sum will go far enough. The costs of decontamination alone for many brownfield sites are enormous. Can the Minister say how the Government intend to address this?
The White Paper proposes to allow local authorities to increase planning fees by 20%. This, again, reflects a recommendation of the committee. It is right to stipulate that this should be reinvested in planning departments, which have suffered from reductions in skilled staff as a result of a 46% cut in funding between 2010-11 and 2014-15. Housing associations want well-resourced local teams, and they will be willing to pay a little more to achieve this.
I have already referred to the gap between the number of planning permissions granted and the number of homes built. Measures in the White Paper to speed up the delivery of new houses are welcome, but the Government’s failure to accept the Select Committee’s recommendation to levy council tax on those developments not completed within a set time is disappointing. Again, perhaps the Minister could comment on this.
The committee recommended that the National Infrastructure Commission should oversee the release of public land for housing. A number of speakers have referred to this. Perhaps we missed a trick by failing to include a bigger role for the commission in setting the agenda for large-scale housing developments across the country. The £2.3 billion committed in the White Paper to a housing infrastructure fund in areas of greatest social need to help unlock the delivery of new towns and developments of 1,500 homes or more is welcome, but could the Government agree to the commission assessing the infrastructure needs in the interests of speeding up the process and getting more homes built quickly? If these infrastructure issues are not addressed, nothing will happen.
The Government’s obsession with home ownership at the expense of other types of tenure concerned the committee greatly. The White Paper’s new approach, with social and affordable housing and private renting at last on the agenda, is really refreshing. It is vital to improve the housing of those who cannot afford to buy their own homes and to help them escape from poor-quality accommodation provided by private landlords. But to achieve this it is important to make it much easier for local authorities to provide new homes on a much larger scale, as many speakers have pointed out.
I conclude on what I think has been the main theme of the debate. In his White Paper, the Secretary of State trumpets a “bold, radical vision”, but with respect to local authorities’ freedom to build, it fails to be either bold or radical. It does not give councils the borrowing powers they need, nor the right to retain right-to-buy receipts to invest in new affordable homes. It also fails to recognise that interfering in the rents that housing associations can charge damages their capacity to build more affordable homes and to reach the 120,000 target mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake. Lenders’ appraisals of risk are affected, as are housing associations’ business plans. Will the Government think again, first, about liberating housing associations in this respect and, secondly, about local authorities’ powers and freedoms to build?
A change of heart would diminish the scepticism of many commentators, which I referred to at the beginning of my speech, about the likelihood that the White Paper targets can be achieved. Only then will we reduce the housing benefit bill and make the progress needed to alleviate the misery of so many people who are suffering because of wholly inadequate housing.
Lord Best (CB)
My Lords, I maintain the long tradition of beginning by saying I do not want to repeat anything anyone has already said, then repeating everything that everyone has said. I hope there will be some slight changes of emphasis in my remarks. The Economic Affairs Committee’s report is a really impressive analysis. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, the committee members—I used to be one; it is a great committee to serve on—and the very well-chosen special advisers, Professors Christine Whitehead and Geoff Meen.
I hope almost everyone has now accepted the core message of the report: we have to build a lot more new homes. Relying on a handful of large housebuilding companies will not do it, so we must dramatically boost building by all the other providers: councils, housing associations, SME builders, retirement housing providers, Build to Rent developers, self-build and custom housebuilding, and more.
Since publication of the committee’s report there have been some radical changes to the position facing us when your Lordships debated the then Housing and Planning Bill last year. In what seemed like an endless tussle over that legislation, with one of the Government’s heavy defeats featuring in this week’s BBC2 documentary “Meet the Lords”, we argued for more affordable homes to rent, not just homes to buy. Now we have the Government’s housing White Paper. Although some regard it as insufficiently radical, I recognise that it represents a shift in housing policy in absolutely the right direction. I also congratulate Gavin Barwell, the Housing Minister, on his leadership. Not least, the White Paper fully acknowledges the requirement for affordable rented homes and the new version of starter homes for sale will no longer replace all the homes so badly needed for rent.
On the Economic Affairs Committee’s views on excessive dependency on a few very large housebuilders, there is plenty of good stuff in the White Paper on diversifying the housing market. I welcome the encouragement for the fledgling Build to Rent sector, which draws in funds from institutional investors to create new, well-managed additional homes, in contrast to buy-to-let speculative investment, which simply acquires homes already there.
Local authorities are rightly disappointed that the Government are not planning to fully relax opportunities for them to borrow to build new council housing. I doubt whether the Government’s stance is really because the Treasury believes local authorities will go wild and borrow excessively, having now seen councils behaving cautiously and prudently where they have had the chance to borrow to build. Rather, it is the continuing reluctance by government to follow international practice and define investment in new housing as being outside the definition of public expenditure. This means housing investment would add so much less to the annual deficit if non-public bodies, such as housing associations, did the spending.
The White Paper helpfully emphasises government intentions to see more publicly owned land released for housing—it’s the land, stupid. Other changes beyond the White Paper also give hope for the future. I am keen on the creation of whole new settlements—those garden villages or garden towns that are beginning to come forward. The signs are good that an amendment promoted by the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Goss Moor, and a number of us from across this House will obtain government approval at Third Reading of the Neighbourhood Planning Bill. This amendment would give councils a greater say in the development of major new settlements, thereby incentivising more local authorities to get behind the creation of these mini new towns, where capturing the land value at the outset enables lots of homes to be developed in high-quality, mixed-income new communities.
On the subject of good news to fulfil the hopes expressed by the Economic Affairs Committee, a new report from the National Housing Federation, Demise of the NIMBY, strongly suggests widespread acceptance of the value of building more homes in place of the endless opposition to any new development which has characterised the debate for years. The biggest housing association concentrating on rural housing, Hastoe Housing Association, similarly reports an increase in the number of parish councils asking it to come to develop homes for locals in their village. Of course there will remain stiff opposition to housebuilders simply adding a lot of “executive housing”, with no additional infrastructure for the community, on the edge of the village. But the need for homes for locals is now accepted in many areas, with neighbourhood plans helping determine the location for them, and this means less hassle to build extra affordable homes.
Perhaps it is worth noting that, in terms of getting the extra homes built, it is very often the housing associations that can make things happen: they are well placed to expand the new Build to Rent market, being in a position to borrow on rather more favourable terms than speculative developers; they can partner local authorities in joint venture companies; they can be central to the master plans for new settlements; they are ideal retirement housing providers since they can be trusted, rightly, by older people wishing to downsize; and they can pursue their core role of providing affordable rental homes, and creating communities which include housing for shared ownership and sale, this time often in partnership with the housebuilders.
I am delighted to see that the Government have found an extra £1.4 billion in hard cash to support this work. More of the same would mean more new and affordable homes. The housing association sector really does have the potential to double its output and to generate the very large numbers of extra homes that we know will not be forthcoming otherwise. Their non-profit, social purpose means they add social value by taking in the most disadvantaged, by working with smaller charities locally, by working with health and social care providers, by investing in training and employment, and by generally supporting every kind of community activity.
Sadly, I have to conclude on a sour note. The positive approach of the Department for Communities and Local Government, which I am applauding, is not matched by the actions of the Department for Work and Pensions. The DWP is undermining housing policy by vainly trying to cut the costs of housing benefit before market conditions make this a sensible option. When supply more nearly matches demand, government can exert downward pressure on rent and therefore reduce housing benefit. But that cannot happen yet. The compulsory 1% per annum real reduction in rents for housing associations and councils means an accumulated 12% revenue cut over four years, which of course impacts on their ability to create additional affordable homes.
All the DWP’s other new benefit caps and ceilings, and the freezes on local housing allowances, mean tenants on the lowest incomes getting less government help with housing. Time does not permit me to speak about the DWP’s latest plans to limit rents charged for specialist supported and sheltered housing, which I fear, if taken forward, will undermine the excellent work of the DCLG in supporting—magnificently—the Homelessness Reduction Bill, which I was honoured to take through its Second Reading last Friday.
However, I must draw attention to the even bigger concern for everyone in the housing world: the reductions in help for tenants in the private rented sector mean fewer and fewer landlords will take in anyone who relies on government help with their housing. Shelter figures show that, by 2020, the local housing allowance will not cover rents for even the cheapest properties in over 80% of local authority areas. Landlords already face the inherent risks of poorer households finding deposits and rent in advance, as well as the DWP’s insistence on paying housing support to the tenant not the landlord. The result is not simply that, in seeking to prevent homelessness, councils and charities will find fewer and fewer landlords willing to accept the people they want to assist. The even greater anxiety is that, gradually, more and more of the 800,000 existing private sector tenants who receive housing benefit will find their landlords ending their current shorthold tenancies. Unless the DWP recognises the need to lift the freeze on local housing allowances and returns to paying housing benefit on the cheapest market rents, a major calamity awaits.
So, there are plenty of reasons to be cheerful about the opportunities for building more homes, as the EAC report advocates so powerfully, but also serious difficulties for poorer households needing somewhere to live, because DWP welfare reforms are undermining constructive DCLG housing policies. I end therefore with a plea for the Government, collectively, to reconcile these conflicting trends so that the good intentions of the Housing Minister and of the housing White Paper—echoing so much of the Economic Affairs Committee’s thinking—can be fulfilled.
Viscount Chandos (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate my noble friend Lord Hollick on securing this debate and on the work of the Economic Affairs Committee in producing this important report. The subsequent publication of the Government’s White Paper is also to be welcomed, particularly where it has responded positively to recommendations of the committee, even if in other respects it is perhaps longer on hope than on constructive policy.
Housing looms large in British life, whether measured by the value of the housing stock—£6.8 trillion, more than 3.7 times annual GDP and 1.5 times the value of all companies listed on the London Stock Exchange—or by the number of television programmes devoted to the usually more glamorous aspects of the subject. Emotional attachment to a family home cannot and should not be disparaged, and the ambition for ownership should not be discouraged. But, inescapably, the cultural and economic emphasis on home ownership in the UK, in comparison with the perhaps more utilitarian approach in other countries, creates a challenging context within which to pursue a successful housing policy.
The Economist wrote, in response to the publication of the White Paper,
“Part of the trouble with Britain’s housing market is that politicians like to tinker, rather than reform”.
The complex implications of radical reform on intergenerational wealth, and even on financial stability, certainly discourage a politician with any sense of career preservation from pursuing it. The current imbroglio on the revaluation of business rates, for instance, makes even the modest recommendation of the committee’s report for council tax revaluation—let alone more fundamental reform of property taxation, as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull—seem like an unappetising invitation to an ambitious Minister.
While the Government’s timidity in this respect in the White Paper may be understandable, if regrettable, the further exacerbation of residential property’s special treatment inherent in the Government’s inheritance tax changes in the summer Budget of 2015 was inexcusable. As the Institute for Economic Affairs—hardly a think tank of Marxist hue—said in evidence to the committee, this was,
“a step in the wrong direction … By treating housing wealth preferentially relative to non-housing wealth, these changes will introduce further distortions, and further inflate demand without adding anything to supply”.
Sad. Against a background, therefore, of the distortions caused by such special treatment of owner-occupied housing and the unambitious targets adopted to date by the Government—at least until the Minister responds—specific measures to improve the situation risk being overwhelmed by the macro-headwinds.
I none the less take a little time at this late stage in the debate to comment on a couple of issues relating principally to social housing. In a report to 13 London boroughs, published in January with the rather indigestible title Viability and the Planning System: The Relationship between Economic Viability Testing, Land Values and Affordable Housing in London, it was disclosed that the delivery of affordable housing in London had fallen 37% since mid-2009. Although the report’s analysis identifies many of the factors already discussed this afternoon as contributing to this reduction, one not otherwise mentioned is the question of the planning obligations on new developments to provide affordable housing though Section 106 agreements.
The report concludes that, as these agreements are currently working,
“this has produced a circular situation in which the more a developer pays for a site, the lower the Section 106 contributions can be argued ... Cumulative changes to planning policies since 2012, as operated in practice, have had the effect of shifting the balance of power between developers, landowners and community with the result that landowners have been the primary beneficiaries”.
Will the Minister say whether the Government will review the workings of Section 106?
As other noble Lords have said, the supply and utilisation of land from both the private and the public sectors need urgently to be improved. The committee’s report recommended that local authorities have the power to levy council tax on developments not completed within a pre-agreed time period. I regret that the White Paper has ignored this. Will the Minister explain why this very reasonable and practicable measure is not being adopted on a basis, I would suggest, whereby the charge ratchets up as time passes?
The White Paper, has, on the other hand, recognised the need set out in the report for flexibility in the application of best value in the sale of public land, as a number of other noble Lords have discussed. However, it only commits to consultation, and giving the public sector bodies greater freedom in relation to best value might not in itself release the land needed without provision for the vendors to at least be partially compensated by central government. Will the Minister say whether a central fund to do this will be considered and vigorously negotiated with the Treasury?
Finally, I strongly support the committee’s report and many noble Lords who have spoken today in wishing to see local authorities enjoying greater freedom to borrow to invest in affordable and social housing. We are truly disappearing down a rabbit hole with Alice and attending the Mad Hatter’s tea party when local authorities are permitted, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, explained, to indulge in what hedge funds term a “carry trade”, buying commercial property from PWLB funds, while being prevented from borrowing to fund social housing.
In advocating this, I should make one caveat. At a time when local authorities are struggling to find the resources to maintain planning departments at fighting strength, we should not underestimate the challenge in building or rebuilding the development teams needed to execute successfully any significant social housing programme to the quality levels advocated by my noble friend Lady Young. Therefore, we need a mixed economy, combining direct building by local authorities with the necessary resources, and partnerships with housing associations and private developers for local authorities without them.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, I first declare my vice-presidency of the Local Government Association. I strongly welcome the report of the Economic Affairs Select Committee on building more homes. I detect from the contributions this afternoon a broad unity of view about many of the conclusions of the report, which is welcome.
There have been—and reference has been made to this this afternoon—a very large number of reports in recent times on housing supply and the rising cost of housing, both for purchase and for rent. I think that the Government have finally realised that the time for just talking about the housing crisis must come to an end. I think that the White Paper is moving us in the right direction, although it does not itself provide a solution to a number of the problems affecting the housing sector. I will return to this later.
I pay tribute to the committee, of which I used to be a member, for its evidence-based report. It has been several months since it was published, but at least it has enabled the new ministerial team to examine why existing government housing policy has been failing and to adapt some of the committee’s conclusions.
We have heard a lot this afternoon about the context of rising homelessness and of homes being called affordable when they are not affordable to very large numbers of people in work. We have very high house prices when compared internationally and very high rents in the private sector. The private sector is building only around 150,000 homes a year. We have low numbers of self and custom-build homes. We have declining space standards and large numbers of planning permissions granted but not carried through. The planning system is underresourced. Reductions in social rents may have helped the Government’s finances, but they have impacted negatively on the affordability of building new social homes for rent and on supported housing. As has been pointed out, it can be difficult for local authorities to develop brownfield sites without higher levels of remediation grant.
I say to the Minister in particular that reference has been made to the sale of high-value council homes. I had hoped that, by now, the Government might have told us that that proposal had been kicked well into the long grass and would not be proceeded with. The White Paper is not helped in its intentions if the Government are to continue with their proposal to sell high-value council homes. I hope that the Minister may be able to tell us, if not this afternoon then sometime soon, that that damaging policy will cease.
The committee’s conclusion in this report is that 300,000 homes a year should be built. Reference has been made to the Government’s target of 1 million new homes by 2020, but the word “target” is incorrect. It is not a target but a commitment; it became a commitment in the last Queen’s Speech. The difficulty for the Government is that the private sector can build only half of the 300,000 homes that the committee believes are needed. So there will be a requirement on everybody else to build the additional homes that I think we now generally recognise are needed—and, be that in the Government’s figure of 225,000 to 275,000 or the 300,000 of the Select Committee, it is significantly higher than what we are building.
The committee rightly pointed out that the Government are helping those on the verge of being able to afford home ownership, whereas those who need secure low-cost rental accommodation have not been helped sufficiently. This is correct; the Government’s focus on home ownership, while valuable and important, has been too great in comparison to that on the social rented sector. The Chartered Institute of Housing has said that the Government commit only 4% of their housing budget on below market rent social housing. That 4% is simply not high enough.
The committee said, as many of your Lordships have said this afternoon, that local authorities must be incentivised to do more. They should be able to borrow using the prudential borrowing code; I entirely subscribe to that. There are ways in which local authorities are doing good things. Bristol’s new housing company is a good example of what can be done. However, while the Government will impose a new housing delivery test on local authorities, that test is mainly about planning, not building. Local authorities need greater powers over borrowing if they are to build.
Indeed, if local authorities and housing associations build more, that will reduce demand for housing benefit, which now stands at a very high level. In the interests of good public policy, it seems to me that building more homes for social rent would save on the total amount being spent by a different government department.
I was struck by the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, about the Public Works Loan Board. Of course, some local government pension funds may be investing in property for perfectly good reasons. For the rest, I would not wish to comment, not knowing the facts. However, the Minister might consider writing to all those who have taken part in this debate about the issue. It is about the future role of the Public Works Loan Board, it is about the powers of local authority pension funds to invest and what they can invest in, and it is about the powers of councils to borrow now against, first, their housing revenue account but, secondly, their general asset base. At the moment, there is not clarity about that in local government. It might help if the Government made a formal statement.
I am taken by the proposal for a senior Cabinet Minister to get more public land released. The figure has been cited that 3 million homes could be built on land that is currently publicly owned. That is a very large number. I subscribe to the view that there should be a Cabinet seat for the Housing Minister and I subscribe to the committee’s recommendation that the best-market-value rule when releasing public land should be relaxed. I shall return to that in a moment.
The Government’s proposals of an increase of 20% in planning fees will probably suffice for the time being. I have certainly been impressed by the work about new towns that the Government are now undertaking under the Neighbourhood Planning Bill, now approaching Third Reading. Useful comments were made about the National Infrastructure Commission and its role to ensure that housing is considered as part of our infrastructure.
The White Paper has some good things in it. I like the fact that the rule about the 20% starter home requirement in larger new developments has been relaxed. I like the proposals for build to rent. I like the proposals to make the affordable homes programme open to all tenures and to promote custom-build and self-build. These are all helpful, as is the housing infrastructure fund.
The problem remains finance. House prices are running at eight times average earnings, and fewer and fewer young people can afford to buy. Less than 40% of those under the age of 35 can now afford to buy, when just 10 years ago it was two-thirds. In the north-east of England, my home region, more than 70% of working renting families cannot afford to buy a new home, even with Help to Buy. Across England, that figure is 83%.
This takes me, almost finally, to land values. The planning system encourages speculation. Land is sold to the highest bidder, even by the Government. Developers can outbid other developers, then sit on the land to wait for values to rise so that they get their money back and generate profit. Where they build, they regularly succeed in getting the affordability element reduced. Unless this issue is addressed, the White Paper will not increase housebuilding by very much. I draw two conclusions.
First, we should tax undeveloped land. The committee said that powers are needed for councils to levy council tax on developments not completed within a set time. I concur with that. I also support land value taxation. It is time for the Government to review the tax system for undeveloped land. Secondly, I should like to think that public bodies, including government departments, should be prepared to sell their land at below market value to break the cycle of ever-rising prices. Treasury rules need to be re-examined because they do not work properly for the medium to long-term.
The latest British Social Attitudes survey states that 56% of people would support more building of homes in their area. That figure has doubled in the past decade. The Government have an opportunity. They should grasp the opportunity of that rising public support for home building.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I should perhaps explain why I am speaking at this stage in the debate as opposed to where I was listed. It is not just because I can follow the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle in an example of Newcastle united. It is, sadly, because my noble friend Lord Kennedy has had to return home because his father-in-law has died and he needs, of course, to be with his wife, my noble friend Lady Kennedy of Cradley. I am sure noble Lords will wish to extend to her our sympathy and our condolences on her loss.
The clue is in the title: I refer to the 104-page White Paper with its glossy cover, published this month, a year after the House began its protracted scrutiny of what is now the Housing and Planning Act. The title is Fixing our Broken Housing Market. It tells us something about the Government’s attitude to housing that they should apparently see what is, at its heart, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle pointed out, a major issue of social policy primarily in terms of the market. Of course, the market is part of the issue, but it is not the only aspect that has to be addressed fundamentally.
We should not, I suppose, be surprised. Where, to give him his due, Harold Macmillan long ago recognised the need for more and better housing, much of it in the public sector, in the Thatcher era an obsession with tenure developed, more particularly an obsession with home ownership, even where that was at the expense of those who were not able to afford to buy a home. So we had, and have, the right to buy, which has led to 35% of council homes that were sold now being in the private rented sector without adequate replacements and at a greater cost to the Exchequer in welfare benefits.
Moreover, affordability is defined by reference not to the income of tenants or would-be buyers but in percentage terms. “Affordable” is defined as 80% of the rents and prices of privately owned properties, artificially inflated as they are by an excess of demand over supply. The right to buy is being extended to housing association tenants, for the moment, at least, in a voluntary scheme, further decreasing over time the availability of genuinely affordable homes to rent.
I congratulate my noble friend Lord Hollick and the members of the Economic Affairs Committee, six of whom have participated in this debate, on a compelling report, which was published in July. As the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, pointed out, it took the Government five months to reply with, in effect, three pages of responses to what they describe as the report’s recommendations. The response does not, however, reply to comments in the report which do not contain specific recommendations. In fairness, some matters are touched on in the White Paper but, for example, the report comments at paragraph 253:
“It is wrong to create specific tax rules, as is the case with recent changes to capital gains tax and inheritance tax, around housing”.
That matter was raised by, among others, the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, and my noble friend Lord Chandos. To this, no reply is made.
The report goes on at paragraph 254 to affirm, correctly, that “Council tax is regressive” and to recommend:
“The bands should be amended so that owners of more expensive properties”—
I declare my interest as the owner of a house which is worth perhaps 12 or more times what some of my constituents’ homes are, despite being in only band F—
“so that owners of more expensive properties contribute proportionately more than owners of less expensive properties. This should be done in a revenue neutral way”.
I mentioned that interest. I should also remind noble Lords that I am a member of Newcastle City Council and an honorary vice-president of the Local Government Association. Perhaps I could advise the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle that in my ward and others work is being done to provide affordable social housing, although not in the numbers that we would ideally like to see.
The proposal is dismissed on the grounds that,
“it would require a wholesale council tax revaluation”.
Indeed it might, given that it is 25 years or more since any revaluation took place. But surely, given the huge increases in house prices over the years, some additional bands at the top and bottom ends of the scale would not be unreasonable, even if the overall yield was not increased, which should be the objective.
The report recognises the need for a substantial increase in the number of houses to be built. We have heard several of your Lordships point out that the Government’s figure is less than is desirable or achievable. But of course we need to build not just houses but communities, of mixed tenures, including social housing, built by councils, housing associations and housing co-operatives, with provision for special needs, such as those of the elderly or disabled, and with the necessary physical and social infrastructure that creates a sense of place. To return to an issue I have frequently had occasion to mention, we must build to higher standards of space and energy efficiency than has been the case for many years. Comparisons with what, for the moment, we can still call our European partners do not show us in a good light.
We need to revive Parker Morris standards, which have been significantly diluted over recent years. Of course, we also need to ensure access to green spaces and educational, recreational and medical facilities. The White Paper devotes only a couple of pages to these issues under the heading of “Sustainable Development and the Environment”. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans made a strong point about the particular needs of rural communities.
The committee’s report—understandably, given its remit—concentrates on numbers, and rightly refers, in chapter 5, to the benefits of, and the need for, more building by councils and housing associations, having pointed out in chapter 2 that government policies on the right to buy and starter homes conflict with their wish to increase the supply of affordable homes to rent. It points out that enabling councils to build homes for sale can help to finance building and refers to the imposition of cuts in social housing rents for both councils and housing associations, with damaging results for the capacity of both to invest in existing or new stock. I have mentioned the effect in Newcastle, where the 1% cut in rents will over time cost £590 million. The noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, and one of the right reverend Prelates made the same point about the impact of this measure. The report says that one housing association will lose £138 million in four years. The cuts benefit the Exchequer, since they will reduce housing benefit, but they aggravate the housing problem.
Critically, the report supports the right of local authorities to borrow to build social housing, a point strongly endorsed by the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Kerslake, but to which the Government made no response. At paragraph 220, it makes a welcome call for the Government to allow councils,
“to borrow under the prudential regime to build all types of housing”.
They would, after all, be investing in assets which over time will increase in value.
Interestingly, the committee is critical of recent government policy on the private rented sector. Paragraphs 94 to 98 refer to polices such as restricting tax relief on financing costs of rental property to the standard rate; introducing a higher rate of stamp duty on purchases of additional private rented properties; reducing tax allowances for wear; and exempting gains on residential properties from a reduction in capital gains tax. It refers to the warning of the Council of Mortgage Lenders that the impact of these changes will increase the cost and limit the availability of private rented homes, while the committee itself is concerned that changes, including stamp duty land tax, could inhibit investment in the build-to-rent sector, where apparently there is potentially between £30 billion and £50 billion available from institutional investors.
Crucially, the committee recommends that the target for new build should be 300,000 annually for the foreseeable future and it dismissed, as some noble Lords did, the Government’s target of l million by 2020 as insufficient. In addition, it proposes that councils should be able to vary planning fees, a matter that has been the subject of comment by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and others, and levy council tax on properties not completed within a set period. The committee’s report makes a notable contribution to a debate of the highest importance to millions of people who aspire, perfectly reasonably, to live in modern, affordable housing with a genuine choice of tenure. It deserves a better reception from the Government than is reflected in last year’s Housing and Planning Act or this year’s White Paper. I hope that the Minister, in his reply, will take the Government’s declared position somewhat further than now appears to be the case.
By sheer and timely coincidence, I attended a meeting this morning with the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Shipley, at which Shelter launched its report on civic building, which is available on its website. It has interesting ideas on the very subject we are debating, and a title as telling as that of the White Paper. Two statistics were mentioned which highlight some of the problems we face: 83% of people cannot afford to buy new homes at current prices, and 50% of people who can afford it and do buy encounter problems with the property. The building industry is not just not building enough, it is apparently not building well enough. That is also something that needs to be addressed.
One other issue received particular emphasis. Colleagues who attended will agree that probably the highest amount of attention and concern was given to the cost of land, and the requirement on public authorities to sell to the highest bidder. This is not addressed in the White Paper. Will the Minister indicate whether the Government will at least be reviewing this? I have been critical of the White Paper but it is an improvement on what has gone before—it would be difficult for it not to be an improvement on what has gone before—but much more needs to be done. The Committee’s report offers sound advice on how to tackle the range of issues that need to be addressed in the interest of providing decent, affordable homes for all who need them, whatever age they are or whatever status they have in society, as part of a programme involving local communities, local people, local authorities and the building industry to reignite an approach to housing that will lead to substantial numbers of good houses being built and made available. Importantly, we need communities of mixed tenure which strengthen the bonds of our society.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, the whole House understands why the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, was unable to wind up the debate. We extend our sympathy to him and to his wife, the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, on the recent loss of her father, although no one would know that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, had not been working on that wind-up speech for several weeks.
If political students wanted a textbook example of how a committee in your Lordship’s House could influence and reshape government policy, I would direct them to the report we have been debating this afternoon. As the noble Lords, Lord Horam and Lord Best, explained, its context was the Housing and Planning Bill, introduced by the newly-elected Government in 2015, which contained a number of measures to increase housing supply, particularly for first-time buyers, but was not free from political controversy. It provided the back-drop to this report, which was published a few weeks after Royal Assent.
A few days after publication, there was, in effect, a change of Government. All DCLG Ministers but one were moved and a new team arrived, with the political space to revisit policy and with your Lordships’ report in their in-tray to assist that process. I have been genuinely impressed by the fresh approach adopted by Gavin Barwell, as I know have many others, who have admired the way he has shown his commitment to tackling the challenges of his portfolio and engaged with all the stakeholders. As a former Chief Whip I would caution against praising him too highly, just in case he is headhunted by the Prime Minister and his skills are applied to other challenges that may confront the Government in Whitehall. But it was perhaps a tacit acknowledgement of the influence of your Lordships’ report that the title of the subsequent White Paper, Fixing Our Broken Housing Market, was lifted from the introduction to this report: “Housing, A Broken Market?”.
I cannot think of any Select Committee report in either House that has had so many of its recommendations adopted so quickly, sometimes at the expense of Government reordering earlier priorities, as my noble friend Lord Horam said, and as also mentioned by the noble Lords, Lord Turnbull and Lord Kerslake. Perhaps the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans would describe it as repentance. We are taking forward measures that fit with over half of the committee’s 13 final recommendations as well as a host of other points raised in the report. So I commend the committee on the timing and the targeting of its report, its chairman for his perceptive introduction and all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. The White Paper was, of course, a consultation document, so everything that has been said in this debate will be taken into account in that process.
I have discovered in my short time in your Lordships’ House that Whips are often invited to respond to debates on subjects in which they had, until shortly before, displayed but a fleeting interest. I hope that that is not the case today; like other noble Lords, I have chaired a housing association. Unlike other noble Lords, I was a housing Minister at various levels of seniority from 1981 to 1994, with a discontinuity from 1986 to 1990 when I fell out with Margaret Thatcher over the poll tax. Indeed, as Under-Secretary of State at the Department of the Environment, I first spoke in a housing debate in October 1981 about making the best use of government land to support the housebuilding programme—a subject still topical today, as the committee highlighted in its report.
Let me say how the Government have acted on the committee’s recommendations, and try to address the points raised in today’s debate, recognising that I may not have time to address all of them, in which case I will of course write to noble Lords.
The report rightly acknowledges that housing has become too unaffordable, whether to rent or to buy—a point strongly made by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, when he introduced the report; and many others, including the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone, and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey have explained the impact this has on the lives of those who are affected. They reminded us that the average house costs almost eight times average earnings—an all-time record. This means it is too difficult for too many people to get on the housing ladder, and the proportion of people living in the private rented sector has doubled since 2000. For the average couple in the private rented sector, rent now takes up roughly half of their gross income, a point mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, who also mentioned the anxiety that many of those in the private rented sector feel because of the absence of security. That figure, of roughly half of their gross income, is even higher in London. Noble Lords may ask themselves, as indeed do many others, how their children and grandchildren will be housed when they grow up and leave the family home. The Government are determined to reform the housing market so that housing is more affordable and people have the security they need to plan for the future. That is the background to the White Paper.
The starting point, as the committee has recognised, is to build many more homes. Since the 1970s we have delivered, on average, 160,000 new homes each year in England, far below what the committee and numerous independent assessments have said we need. The White Paper sets out a comprehensive plan to deliver the step change in housebuilding—as the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, described it—which capitalises on the substantial additional funding secured in the Autumn Statement. The figure of £1.4 billion was referred to by a number of noble Lords as extra money available for affordable housing. In deciding how that money should be spent, the right reverend Prelates the Bishop of Newcastle and the Bishop of St Albans stressed the importance of stable communities where young people can buy a home and have a stake in the area in which they live. We were invited by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans not to overlook the needs of rural housing. That is, indeed, a priority and there is a new community fund to provide £60 million per year to support housing in rural areas. It is interesting that in the Neighbourhood Planning Bill a number of neighbourhood plans came forward with more homes in their village or community than were actually required by the district plan. That addresses the point so well made by the noble Lord, Lord Best, that nimbyism is moving on, although it may not have totally disappeared.
To achieve this goal, the White Paper sets out a four-pronged approach. First, release more land for homes where people want to live. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, reminded us that there are regional variations in the equation between supply and demand. Secondly, ensure homes are built more quickly, once they have planning permission; thirdly, open up the housing market to a wider range of providers and methods of provision; and fourthly, help people in the meantime while our reforms take effect. We think that that is a comprehensive and realistic plan to deliver the homes we need, and others agree. David Orr, chief executive of the National Housing Federation, said that the White Paper contained,
“extremely positive steps towards ending the housing crisis”.
How have we addressed the committee’s recommendations? It raised the importance of ensuring that local authority planning departments are properly resourced—an issue raised by my noble friend Lady Eaton and others. As noble Lords have mentioned, the Government are boosting local authority capacity by raising planning fees, by 20% where local authorities commit to spending the additional income on planning services. The Federation of Master Builders has said that this is,
“one of the biggest game changers”,
in the White Paper. I hope that those extra resources might enable planning authorities to recruit the ecologists referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, where they are needed and also to deal with some of the sharp practices that we heard about from the noble Earl, Lord Lytton. An additional 20% is available in areas that are delivering on their housing plans.
The Government agree with the committee that we need to act to ensure that homes are built more quickly once planning permission has been granted, which was an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone. The White Paper includes a package of measures to address slow build-out. The committee highlighted the suggestion that planning consents should be limited to two years. We encourage local authorities to consider shortening the timescales for developers to implement a permission from three to two years, as set out in the White Paper.
The committee recommended that the community infrastructure levy needed to be simpler, more transparent and responsive to the concerns of builders and we are looking at that carefully. That includes the workings of Section 106, which was raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Chandos. We will make an announcement at the conclusion of those considerations in the Autumn Budget this year.
More broadly, we are tackling the barriers that can hold back development on-site, including through the £2.3 billion housing infrastructure fund, by helping to put the right infrastructure in the right places—an initiative welcomed by the noble Lord, Lord Hollick—and by streamlining the licensing system for managing the great crested newt. Too often, lack of infrastructure prevents development, and that substantial sum should unlock up to 100,000 new homes. We will hold the feet of local authorities and developers to the fire to account for the delivery of new homes, including through a new housing delivery test, to ensure that local authorities are on track with their plans.
The committee made several recommendations about making better use of public land to deliver new homes. The Government aim to dispose of surplus government land in England with capacity for at least 160,000 homes by the end of March 2020. This follows our successful programme in the last Parliament, in which land was released for 109,000 homes against a target of 100,000.
Progress with the current programme is good. The programme’s annual report, published on 20 February, shows that by the end of September 2016 departments had already sold or identified land with capacity for 145,492 homes—91% of the programme’s ambition. I hope that publication of that report, which of course came after the publication of the committee’s report, has addressed concerns about when information on monitoring the new programme would be available. We will publish a further report in July, with data about the number of homes built on land released under the programme—an issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blackstone.
Alongside this, the Government’s new accelerated construction programme will deliver up to 15,000 housing starts in this Parliament on surplus public sector land and encourage new developers with different models of construction to build new homes at up to double the rate of traditional housebuilders.
We agree with the committee that we need to diversify the market to increase supply. That includes supporting housing associations and local authorities to build more—an ambition recommended by the committee in Chapter 5—alongside supporting smaller developers and new investors.
We want to support housing associations with ambitious plans for growth—for example, L&Q, which has recently merged with East Thames housing association and acquired the strategic land firm Gallagher. I was interested to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, about the merger between Peabody and Family Mosaic with the specific aim of enabling the combined association to build more homes. We welcome new investors into different types of housing, such as the joint venture in supported housing between Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd and Morgan Sindall Investments Ltd—a subject raised by a number of speakers, including the right reverend Prelate. Although we have taken initiatives to sustain supported housing with some ring-fenced funding, I understand that there are residual anxieties, which I will certainly pass on to ministerial colleagues.
We want to see local authorities deliver new council houses, as stressed by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. Numbers of new council homes have been increasing year on year, and they are an important source of new supply, particularly in areas where there is acute housing need.
We will work with local authorities and key partners to consider the options for increasing housebuilding further. This may include innovative approaches—such as the one in Ashford mentioned by my noble friend Lady Eaton—and the use of local housing companies to deliver new affordable and market housing. In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Hollick, I understand that there is no fixed budget for this. The department responds to requests on a case-by-case basis, focusing on areas of high demand.
My noble friend Lady Wheatcroft raised points about diversifying the market and the potential for the greater use of modern methods of construction, such as off-site construction. We will stimulate the growth of the sector through government programmes—for example, partnering with off-site manufacturers through the accelerated construction programme—and we will work with lenders to ensure that homes built off-site can access finance on the same basis as traditionally built homes. Therefore, in direct response to the question from my noble friend, we recognise the imperative of government leadership in this area in getting the initiative off the ground.
The committee called for more homes for rent alongside those for sale. The White Paper includes a package of measures to boost new privately financed build-to-rent developments, as well as additional investment and flexibility for more affordable homes, including those for rent. That was a subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Best, and perhaps I can focus on it for a moment. I have always been amazed that pension funds and insurance companies in this country have invested in almost every conceivable asset apart from residential accommodation for rent. They have invested in gilts, equities, commercial property, commodities, gold and silver, but, had they invested in homes for rent, they would have achieved both capital appreciation and income buoyancy unparalleled by almost any other investment. I have nothing against buy-to-let investors, but there would be more stability and professionalism in this sector if there were this long-term institutional investment, as suggested by the noble Lord.
A number of major investors have already invested and are already building schemes—Legal & General, M&G, Grainger, Moorfield, Lone Star, Hermes, Realstar, Essential Living and Delancey, to name but a few. I noted that the property consultancy Knight Frank estimates that investment appetite could grow to £50 billion, representing 250,000 homes.
The committee highlighted barriers to entry for smaller builders. The White Paper includes a package of measures to help smaller firms—an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Layard—from making more small sites available through the planning system, to loan funding of £1 billion as part of the home building fund to support small and custom builders. Many noble Lords spoke about those on the waiting list and those threatened by homelessness, which I hope will be assisted by the Bill being taken through your Lordships’ House by the noble Lord, Lord Best.
Increasing the supply of social housing for rent will of course help those looking to the sector for a solution to their housing problem. I have always favoured schemes that help social tenants move on to home ownership, such as HomeBuy. Some of these, where tenants move into a new property such as Help to Buy, can help to secure a re-let at a fraction of the cost and time of a new build. That can promote mobility through the sector helping both tenants and those in housing need.
The committee and noble Lords raised a number of questions about the Government’s housing target. Our ambition is to deliver 1 million new homes by this Parliament, by March 2020. We have made good progress so far with 189,650 new homes delivered in 2015-16. However, there is clearly more to do, as the noble Lords, Lord Sharkey and Lord Kerslake, reminded us. No one who has listened to this debate could draw any conclusion other than that we need to go a lot further to meet that ambition.
I turn now to some of the points raised in the debate. A recurring theme was the need to raise the borrowing limit for local authorities. In addition to doing a spell as a Housing Minister, I also did a spell in the Treasury so I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand, the Housing Minister wants the maximum borrowing capacity for local authorities and on the other hand the Treasury sees an imperative to manage public debt. Clearly, there is tension between the two. I would like to write to noble Lords because there is a real danger of getting bogged down in fiscal theology as to what scores and what does not score as a public expenditure. I will set out more clearly what we are doing and what the constraints might be. But in the Autumn Statement 2013, £300 million of additional borrowing was made available to councils in England and £127.2 million was taken up. In 2015-16, local authority borrowing headroom is set to be £3.4 billion on top of almost £2.5 billion of general housing revenue account—the reserves accumulated by local authorities.
The noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, asked what the housing delivery test was. It is about assessing progress in housebuilding against local planning authorities’ targets. It compares the number of homes that local planning authorities set out to deliver in their local plans against the net additions in housing supply. It is not just about planning but about how many actual houses are built.
My noble friend Lord Forsyth raised the issue of the PRA. I will raise again with the Treasury and the PRA the issue of the capital weighting of loans to small builders. I have many other answers, but my time is drawing to a close so I will sum up. The Government are committed to fixing the problems with our housing market, many of which the Committee highlighted in its excellent report. By building the homes that Britain needs and giving those renting a fairer deal, we will give those growing up in society today a greater chance of enjoying the same opportunities as their parents and grandparents, as part of our wider ambition to make this a country that works for everyone. I welcome the committee’s interest in this area and, in light of the impact of its report, hope that it will consider looking at the issue of housing again, possibly later in this Parliament.
Lord Hollick
I thank all noble Lords who have spoken today. We have had an interesting debate and there were some kind remarks about the committee’s report. There were surprisingly high marks from the noble Lord, Lord Kerslake, and some unusual career advice from the noble Lord, Lord Horam. We may indeed return to this topic later, but we look forward to the Minister’s response, particularly on the availability of finance to underpin the ambitions that are widely shared around the Chamber. On the 1 million homes, it is clear that we will have to see quite a large increase at the end of the Parliament—in 2019-20. It might be helpful if I add a further burden to the Housing Minister’s already full in-tray, which is to provide a programme of how the Government are going to achieve this objective. What measures will they take? We have neighbourhood plans for local authorities, which indicate the number of housing opportunities available. How will those opportunities be grasped? Who will build those houses? If the Government could set that out, it would do a lot to allay the scepticism that we have heard around the Chamber today about the deliverability of the plans.
Brexit: Options for Trade (EUC Report)
Lord Whitty
That this House takes note of the Report from the European Union Committee, Brexit: the options for trade (5th Report, HL Paper 72).
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, after a week of excitement in this House on Brexit, it is a little galling that it takes us until 5 pm on a Thursday afternoon to get to what is actually the central issue in terms of our future relationship with Europe—namely, the trade relationship. However, I am very grateful to everybody who has stayed, including the Minister, and I am sure that we will have a good and effective debate.
This inquiry was carried out by two committees. I thank all the members of both my committee and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and the staff who have produced this report. It was a very interesting exercise. The inquiry was conducted in the autumn of last year and reported in December.
There have obviously been one or two developments since then. We have had the Prime Minister’s speech in January and the White Paper which followed. In effect, the Government have rejected two of the broad frameworks that we considered as options: the option of remaining within the single market, probably via the EEA—what some call the Norway option—and, to all intents and purposes, the option of staying within the customs union. More recently, actually as recently as yesterday, we had the Government’s response to our report, for which I thank them.
These developments have limited the range of formal options and negotiating priorities that the Government have decided to pursue—they have restricted them broadly to what the Prime Minister calls a “bold and ambitious” or an “ambitious and comprehensive” free trade agreement—but they have not altered the concerns, anxieties and requirements that we had put to us from a whole range of sectors at that time, most of which are still valid.
Our collective starting point was that membership of the EU has defined the UK’s trade policy for the past 40 years. It obviously defines our terms of trade with other EU states but, equally importantly, the UK’s trade with third countries is in effect based on terms negotiated by the EU as a bloc, either through EU free trade agreements or shared schedules of commitments under the World Trade Organization. We considered how this might change after the UK leaves the EU. We looked at the European Economic Area, at the customs union, at trading on the basis of WTO rules and at negotiating, as the Government seem now to be intent on, some form of free trade agreement with the EU.
We did not attempt a detailed economic evaluation of each of those options, nor have the Government ever presented us with such an evaluation—which is a bit strange, given the strategic importance of the decision before us. Nevertheless, we looked at what the requirements would be as expressed to us by a whole range of industrial sectors, academics and others who saw the advantages and disadvantages in each of the options. The fact that we are now focusing on a free trade agreement is important, but equally important is to focus on the other option which the Government say is now open: in effect, reverting to trading under WTO rules if there is a “no deal” situation.
Let us look a little bit more at those options. The first point in our report is that the majority of our industrial, business and academic witnesses favoured one option that is now rejected: membership of the EEA—or at least of the single market but the most obvious way to do that was through the EEA. That option has been closed by the Government, but the reasons industry favour it remain. They want tariff-free access, maximum regulatory equivalence and, in many cases, freedom to recruit skilled labour within the EU. Any free trade agreement with the EU would need to go at least some considerable way towards meeting those requirements.
Of course, it is true that the Government rejected the Norway solution because it offends two of their key political red lines: first, the need post Brexit to gain what they regard as total control of our migration policy and, secondly, the need to escape the jurisdiction of European law and of the ECJ in particular. It is arguable that a further deal could have been done on the issue of free movement, but our report does not go into that. We clearly say that, frankly, any liberal trade agreement—an FTA or even trading under the WTO rules—involves some compromise on your sovereignty. In other words, it is a myth that you can take back total control of your borders if you engage in trade in any degree of mutual arrangement with other countries, including the EU. Taking unilateral control is subject to at least supranational or joint processes for dispute resolution and for testing equivalence of regulatory frameworks. In the world of international trade, there is no entirely free lunch.
Our report describes two of the most comprehensive FTAs the EU already has with third countries: its trade relationship with Switzerland, which is complicated and based on more than 100 bilateral agreements within that framework, and the very recent and not entirely implemented Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement with Canada.
Although CETA has been branded the most comprehensive FTA in existence, our witnesses were quite clear that existing FTAs, including CETA, do not provide anything like as comprehensive access to the single market for businesses as membership of the single market as such would entail. In a free trade agreement, UK manufacturers for example may well have to comply with the rules of origin. These imply levies imposed by importing nations on the components of goods that originate outside the country. Exporting such goods would cause complications for most of our manufacturing industry.
We also conclude that an FTA with the EU would have to be of unprecedented depth to provide anything like the level of market access for UK service industries. There are great complications in the services trade, and most FTAs do not in any detail cover trade within the service sector. They more or less talk about equivalence of regulatory frameworks. There is therefore no precedent in any relationship the EU has with other third countries that gives us much guidance as to how an FTA would look in relation to the EU. FTAs provide a great deal of flexibility. Of course, we would not have to accept the principle of free movement or the jurisdiction of the Court of Justice. However, we would have to ensure that there was a high degree of regulatory equivalence and that we had a joint arrangement to settle disputes.
We then also considered how the process of negotiating such an FTA would operate. This is the area where we had greatest reservations about what appears to be the Government’s current position. In the context of the tight two-year deadline imposed by Article 50, we concluded that,
“experience demonstrates that FTA negotiations with the EU are complex and slow moving”.
All our witnesses were unclear to downright doubtful about whether the UK would be able to negotiate such an FTA in the same timetable as the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. Ministers continue to say that they would hope to do so; almost everybody else told us that, in any case, the EU 27 and the Commission are likely to take the view that these negotiations would have to be undertaken separately and staggered. There would be a divorce agreement, and that divorce agreement covering such contentious issues as the budget and acquired rights would have to be completed before we could move into negotiating a free trade agreement in any detail. Even if we had an outline commitment to a free trade agreement, the complexity I have described would take considerably longer to negotiate. We therefore recognised that the conclusions would be not only complicated but probably part of a wider agreement which the Government would have to reach with the EU.
There are issues other than trade—security, criminal justice, climate change, cultural and foreign policy relationships, and possibly mutual arrangements on migration—and it would be highly desirable if we did have a very comprehensive agreement, but that would be even more complicated and likely to take even longer. Accordingly, we recommended that the Government should urgently consider and be clear to the nation about whether negotiations on a UK-EU FTA could be conducted in parallel with the withdrawal negotiations and if not—and probably even if so—whether they would seek a transitional trading arrangement in order that the full details of the negotiations could be worked out.
On the issue of the transitional arrangement, the Government’s response is that we will not seek,
“some form of unlimited transitional status”.
Rather, we expect,
“a phased process of implementation”.
Nobody was calling for an unlimited transitional phase, but phased implementation clearly relates to an agreed end. In effect, the period of negotiating withdrawal is considerably less than two years. We will not be starting until the mandate has been given by the Council of Ministers to the Commission, which will probably be in June. Even then, heavy discussions will probably have to await the German elections and will have to be completed before the European Parliament elections. We are therefore talking about considerably less than 18 months. In the absence of clarity on the Government’s position, I therefore ask the Minister to clarify the Government’s view on the relationship between the withdrawal arrangements and the negotiation of a free trade agreement, and on the need for a transitional arrangement.
The other reason why the now discarded EEA option remains relevant is that it illustrates what the EU has sought or found acceptable in the past in the pretty comprehensive trading relationship it has with the EFTA countries. It includes a mechanism to transpose changes in EU laws into domestic legislation on an ongoing basis. We are about to see a great repeal Bill, which will in effect put EU laws into British law. That will mean that, at the point of departure, we will have more or less harmonised or equivalent regulatory structures. It is what happens beyond that that the Government will have to ask about, and the EU is likely to have a starting point that it will require the same of us as it has required of the EFTA nations. Frankly, there is not much reason to suppose that the EU’s starting point in negotiations will be to offer the UK significantly more favourable terms than it does to the EFTA countries.
I will mention one other thing before I sit down. The report is about UK-EU relations but those relations are also important for the prospect of deals with the rest of the world, on which the Government are embarked, and for the sequence of events. For all the talk of doing deals with Mr Trump, New Zealand or India, while preliminary discussions can no doubt take place, no deals can be signed until after we leave the EU customs union and the common external tariff. That is not simple. Even if scheduling what are currently EU tariffs as provisional UK tariffs at the WTO may be relatively straightforward, we will then have to unravel from EU arrangements. Until we do that, it is not possible to conclude other deals, because not only is it unclear whether third countries currently party to an FTA with the EU will be prepared to offer the same terms to a market of only 60 million that they offered to a market of 600 million, it is technically difficult in many cases, because many EU tariffs also have tariff quotas attached. This applies in particular to agricultural and commodity trade. Since many third countries, including New Zealand and the USA, are big in agriculture, as are India, Brazil and most of the developing countries, the divvying up of those tariff quotas will be a very complex early stage in negotiation. This has implications for trade with the third world, as well as trade with the EU as such.
The report is not all doom and gloom; we are merely saying it is difficult. The Government have to recognise that it is difficult and gear up to tackle it. We were a bit critical of the Government’s capacity when we discussed this back in December. We have been reassured to some extent that the Government are getting their act together across Whitehall now, but it is a colossal task. I would welcome anything the Minister can tell us about how the build-up of Whitehall expertise, capacity and co-ordination is going.
Our report is but a snapshot of the debate. It covers different paths that we are now likely to go down. None the less, it remains instructive not only about the realities of trade in the modern world, but in highlighting the trade-offs and the deals that will need to be done on sovereignty and mechanisms. It also brings the House up to date on the complexity and size of the tasks. I beg to move.
Baroness Verma (Con)
My Lords, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity to debate the report of the External Affairs and Internal Market Sub-Committees of the EU Select Committee. It is a great pleasure to follow the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. We have worked very closely with him and his sub-committee on this joint inquiry. He has laid out with great eloquence a number of key areas that have been provided by witnesses in evidence to the committee and the range of questions that the committee has put to the Government.
I will not repeat many of the areas the noble Lord has alluded to but, as the chairman of the External Affairs Sub-Committee, I start by extending my thanks to its members for their important and considered contributions to this report. I am pleased that many of them are here supporting the debate and contributing to it. I also put on record our thanks and appreciation to the secretariat, to Eva George and the policy analyst, Julia Ewert, for their assistance and diligence throughout the inquiry and in the preparation of the report. It has not been easy. It has been a difficult one to bring together. They have done a sterling job with the clerk and members of the Internal Market Sub-Committee. I also put on record my appreciation and thanks to our specialist adviser, Holger Hestermeyer, for his expertise. It made a valuable contribution to our work, the report and our wider understanding of some of the minute details of the work the Government have to undertake.
As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, future trade with the EU after Brexit is a hugely important issue. The EU is the destination for 44% of our exports and the source of 53% of all our imports. The terms of this relationship will be fundamentally changed by our exit from the EU. We are entering uncharted territories, so in this environment the role of Parliament in investigating the implications of Brexit and in scrutinising the Government is critical. The committees have sought to provide a balanced and thorough overview of the issues that are likely to arise from the four main options for trade. As the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, the EU committees will further be publishing detailed reports on trade in goods and trade in services next month. In this debate, I will focus on two options not covered in detail by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, in his opening remarks, although he did mention them: the implications of leaving the customs union and trade under World Trade Organization rules.
I turn first to the customs union. As we set out in the report, the customs union prohibits customs duties and non-tariff barriers on imports and exports between member states. It forms the single market in goods and has significantly benefited cross-channel trade and facilitated the development of integrated EU supply chains in many industries, for example in, first, the chemical industry and, secondly, the automotive industry.
We have heard that great attention has been given to the Government’s stated intention to negotiate their own trade agreements after Brexit, and since we published our report, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, the Government have confirmed their intention to leave the common external tariff and forge new agreements with third countries. In our report, we concluded that addressing tariff barriers within an FTA could be relatively straightforward, notwithstanding the short timescale to negotiate an agreement. But replicating the prohibition of non-tariff barriers to trade while outside the customs union will be more of a challenge. This includes compliance with rules of origin, regulations and standards. A second issue in leaving the customs union will be costs and delays resulting from customs procedures and any added administrative burdens.
Since we published our report, the Government have, as has been alluded to, ruled out membership of the customs union following the model of Turkey—a non-EU country. They have also stated their intention to achieve “frictionless” trade with the EU. Currently, it is unclear how this can be achieved outside a customs union, but our forthcoming report on trade in goods will consider and probe these matters in greater detail. It will be interesting to understand much more clearly what frictionless trade means.
My second point is about the World Trade Organization option. Establishing the UK’s independent schedules at the WTO is a matter of first-order concern. The UK’s WTO schedules will be the baseline for the rest of our trade, with the EU and with other trading partners. I am pleased that the Government have confirmed that work is under way to begin this process, and that they will seek to replicate the EU’s existing schedules. The Government told us that this process should be a largely technical “rectification” process, and so relatively straightforward. Although I hope that this is the case, as we noted in the report, politics and events can sometimes intrude into such negotiations. Although establishing UK schedules swiftly may be the UK’s priority, other members of the WTO may seek to use this process to seek further concessions and clarifications from the UK. Notably, negotiations on tariff rate quotas for agricultural products often prove protracted and complex to resolve.
The Government have said that they recognise the need to increase human resources within government and, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said, we are pleased that the headcount is going up. I am assured that the Government are working to increase not only staff numbers but capacity at the Department for International Trade. However, we concluded in the report that its current staff headcount is relatively modest compared to the ambitions of the Government to begin preliminary discussions on FTAs with a range of third countries. It is crucial that in that light, and looking at what other current partners already have, we see the capacity and resource issues addressed urgently.
I reiterate the view of the committee that establishing the UK’s schedules at the WTO, alongside the negotiations with the EU, should be the Government’s priority. The UK’s WTO schedules will be the foundation of its independent trade policy. Future FTAs with countries such as the US cannot be concluded until the UK has left the EU, and so work by the Department for International Trade should be sequenced accordingly.
If, as we concluded in the report, the UK is unable to agree an FTA with the EU within the two-year Article 50 process, as raised by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, we will trade on WTO terms. The Government have said that, in their view, no deal is better than a bad deal—but when the Government describe the no-deal scenario, trade under WTO terms is the reality. I will elaborate a little further. Trading with the EU on the basis of WTO schedules would involve a considerable change to the UK’s current conditions for trade: tariffs would be imposed, non-tariff barriers would no longer be prohibited, and there would be no provisions for many important services traded by the UK. This could be extremely damaging. The Government have been clear that this is not the outcome that they seek but, while we must aim for the best possible outcome from the negotiations, rigorous planning is needed to understand the impact of no deal—that is, of trading with the EU on WTO terms—to help businesses prepare for this as a possibility.
This also highlights how important it will be to secure a transitional arrangement, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has said. The Government’s position—as stated by the Prime Minister on 17 January at Lancaster House, and in their response to our report—has been somewhat unclear. They have ruled out what they term an “unlimited transitional status” and instead proposed a “phased process of implementation”. This may be a case of semantics—at least, I hope it is—but UK businesses need a bridging agreement that begins immediately after our current terms expire. I urge the Government to seriously consider negotiating a transitional arrangement as they begin these vital negotiations with the EU.
I recognise that there is a lot of work being undertaken by the Government, but the Prime Minister has excluded membership of the single market and the EU’s customs union, and there remains considerable uncertainty. Can my noble friend the Minister tell the House how they will assist business in managing the transition to a new trading framework, and provide more detail on the content and feasibility of the Prime Minister’s approach to the customs arrangement? I look forward to hearing from my noble friend.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and my noble friend Lord Whitty who, as the chairs of the two sub-committees that came together, guided us very carefully to as clear a report as possible. I saw this inquiry as a straightforward attempt to set out the myriad relationships that there are currently between the European Union and other countries and the costs and benefits of each approach, so that wider stakeholders, the public, and the Government could begin to see some of what will need to be negotiated.
As I have said before in this House, I am learning a lot from these committees—I come out of every meeting thinking that this is much more complicated than anybody anticipated, and certainly more than anybody understood before they were able to place their cross on 23 June last year. I approached this inquiry as I approach most things: through the prism of the region that I come from—the north-east. Trade is at the centre of the relationship between the north-east and the European Union. Indeed, a higher proportion of exports from our region go to the EU than from any other region. These exports are almost exclusively manufactured goods, although there are, of course, services that often go alongside them, but we export more manufactured goods per capita than anywhere else in the country. The north-east has a positive balance of trade that is the healthiest in the country and I am sure that the Government will not want to lose or neglect that really important point, because I suspect that the north-east is—by every criterion—one of the areas left behind that the Prime Minister talks about so much.
The Government, in their response to the report, make it clear that they are not actually going for any of the models that are outlined in it. They do accept, however, that they have to prepare for the “no deal” option, which would mean reverting to WTO rules. Even before triggering Article 50, they have already ruled out the option that the majority of manufacturers want—continued membership of the single market and the customs union. That means that the struggle to meet their expectations is going to be even greater, and I hope that the Government accept from this report the challenges that any new deal is going to bring. None of them is cost-free and none of them constitutes “taking back control” continually, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said. The real problem that crawls out of this report is that nothing is for nothing.
The Government have been, to date, incredibly optimistic, but sometimes it seems—and their response to this report reinforces this view—that they are not being wholly realistic. What manufacturers are looking for is as much clarity and certainty as possible. I accept that it is not possible at this stage to provide that fully, but the Government have a responsibility to respond to those ambitions as much as possible. I have met no one in the EU—and the committee has met people from the EU in relation to this report and to many other activities in recent months—who wants to be vindictive towards us. However, their prime ambition seems to be to make sure that the EU survives and, hopefully, prospers. If they think that we are seeking a deal with no difficult consequences for the UK—that it is all going to be wonderful in the way it is often described to us in government speeches—then they are going to look at that with a great deal of caution. They do not want people in any other country to feel that we will get a better deal than they would and that, therefore, it is worth them seeking to leave the EU. We have to remember that in the way that we negotiate and approach this.
I suspect, and the report reinforces this, that the devil will be in the detail, and that the framework for future relations that will have to be spelled out in the leave document, which we normally refer to as the divorce settlement, will simply not be able to explore the detail. In this case, the Government need to address transitional arrangements, but they seem somewhat coy in acknowledging this. They say—again, as the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, said—that they expect a “phased programme of implementation” following the Article 50 process. Frankly, I do not care what the Government want to call it. What we need, and what manufacturing industry in particular needs, is some clarity that there will be a process put in train after the two-year limit, which will deal with the detail in a way that does not put it at the cliff edge. I know that that is the Government’s ambition but they are going to have to establish the game plan, as we say in the report.
I am normally an optimist: being a woman in the Labour Party and a Sunderland supporter, you have no option. However, I find this very difficult. I do not accuse the Government of false news, although a lot of the campaigning for the referendum could be described in that way, but I caution them about being so optimistic that it appears blasé. The worst outcome will be to raise expectations that are then distinctly underachieved. That is not in the interests of the country and, I might say, especially not those of the north-east. I hope the Minister recognises that we need a dose of reality in this debate. It will be a long, tough road ahead. Yes, we want the best outcome but this is a negotiation and while we may be one of the largest countries in the EU now, we are not in sole control of these negotiations. We need to approach them realistically and with humility.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I, too, add my thanks to the two chairs of the sub-committees and to the staff of Parliament who assisted us in making this report. In his opening remarks the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, referred to the picture having moved quite rapidly since the report was written. It is rather like having a snapshot taken out of a moving picture. I will therefore concentrate my remarks on the Government’s response to this report. We could probe many very pertinent issues very deeply.
It seems that the Government have issued all departments with a lexicon of words that they must use in respect of everything to do with our future relationship with the European Union. I will name a few: ambitious, comprehensive, frictionless, phased implementation, and the one that is definitely not my favourite, facilitations—I even have trouble pronouncing that because it does not appear in any dictionary. I looked up one word that has been used frequently: frictionless. The Oxford dictionary defines it as, “Smooth, achieved with little difficulty, effortless”. I wonder therefore whether the Government have given out the wrong book, because they are using these words in their analysis of the huge challenges ahead.
I am somewhat amazed—in fact, absolutely amazed—at the level of ambition, given the timescale in which the Government seek to meet their own objectives. I am also concerned about the way in which the words “return of sovereignty” are used, as an underpinning ambition to be reached. Any free trade agreement involves trading off interests in one area to gain in another. By their very nature, free trade agreements involve losses of sovereignty. The alternative is building barriers. I am reasonably confident that the Government do not wish to build a wall—physical or otherwise—around the UK, not least because that would mean a definite and dangerous return to a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
There is no example in the world of a significant economy that has both market access and absolute sovereignty. So it is appropriate to ask the Minister: how do the Government reconcile their response to the report, which states that they want,
“the freest possible trade in goods and services”,
with their desire at the same time to take,
“control of our own laws”?
In their response to the report, the Government state that our future relationship with the European Union will be very complex. I would say that that is very much an understatement on the part of the Government. They say that it will be wide-ranging and will apply to both trade and non-trade issues, citing justice, defence and home affairs as examples. The House of Lords report looks in detail at the wide spectrum of matters that will need to be dealt with in terms of UK-EU trade. All this is to be agreed within the timescale set by Article 50.
The Government hope that they will not only secure the framework for the new relationship with the European Union but will deal with both departure and future arrangements simultaneously. On the assumption that only the framework will be concluded in the timescale available, given that that is what is actually in Article 50, it would be useful if the Minister could outline in her response the Government’s understanding of how close a framework comes to a fully worked-out set of arrangements, particularly in the area of our new trading arrangements with the European Union.
The timescale for negotiation will not be two years. Given the requirements to achieve the agreement of individual member states and the European Parliament, many months will need to be sliced off the end of the 24 months to achieve the two-year target. Some have suggested that the negotiations therefore need to be concluded in 18 months. As has just been said in the Chamber, there is likely to be some slicing-off at the front end of the timetable as well, as elections and future politics in France, Italy and Germany take their part. So I would be grateful if the Minister could give your Lordships’ House the Government’s view of how many months they think they will actually get to conclude an agreement to exit and a framework for this new relationship with the EU—whatever that framework might contain.
This brings me neatly to the issue of transitioning and phased implementation. I recognise that in their lexicon, the Government have found new words for the period that follows the 24-month exit period. They say that they want not unlimited transitional status but a phased process of implementation. The introduction of the word “unlimited” is interesting, and I would like the Minister to explain what is meant by it. For example, does it mean that the UK does not want unlimited time to complete the new relationship; or does it mean that it will be seeking transition only in a limited number of areas; or does it mean that it wants to limit the need for any changes to be made during the implementation phase? I simply do not understand it, and I should be grateful for an explanation. In all other respects, I think the use of “phased implementation” and “transition” are virtually indistinguishable.
This brings me in turn to one aspect of transitioning that will definitely be needed: our trading relationship with third countries. The committee’s report makes it perfectly clear that the UK cannot conclude trading agreements until we have ceased to be a European Union member state. The report also makes it clear that the UK would be unlikely to be able to retain access to the European Union’s free-trade agreements with third countries. Can the Minister confirm that this is likely to be the case? The question was raised in the report but not answered by the Government in their response.
At the point of exit, we would be facing a cliff edge for our trade with third countries. The Government’s response to the committee’s recommendation on this matter states that they are “exploring ways to achieve” avoiding a cliff edge, but then fails to give certainty that such routes are available to us. So I ask the Minister directly: what ways are available to the Government to ensure continuity of trade with third countries on the day of departure from the European Union? I am asking the Government not to give us their preference but simply to outline the choices available. There is a very practical issue here for which, as the report points out, certainty is required by UK business.
We recognise the need to invest in greater trade negotiation expertise. Unfortunately, the Government’s response to this matter in the report is to provide a set of bald numbers—300, 350—building up in departments. What is needed to understand this properly is what skills the Government now have available to them. By way of example—again, this question was asked in the report—how many new, experienced trade negotiators have recently been taken on by the Government? Where have they come from and what level of skills do the Government now have available?
The Government’s responses on this and other trade matters lead to far more questions than answers. It will be necessary for your Lordships’ House to continue to throw light on the issues which face us. I commend the report and I look forward to the upcoming reports on trade in goods and trade in services which will give another chance for this House, British industry and our people to examine these critical issues for our future well-being as a country.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord German, had great fun with the lexicon of the terminology to which Ministers are clinging like a life raft. I think one recognises here all the subtle skills of a Sir Humphrey in collating the incompatible. To be absolutely fair to the Government, they have come up with a clear plan in the shape of the White Paper which we are all familiar with, but I remind the Government and the House of the words of Mike Tyson, the boxer, who said recently, “Everyone has a plan until they get a fist in the face”. A fist in the face will come with the shock when we find out exactly what the European Union thinks of all this. We will have some idea—there is talk of a €60 billion bill as a start, before discussions can even take place—but I hope it is not too big a shock. Even as professional an adviser as Sir Ivan Rogers said that we should be prepared for some sort of stand-off after the initial discussions take place, and that may well happen.
The merit of our report—speaking as a member of the committee—is that it lays out for the trade in goods the various options: the single market, the European Economic Area, a UK/EU free trade area, the customs union and World Trade Organization rules. I, too, thank our chairs, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend Lady Verma, for getting us through all this, and I thank the staff who did a very difficult job in marshalling this extensive material and trying to understand it. I now understand what a diagonal cumulation of rules of origin is—at least, I understood for five minutes this morning, but I am not sure I could repeat the explanation shortly afterwards. We tried to explain to the world at large exactly what is involved in these various options.
We went on to make two recommendations—bits of advice, I may say. The first has already been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord German. We said that this cannot be done in the time available and we need some sort of transition period. To be fair to the Government, they have grasped this point and are using the word “implementation”—we return to the question of language. We explore this further in our second report, which is about to hit the stalls. I shall give it a trailer: it is fascinating reading, just as our first report was. I think the Government have grasped that there is a very short period.
The second recommendation is that we advocated staying in the customs union—not the single market, of course, which is impossible as the Government have ruled that out—at least in the transitional period while this is all sorted out. The White Paper rejects that, saying that the Government want to set up a new customs or free trade arrangement—a bespoke arrangement, a unique arrangement—for the UK. This is not impossible. For example, Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany’s Finance Minister, has commented on this and said that the model the UK might look to is the arrangement that Switzerland has with the EU. Of course, we should remind ourselves that Mr Schäuble is a notably good friend of the United Kingdom. It is reported that he shed tears when he heard the referendum result. He is a friend, but there might be others who are rather less friendly and who have rather more influence when we are negotiating these things. He may not, of course, be in post as Finance Minister any longer, so we cannot rely too much on him. None the less, it is certainly possible.
However, if that cannot be negotiated, we have either to go back to the customs union or to rely simply on World Trade Organization rules, which present us with a problem. First, as David Davis apparently said to the Cabinet sub-committee looking at these issues this week, all the bureaucracy of government will have to be re-engineered in a very short time to be ready for that period no less than two years from now. All the companies will have to re-engineer all their arrangements, particularly those with complicated just-in-time supply chains. That will be an absolutely major undertaking. Not only that, but we are looking to replace the certainties of a large free-trade market on our doorstep with only the possibilities of free-trade agreements with other countries, which may take a long time to complete and may not give us as much in total trade as we will lose by not continuing to be members of the customs union. There is no doubt that this is a huge gamble, and we live in perilous times—when you look at it this way.
Some in these circumstances predict disaster, and some say that we will have a bumpy ride for a few years and, after that is out of the way, things will be better. In my experience, in such situations certainty is usually misplaced. I say that particularly as an economist who has quite often found that predictions I have made in good faith and from my expertise have turned out to be wholly wrong. People far more illustrious than I am have made even more certain predictions that have been even more certainly proved unfounded in the light of events. Even the greatest of experts—as in Michael Gove’s view of experts—have come unstuck in all this. So I confess that I do not know what is going to happen. What I do know is that a great deal will depend on the choices we make in these areas in the trade negotiations we are about to enter into. Success in politics usually comes from a good combination of courage and judgment, so I can only hope that my colleagues in government can show both the courage and the judgment to steer us through these perilous times.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased we have the opportunity to debate this report, and I thank my noble friend Lord Whitty for his skilful steering of the two committees—and, of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma—through a complex subject. The secretariat has done a marvellous job in presenting the options for trade with clarity and thoroughness, and I add my thanks to all those who submitted evidence, whether in person or by correspondence, for sharing their knowledge and wisdom.
I want to say something about the timing and context of the report and why its recommendations are still valid, as my noble friend Lord Whitty has said. I also want to explore what precisely is meant by open-mindedness in the context of the Government’s approach. It is 75 days since our report was published, and most of our hearings took place in September and October last year. Some would argue that it has been overtaken by events—in particular the Prime Minister’s speech on 17 January when she said:
“What I am proposing cannot mean membership of the single market”.
It is important to remember that when the sub-committee saw the noble Lords, Lord Bridges and Lord Price, on 13 October, we were told that the Government were,
“looking at all the options”,
and “not ruling anything out” for a future trading relationship between the UK and the EU. We took that statement on its merits and looked at four options, and their implications and risks. This is set out in our report. It is my contention that, although the politics may have changed, it does not invalidate our report or its analysis.
The risks and uncertainties are still there. Following the Prime Minister’s January speech, the White Paper was published on 2 February. It says:
“We have an open mind on how we implement new customs arrangements with the EU”.
It is not my intention to put the Minister on the spot. I appreciate that the open mind of 13 October is very different from the Government’s open mind of 2 February, and she has her instructions from her boss, but in our report we say:
“We therefore had to adopt an open mind and following chapters consider all four potential frameworks”.
Our mind was genuinely open and we carried out that remit. From a personal point of view, I regret that two of the four potential options have been ruled out by the Government.
Two key recommendations in the report are about business confidence and the need, as the noble Lord, Lord German, said, for a clear game plan for a future transitional agreement. We referred to the fact that businesses are operating in conditions of considerable uncertainty, which is a significant threat to the UK economy. Our report is clear that business confidence is of the utmost importance. In these days when international compliance on quality, standards, country of origin agreements and dispute resolutions are the norm, it makes nonsense of the kind of free-trade buccaneering of Mr Patrick Minford’s world, for instance. Will the Minister give us an assurance that industry will be fully consulted and involved in the negotiations and that that will be a government priority?
Secondly, we recommended the need for a clear game plan. It could be argued that the Prime Minister’s 12 principles are as clear a game plan as could be had, but they are not principles but objectives, many of which depend entirely on the agreement of others, and I think the Government accept this. When I was chair of ACAS, I would see many so-called principles presented by both sides of industry. The trouble was that they were never the same. That is why language is going to be extremely important.
Looking through the Government’s belated response to our report, much of which is a reiteration of the White Paper, I welcome the emphasis on dispute resolution and I am duly impressed by the volume of contacts with interested parties listed in the annex to the letter. I particularly welcome the statement that,
“we do not want to undermine the Single Market, and we do not want to undermine the European Union. We want the EU to be a success and we want its remaining member states to prosper”,
politically and economically. There are some Europhobes who would delight in seeing the dismantling of the EU, so this statement by the Government is important.
Finally, there is an intriguing answer by the Government to recommendation 3 of our report, on the World Trade Organization. It says:
“As we leave the EU we will be the more able to play a full role in underpinning and strengthening the multilateral system”.
So we are leaving the EU to take over the world. Now that really is open-minded.
Lord Gadhia (Non-Afl)
My Lords, having made my maiden speech last October during the debate on championing free trade it feels appropriate to speak again today to welcome the excellent report produced jointly by the EU sub-committees chaired by my noble friend Lady Verma and the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. Having missed the opportunity to be the 180th speaker at Second Reading of the Article 50 Bill last week, I am provided another opportunity to share some broader reflections on Brexit. In particular, I shall focus on the central issue of how the dynamics of the trade negotiations might unfold once Article 50 is finally triggered.
With all due respect to your Lordships’ House I believe that we have spent far too much time on the process issues, at times generating more heat than light, and today’s debate allows us to get into the substantive and tricky issues which lie ahead. We should ultimately be comfortable in granting the Prime Minister maximum flexibility to negotiate unencumbered. We can do so in the full knowledge that the success or failure of this negotiation will make or break her premiership, as signalled by her rare appearance on the steps of the Throne last week. Put simply, the Prime Minister will have the clearest of political incentives to carry Parliament and people with her ahead of the 2020 general election—which will serve as a de facto referendum on the outcome, or define the negotiating parameters for the remaining process should the timetable extend beyond two years, which seems highly likely, as noted in the report.
Much of the debate during Committee on the Article 50 Bill this week has boiled down to different views on the art of the possible once negotiations commence. So instead of speculating, I say: let us get on with it. I have spent 25 years negotiating large and complex corporate and financial transactions, but those pale into insignificance compared with the heroic and daunting task ahead. It is now clear that we are seeking to conclude an unprecedented free trade agreement with deeper preferential access to the EU single market across both goods and, importantly, services than is currently enjoyed by any third country. Indeed, it is likely to form part of a wider association agreement encompassing other, non-economic areas of co-operation. So all the apparent hyperbole is more than justified. This will be the most ambitious and complex trade treaty of all time—particularly if it is going to deal effectively with alternatives to a customs union, not least in Northern Ireland, and the equivalence and/or mutual recognition issues for services.
Let us drill into how we might persuade our counterparts to conclude such an unprecedented FTA, and consider if we are overestimating the strength of our cards. We must certainly be ambitious, but at the same time make an honest assessment of whether our starting positions are realistic.
The UK Government’s position is built on four pillars of logic. First, the Article 50 process and the FTA should be undertaken in parallel since the withdrawal process is intended to take account of the framework for the UK’s future relationship with the EU. The other obvious reason for linking the two processes is that we can then maximise negotiating leverage from any divorce settlement.
Secondly, we start from a position where all the rules and regulations are identical on day 1, with zero tariffs and so, unlike most trade negotiations, we are not seeking convergence. The great repeal Bill underpins this position from a legal perspective. What is therefore important is to protect against divergence, so the dispute resolution mechanism will be key—which is why the Government’s White Paper includes a whole annexe of such examples.
Thirdly, we can achieve all this in two years and therefore any transitional arrangements are designed not to extend the negotiating period but simply to provide an implementation buffer. The actual negotiating period, as mentioned, would in fact be shorter—something like 18 months, or even shorter than that if we include the process for approval by both the European and UK Parliaments. Fourthly, if we cannot get the deal that we want then we fall back to WTO terms, and this represents what expert negotiation theorists call the BATNA, or best alternative to a negotiated agreement.
In contrast, the EU position is clearly at odds with our own starting position. On the first pillar, Michel Barnier has made it clear—repeatedly—that the EU proposes a sequential process: Article 50 first followed by the new trading arrangements. I believe the current stand-off can be unblocked only by the European Council in its negotiating mandate to the European Commission in response to the formal triggering of Article 50. Without this course correction the negotiations will get off to an acrimonious start and it will remove the leverage inherent in our monetary settlement.
On the second plank of our argument, about starting from a unique position of trading conformity and offering zero-for-zero tariffs, we are placing huge faith in Homo economicus that rational decision-making will prevail. Having had dinner in Brussels with senior European leaders earlier this week I am not sure that they see it entirely this way. Brexit was a political choice and it will receive a political response. The EU is determined that Britain pays a price for leaving the club—not out of vindictiveness but because it fears that a favourable deal for Britain would create a bad precedent and potentially encourage other member states down the same path. It clearly want us to pay a price, while we naturally want to minimise the economic impact. Put crudely, can we get away with a slap on the wrists or will it be a slap on the face? I believe that we will not really know until much later in the process, when all the big contentious items are on the table and we progress to 11th-hour horse-trading.
There is a significant risk that the arrival of Macron in France and Schulz in Germany could embolden European hawks to play hardball. There is also a big bear-trap waiting for us: clasping at what might appear a relatively attractive deal on goods—where the EU runs a trade surplus—but a relatively poor compromise on services, where we enjoy our biggest competitive advantage. I am afraid that standing up for City interests is clearly unfashionable, but I hope that protecting the £66 billion tax base that pays for essential public services is something we will not trade away lightly. To secure a preferential deal on services we will inevitably be asked for some form of preferential access to the UK’s new immigration policy; so we must define that, as a matter of priority.
On the third area, relating to the timetable and transition, a big expectations gap is opening up. Understandably, the Government are targeting two years to conclude the whole process. It would certainly be in our national interest to minimise the period of uncertainty. However, all the empirical evidence and expert opinion is stacked up against us and I fear that Ministers are creating a rod for their own backs. It seems more likely that within a two-year timeframe we can conclude Article 50—including our new WTO schedules—alongside a substantive framework for the future trading relationship and how to reduce customs friction; but more time will be required to complete and ratify the FTA. In those circumstances, a strictly time-bound transitional phase would be extremely valuable. That would be about not just implementation. I note that my noble friend Lord Bridges has side-stepped the question of temporarily remaining in the EEA but this option, or something more bespoke, could provide a bridging phase from one regime to another. We will also need this phase to replicate all 53 third-country FTAs.
I can assume only that the Government’s logic is driven by the desire to keep maximum pressure on timing, and that a transition period which elongates the timetable is a fallback and any such proposal is tactically better off coming from the EU. I believe that there is significant risk that the Government ultimately will be forced to retreat on both timing and transition, so perhaps it might be preferable to hedge their bets.
Fourthly, I come to our fallback position that,
“no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal”.
The EU is likely to view that in a diametrically opposite way, namely, “Any deal is better than no deal”. Why? Because the cost of abrupt exit is significant. From where we stand today it would be the Grand Canyon of cliff edges and therefore falling back to the WTO will be seen as an empty threat. As Sir Ivan Rogers pointed out in his evidence to the House of Commons Brexit Committee last week, no other major country trades on pure WTO terms with the EU. Since the WTO does not cover services in any depth it is doubly disadvantageous for a country like the UK. We would be walking into a legal vacuum in many areas.
On all four pillars of our negotiating strategy, therefore, we have serious work cut out to win over hearts and minds. The honest assessment is that we do not hold many cards and face a negotiating asymmetry of 27 versus one, set against a ticking two-year clock without an easily palatable fallback. Put starkly, we will need to buy our way or charm our way out of this situation. Fortunately, our surprisingly resilient economic position since the referendum provides us with some room for manoeuvre on the financial settlement, particularly if the amounts can be stretched out over time. It is also crucial to galvanise the good will among our European partners. In the words of Sir Simon Fraser, speaking at the Worshipful Company of World Traders last week, we will need to avoid “gratuitous political friction”. This is a time not for gifted amateurs but for serious and professional negotiators.
We might also need to draw upon the mediation skills of leaders and countries that enjoy the trust and respect of both the UK and the EU and can see the benefits of enduring non-economic co-operation across Europe. The voice of European businesses will also be important in focusing the minds of national Governments back on to the economics and not just politics. I suggest to the Government that this wider advocacy mission is not just for Ministers and that we should actively draw upon the expertise and Rolodex of the House of Lords in reaching out to parliamentarians and key influencers across Europe.
In conclusion, to achieve a successful, smooth and smart Brexit and secure the most advantageous trade agreement going forward, we will need to have our cheque book ready and, above all, make efforts to win friends and influence people as never before.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, with all his experience of the City and his extremely wise words. As a public sector Cross-Bencher, I feel rather uncomfortable being sandwiched between the noble Lords, Lord Gadhia and Lord Green—but I will do my best.
I very much welcome the report and offer my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and their committees for producing it. It is good to have the discussion now about the future relationship between the UK and the EU because, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Horam, I have some suspicion that when Article 50 is triggered, the attention will switch, at least for a while, towards the rather more exciting prospect of the short-term withdrawal negotiations and, in particular, will focus on the much-heralded figure of €60 billion that may or may not come forward from the Commission. None the less, I hope that those negotiations will progress and that attention will turn again, both in public and during the negotiations, to the longer-term relationship between the UK and the EU.
Like others who have spoken this evening, it seems clear to me—and it is quite clear from what the Government have said—that remaining in the single market is not an option that will be open to us. The Government’s commitment to having at least some control over the levels of migration from the EU and their concern to avoid ECJ jurisdiction will rule that out. I regret that but it is a fact. I had hoped that they would keep open the option of staying in the customs union. That would have guaranteed tariff-free movement of goods, if not of services, and also would have eased the difficulty of managing the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Although I am very glad that the latter issue is mentioned in the Government’s response to the report, I still feel that it is not given anything like enough attention. I hope that it will get more attention in future. However, the Government have not kept the customs union option open—or at least they seem not to have done so.
I am not quite sure what the Government are now hoping to achieve in their trading relationships with the EU and the rest of the world. In her speech on 17 January the Prime Minister said:
“We want to get out into the wider world, to trade and do business all around the globe”.
That is an aspiration but I do not think it is a policy. It was slightly more fleshed out in the recent White Paper, but I hope that in her response to the debate the Minister will say a little more about the Government’s intentions as regards their relationship both with the EU and the rest of the world.
I will make three points in what time remains. First, if the Government do not succeed in reaching agreement on their negotiating objectives, they risk getting pushed back, as others have said, on to WTO terms. I have heard it argued that this would be no bad thing, and that it would provide business with certainty. Perhaps—but that is not the kind of certainty that business, and in particular the jobs that depend on business, needs. So I hope that the Minister can also tell us more about whether resort to WTO terms really is envisaged as a desirable or even plausible fallback if—as I hope is not the case—the negotiations do not succeed.
My second point concerns dispute resolution. The Government clearly do not like the ECJ and in particular its direct effect on UK law. But dislike of the ECJ does not mean that you can do away with dispute resolution. The key point is that virtually any international agreement, and certainly any trade agreement—again, as has been said in this debate—has to have some form of dispute resolution. The WTO has its own dispute resolution mechanism. The EU and the US, the US and China and the EU and China have resorted to it when necessary in the past. So will the UK, if and when it has trade agreements that lead to disagreement—as, inevitably, will happen.
I deliberately used the past tense when I said that the US had recourse to WTO dispute resolutions in the past, because I have seen, as I am sure have other noble Lords, reports in today’s press that the US may be thinking of not accepting WTO dispute resolutions in the future. That is a profoundly worrying development that would make our position outside the EU, if there were no effective dispute resolution within the WTO, even lonelier than I fear it will be when we leave the EU.
My final point is perhaps the most important. There sometimes seems to be an assumption behind the Government’s rhetoric that with one bound we will be free from the constraints of the EU and the single market—which, incidentally, as others have said, takes more than 40% of our exports—and shall be able to trade easily through new bilateral trade agreements with China, the US, India, Australia, Brazil and others. But those are all tough potential partners, with a clear sense of what is in their interests. They and other countries will negotiate what they want out of negotiations and not what we want. Such negotiations will be tough, protracted, complex and at times ugly—and it is no use pretending otherwise.
I do not favour another referendum on the EU. I would have wished the result of the last one to have been different, but I accept it. But I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, and others have said in this debate: that the road ahead, particularly for trade, will be hard and long and gritty.
Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint (Con)
My Lords, as has already been recognised, since the report was published, events have moved on. The Government have set their course, aiming for a deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, a customs agreement with the EU and a range of FTAs with other markets. More generally, the Government have proclaimed an aspiration for Britain to become the standard bearer for open trade policy. This is to be the new global Britain.
There is much to be saluted in those aspirations, even by one such as myself who believes that we should have remained in the EU. Apart from anything else, there is a fundamental difference between this approach—the approach of the new Brexit Britain—and that of Trump’s protectionist version of America. We did not hear at any stage in the referendum campaign rhetoric about cheap Chinese imports, for example.
I want to make a few points, all briefly—not least because some of what I was going to say has already been covered. First, the deep and comprehensive free trade agreement and the customs agreement with the EU will now be critical as the centrepiece of the Government’s strategy. As has already been underscored, this is unprecedented. It will be more ambitious than the ambitious Canadian agreement, the South Korean agreement and the Ukraine agreement—which we looked at in our deliberations. It will be different, too, from the Turkish association agreement. In a sense, “more than all of these put together” is the mantra. At the end of the day, it will be something sui generis.
Of course, unprecedented does not mean impossible. In fact, it has often been argued—there is clearly an element of truth in this—that the starting conditions make an agreement easier to achieve than was the case with any of the others that I referred to. We start, after all, from a position of considerable harmonisation, certainly in the goods markets and increasingly in the services markets, too. So, technically, the achievement not of convergence, which already exists, but of the avoidance of divergence should be easier.
Politically, however, it will not be straightforward. As has already been mentioned, from the EU perspective this deal cannot be as good for the UK as the status quo. If it were, others might be tempted to say, as Philip Snowden is reported to have said in 1931 when Britain dropped off the gold standard, “I didn’t know you could do that”. It will also be difficult for Her Majesty’s Government because the dispute resolution process will almost certainly have to involve in some way the ECJ—certainly on the EU side, there is no way to avoid that.
My second point has been made by a number of other noble Lords: there is close to no chance of accomplishing all this in two years. The Canadian deal took somewhere between seven and 10 years; the Japanese discussion with the EU is going surprisingly well but it is already into its third or fourth year and clearly will not be completed any time soon.
The complexities are enormous. They are not just about the short-term distractions of the EU elections and the high priority that will undoubtedly be attached by the EU to the budgetary questions and by all of us to the acquired rights questions. All these mean that that the process will take some time. On top of that, the trade discussions with the EU are inevitably related to other trade discussions—this is true on both the UK side and the EU side. The existing EU FTAs may be questioned by their counterparts. The South Koreans and the Canadians, after all, both signed deals with a market that included Britain. Will they want to review those agreements in the event of their no longer getting access to the British market?
Then there is the question of new agreements that are in process of negotiation now—I have referred already to the Japanese agreement, which is the most important case. The noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, mentioned the north-east and its high export propensity per head. Those exports are very largely of cars to the EU market. Therefore, I am sure that the noble Baroness would want to join me in asking the Minister whether the Department for International Trade has given careful thought to the impact of a successful conclusion of the EU-Japan deal on the UK-EU discussions.
Thirdly, there is the all-important question of Ireland. We debated this at great length earlier this week, but, unlike everything else in the Brexit discussions on trade and investment, this is not just about commerce and could not be treated as one item in a shopping basket for a negotiation where, inevitably, trade-offs and compromises get made. It is of course about the peace settlement, and if it went wrong a human tragedy could result. Ministers have confirmed on a number of occasions that they attach a very high priority to the maintenance of a seamless, open, frictionless border on the island of Ireland. In responding to this debate, could the Minister confirm that this means that there are no circumstances in which we would sacrifice that question on the altar of a very good free trade arrangement in other respects?
Fourthly, the phased period of implementation in which the UK, EU and member states prepare for the new arrangements—to quote from the Government’s response to our report—has been commented on by a number of speakers. What is in a name? We might well ask. A rose is just as prickly by any other name. The fact is that this will take a considerable number of years beyond the two years of the Article 50 discussions. I wonder, in the company of a number of other speakers, whether the Government would not be better to say this outright and set a period— not an unlimited period but one, for example, of five years—during which there will be a transitional agreement and, knowing the direction of travel towards an eventual deep and comprehensive free trade agreement, discussions can take place in the orderly manner and over the timeframe they will need and necessarily take.
Finally, I will raise a broader and deeper issue. Global Britain will want to think of itself as a nation of traders. Indeed, we have heard that expression. We want to think of ourselves as outward looking and entrepreneurial, ready to take on the wider world. But, as of now, we are more what Napoleon said we were: a nation of shopkeepers. We have too few companies engaged in exports. We have market shares in some of the fastest-growing markets in the world that are behind those not only of Germany but of France and Italy. The growth statistics this week produced by the Office for National Statistics show how unbalanced the current growth pattern is in this country. We have a yawning trade and current account deficit, which has a long history. We have an import penetration problem such that the devaluation of sterling is blunted and tends to translate all too quickly into higher rates of inflation. Rhetoric will not change this and neither will monetary policy and fiscal rectitude alone.
We need to face up to one of the most basic lessons of the Brexit vote. Britain has lived for half a century with not only an increasingly unbalanced economy but an increasingly unequal society. These two trends are related. We have failed over decades to invest properly in the country’s societal future, above all through the education and training needed to enhance life chances and social mobility. Changes in the nature and structure of the economy in the latter decades of the last century played their part in this, and the radical change in technology that is likely to transform the economy over the next few decades will exacerbate the challenge.
The last generation saw the British economy become more dominated by services than that of any other major European country. Of course, others have seen manufacturing decline as a percentage of national output in the face of newly globalised competition—but none as steeply as Britain. As the share of manufacturing shrank from the 1970s onwards, apprenticeship training—the principal route into the good, intermediate-skilled jobs that are the backbone of any effective manufacturing industry—was allowed to wither on the vine.
The so-called hourglass economy has not done away with the need for intermediate skills. In fact, we are gradually building up a significant skills mismatch. An unbalanced and unfair system of preparation for adult working life has produced plenty of low-skilled workers and not enough intermediate-skilled ones, such that by 2022 on present trends, 9 million low-skilled workers could be chasing 4 million jobs while there will be a shortage of 3 million workers needed to fill some 15 million higher-skilled roles. In an underinvested economy that has seen no material growth in labour productivity, economic growth overall has failed to increase average prosperity and has been possible at all only because skills gaps have been plugged through immigration.
This is not sustainable and the social implications of these imbalances are certainly unacceptable. This is a complex problem with deep roots, both societal and economic. The Social Mobility Commission’s State of the Nation 2016 report documents in sobering detail how a disadvantaged start in life feeds through to weaker average educational performance from the earliest years onwards; less access to tertiary education; and less support for vocational development routes into adult working life and into a labour market where the supply/demand equation is increasingly weighted against the low-skilled.
Does this all seem irrelevant to the question of trade? I hope not, because it is actually fundamental to our long-term ability to succeed in trade. In other words, there is a lot more to the strategy for the successful development of the new global Britain in its trade position vis-à-vis the rest of the world than trade deals. Surely a major priority has to be a long-term, properly resourced skills education strategy. It is not easy. We have failed over several decades to do this well. We need—dare I say it?—to be prepared to learn from some of our European friends who do this so much better than we have done.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, I very much welcome the report and the debate that we are having. Indeed, I very much welcome the thrust of the remarks just made by the noble Lord, Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint. When we are compared with the Germans, the area of training, educational standards and so on is one excellent feature of the closer European integration. The concept of benchmarking best practice in Europe, our nearest neighbours, is a huge factor in what has been the relative success story—let us say it—of our membership of the European Union since 1973, when we joined the EEC.
My noble friend Lord Whitty said at the start that he was a little sorry that the report had not been debated before the two days of Committee this week. The plus side is that we who sat through most of those two days—Monday and yesterday—can add some reflections arising from that debate, which are germane to where we are today. I moved the first amendment on Monday, to do with retaining our membership of the European Economic Area, at least to get it on to the map so that everyone understands we are a member of the European Economic Area by virtue of our membership of the EU, and that membership would be retained if we were a member of the other pillar of the EEA—EFTA—despite leaving the EU, as was required by the result of the referendum last June.
One thing I am looking for—perhaps in vain—in the next few months is for the public debate to become much more ruthlessly realistic about the options. I hope my noble friend Lord Whitty does not mind me describing him as ruthlessly realistic in chairing the committee but it is what we need. We still have too much “have your cake and eat it”, Alice in Wonderland stuff. When we go back to the referendum question, what people voted for was totally obscure. As all we all know, there was a melange of things in people’s minds. But the idea came up yesterday: “We voted for maximum access to the European single market, not membership of it”. “Oh, so that was on the ballot paper, was it?”—et cetera. This ruthless realism is absolutely vital to avoid what Field Marshal Montgomery would have called a dog’s breakfast at the end of it. I do not know whether breakfast rhymes with Brexit but it will have to do for the moment.
It is also rather irresponsible to have an imbalance in the debate, which the Government somehow have to answer for. On the one hand, things are ruled out in this speech or that: you see a bridge and you blow it up; it is ruled out. But nothing is ruled in. The number of things that are still there to be looked at seem to get less and less until you are left with only one. That one will be the same as all the others: it will have down sides as well as up sides. In the spirit of ruthless realism, let us acknowledge that all the options have down sides as well as up sides. We have to evaluate them all against the background of that recognition.
Let us take account, for example, of some excellent points made by my noble friend Lord Mandelson. We shall hear from my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn in a minute; I always pause to make sure I have not got the two pronunciations mixed up. My noble friend Lord Mandelson made an interesting speech on Monday, saying that the sort of agreement the Government now think they can get would give us far less economic bang for our buck than the arrangements we have at the moment. Let us reduce all this to one slogan. We are in the business of maximising our world market share. The central question is: what, in the short, medium and long term, maximises our world market share? That is certainly how the Germans and Japanese see it. One cannot quite summarise how the Americans see it at the moment because it is very hard to make the thing add up.
There is, in the way the debate is becoming rather abstract, a denial of what my noble friend also said in an interesting phrase: in Europe, we are talking about not just a vast trading area but a vast factory floor. As a former trade union official, in designing the framework of agreements for multinational companies on a whole string of things, which is the way much of the world now operates—there are not as many strong trade union agreements as we would like—conceptually it is clear that you do not want a race to the bottom. You want some minimum standards and even long-term training investment. You cannot just have people poaching each other’s labour. This is what happens if you do not have any rules.
Talking about rules, I mention the metaphor of a level playing field. There seems to be a belief that we want a level playing field, while at the same time we do not want a referee. I thought the metaphor of a level playing field referred to football, where the levelness of the playing field was so that, even though you have half-time and you move from one end to another, generally speaking you are kicking the ball along an even, horizontal patch, and you have a referee. As we know, there are offside rules and some disputed decisions, but you do not normally shoot the referee—much as Everton supporters think you ought to be able to. We have decided that there is a world where we can have free trade and it will all be hunky-dory, but no referee—unless the implication is that we are happy to have a referee as long as he or she is not a foreigner, certainly as long as he is not a European foreigner, or as long as he is not specifically called the European Court of Justice. EFTA has a European court of arbitration, so is it just about the name, or are people still irrational when it comes to how you have rules about trade and investment in Europe? I would be very glad if the Government could give a lead in making sure that their succession of Green Papers, White Papers or whatever are ruthlessly realistic in having a totally objective view and transparently evaluate and publish how the national interest, in terms of trade and investment and our world market share, would be met by the different options on the table.
In yesterday’s debate on all the Brits living in Spain and all the Spanish et cetera living here, we heard a very interesting vignette about reciprocity which bears on all of this. It began with an acknowledgment that this was inherently a relationship of reciprocity, but that we could give a lead by saying that we would make the first move ourselves. But that notion assumes that we can have everything that suits us and ignores the fact that there are 27 member states over there against our interests. All of them simply want to recognise that the Brits want this interest to be reflected. But there has to be reciprocity; we of course need reciprocal rules. I do not think you can simply say that this was not what people voted for. Retrospectively, we can deliver only something which is deliverable, whatever people thought they were voting for, and I repeat that I do not believe that they were voting, in any conscious sense, to say, for example, “We would like to have access to the single market but not be members of it”.
I hope the committee will go on and do further work, ruthlessly identifying the options and holding the Government’s feet to the fire to make sure they give us a running commentary. I do not buy this idea that there should be “no running commentary”. We are parliamentarians, and it is our job not only to have a running commentary ourselves but to demand that the Government engage with us in so doing.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, it is a privilege and a pleasure to serve on the European Union Internal Market Sub-Committee under the able and affable chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. The report we are debating today gave us the welcome opportunity to work in tandem with the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee, chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Verma. This proved both enlightening and somewhat daunting, and I am grateful to both chairs as well as to the clerks and other staff—and of course to my committee colleagues and other noble Lords speaking in this debate—for their contribution, at least to the enlightenment part.
The report provides an essentially factual analysis of available options, and its findings have already been outlined very clearly and succinctly by other noble Lords, so I will try just to highlight some issues that strike me as significant. The Government have made clear that their aim is to achieve an ambitious, comprehensive and bespoke free trade agreement with the EU, together with a new customs agreement. The Prime Minister has stated that no deal is better than a bad deal. So what would a good deal look like? What criteria will the Government use to determine whether the outcome of the negotiations is good enough for the UK to sign up to it?
I recently received a helpful document entitled A Successful Brexit: Four Economic Tests from a body called The UK in a Changing Europe, based at King’s College London. This sets out a series of tests under four headings. Will Brexit make us better off economically? Will Brexit make Britain fairer? Will Brexit make the UK a more or less open economy and society? Will Brexit increase the democratic control of the British people over their own destiny? These tests make a lot of sense to me but it is of course down to the Government to determine the actual criteria to be used. So I ask the Minister, first, how do the Government plan to define the criteria against which the merits of a deal will be assessed? Secondly, how will these criteria be tested to determine their acceptability to business and other affected interests, Parliament, the devolved nations and, of course, the electorate? Thirdly, what sort of process will the Government conduct to evaluate the terms of a deal against the criteria and to explain the conclusions that they reach? Finally, what are the options being considered if a deal is found not to be acceptable against those criteria?
My next point relates to the negotiating process and the engagement in it of business and other parties affected by the outcome. When I worked on trade issues for IBM in Washington in the early 1980s, in the lead-up to the GATT Uruguay round, I was struck by the wide range of mechanisms used by the US Administration to involve business and other groups in establishing negotiating objectives and priorities, and indeed to encourage such groups to do their own horse-trading among themselves, so as to present an agreed common position—often involving a considerable degree of compromise—to the US Government. IBM had its own trade team and was an active member of organisations such as the American Electronics Association, the National Association of Manufacturers, the US Chamber of Commerce, and other bodies concerned with specific trade-related issues, such as services, intellectual property or overseas investment. Its chairman and chief executive was one of a number of chief execs on a business round-table task force, which provided direct support to the US trade representative.
To me, this points to a responsibility for both government and business in the UK to set up appropriate mechanisms to enable agreed common messages and objectives to be developed and fed into government and the negotiations. What can the Minister tell us about plans to ensure that the Government have access to clear, reliable, broadly agreed input and advice from business, available at short notice, if required? We have been encouraged that most of the businesses that the committee has heard from have been positive about the level of engagement that they have so far had with the Government and Ministers. At the moment, of course, the Government are mainly in listening mode, seeking to understand the range of issues raised by Brexit and how they affect businesses across the 50-plus sectors they are analysing. The real test will come when they need to make trade-offs between different sectors and interests or to determine priorities between competing options.
My third point is about planning for situations that may arise in the negotiating process. I will address this by posing some “what if” questions. What if, even with good will on both sides, a deal takes longer than two years to finalise? Given the challenge of reaching an ambitious and comprehensive bespoke FTA—and indeed in the light of the time needed to agree existing EU FTAs, such as that with Canada—the committee felt that it would not be possible to complete a deal within two years, even though it may be easier to do so as an existing member, already fully complying with EU rules and regulations, than for a country outside the Union. It is surely essential to have a plan B in place. Article 50 allows the possibility of extending the negotiating period beyond two years, but only if all 27 other member states agree. Can the Minister indicate what thought the Government are giving to whether and how this might be achieved?
What if a deal is in prospect but needs time to be brought fully into effect? Our report argues that:
“A transitional agreement will almost certainly be necessary”.
What thinking are the Government doing about how such a transitional arrangement might work and what it might involve—such as a temporary continuation of the UK’s membership of the EU customs union, which is indeed mentioned as a possibility in the Government’s response to the report? Other noble Lords have raised the question of what the difference is between a transitional arrangement and a phased process of implementation.
What if, at the end of the day, no deal proves possible because the various demands and interests of the other 27 countries prove irreconcilable with the goals of the UK? Do we just fall back on WTO rules—which in itself may not be wholly straightforward and is widely seen as highly undesirable?
My final question is: what can the Minister say about possible parameters for dispute resolution mechanisms? Enforcement is one of the strengths of the EU single market. Legal action can be taken both by companies—even relatively small ones—and by individuals in their own national courts. There are also less costly mechanisms for resolving disputes, such as SOLVIT.
None of the example dispute resolution mechanisms in the annexe to the Brexit White Paper comes close to matching the EU arrangements. One possibility that is not mentioned at all, perhaps for obvious reasons, is whether the EU Court of Justice might have a role to play in a new bespoke dispute resolution system, without, of course, having primacy over the counterpart UK court or panel.
In conclusion, this report raises some crucial issues for the conduct of the Brexit strategy and negotiations. I do not for a moment expect all the answers from the Minister today, but I believe that the Government will need to share considerably more of their thinking on such issues than they have been willing to do to date if they are to end up with an outcome that is clearly recognised as a good deal. That means a deal that reflects the needs of business and other interests in a balanced way and that is achievable in the time available, even if that time has to be extended beyond two years. I hope the Minister can give some reassurance about how the Government plan to tackle this challenge and how optimism—as another noble Lord suggested—can be matched by realism.
Lord Mawson (CB)
My Lords, the findings of this excellent report are in the document before the House. Having listened to evidence of companies on the cutting edge of our economy, I wanted to take this opportunity to talk about what our future as a country might need to look like if we are to trade, post the decision of 23 June last year, in a changing world and to truly optimise the development of products and services that we can sell not just to Europe but across the world.
Sitting on House committees sometimes feels for me a little schizophrenic, because I am conscious that as a working Peer, I live my life nowadays in two very different worlds which gloriously collide in this place. This, of course, is one of the reasons why the House of Lords is such a treasure and needs to be preserved at all costs in a modern economy, but it can also be a little painful when you find yourself riding two horses at the same time.
I have spent most of my working life growing and developing modern entrepreneurial environments that generate innovation both in public services and in wider products and services, that do not sit neatly in traditional government silos. I am an innovator by nature and know that new ideas and ways of working do not come out of the clouds, but develop when very different skills and experiences collide. New products and services in the modern world will now come from between the siloed worlds of government and business, and not from within them. In this internet age this is increasingly so.
We have heard in the evidence that sits behind this report that modern digital entrepreneurial environments generating these new products and services that we must now sell across the world come about through networks of individuals engaging together across different disciplines, from clusters where different skills and businesses sit cheek by jowl. The modern entrepreneurial environment is not about policies, strategies and reports so favoured by civil servants; it is all about people and relationships and learning through hands-on experience. The traditional governmental environment is increasingly no longer fit for purpose in a very fast-moving business environment, within which SMEs certainly now live, and are a rapidly expanding sector of our economy. This is as true here as it is for our partners across Europe.
I am responsible today for the development of 10 entrepreneurial campuses in 10 towns and cities in the north of England, based on 33 years of work in east London, and I declare my interests. My 10 clusters in the north are bringing together very entrepreneurial business people, leaders in the public sector, local residents and emerging business and social entrepreneurs. They are generating lateral, out-of-the-box relationships, and it is fascinating to watch the speed with which these organisms are growing if the conditions are right. In time, I can see already lots of opportunities for new, cross-cutting products and services that we could export across the world if these young flowers are watered and given time to blossom.
Brexit is a real opportunity for new thinking about the opportunities now presenting themselves in a digitised world that exists outside traditional silos. To grasp it, we all need a real change of mindset, both in Europe and in this country, if we are to trade with the world. I suspect we have more in common than we realise. The clues in this new world are in the micro and not the macro. They are not necessarily in large corporate businesses and institutions. Small is beautiful in this new world.
Last week, a former finance director of one of our most established banks came to see me—a young man who had decided to resign from the security of his position. Why? Because he was fed up with the outdated politics that went with the job, with the endless treacle and bureaucracy he had to drown in. He wanted a more fulfilling life: to innovate in financial services and use his many skills and knowledge to rethink the industry. He now has a £50 million fund and within one hour, with no forms or papers, we were agreeing practical work that we could start to do together on the back of a handshake.
Another of our very large government-controlled banks that I have been dealing with recently, which will remain nameless, has forced me into endless meetings in silos and red tape, with no joined-up thinking. The middle management and those at the front edge of this bank were great; they wanted freeing up to engage with me and my colleagues. Those sitting in the boardroom were apparently unaware of and uninterested in all this entrepreneurial behaviour below them, which did not fit in with their policies. I worry that that bank will be out of business in 20 years’ time if it does not focus more on this entrepreneurial activity at the leading edge of the business. This bank felt more siloed and bureaucratic then anything I have experienced in our universities or the NHS, and that is saying something.
Two weeks ago, I attended an NHS awards ceremony in Liverpool to celebrate the new health products and services being generated by some of our finest minds. We saw great examples of products and innovations generated out of the real-life experience of our northern hospitals. But when you dug below the surface, you could hear the frustration of a young generation of entrepreneurs and innovators in our health world who were swimming through treacle with their hands tied behind their backs. We are asking them to dance with lead weights on their shoulders. There was also a sense of despair and resignation about the NHS culture from the senior managers present, who were looking forward to retirement.
I read recently in the Financial Times that in the City, a lot of business analysts are losing their jobs because it has finally dawned on people that no one was actually reading the reports they produced. The emperor has no clothes. Instead, businesses are developing real-time dashboards to give them information about what is happening to their businesses right now, not three or 12 months ago. I found myself wondering whether central government, local authorities or NHS trusts might take this approach. We might develop some world-beating technology to sell around the world. I am not exactly holding out hope because it is rare to find examples of real learning organisations in the statutory sector. Sadly, I feel that may be true for some large businesses and some charities; it may also be true in a lot of Europe. But unless we can make this sort of change, what will our world standing be in the post-Brexit world?
One assumption that I find fascinating in the Brexit debate is the idea that British bureaucracy, and rule from Westminster rather than Brussels, will inherently or automatically be more imaginative—more responsive, more forward-looking—as suggested by these examples. If we do not manage this, I fear that future generations will scratch their heads as to why people thought Brexit would lead to real and positive change.
I am sorry that sometimes at our meetings, I sound a little crusty and difficult. I am only trying to ensure that the voices and experiences of this next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators I have described is heard and experienced. Our future economy and trade, post-Brexit, depends upon them. The noble Lord, Lord Howell, reminded us that the great repeal Bill is a real opportunity to help them get hold of our regulatory and bureaucratic world and bend it in favour of that new generation, for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Green, has just articulated to us.
I think that the noble Lord, Lord Howell, is right: there is an opportunity to remove lots of treacle and create more flexibility to boost our trade, products and services. But has anyone seen this important opportunity marching up this new road? I say to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, that perhaps our committee should look at that. Perhaps we should try to get into a different kind of conversation about this emerging entrepreneurial world, focused on innovation, that affects both us and our partners in Europe. It affects all of our trading, and will do into the future.
I suspect that we have more in common in this new trading world than we may think as we negotiate a new trade treaty. It may be that all of us, in this country and Europe, need to start to think a little more outside the box.
Lord Lansley (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute. I will attempt to be as brief as I possibly can. I am helped not least by the fact that our two chairs introduced the debate and distilled the report with such clarity. I am further helped not least by my noble friends Lord Gadhia and Lord Green of Hurstpierpoint, who respectively, in brilliant forensic fashion, talked about both the substance of the negotiations and some of the broader challenges for the United Kingdom in achieving success in global free trade. It is not enough simply to open markets; one has to win in markets.
I follow up on one issue to which my noble friend Lady Verma referred, and that is the question of the future customs arrangement. We talked about the customs union in our report, and I remember that when we were preparing it, we said that we knew that one of the first issues that the Government will have to decide is whether they are in or out of the customs union. Indeed, they have decided to be out of the customs union. When the Prime Minister made her speech on 17 January and said that we are out of the customs union because we cannot agree with the common commercial policy or a common external tariff, I may not have been alone in wondering what our customs arrangement will look like in future.
My noble friend Lord Bridges touched on this on Monday evening and talked about how the US and Canada are able to achieve sophisticated supply-chain activity across borders where they do not have a customs union. He also reminded us, as other Ministers have rightly done, that digitalisation of documentation for customs purposes has proceeded apace, not least in the past decade. The United Kingdom is probably best in class for customs documentation by digital means. My noble friend said that,
“99% of customs declarations are received electronically and 96% are cleared in seconds”.—[Official Report, 27/2/17; col. 669.]
He also, interestingly, referred to “authorised economic operator” status, and said that 60% of UK imports and 74% of UK exports are accounted for by UK companies with AEO status. We are starting to see a bit, therefore, what the Government might have in mind and what frictionless trade across borders may look like.
The central, prior issue is achieving a zero-tariff relationship with the European Union, but let me for the moment say that that is clearly part of the negotiations. Let us assume that that can be achieved—it may not be and, if it is not, serious inherent problems emerge. Leaving that on one side, the customs and border relationship none the less involves some pretty serious issues. There is reconciling all this transfer of data electronically with the physical transfer of goods. There is the business of understanding how rules of origin will apply in the supply chain and certification to comply with them.
There is the business of dealing with anti-dumping. I remember nearly 40 years ago being responsible for the generalised scheme of preferences for chemicals in the Department of Trade and Industry, as then was. If we are to align ourselves with the European Union long-term, it will be looking for us to have a generalised scheme of preferences. In general, it will not want any external aspect of its tariff—be it anti-dumping, tariff impositions or quantitative restrictions—to be circumvented by those who are able to bring their goods into the United Kingdom and re-export them to the rest of the EU. We can see this whole string of potential difficulties which could, of course, lead to cost, delay, relative lack of competitiveness and bottlenecks at borders.
At the same time, I want to ask Ministers whether they will do one thing for me. Will they tell us more about the possibilities for dealing with this, and involve us directly in thinking about this? It is not part of the negotiations. I do not think it would prejudice the negotiations in any respect for us to be working hard now to try to put in place the practical mechanisms for facilitating trade and reducing the cost and delay involved in trade across borders for the longer term. We are going to have a customs Bill, a piece of customs legislation. We should have an opportunity to have the Government come forward with their proposals at an early and draft stage to follow up the External Affairs Committee’s report with pre-legislative scrutiny in order to get the Bill right and have a better chance of having our legal framework, as well as our administrative framework, in place before the two years, or a further transitional period, are completed.
What does it look like? We know that the current customs declaration system—the so-called CHIEF, or Customs Handling of Import and Export Freight, system—has about 90 million transactions. After Brexit, the number could rise fourfold. As it happens, there is going to be a new customs declaration system in 2019. It has to be a project that is configured for, and capable of, handling that dramatic increase in the potential complexity and number of those customs declarations.
I think there are only a few hundred authorised economic operators in this country because to get to be an AEO is costly and difficult. We need some additional mechanism by which small and medium-sized enterprises can acquire some of the trusted status which goes along with AEO status for security and customs simplification purposes so that they can access the same kind of cross-border mechanisms. There is technology which allows us to track vehicles, goods and shipments in ways that mean that we do not necessarily have to stop people at borders, and in so far as they are stopped at borders, it will be on a risk-based assessment, rather than having long queues with everybody having to be checked through.
As a former—some 30 years ago—deputy director-general of the British Chambers of Commerce, I know that all over the world chambers of commerce help to make trade work. In this country, we have chambers which have a long history of certification of origin and trade facilitation. We have hundreds of trade facilitation experts—they are not international trade negotiators—in chambers of commerce. In future, we need to have new customs arrangements and, through designing a UK customs code to replace the EU customs code, an opportunity to improve the circumstances for businesses in this country, reduce the cost of compliance and make trade easier for small businesses in particular. I urge Ministers to work with us in the way I have described and to work with my friends in the chambers of commerce movement to try to put that kind of trade facilitation in place for small businesses for the future.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
My Lords, I rise somewhat hesitantly and, I hope, briefly, to add to a remarkable cross-party consensus of gloom and apprehension about the prospects for a successful outcome of the Government’s wish to conclude an ambitious and comprehensive trade agreement with what we are no longer allowed to call our “partners”. I noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, yesterday was calling them “counterparts”, which is an interesting shift. Our chances of concluding the agreement successfully are not very good.
It has been a privilege to serve on the committee that produced the report, which provides a very balanced assessment. I have personally learned a lot. I trade on the fact that I know a bit about Europe, but I certainly learned an awful lot in the process of these hearings. It is an excellent report, for which we owe an awful lot to the clerks, officers and witnesses, very ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on the Internal Market Sub-Committee, to which I am very grateful.
What is true of the report is that its balanced assessment contrasts with the kind of bluster and assertion of the Government’s position, which I find worrying. Where are the Government getting it wrong? The starting point is the self-deluding proposition that we are in a very strong and good position in these negotiations. I do not think that we are. One of the comments to justify this confidence is made in the response to recommendation 18 in our report, where they say that we are starting from a very different position to other countries looking to agree free trade agreements with the EU because, unlike most negotiations, these talks will not be about bringing two divergent systems together—they will be about managing the continued co-operation of the UK and the EU. They say that they are confident that it is in everyone’s interests to arrive at a mutually beneficial deal. That is false optimism. If you think about it, maybe the rules are at present both the same, because we are all members of the EU as it is, but will they automatically in future stay the same and will we commit to keep our rules in line with European rules to have access to those markets?
Elsewhere the Government say in response to our report that equivalence will of course be an important part of any discussion on our future trading relationship, but we are committed to taking control of our own laws as the people of the United Kingdom have demanded that we must. So will the Government seek to maintain equivalence in future or are they going to exercise sovereignty in determining their own rules affecting our trading position? A very obvious example of this is coming up right now, with the key sector of automobiles—very important in terms of our manufactured exports. We are clearly going to have to devise a lot of rules to deal with the coming of autonomous vehicles; that is happening in the next 10 years. Will we follow the Brussels rules to guarantee access for our manufacturers, or will we have a completely independent approach and say, “We have a right to determine our own rules on safety and everything else”—in which case we will create tremendous trade problems for ourselves? I do not think that the Government are giving a clear answer on that at all.
Another problem is that I do not think that the negotiating position that we are in is very strong. We have much more to lose from a breakdown of these talks than do the EU 27. Our trade with the EU is a much bigger proportion of our GDP than it is of the GDP of the EU 27 and the Government do not seem to understand that point. The timetable that the Government have set themselves, without willingness to contemplate a proper transition phase, is truly frightening, because we are not actually talking about two years. As I see it, in practice, we are talking about the period between the end of the negotiations for the new German coalition, which is when we will see a German Government who are able to make political compromises and will probably be in November or December this year, and the autumn of the following year, when the draft agreements would have to start being put to the European Parliament if they are going to be agreed by March 2019. This is a frighteningly short timetable for issues of huge complexity. If the talks break down, the cost to us will be enormous. There are some sectors where we do not even have the WTO to fall back on.
We heard yesterday in the Article 50 debate about Euratom. The nuclear industry is one of the strategic ambitions in our industrial strategy White Paper yet, if we do not reach agreement with the EU, Euratom comes to an end and there can be no transport of nuclear fuels or nuclear materials with other countries because there is no regulatory regime to cover them. The same is true of aviation and broadcasting. There is a terrible cliff edge for a lot of key sectors of the British economy. If it was not so tragic I would laugh. It is a bit like someone who has been a member of the golf club for 44 years and decides, “Oh, no, I am not going to be a member any more, but I still want to play on the course every day. However, I am not prepared to pay a membership fee for this privilege, I want to determine rules of my own as to who works on this course, because I am not having your free movement rule, and I also claim the right to rewrite the rules to suit myself because I insist that I have the national sovereignty to do so”. This is ludicrous. This is not a sensible way of behaving.
If you are going to leave a club but you want to stay in it, you have to make lots of adjustments to make that possible. I hope that this whole experience does not turn out badly, but I fear that it will and I fear for the country.
Lord Risby (Con)
My Lords, it is always worthwhile listening to the noble Lord: he asked one or two very pertinent questions about the future situation of our mutual relationship. It gives me great pleasure to thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for introducing this debate so well and for chairing the proceedings of his committee, but most particularly I want to thank my noble friend Lady Verma, who also made such a good contribution and chaired our proceedings so well. I add my appreciation for the staff who did such a brilliant job in pulling all this together; they really are the unsung heroes of the situation.
Since the report’s publication, as has been indicated, we now have a much clearer view of the Government’s intent, but the details of our pursuit of a free trade agreement are certainly not yet at hand. This is our dilemma in the discussion this evening. The possibility also exists, as we have discussed, of our just having to deal with the WTO, if the whole process fails. Indeed, we do not know very much more than that at this point. I should therefore like to focus on some elements of the topography of trade post our formal departure, including, of course, non-tariff barriers. While we will initially be incorporating EU legislation into our own legislation, the challenge thereafter is how we manage the inevitable regulatory and other changes as the EU itself evolves.
As we have often heard, supply chains are uppermost in business’s mind. We could, in theory, see tariffs levied at different production levels across borders several times, with all the difficulties that that brings. While there appears to be a template offered by NAFTA, particularly between the USA and Canada, with simplified customs procedures, the issue of a pan-European supply chain is a hugely significant factor to manufacturers, most notably in the successful automotive sector. Both the supply chain and regulations on quality assurance are fundamentally important as we seek a new trade agreement with both the EU and others. We naturally would favour preferential rules of origin, and such rules apply currently, but I wonder whether my noble friend the Minister could expand further on how possible preferential rates of origin might apply as we leave the currently structured customs union, as presumably there would still be an issue of more burdensome administrative checks to be undertaken.
Regrettably, the UK traditionally suffers a considerable trade deficit. What is left of our manufacturing industry is modern, productive and in many instances a great success story, for example in our car industry, although it is mostly foreign-owned. So what every Government have had to do, for decades, is continuously try to attract foreign direct investment to fill the trade balance void. Successive UK Governments have sought to minimise any disincentives to the purchase of British assets, and this has broadly been a success. Traditionally, we have remained the single most favoured European investment destination. But of course, as we have heard, access to the single market is at least a substantial part of the reason why this investment comes in in the first place, to avoid not only tariff disincentives but potential non-tariff barriers as well. Concluding an FTA is therefore—for all the reasons so perfectly and thoughtfully put by your Lordships this evening—crucial for our continuing survival.
Our report relates to the EU, of course, but we need to address the impact on other markets as well. For example, in two key markets, Japan and China, the demand for high standards is increasingly marked. We are currently signed up to the EU, and that is one thing, but a common EU-wide regulatory system is also both efficacious and avoids higher administration costs. Consider the case of the pharmaceutical industry. The quality of our pharmaceutical companies is bound to be put under a spotlight during these negotiations. The quality of these companies—often ultimately owned by non-British enterprises—as well as food and beverage suppliers, is bound to be tested. While we may start with the assurance that common regulation and standards provides, our export destination countries need to understand how our regulatory and therefore quality system will prevail post Brexit. While we know that the EU-Korea and EU-Switzerland agreements provide useful templates for mutual recognition and certification, this is going to be an increasing challenge as living standards improve in our key export markets, and as we seek to create new business agreements with those countries which enjoy a trade agreement with the EU at present.
In a recent speech my noble friend Lord Hill reminded us that there are 27 other countries now directly or indirectly engaged in our negotiation process—with all the potential pitfalls, as we saw in the Wallonia problem in the EU-Canada agreement. But it is interesting to note, on a rather more optimistic note, that the European Commission has just published a working paper on equivalence in financial services which at least accepts the need for compliance in international standards in tax and money laundering, as well as potential reciprocal trading rights with third countries. This is incredibly important for our financial services industry, and I hope that this sort of realism will prevail during our direct negotiations with the European Commission over the broad range of goods and services, rather than what my noble friend Lord Horam described as a fist to the face. Therefore it goes without saying—I emphasise this—in the language we deploy, a prosperous EU is completely in our own national interest, and we have to go on saying that.
My noble friend Lady Verma mentioned the complexities of the agricultural sector, for example, in any negotiations. I ask noble Lords for forbearance in mentioning one rather personal instance of how deeply our current agreements reach within the EU. I declare an interest as a government-appointed director of the Horserace Betting Levy Board and as the former Member of Parliament for Newmarket. Freedom of movement usually implies human beings, but I want to bring an equine dimension to this discussion. A tripartite agreement between the UK, France and Ireland currently allows thoroughbred horses to travel freely between the three countries for race meetings. Under an EU directive, horses need only a simple passport arrangement, with no customs documentation or veterinary export health certificate. I can only hope that a frictionless trade agreement will be extended to this valued part of British life, but it simply illustrates how far we are embedded in the totality of EU architecture. Therefore, I hope that the next two years will bear fruit; but it will be a challenge. I make a plea to the Minister to communicate this as appropriate.
It is certainly gratifying, as we have heard, that skilled individuals are now being deployed in our negotiations to forge new trade relationships with the EU. However, may I highlight how, with some notable exceptions, our embassies are underresourced and insufficiently manned, compared with our soon-to-be rival neighbours? As one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys, I see how actively EU countries—particularly currently, because they sense an opportunity—are hard at work in a number of promising export destinations. It is a matter of the utmost concern to me and others that, while some embassies have liberal funds specifically for social or political projects, their ability to promote trade is wholly inadequate. If our embassies are to be part of developing our post-Brexit strategy, as promised, the ludicrous resources available to them need to be dealt with with the utmost speed. Any other trade envoy would tell your Lordships exactly the same thing. We can only hope that a free trade agreement can be secured to avoid the additional burden that WTO tariffs imply. How necessary it could well be to secure transitional arrangements we all accept, to give assurance to those foreign investors and businesses that are so important to our national economic life, survival and prosperity.
Baroness Randerson (LD)
My Lords, let me thank the chairs of both committees, the staff who have produced this excellent report with us and, indeed, the witnesses who prepared so carefully for evidence sessions. This has been an excellent debate. I have found myself in agreement with almost everything that has been said so eloquently on all sides of the House. This whole process of preparing for Brexit I find infinitely depressing. Thursday mornings are a very depressing part of the week, despite the excellent company of my fellow committee members, because one witness after another—experts, practitioners, trade bodies and so on—parade before us the complexities of the situation we are in. Such warnings are all around us. Last night the president of the CBI talked about his fears for the whole process, calling it a rollercoaster, and warning that no deal with the EU would hit 90% of our exports to the EU, either in tariffs or non-tariff barriers.
It is a great pity that none of the strongest opponents of the EU is here this evening to hear the variety and depth of the debate. The Government’s very late response to our report also makes a depressing read. Either the Government have very few words in their lexicon, as envisaged by my noble friend, or they have very few ideas, because the same banal, generalised, high-level statements are repeated over and over again: “ambitious and comprehensive”, “frictionless”, “no cliff edge” and so on. The endless repetition was so intense that at the end of reading the response I felt that I was being brainwashed.
As with the White Paper, I was also distressed by the Government’s apparent smug self-confidence. I have referred to this before as hubris. I believe that the use of the terms “world class” and “world leading” show that overconfidence. However, there is a new line that appears in the Government’s response to the report, which is that it will be all right because we are already well integrated with the EU and currently have no trade barriers, so apparently we are unlikely to have any in the future. If the Government seriously believe that, they have been deaf to the statements coming from our current EU partners, who have said, in terms, that if you leave the club, cease to pay the membership fee and no longer agree to play by the rules, you can no longer enjoy the benefits of membership. We have already announced not just that we want to leave the club but that we do not even want associate membership.
I think that in reality, like ducks on a lake, the Government are paddling furiously just below the waterline. Indeed, the impressive list of meetings that they have held with business organisations, set out in the government response, and the hundreds of additional civil servants they have recruited are signs of the effort and work going on. I just reflect that it is a pity that those extra civil servants are needed in order for us to fight just to stay still. I would have preferred them to do something rather more creative.
What I looked for in the government response was some acknowledgement of the sheer complexity of the situation. The committee report that we are discussing today makes that complexity plain—albeit this is only an introductory taster to the true difficulties. This morning our committee discussed its next report, which looks behind and beyond the level of detail in the report we are discussing here to a further level of complexity. I believe it should be compulsory for everyone who tells us that it is all quite straightforward to read not just the summary but the body of this report. Only by doing so can you understand the complexity. It does not need to be this report; it can be any one of the excellent reports produced by our EU committees. They are authoritative and comprehensive but, as I have said before, they are also depressing.
In my inbox and on Twitter there are two categories of pro-Brexit campaigners. Just to clarify matters, I do not put everyone who is pro-Brexit in these two categories, but I want to refer to two types of correspondents. One is what I call Brexit bullies, who feel that, by shouting loudly and heaping sometimes personal insults on those who oppose Brexit, they will drown out the arguments being put before them. Then there are the lemmings—those who blindly follow their leaders towards the Government’s famous cliff edge. This report and others in the series should be read by all lemmings. It sets in context, in factual, precise detail, the enormous complex task that the Government face. I will briefly refer to a couple of detailed issues.
Our report refers to potential costs and delays associated with more complex border and customs processes. The Government’s response that that is all done electronically now has been put forward in the Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland context. I very much hope that it could be a contribution, although that should not be overestimated in its potential. But in general terms, the value of electronic processes needs to be considered. I draw noble Lords’ attention to an article in this week’s Times about the considerable delays at the Turkish/Bulgarian border—up to 30 hours. Reference was made to bulky sheets of documents. Turkey is in the customs union with the EU. The point made in the article is that EU states can and do impose significant transit fees and permits based on a quota system. Each EU country sets its own fees. That is despite the customs union.
The Road Haulage Association has warned of the need for significant investment in infrastructure of ports and customs. We have very little such infrastructure because we have not needed it for 40 years. It warns of the total lack of experience and knowledge in the road haulage industry on these matters. Can the Minister tell us precisely what the Government are doing to prepare for this?
On dispute resolution procedures, our report refers to the advantages of the EU system and the disadvantages of the WTO system. We need to ask ourselves, why would the EU agree, as the Government suggest in their response, to a separate and new system that the Government hope to set up with the EU when one already exists from their perspective? Any new system that is established has to be accessible to small businesses and just as accessible as the current system.
The Government’s response, beyond the Prime Minister’s statement that we would not remain within the single market or the EEA, does not have much detail. In debate earlier this week, one noble Lord, when referring to negotiating and revealing our hand, compared our negotiations to those with the IRA and the DUP in Northern Ireland. I want to examine that. Negotiations in Northern Ireland were between groups who had been seeking to kill each other. We are talking about negotiating with our EU partners and friends who have sat on the same side of the table with us for 40 years. The Government place too much emphasis on keeping their powder dry and keeping their cards close to their chest. Those other countries which have been our friends for 40 years know every nook and cranny of what we are trying to negotiate and what we want to do.
These days, there is global interdependence. If we want to trade we effectively have to pool sovereignty with others. The irony is that because the EU is the world’s biggest customs union, it dictates many of the terms and standards of world trade and we will have to accept that, whatever the Government lead us to in terms of negotiations on Brexit.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, there is an abbreviation that expresses the sense that someone feels that they were not in the right place at the right time when something else rather remarkable went on. It is called FOMO—the fear of missing out—and I fear that I have a case of FOMO when it comes to looking at this committee’s report. This has been an excellent and extraordinary debate, with eloquence, relevance and expertise in every contribution. We owe a great debt to the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee and the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee, and in particular to the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and my noble friend Lord Whitty for the excellent way in which they have brought the committee together and its conclusions to life. I note that that there is a further report on what a good deal on trade and services will look like, and I hope that we will get an early opportunity to debate that in the House.
While events have moved on, the report stands the test of time. In short, the report and this debate demonstrate that while an approach of pursuing a free trade agreement has been chosen, many other elements are in play which cause uncertainty and complexity. Official trade statistics show that the European Union is the destination for about half of all British goods and exports, but the trading links are bigger if we include the countries we trade freely with because they have a free trade agreement with the European Union. Those agreements mean that 63% of Britain’s exports in goods are linked to EU membership. What is at stake here is about more than just the single market; it is about how entwined and impactful have been the past decades of economic connections and their evolution. Those elements will rest heavily on the construction of an even more complex series of future arrangements.
This report is full of sound advice and it should be re-read constantly throughout the process of negotiations and as people consider our options. I want to touch on three themes from the report and from this debate. The first is that of synchronicity. The task of withdrawing from the EU, of establishing what the free trade agreement will look like, of preparing trade agreements with other countries, with all the problems of whether we can have those in sequential or concurrent mechanisms, and the question of how interrelated those elements are and whether they are determined by economics or a bit more politics: all of that will shape a very difficult series of considerations. The Government will need to consider what is fundamental and what anchors we need. There is a big question around what assumptions they make about how to integrate into any discussions a whole variety of other elements which fall from the side and some of which we have not touched on in detail during the debate but have been touched on in the report. They include questions around the UK’s position in the WTO schedules and our share of EU quotas.
In tandem with these discussions, we need to design and agree future trade relations with the least developed countries and other developing countries which are currently covered by the EU’s generalised system of preferences. In practical terms, how and when this is done will be crucial for our export position in developing markets, and our EU competitors will take advantage of any interregnum that we create as a result.
To ease negotiations with third countries, joining existing or intended large regional or mega-regional agreements could be advantageous. However, doing so may also result in a loss of sovereignty and raise other issues relating to migration and financial contribution. Is this something that the Government will consider in a tapestry of new trade relationships?
Secondly, we have also the large question of capacity. The report raises the issue of capacity, and I have heard others say that they are reassured that we are at least starting to make some progress on this. I am less reassured. My own experience of the Government’s dealings with other sectors is that we have created for presentational purposes—which is not always a bad thing—layers which do not inherently indicate that we are going to take account of some of these considerations of companies and businesses, and the long list covered in the Government’s reply, in the mechanism that will add to the capacity of our country to deal with the huge challenge.
We are faced with the task of negotiating more than 100 new trade agreements if we leave the EU customs union. In addition, trade partners in regional and bilateral agreements may want to change the terms of their existing agreements. The most immediate challenge the UK faces arises from our reduced negotiating powers as sole actor, time pressures and concerns about the character of how negotiations will be conducted. In view of the narrow base of domestic expertise in conducting trade negotiations, we will need to recruit and train a large body of new specialist staff. We will also need—this is an important point—to re-engineer how we do negotiations and trade, and how we re-create the Whitehall machine to deal adequately with how policy is addressed across a variety of departments.
Crucially, as raised by other noble Lords, there are questions about what support and advice has been given to British businesses. If the UK is to expose its markets to greater competition, we also need to make sure that we are ready to help potentially disadvantaged groups at home to adjust. We must get these elements right. It is about our capacity not just to negotiate but to deal with the consequences of the negotiations and the pattern of them.
Thirdly, there is the question of data. As my noble friend Lord Whitty said, no comprehensive economic evaluations have been made. These are absolutely crucial. Making a correct estimate of our trade interests, as well as properly informing the slowly developing industrial strategy, requires us to have a very sophisticated view of the dynamics in our economy and in the existing trade situation, as well as a correct estimate of the trade opportunities and context of other markets. This is no small challenge.
To illustrate the point, let us look at services. A large volume of services are traded across borders directly—for instance, a legal opinion or a form of insurance. This area is relatively easy to quantify, but a large amount of our services are wrapped up in other activities. Some services trade is camouflaged as merchandise trade, as it encompasses services inputs—for example, elements that are value added in the context of design or about some forms of advice, research and development.
Data that trace how value is added in both goods and services along the supply chain have only started to emerge and are not particularly meaningful at this stage. The strength of the services available and the quantity, quality, availability and geography play an ever more important role in making manufacturing competitive. Understanding how these impact and how we can design the right sort of policies and the future architecture of what our trade relationship should be with Europe and all the other countries we are looking at will require a much better set of data than we have at the moment. In relation to that question about comprehensive economic analysis, I am keen to know what sort of work the Government plan to do here.
This also touches on the issue of capacity. Many officials whom we are now training to look at some of the aspects of trade have great expertise in a variety of areas, and we now need that knowledge to enhance the ability of those areas to be adequately covered in the negotiations but they are now focusing on different elements. That shows a sense in which the breadth of the people, experience and expertise required will play an ever-increasing part during these negotiations and discussions.
This debate has shown the complexities of negotiations on our position. The path we are on is not the one that I wanted, but our task is to make the best of the situation. As someone from a business background, I am hotwired to think about what is the best we can do. The Government’s challenge is to face up to the need for a realistic approach and to prepare for the ripples and waves caused by the negotiations that will wash over all sorts of different areas of our economy and country. Without addressing that adequately, there are too many questions and uncertainties. Uncertainty is the main destroyer of GDP and our greatest economic risk in the short and medium term.
While the Government need to provide leadership and have the responsibility to conduct the withdrawal from the EU, the political need to look in control and to ignore building a broader capacity for our country to succeed in the face of this challenge is self-defeating. This report and the EU committees demonstrate that others can make a valuable contribution. The Government would do well to reach out more to them.
Baroness Mobarik (Con)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for tabling this debate and for his excellent speech. I also thank the EU Internal Market Sub-Committee and the EU External Affairs Sub-Committee for their report, Brexit: The Options for Trade, which provides a rigorous analysis of how the Government might approach a new trading relationship with the European Union. The committees will now have received the Government’s response to their report.
As your Lordships will know, my noble friend Lord Price appeared with my noble friend Lord Bridges before the committees in October last year, and again last month to discuss the upcoming publications, Brexit: Future Trade Between the UK and EU in Services and Brexit: Future Trade Between the UK and EU in Goods. I am looking forward to the contents of these two reports, which have been informed by evidence from key sectors as diverse as pharmaceuticals, food and automotive.
As a businesswoman and former chairman of CBI Scotland, I know that trading continuity is vital during times of change. That is why the Government have held thousands of visits, meetings and events with businesses since the referendum. My noble friend Lord Price alone has met more than 50 Ministers from foreign Governments since the referendum, 18 of whom are in the EU. The reason he is unable to attend this debate is that he is on his way to attend the informal Foreign Affairs Council on trade in Malta. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to him for the work that he is undertaking, and to wish him a happy birthday. In addition, Ministers from the Department for Exiting the European Union have met more than 150 businesses through round-table meetings with key sectors.
I am very pleased to be able to wind up for the Government in this debate, and will now address the points raised. I will also set out the Government’s plans. Since the publication of this report, the Prime Minister has set out Our Plan for Britain, including the 12 principles which will guide the Government during negotiations on the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. The Government have also published a White Paper on the UK’s exit from and new partnership with the EU. In response to the points raised by some noble Lords on the Government’s narrative on these issues, our strength is speaking with one voice. Speaking with one consistent voice is a negotiating strength.
As the Prime Minister has said, we will not seek membership of the single market but will pursue instead a new strategic partnership with the EU, including an ambitious and comprehensive free trade agreement. We want the UK to be able to negotiate its own trade agreements. We want our new relationship with the EU to aim for the freest possible trade in goods and services, and for cross-border trade to be as frictionless as possible. I thank my noble friend Lady Verma for her question on a customs agreement with the EU. We are seeking a new customs agreement with the EU. There are a number of options for any new customs arrangement, including a completely new agreement or for the UK to retain some elements of the existing arrangements. The precise form of this new agreement will be subject to negotiation.
I remind noble Lords that we start from a unique position. On day 1, we will have exactly the same regulations and standards as our negotiating partners. This provides an unprecedented starting point for our negotiations with the EU. We will aim to have reached an agreement about our future partnership by the time the two-year Article 50 process has concluded. Article 50 states that the process of withdrawal will take account of the framework of the leaving member state’s future relationship with the EU, and there is a clear connection between the terms of our withdrawal and the future relationship we want to establish.
As we have said before, it is in no one’s interest for there to be a cliff edge for business as we change from our existing relationship to a new partnership with the European Union. That is why the Government have announced that we will establish the UK’s independent position at the WTO, of which the UK is a full and founding member. We are currently represented by the EU at the WTO, but as a post-EU member we will need to separate our schedules of commitments, which are currently integrated into the schedule for the EU as a whole. We will do this in a way that causes the least disruption possible to our trading partners. To address the concern raised by my noble friend Lady Verma about the UK’s technical rectification of WTO schedules, I tell the House that the WTO director-general, Roberto Azevêdo, stated in support of the UK’s position:
“The UK is a member of the WTO today, it will continue to be a member tomorrow. There will be no discontinuity in membership”.
Our ambition is clear: we want Britain to become a champion of free trade, working with our partners across the world to remove barriers. As the Prime Minister has said, we want to build a truly global Britain that is one of the foremost advocates for free trade anywhere in the world. We cannot negotiate and conclude trade agreements while a member of the EU, but we can have discussions on our future trading relationships. We have announced a series of working groups with key partners and are seeking to ensure that we deploy the right trading tools with each market to take best advantage of the opportunities available to us, both now and as we leave the EU. With some of our partners an FTA might be the right solution. In other cases, other trading arrangements may be more appropriate.
I am keen to address the concerns of the business sector. I hope I am able to answer the very important question raised by my noble friend Lady Verma. The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, asked a very sensible question: what criteria will the Government use in assessing when they have achieved a good deal? The key is engagement. The Department for International Trade and the Department for Exiting the European Union have been engaging widely with businesses at all levels since the referendum, as have other departments, such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport and HM Revenue & Customs.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, for her point on ensuring engagement with industry. I can assure her that, as we prepare for the negotiations over the UK’s future relationship with the EU, the Government will continue to have open and honest conversations with businesses and trade associations to understand issues, limit uncertainty and ensure that our new relationship with the EU works for business.
The insight we are gaining from our engagement will play a vital role in informing the development of trade policy that works for the whole of the UK. I confirm the intention raised by my noble friend Lord Green. The Government are determined not to allow any part or nation of the United Kingdom—Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland or England—to lose out in this process. The Department for International Trade is dedicated to serving the whole of the UK, now and when we leave the EU. Officials from DIT have been engaging with counterparts in each of the devolved Administrations.
This engagement is stepping up. Last week, DIT hosted officials from the Governments of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland for an in-depth discussion of our WTO membership, the rights and obligations that come with membership, and the impact that Brexit will have on our relationship with the WTO. The Department for International Trade will be engaging further on a wide variety of trade-related topics over the coming weeks and months, and the Government are of course taking into account the specific circumstances faced by businesses in Northern Ireland. The Prime Minister has been clear that there will be no return to the borders of the past and that retaining trade will be important. She agreed with the Taoiseach that we will work to ensure as seamless a border as possible with Ireland and to continue the common travel area.
We are clear that we want Britain to have the greatest possible tariff and barrier-free trade in goods and services with our European neighbours, and to be able to negotiate our own trade agreements. As the Prime Minister said, we want to have reached an agreement about our future partnership by the time the two-year Article 50 process has concluded. We approach these negotiations not expecting failure but anticipating success. As we have always said, of course there will have to be give and take, as in any negotiation, but a punitive approach by the EU that punishes Britain would be an act of self-harm for the countries of Europe. Britain would not and could not accept such an approach.
My noble friend Lady Verma and other noble Lords were concerned, I think, about the costs of leaving and trading on WTO terms alone. In the event that it is not possible to reach a positive agreement—a scenario the Government are confident need never arise—the Government are clear that no deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain, because we would still be able to trade within Europe and free to strike trade deals across the world.
Ahead of and throughout the negotiations, we will provide certainty wherever we can, and as much information as we can without undermining the national interest. Noble Lords will recall that the publication of impact assessments was discussed in detail in Committee on the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill earlier this week. The challenge we face is to get the balance right between enabling scrutiny and ensuring that our negotiating position is not revealed. A cardinal rule of negotiation is not to tell those on the other side how much certain scenarios and outcomes would cost or benefit you, but that is what publication of an impact assessment would do.
A number of noble Lords have asked whether the Government are able to deliver Brexit. Do we have the right staff? Will our customs arrangements be sufficient? The Civil Service is well equipped to deliver the UK’s exit from the EU and has substantial experience of negotiations with it. Alongside the increase in staff and resourcing in my department, the Department for International Trade, and the Department for Exiting the European Union, as part of the Autumn Statement, we also secured funding for additional staff in key posts overseas. Our diplomatic network will be absolutely key in delivering the best for the UK. As I said, DIT is working closely with the Department for Exiting the European Union and other departments to contribute to the Government’s preparations for Brexit, advising on the implications and operational aspects of EU exit for our trading relationships.
At the end of 2016, DIT’s trade policy team consisted of around 150 staff. This team of trade policy officials has now increased to 185 and is continuing to grow. This includes policy and country specialists as well as expert economic analysts and lawyers. We will continue to develop our existing expertise as well as hire the brightest and best talent from within and outside the UK Civil Service to deliver the best outcomes for the UK. The Department for Exiting the European Union now has more than 300 staff, and is growing fast. It is also supported by 120 UKRep staff based in Brussels, who report to Ministers in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Department for Exiting the European Union.
Parliament will of course be involved in helping to shape the UK’s future as we leave the European Union. There have already been 70 parliamentary debates on Brexit, as well as 36 Select Committee inquiries. The House of Commons voted overwhelmingly for the Article 50 Bill to pass Third Reading unamended. As noble Lords know, the Bill passed the House of Lords Committee stage with an amendment last night. It will now pass back to the House of Commons and approval of the Bill will provide a key step towards a smooth and orderly exit from the EU.
The Government will bring forward legislation in the next Session that, when enacted, will repeal the European Communities Act 1972 on the day we leave the EU. We will bring forward a White Paper on this great repeal Bill, which will set out our approach to giving effect to withdrawal on the domestic statute book. We will ensure that it is published in time to allow Parliament to digest its contents in advance of the introduction of the Bill in the next Session. Many noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, and my noble friend Lord Risby, asked whether the Government would seek equivalence of EU regulations and standards. Equivalence will be an important part of any discussion on our future trading relationship and the great repeal Bill will convert current EU law into domestic law while allowing for amendment in future. How we go about ensuring the fewest possible barriers to trade between the UK and EU is a matter of negotiation. We will inform the House about the detail and timing of the repeal Bill legislation in due course. We have always been clear that Parliament will have every opportunity to scrutinise the great repeal Bill and we are considering the best way to enable that. Of course, Parliament must be consulted before ratification of any future trade agreements that we negotiate.
We recognise the importance of access to EU markets. As my noble friend Lord Gadhia and others have raised, financial services contribute more than 7% of UK GDP and its exports account for over 12% of the UK total. Around half of the world’s largest financial firms have their European headquarters in the UK. We are listening to what the financial services industry has to say on the key issues it faces and we will be looking for a sensible discussion in negotiations.
On the UK being outside the jurisdiction of the ECJ, we are preparing a UK trade remedies framework for when we leave the EU, which will enable the UK to be a leading proponent for free trade while providing a safety net for its industries if dumped, subsidised or surges of imports cause injury to UK producers, as set out by WTO agreements. The UK remains committed to pursuing free trade, and this includes seeking to achieve continuity in our trade and investment relationships with third countries, including those covered by EU FTAs or other EU preferential arrangements. We are actively exploring what may be possible with our trading partners to achieve this.
I want to respond to some of the points raised by my noble friend Lord Green with regard to UK trade statistics. In 2016, UK exports were £544.8 billion—up by 22.6% from 2010. While there was a trade deficit in goods last year, there was a £98.1 billion surplus in trade in services. This is a positive picture, but the Government wish to build on it and ensure that the benefits of trade reach as many across the UK as possible.
Many have commented on the complexity of the task ahead; I assure noble Lords that the Government do not underestimate this—the Government will not, and must not, do this alone. We must take a “whole of the UK” approach, drawing on the skills and expertise of the Members of this House and the other place and the key learnings that we can draw from business and civil society. I am confident that if we seek to work together we can get the very best outcomes for the UK.
I conclude by thanking noble Lords for their contributions over the course of this debate. I am sure that this House will continue to play a valuable role and will work pragmatically towards building our future.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that contribution to the debate. I join her in sending birthday greetings to the noble Lord, Lord Price. I gently say to her, though, that there was not much new in her speech. I had hoped that there would be a little more engagement with some of the points made by noble Lords. One of the difficulties as we go forward in this House, and in Parliament generally, is that if the Government continually repeat the same phrases it will increasingly sound like whistling in the dark. It might be whistling in the dark to keep their own spirits up, or it might be to make sure that we do not quite know what is going on. Either way, we need a little more than that. It was a good run-through, but it was only a run-through of things that we had heard before, generally speaking.
There was one little bit that might be new, although I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, would agree with me with his interest in customs, I thought the phraseology on the customs union was slightly different, and I will look at the precise text on that and see if there is a new measure there.
I am not going to make a great speech tonight; I thank everybody who has participated in the debate, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Gadhia, my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn, and others who had not participated in the debate; everybody else who spoke had participated in committees. I thank them very much for their work, as I thank again the staff. I just wanted to mention one thing in relation to staff: the clerk to our committee, Alicia Cunningham, has actually left for separate duties in this House this very week. I would like to put on record in this debate the work that she has done for us.
Of all the experts that were going to be quoted in this debate, I had not expected Mike Tyson to be one of them. However, knowing how the EU negotiators react is an important missing part of the jigsaw in most of this debate. There was a point in one of our debates, and the noble Baroness, Lady Verma, and I are probably the only ones who remember it, when one of our colleagues—he was a noble and gallant Member of the House—said, “In these situations, I like to see it through the eyes of the enemy”. That might be going a bit far—I prefer the term “counterpart”—but nevertheless, we did not get much of an inkling during the course of our discussions with the Government that they were really getting enough intelligence on where the EU is coming from.
One of the things my noble friend Lord Lea and my noble friend Lady Donaghy will remember is our irritation, in trade union discussions, when the press always said that the trade unions made a demand and the employers made an offer. The reality of this is that that is how Europe sees this: we are the demander and it has to deign to make an offer to us. It has interests to preserve, but those are not necessarily the same as ours. We want to maintain a good relationship and so does it, but it sees us as the people who are walking away and, to some extent, stopping paying the rent at the same time. We start from that psychological disadvantage. If we do not try to understand and cultivate a better understanding of our position among our EU partners—I will still call them that for the moment—then this negotiation will fail. I hope the Government are up to this.
We need proper engagement in this Parliament. We are going to discuss parliamentary scrutiny again on the Bill, but whatever the results, there has to be a greater degree of candour between the Government and Parliament as we go through this process. We do not expect the Government to give their total negotiating hand to the world at large. I think my noble friend Lord Lea said of our report that it was ruthless and realistic.
Lord Whitty
I thought for a moment that he was talking about me; it would have been the nicest thing he has ever said about me.
We need to be realistic and some of the statements by the Government are self-evidently not realistic at this point. If this House is to be taken along with the Government during this very difficult process, we need to have an honest and realistic discussion of what the options are and how we are to deal with them. We need that to be on a systematic basis and I hope that the Government have taken that lesson from this debate. Certainly, we in our committees will be both honest and realistic. We will also recognise the limitations. But the Government will not get through this if they do not get parliamentary support in both Houses. I hope they recognise that and that we can therefore have a perhaps slightly greater engagement than we have had so far with Ministers and government. That way, maybe we can get through this difficult process. In the meantime, I thank everybody who has participated in the debate.