House of Commons

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

Wednesday 28 June 2017

The House met at half-past Eleven o’clock

Prayers

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker in the Chair]

[Mr Speaker]

I remind Members that the private Members’ Bill ballot book is open in the No Lobby today until the rise of the House, when the ballot for 2017 to 2019 will close. The ballot draw will be held at 9 am tomorrow in Committee Room 10. I also remind Members that the ballot for the election of Deputy Speakers is taking place until 1.30 pm today in Committee Room 8. The result will be announced as soon as the count is complete.

Oral Answers to Questions

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)]

1. What steps the Government are taking to comply with the requirement for rigorous impartiality set out in the Belfast agreement.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

5. What steps the Government are taking to comply with the requirement for rigorous impartiality set out in the Belfast agreement.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (James Brokenshire)]

The Government remain steadfast in our commitment to the Belfast agreement and its successors. We will continue to govern in the interests of all parts of the community and to work in partnership with the Irish Government, in accordance with the well-established three-stranded approach, as we have done for the past seven years.

[Kate Hollern]

In the past few days, the deal with the Democratic Unionist party has been described as grubby, dangerous and desperate. Obviously, the situation in Northern Ireland is at a very sensitive point. Can the Secretary of State outline in a clear and cohesive way the steps that his Government are taking to ensure impartiality?

[James Brokenshire]

I say at the outset that I do not recognise the characterisation that the hon. Lady has given the agreement, which is about providing stability here for the UK Government and governing in the best interests of all parts of the UK. But in response to her important question about the Belfast agreement and its successors, I say to her that the Government remain steadfast in their commitment to those agreements and we continue to work with all parties, as I have done over recent days and will continue to do, so that the Government act in the best interests of all parts of Northern Ireland and continue to listen to the concerns of all parts of the community.

[Jeff Smith]

Over the past few days, a lot has been made about the extra money for infrastructure spending. What assurances can the Secretary of State give that that extra funding will be spent across all communities in Northern Ireland, especially the rural communities in the west? What can he do to help make sure that that happens?

[James Brokenshire]

The additional funding that has been outlined is for an inclusive Executive to be able to utilise those funds in the best interests of Northern Ireland. That is the most powerful, effective way to deliver on that. That is why I have been using all my time, energy and efforts to see that the Executive are restored. That is absolutely the best way to ensure that the points that the hon. Gentleman rightly makes are seen.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)]

Is it not the case that in September 2015 there was a crisis in the institutions in Northern Ireland—long before any deal between the Conservative party and the DUP was struck? Is it not also the case that this particular crisis started long before any deal between the Conservative party and the DUP was struck?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend highlights the challenges that we have in seeing the Executive restored and the challenges that have emerged over the course of this year. He is right: it is so important that we focus on that task at hand and see that the time available is used so that the Executive are restored and perform in the best interests of Northern Ireland and all communities across Northern Ireland.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

Surely the point is that, given the additional funding for Northern Ireland, the imperative will be on the Executive to reform and deliver for all people there, and to kick-start more private industry there to make the people of Northern Ireland less dependent on the state and to get better receipts back to the UK Treasury.

[James Brokenshire]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend, who makes such an important point about the real opportunity that there is for Northern Ireland. We want to see jobs, growth and prosperity—to see investment in infrastructure and that enterprise-driven economy. There is that opportunity here, and we as a Government want it to be seized and to see Northern Ireland continue to move forward.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I wish the Secretary of State well in his efforts in the coming days to restore the Executive to Northern Ireland. For our part, we are absolutely committed to getting the Executive up and running again. We did not collapse the Executive and we are not setting any red lines or preconditions for a reformation. Will he be assured that our focus is on ensuring that money for infrastructure, health, education and the rest of it is spent equally and fairly across Northern Ireland, as has been our record in office over the past 10 years in the Northern Ireland Executive?

[James Brokenshire]

I very much welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s statement of his party’s determination to see an Executive restored and, equally, that funds made available are seen across the whole community. This is about infrastructure, including investment in the digital infrastructure that provides the mechanism for prosperity to continue to grow in Northern Ireland.

[Nigel Dodds]

On the issue of rigorous impartiality, of course we are committed to the agreements that we have entered into, as are Her Majesty’s Government. I particularly welcome the statement in the policy agreement that

“the Conservative Party will never be neutral in expressing its support for the Union”,

and that it

“will never countenance any constitutional arrangements that are incompatible with the consent principle.”

We are united on the great principle that we want to strengthen the United Kingdom, and the Secretary of State will have our full support in measures to achieve that.

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman is right that we will never be neutral in our support for the Union. The Government are proud to take that approach. Equally, we uphold the principles of those agreements, particularly the principle of consent, which has underlined and underpinned the activities of Governments over so many years. It is about the rightful balance between support for the Union and, equally, upholding the principle of consent.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

12. I have seen the troubles at first hand, so I know that the peace process has been integral to progress since then. I very much welcome the agreement with our friends in the Democratic Unionist party, but what more can the Government do to reassure all the people of Northern Ireland that the agreement will not jeopardise this process? That is the chief concern at the moment.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and important point. This agreement underlines our steadfast commitment to the Belfast agreement and its successors. Indeed, I have been working with all major parties in the Executive in recent days to see the restoration of that Executive—one of the key bodies under the Good Friday agreement. That remains such an important outcome to achieve.

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is clear that other parties in Northern Ireland have serious concerns about the Good Friday agreement as a result of the deal that the UK Government have done with the DUP. What guarantees can the Secretary of State offer that the confidence and supply agreement does not threaten the impartiality of the UK Government? What assurances can he give us that the Prime Minister’s reliance on DUP votes to remain in power does not compromise his position? Finally, given the sword of Damocles clause—offering support on a case-by-case basis— how can any of us be sure that the UK Government will not be compromised when it suits the DUP?

[James Brokenshire]

The agreement relates to what happens here at Westminster. I am not part of those discussions or the envisaged committee, but there are important reasons for the role I play in Northern Ireland. The hon. Lady makes various assertions and characterisations. It is worth underlining that I have been working closely with the Irish Government in recent days as part of the restoration of the Executive, and they noted in their response that they welcomed the British Government’s commitment to

“govern in the interests of all parts of the community in Northern Ireland.”

That principle will guide our actions.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

Notwithstanding the commitment to parity in the Good Friday agreement, does my right hon. Friend agree that the military covenant needs to be applied throughout the country, regardless of where servicemen and women live?

[James Brokenshire]

I do uphold the military covenant. The Conservative party has made great strides in rolling it out across the UK, and the Government remain committed to that. We will work with the Executive and all the parties so that the benefit of the military covenant is felt in all parts of the UK.

[Owen Smith (Pontypridd) (Lab)]

May I begin by paying tribute to Northern Ireland Members from all parties who lost their seats at the election? I pay particular tribute to Mark Durkan, who served this Parliament and Northern Irish politics with such distinction for so long. I also welcome all new Members from Northern Ireland to the House.

I do not doubt for a minute the good faith of the Secretary of State, and I wish him well in trying to bring about the power-sharing Executive, but he must acknowledge that his desire to look impartial has been compromised by the arrangements with the DUP. I would like to know what advice he gave the Prime Minister. Did he tell her that she was making his life that much harder?

[James Brokenshire]

May I welcome the hon. Gentleman to his place? I know the role that he has played previously in Northern Ireland, and I welcome his experience on to the Labour Front Bench. I join him in recognising those who served previously in the House. I pay tribute to his predecessor, Dave Anderson, for the very constructive approach that he took. I would also like to recognise my colleague Kris Hopkins, who, as my Minister, played an extraordinary role. I also recognise my colleague Lord Dunlop.

The hon. Gentleman makes the point about Mark Durkan—another colleague who has served in the House—and it is notable that Mark Durkan is reported as saying that there is nothing in the Good Friday agreement that prevents agreements between parties in Northern Ireland and the Government of the Republic of Ireland or the UK Government. It is the principles of those agreements that we continue to uphold in the actions that we take, and we see nothing inconsistent with the agreement that was reached this week in terms of our actions and the role that we play in Northern Ireland.

[Owen Smith]

I acknowledge all the points the Secretary of State has just made, but he knows from his experience and mine that trust is absolutely vital in Northern Ireland, and there is a danger that that trust between parties and in the Governments will be eroded over time if one party is seen as having the ear of the Government. Transparency is the key to avoiding that, so can he commit that, in addition to being transparent in the initial agreement, all subsequent agreements and all the minutes of the DUP-Tory co-ordination committee will be published so we know exactly what is going on?

[James Brokenshire]

This issue of impartiality, and the principle of working across all communities and with fairness to all communities, is one that we steadfastly uphold. That is why I will continue to work and engage with all parties and, indeed, community groups and sectors across Northern Ireland in the role that I uphold. I think the hon. Gentleman has seen from the actions that we have taken in publishing the confidence and supply agreement and the financial statement that sits alongside it that that transparency has been provided.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

2. What progress has been made on discussions on power sharing in Northern Ireland.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

10. What progress has been made on power-sharing arrangements in Northern Ireland.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (James Brokenshire)]

The overriding priority for the UK Government in Northern Ireland remains the restoration of devolved power-sharing government in Stormont. The UK Government are working with the main Northern Ireland parties and, in accordance with the well-established three-stranded approach, the Irish Government to restore a fully functioning inclusive Executive and Assembly. But time is short. I would urge all concerned to use the narrow window that remains to look beyond their differences and to see that an Executive is formed.

[Mr Wragg]

Like many Members, I have been assisting constituents who are former members of Her Majesty’s armed forces and who served in Northern Ireland with distinction during the troubles. Will my right hon. Friend tell the House the extent to which disagreement over reforming the unfair legacy case process is a sticking point in restoring power sharing?

[James Brokenshire]

I think that there is a growing consensus that the next stage needs to be the publication of a consultation around the Stormont House agreement bodies, which are founded on the principle of fairness and proportionality, and it is that that has come through from the discussions that we have had.

[Victoria Prentis]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that any return to direct rule in Northern Ireland would be a huge backward step and that devolution is really the only good way forward?

[James Brokenshire]

I do agree with the comments of my hon. Friend. An Executive—an inclusive Executive—acting in the best interests of Northern Ireland is profoundly what Northern Ireland needs and what the people voted for, and that is where our focus must lie.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

The Secretary of State will be aware that the armed forces covenant has been the subject of talks in Northern Ireland because of the lack of full implementation. Does he agree that the party blocking that implementation talks a lot about rights and respect? It needs to do the right thing and stop being a barrier to the support that the veterans in Northern Ireland need.

[James Brokenshire]

May I welcome the hon. Lady to her position? I am sure that the experience she has—over legacy, and over so many parts of Northern Ireland—will enrich the debate in the House.

We obviously stand by our commitments in relation to the military covenant—wanting to see that felt in all parts of the UK—and we look forward to working with all parties and all communities across Northern Ireland and the UK to see that that happens.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that the vast majority of the public in Northern Ireland are very interested to see who actually pays and funds the political parties in Northern Ireland? As part of his ongoing discussions, will he therefore have the courage of his convictions and make sure that there is an end to the anonymity of political donations in Northern Ireland?

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point, which she has made on a number of occasions in the House. I think she will have seen the commitment in my party’s manifesto over the transparency of political donations. I look forward to moving ahead and seeing that that is actually implemented.

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

13. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that the disgraceful treatment of my constituent, Major Dennis Hutchings, and other ex-service personnel will continue to be an important element of his discussions?

[James Brokenshire]

I recognise the way in which my hon. Friend has championed the cause of her constituent. I know she will appreciate that there are legal proceedings outstanding that mean that I cannot comment in detail, but I hope she appreciates the Government’s desire to see fair, balanced and proportionate mechanisms put in place for dealing with the issues of the past.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

May I associate myself with the generous comments the Secretary of State made about Kris Hopkins, who is a good and decent man? I welcome the Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), my seventh opponent, to the Government Dispatch Box. Unlike all her predecessors, she lacks a little close combat experience, except, of course, from her time in the Whips Office.

We all hope that there is a re-establishment of the Executive tomorrow, but should that not happen, Ministers must obviously be undertaking some contingency planning. What structures would they like to see in place to ensure impartiality in the disbursement of the additional money?

[James Brokenshire]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments about Kris Hopkins, who served in the House with distinction, including in the role that he played in the Northern Ireland Office.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that our focus is on seeing that an Executive is restored. I have been clear on not wanting to pre-empt what may happen should that not be the case. Obviously, there would be profound and serious implications in that context. I can assure him that we will work with all parties, and indeed have discussions with his party and others across the House, to see that these issues are considered very carefully, but our focus—

[Mr Speaker]

I am very grateful. Mr Ranil Jayawardena.

[Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the security situation in Northern Ireland.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chloe Smith)]

The terrorist threat level in Northern Ireland remains unchanged at “severe”—namely, an attack is highly likely. The need for vigilance remains, and I pay tribute to the brave men and women who work to keep communities safe. They will always have this Government’s fullest support.

[Mr Jayawardena]

Last December, the Secretary of State assured me in the Chamber that he would be unswerving and unstinting in underlining the huge contribution of our armed forces, so will the Minister join me in welcoming the commitment in our manifesto that the bodies envisaged in the Stormont House agreement will be fair, balanced and proportionate to former soldiers?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I do reiterate that commitment in our manifesto. We continue to focus on implementing the Stormont House agreement and creating new bodies that will be fair, balanced and proportionate. The next phase, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has outlined, is to consult publicly on the detail of those bodies’ workings.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

As the Member of Parliament in the west of the Province who takes his seat, may I ask the Minister whether she is aware of the fact that security has been getting worse in the west of Northern Ireland, particularly the north-west? Will she review the problems associated with the bomb disposal team in getting them to the places where problems have occurred?

[Chloe Smith]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s experience in this area and would be more than delighted to meet him to hear more about his specific concerns. As a new Minister, I have endeavoured to be in touch straight away with all the Northern Ireland MPs and those in the House with an interest. We must be vigilant, as I said earlier, and I look forward to further detail from him.

[Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)]

Will the Minister ensure that she and the Secretary of State play a full part in the Government’s forthcoming review of counter-terrorism strategy to reflect the lethal nature of the domestic terrorism threat in Norther Ireland? [Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

There is far too much noise and too many private conversations taking place in the Chamber. There has been extensive interest in all parts of the House in Northern Ireland in recent weeks; there ought to be interest in these matters being treated of in the Chamber today.

[Chloe Smith]

The short answer is yes. Both I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will endeavour to ensure that security is at the forefront of all that we do.

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The Minister will know that many terrorists have been brought back to Northern Ireland to face justice under the European arrest warrant. Will she commit today from the Dispatch Box that this Government will keep that arrest warrant post-Brexit?

[Chloe Smith]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that all such matters are for negotiation and are in the hands of my right hon. Friend the Brexit Secretary. We enjoy strong working relationships with our counterparts in the Irish Government. We intend to continue that, in the service of all the communities of Northern Ireland.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

4. What assessment he has made of the implications of exiting the EU for the free movement of people between Northern Ireland and the (a) Republic of Ireland and (b) rest of the UK.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (James Brokenshire)]

The Government want to protect the ability to move freely between the UK and Ireland, which is an essential part of economic integration and daily community life. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister confirmed in this House last November, there will be no change, alteration or impediment to movement within the UK.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The simplest way to ensure that free movement continues unimpeded across these islands is to accept that there will in reality be no increased border checks or in-country controls on EU nationals after Brexit—any controls occurring in-country. That is what the Home Secretary has previously suggested. Will the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland confirm that that remains the Government’s thinking?

[James Brokenshire]

We want to maintain the common travel area, which has served us so well over so many decades. Equally, we want to work with the Irish Government to ensure that the external border is upheld and strengthened. That remains our focus.

[Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to ensure that there is no hard border with the Republic of Ireland after the UK leaves the EU.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chloe Smith)]

My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made clear in her letter to Donald Tusk that we want to avoid a return to a hard border—nobody wishes to return to the border of the old days— and to maintain the common travel area. That desire is shared with the Republic of Ireland and the European Union, and we shall work tirelessly to achieve it.

[Gareth Johnson]

Northern Ireland is as much part of the United Kingdom as Dartford, but does the Minister agree that, given Northern Ireland’s unique situation, it is essential that there is a frictionless border between it and the Republic, without ever compromising the security of the whole of the United Kingdom?

[Chloe Smith]

Yes, I do agree. We all want to see people and goods moving as freely as possible across the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, in the service of a strong economy for those who need it.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

Mindful of the worryingly high levels of radicalisation of people in the Republic of Ireland, what assurances can the Minister give DUP Members that the soft border that is important for trade will not become an unsafe border in terms of security?

[Chloe Smith]

I value the strong working relationship between this country and the Republic of Ireland, which will allow us to focus on the issue raised by the hon. Gentleman. We need to preserve the common travel area and to maintain tariff-free trade with Europe. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

[Mr Speaker]

The Minister has never been more popular.

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

7. What recent progress has been made on developing Northern Ireland's economy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Chloe Smith)]

The fundamentals of the Northern Ireland economy are strong, with growth last year at 1.6%. Unemployment has fallen and employment has risen, but there is much more we must do.

[Jeremy Quin]

I welcome the additional investment in Northern Ireland’s economy, to address structural weaknesses. May I urge the Government to reinforce their efforts to secure private sector and foreign direct investment?

[Chloe Smith]

I assure my hon. Friend that we will continue to do that, using our relationships across the globe. It is clear that, despite the progress made in recent years, special circumstances still apply to Northern Ireland. We want a strong economy for all communities there.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The industrial strategy and the national shipbuilding strategy give two key opportunities for the Minister and this Government to assist in building and growing the Northern Ireland economy. Will she facilitate discussions with us and Ministry of Defence colleagues so that we can advance those golden opportunities for our Province?

[Chloe Smith]

I will be happy to do so.

[Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)]

Under the terms of the Azores agreement and legislation passed through this House, only a devolved Administration can use their powers to reduce corporation tax, which would have an overwhelming beneficial impact on every citizen in Northern Ireland. Can the Minister guarantee that that will be raised in the talks over the next two days?

[Chloe Smith]

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will do everything he can to ensure that those talks come to a successful conclusion. The point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Shropshire (Mr Paterson) simply underlines the need to make the reaching of that agreement a priority.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

8. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on the peace process of an agreement on confidence and supply between the Government and the Democratic Unionist party.

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

9. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on the peace process of an agreement on confidence and supply between the Government and the Democratic Unionist party.

[The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (James Brokenshire)]

This agreement provides stability at a vital time for our country and is in the interests of all of the United Kingdom, including Northern Ireland. It in no way changes the UK Government’s commitment to the Belfast agreement and its successors.

[Alison Thewliss]

We are now in the slightly odd position that each DUP Member is worth more than Ronaldo: I do not know what that says about their footballing skills. Does the Secretary of State agree with Jonathan Powell that it is now impossible for the UK Government to be even-handed in Northern Ireland?

[James Brokenshire]

No, I do not.

[Patricia Gibson]

Can the Secretary of State not see that the UK Government’s credibility with the other constituent parts of the United Kingdom has been destroyed following the £1.5 billion bribe for Northern Ireland, subverting the Barnett rules, as the price of staying in office?

[James Brokenshire]

No, I cannot.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

14. Will the Minister join me in welcoming the Government’s commitment to use our high commissions and embassies to promote Northern Ireland as a place to do business, to ensure that Northern Ireland is fully included in any UK-wide initiative to boost exports and prosperity?

[James Brokenshire]

I strongly support the point that my hon. Friend makes. Northern Ireland is a great place to do business and as a Government we will continue to support that in all ways that we can—and in all other parts of the UK.

The Prime Minister was asked--

[Mrs Sheryll Murray (South East Cornwall) (Con)]

Q1. If she will list her official engagements for Wednesday 28 June.

[The Prime Minister (Mrs Theresa May)]

The House will be aware that today the Crown Prosecution Service announced charging decisions in relation to Hillsborough. I know from working closely with the families when I was Home Secretary that this will be a day of mixed emotions for them. The House will understand that I cannot say anything further on matters that are now subject to criminal prosecution.

This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I will have further such meetings later today.

[Mrs Murray]

Over the past months I have had swastikas carved into posters; social media posts such as “Burn the witch” and “Stab the c***”; people putting Labour party posters on my home, photographing them and pushing them through my letterbox; and even someone urinating on my office door—hardly kinder, gentler politics. Can my right hon. Friend suggest what can be done to stop such intimidation, which may well put off good people from serving in this place?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue and she was not the only person to experience such intimidation during the election campaign. This sort of intimidation was experienced—I am sorry to say—by female candidates in particular. I believe that such behaviour has no place in our democracy. She is right: it could put good people off serving in this House. We want more people to become engaged and to want to stand for election to this House. As I stand here and see the plaque dedicated to the late Jo Cox, I think we should all remember what Jo said, that

“we are far more united and have far more in common”—[Official Report, 3 June 2015; Vol. 596, c. 675.]

—with each other than the things that divide us.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I welcome the announcement by the Crown Prosecution Service this morning that it will prosecute six people in relation to Hillsborough. The prosecution, the inquiry and this development happened only because of the incredible work done by the Hillsborough Justice Campaign, Andy Burnham, Steve Rotheram and other colleagues. We should pay tribute to all those who spent a great deal of time trying to ensure justice for those who died at Hillsborough.

Seventy-nine people died in Grenfell Tower. Our thoughts are with the families and friends of those who have died, those still unaccounted for and those who will live with the trauma of this horrific and utterly avoidable tragedy for the rest of their lives. Last Thursday, the Prime Minister said she expected to appoint a judge to chair the inquiry within the next few days. We have not had any further news on that. Will she now update the House on when an appointment will be made, and what will be the timetable for the inquiry?

[The Prime Minister]

There have been many years of waiting for the Hillsborough families and the different groups who came together, not just the Hillsborough Justice Campaign. The work done by Margaret Aspinall and others has been absolutely exemplary. As I said, today will be a day of really mixed emotions for them, but we all welcome the fact that charging decisions have been taken. That is an important step forward.

The right hon. Gentleman asked me for an update on Grenfell Tower. If I may, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on a number of aspects. We all know what an unimaginable tragedy this was, and our thoughts will continue to be with all those affected by it. As of this morning, the cladding from 120 tower blocks across the country, in 37 local authority areas, has been tested and has failed the combustibility test. Given the 100% failure rate, we are very clear with local authorities and housing associations that they should not wait for test results; they should get on with the job of the fire safety checks—indeed, they are doing that—and take any action necessary. The Government will support them in doing that. The Communities Secretary has set up an independent expert advisory panel to advise on the measures that need to be taken. The panel is meeting this week.

On the housing offer, 282 good quality temporary properties have been identified, 132 families have had their needs assessed and 65 offers of temporary accommodation have already been made to families. The payments from the discretionary fund we have made available continue. As of this morning, nearly £1.25 million of payments have been made. In addition, we are giving an extra £1 million to the local consortia of charities, trusts and foundations that have been doing such important work.

On the public inquiry, I expect us to be able to name a judge soon. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, the process is that the Lord Chief Justice recommends the name of a judge. We want to ensure that, as the process goes forward for that inquiry, the survivors and the families concerned are involved. That is the work we are currently doing.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the Prime Minister for that answer, but I hope she is able to stick to her promise of everyone being rehoused within three weeks. At the moment, it does not look anything like that target will be achieved. I hope she understands the fear that so many people have living in tower blocks at the present time all around the country. In 2014, the all-party fire and safety group wrote to the Department for Communities and Local Government, warning:

“Today’s buildings have a much higher content of readily available combustible material”.

There have been contradictory messages from the Government. Can the Prime Minister give a categorical answer: is cladding with a combustible core, such as polyethylene, legal for use on high-rise buildings, and was the cladding on Grenfell Tower legal?

[The Prime Minister]

The building regulations identified the cladding that is compatible with the building regulations and that which is non-compliant. My understanding is that this cladding was not compliant with the building regulations. This raises wider issues, as the House will recognise. It is important that we are careful in how we talk about this. A criminal investigation is taking place, and it is important that we allow the police to conduct that criminal investigation and to take the decisions they need to take.

There is a much wider issue here, as we have seen from the number of buildings where the cladding, from the samples already sent in by local authorities and housing associations, has failed the combustibility test. This is a much wider issue, with cladding having been put into buildings for decades. There are real questions as to how this has happened, why it has happened, and how we can ensure it does not happen in future. That is why I am clear that in addition to the inquiry that needs to identify the specific issues for Grenfell Tower—what happened in relation to Grenfell Tower and who was responsible—we will also need to look much more widely at why it is that over decades, under different Governments and under different councils, material has been put up on tower blocks that is non-compliant with the building regulations. There is a very wide issue here. We need to make sure we get to the bottom of it and that is what we are going to do.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Last Thursday the Prime Minister told my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds Central (Hilary Benn) that she would make the results of the Grenfell Tower cladding testing public within 48 hours, and I am not sure she has actually done that with her statement today. As of yesterday—the Prime Minister has just confirmed this—120 high-rise blocks across Britain have had fire safety tests and failed them. What timetable has the Prime Minister set for such tests to be completed, including on schools and hospitals, in every part of the country? What plans does she have to compel the testing of high rise buildings such as private sector office blocks and hotels, which may also have combustible cladding material on them?

[The Prime Minister]

What I said last week in the statement is that my understanding is that the police were going to make a statement about the cladding material within 48 hours, and I think the police then did make a statement about the position. In relation to the tests, my message is a very simple one. As I said in my answer to the right hon. Gentleman’s first question, what we are saying to people is that this is not a question of waiting for the tests: do not wait until you have a sample in and you know the result of the test; so far, 100% of the samples that have come in have proved to be combustible, so work on the assumption that you should be doing the fire safety checks now. That is what we are telling people to do. We know that parts of the private sector are also doing their work on fire safety checks, but my response to all those who have buildings that are covered by this is: do the fire safety checks with the fire service, take any measures that are necessary to ensure fire safety and the Government will support you in doing that.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Since 2010, only a third of new schools have had sprinkler systems installed, so parents are rightly concerned about the safety of their children. In 2013, the Lakanal House coroner’s letter formally recommended that the Government encourage providers of housing and high-rise residential buildings to consider retrofitting sprinklers. Two years later, Inside Housing reported that only 1% of council tower blocks had sprinklers fitted. Can the Prime Minister let us know what the Government actually did to encourage retrofitting during the past four years?

[The Prime Minister]

The Government did indeed ensure that those local authorities were aware of the recommendation that came from the coroner and they did act on that recommendation. However, if we look at what has happened and the identification of the issues in a number of tower blocks so far, there are various issues that lead to concern about fire safety. If we look at what has happened in Camden, for example, where one of the five blocks was considered to be habitable but four were not, that was not just because of the cladding; it was because of other issues, in relation, for example, to the gas riser.

All these issues raise wider questions about the inspections that have taken place and about residents’ complaints and residents’ voices not being heard. That is an issue that has been raised at Grenfell Tower and it has also been raised in Camden. This is a much wider question. A terrible tragedy took place. People lost their lives who should never have lost their lives. We need to look at what has happened over decades in this country that has led to this position, and that is exactly what we will do.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

There have been two coroner’s reports. Building regulations have not been overhauled and local authorities, while asked to act on them, have had their budgets cut by 40% during the same period. Under the Prime Minister’s predecessor, fire safety audits and inspections were cut by a quarter and fire authority budgets were cut by a quarter. Can the Prime Minister give an assurance to the House that the further 20% cuts to the fire service planned by 2020 will now be halted?

[The Prime Minister]

I think that, in his reference to the building regulations, the right hon. Gentleman missed part of the point. It is not just a question of what laws we have; it is a question of how they are being applied. That is the issue. We have building regulations about compliant materials. The question is, why, despite that, have we seen, in local authority area after local authority area, materials being put up that appear not to comply with those building regulations? That is what we need to get to the bottom of. Why is it that fire inspections and local authority inspections appear to have missed that essential issue?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I think I can help the Prime Minister with that issue. When you cut local authority expenditure by 40%, you end up with fewer building control inspectors—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. It is pretty bad when people shout. For someone sitting right by the Speaker’s Chair to shout displays, let us say, a lack of wisdom, which should not be repeated. [Interruption.] Order. Every Member in the Chamber must and will be heard, however long the session has to run.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I was simply making the point—which seems to have upset a lot of Conservative Members—that when you cut local authority budgets by 40%, we all pay a price in public safety. Fewer inspectors—fewer building control inspectors and fewer planning inspectors—and we all pay a price. Moreover, those cuts in the fire service have meant that there are 11,000 fewer firefighters, and the public sector pay cap is hitting recruitment and retention throughout the public sector.

What the tragedy of Grenfell Tower has exposed are the disastrous effects of austerity, a disregard for working-class communities, and the terrible consequences of deregulation and cutting corners. I urge the Prime Minister to come up with the resources that are needed to test and remove cladding, retrofit sprinklers, and properly fund the fire service and police so that all our communities can truly feel safe in their own homes. This disaster must be a wake-up call.

[The Prime Minister]

The cladding of tower blocks did not start under this Government. It did not start under the previous coalition Government. The cladding of tower blocks began under the Blair Government.

The right hon. Gentleman talks about local authority resources, and about changes in regulation. In 2005, it was a Labour Government who introduced the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order, which transferred the requirement to inspect a building on fire safety grounds from the local fire authority, which was usually the fire brigade, to a “responsible person”. The legislation governing fire safety in tower blocks—and this was commented on in the report on the Lakanal House fire; it criticised that 2005 order, which had been put in place by the Labour Government—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Prime Minister’s answer must be heard, and it will be.

[The Prime Minister]

Laws that took effect in 2006 ended the practice of routine fire service inspections, passing the responsibility to councils. That is why I say to the right hon. Gentleman that we should recognise, across the House, that this is a matter that has been developing over decades, and has occurred under Governments of both colours and councils of all political persuasions. I hope we will say that we should come together and ensure that we get to the answers to the questions about why this has happened over many years, what has gone wrong, and how we can stop it happening in the future.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Understandably, on this most solemn and sensitive of matters, the Front-Bench exchanges have, perhaps inevitably and perhaps rightly, been very comprehensive. I am now keen that all Back Benchers scheduled to take part should have the opportunity to do so.

[Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)]

Q2. Businesses in my constituency share the Prime Minister’s desire to provide certainty for trade arrangements in the years immediately following our exit from the EU. Can she confirm that any transitional arrangements will be for a strictly limited period and that any suggestion of ever-retreating deadlines or a perpetual status quo would fall short of honouring the decision made by the people of this country to leave the EU?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. For very practical reasons, when we know what the future relationship will be, we may need implementation periods—we made that point in our article 50 letter—to ensure that the practical arrangements can be put in place for that new relationship. But I am very clear that this does not mean an unlimited transitional phase. We are going to leave the European Union. That is what people wanted and that is what we will deliver.

[Ian Blackford (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (SNP)]

I welcome the announcement of the prosecutions on Hillsborough, and I congratulate the families and all those involved in the many years of campaigning to achieve justice.

The Scottish Secretary insisted that Scotland would see increased funding if the Democratic Unionist party secured money for Northern Ireland as part of a confidence and supply deal. He insisted:

“I’m not going to agree to anything that could be construed as back-door funding to Northern Ireland.”

Did the Prime Minister receive any representations from her Scottish Secretary about the DUP deal, either before or after it was signed?

[The Prime Minister]

When we look at what has happened in terms of funding for the rest of the United Kingdom, we see that in the autumn statement last year, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set aside an infrastructure fund of £23 billion. We are putting more money into our NHS and more money into our schools. And of course there is an impact on Scotland as a result of that autumn statement: £800 million extra spending is going to Scotland and, as a result of the Budget, £350 million extra is going to Scotland. I do not remember, when that money for Scotland was announced, the hon. Gentleman complaining that more money should be going to Northern Ireland—but then of course, he is a nationalist and not a Unionist.

[Ian Blackford]

The Prime Minister’s failure to give a straight answer to that question speaks volumes—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Let’s hear the fellow!

[Ian Blackford]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Prime Minister’s failure to give a straight answer to that question speaks volumes and has succeeded only in piling more pressure on the Scottish Secretary, whose position now looks less secure with every day that passes—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman’s question—I think he is reaching his peroration—must be heard.

[Ian Blackford]

I will give the Prime Minister one more opportunity: did she receive any representations about the DUP deal from the Secretary of State for Scotland-yes or no?

[The Prime Minister]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that I regularly receive representations from the Secretary of State for Scotland about matters relating to Scotland, including regular representations pointing out that if the Scottish nationalists actually had the interests of Scotland at heart, they would want to remain part of the United Kingdom.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Q9. Given that rail passengers in my constituency are once again facing rail misery with an overtime ban and strike action looming, does the Prime Minister agree that the only way to end the 18 months of rail misery for my constituents and for all passengers on Southern rail is for the unions to stop their strike and get back round the table to resolve this once and for all?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Southern rail passengers have been experiencing unacceptable delays and disruption to their service. An expert report has found that the main cause of widespread disruption was union action, so I say, “For the sake of the passengers, get around the table and solve this dispute.”

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Q3. May I thank the Prime Minister for coming to my constituency during the general election campaign and for making her widely welcomed U-turn on the dementia tax? May I invite her back to Wrexham to make another announcement, reversing her appalling cuts to police budgets, which my constituents want to see the back of?

[The Prime Minister]

We are protecting police budgets—[Interruption.] Yes. But we are of course making reforms to policing. That is why I introduced the National Crime Agency to deal with serious and organised crime, which actually relates to crime on the streets. That is why we have put money into a new national cybercrime unit to ensure that the police can deal with the new sorts of crimes they are having to deal with. Yes, we are reforming policing, but the key thing is not the number of police on the streets; the key thing is what happens to crime, and crime has fallen to a record low.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Q12. The Grenfell Tower tragedy shocked so many of us because we all believe that there is much that should never have happened. However, to claim ahead of any inquiry, as an Opposition Front Bencher did, that residents were “murdered” by politicians is grotesquely inappropriate. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that our Government will get on with helping to rebuild lives and homes and with progressing critical inquiries with urgency and, above all, non-partisan calm?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a very important point. What all of those affected by Grenfell Tower deserve is an inquiry that gets to the truth and provides them with the truth and with the knowledge of who was responsible. We need to do that in a careful, calm and determined way. We also need to use that same calm determination to ensure that we get to the bottom of the wider issue of why materials that have been used in tower blocks around the country appear to be non-compliant with the building regulations. There are real issues here. We are not going to get to the truth by pointing fingers, but we will by calm determination.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Q4. On the deal that the Prime Minister has done with the DUP, is it true that, on the one hand, she is shelling out all this extra money to secure its support while, on the other hand, she is still giving it taxpayers’ cash in the form of Short money to be in opposition? Is that what we get from this Prime Minister: no pay rise for the nurses, but a double bubble for her friends in the DUP?

[The Prime Minister]

Let us be clear about what the Government have done in the agreement with the Democratic Unionist party. As a result of the election, no party had a majority in this House—[Interruption.] Yes. The party with the largest number of seats and the only party that can form an effective Government is the Conservative party. That is the right thing to do, and that is what we have done.

[Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)]

Q13. Does the Prime Minister share my concern that 50,000 people were stopped at the controls in Calais last year? That is 150 people every single day, which underlines the fact that we should keep the controls in place. Will she consider the case for investing more in state-of-the-art technology and in more border officers, so that we can win the war against the people traffickers and keep our borders safe and secure?

[The Prime Minister]

Our Border Force officers are doing an excellent job at the juxtaposed controls and the work they do in his constituency, in particular the work to stop illegal immigrants and human traffickers. We have been investing in the system capabilities, with £108 million invested in new technology in the past two years and with a further £71 million earmarked for that in this current financial year. Of course, there are particular pressures on Dover, which is why we have also invested more money to maintain security there and to ensure that the Calais camp remains closed. We are also making efforts upstream to ensure that we reduce the number of people who are trying get to the United Kingdom illegally. The Department for International Development is now putting extra focus on the central Mediterranean route, and, as I announced last week, an extra £75 million is going towards humanitarian support there.

[Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)]

Q5. I know the Prime Minister is well aware of the misery and suffering caused by reckless gambling. Following her own recent experience and the turmoil it has caused to her friends and colleagues, will she now commit to legislating on fixed odds betting terminals, the cause of so much hardship across our communities?

[The Prime Minister]

As the hon. Lady knows, a consultation was undertaken on that particular issue, which the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is considering. It will announce a response in due course.

[Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)]

In Fareham 63% of voters chose the Conservatives, a share of the vote not seen since 1935. Will my right hon. Friend join me in reminding the Chamber that this side won the election and the other side lost? Will she join me in thanking the good people of Fareham for placing their trust in the Conservatives and reassuring them that she is the best person to deliver a prosperity-led and successful Brexit?

[The Prime Minister]

I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in thanking the good people of Fareham for re-electing a first-class Member of Parliament to this House to represent them. She is absolutely right, of course, that it was the Conservative party that got the highest percentage share of votes in this election, the Conservative party that got the most seats—56 more seats than the Labour party—and the Conservative party that got more votes. That is why we are an effective Government.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Q6. Will the Prime Minister confirm that, last week, Britain’s four most senior police officers—the commissioner of the Met and the heads of counter-terrorism, the National Crime Agency and the National Police Chiefs Council—all wrote to the Government saying that the counter-terrorism policing and protective security grant is being cut by 7.2%? Does that not show, contrary to what she just told my hon. Friend the Member for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas), that her promise to protect police budgets is not being kept?

[The Prime Minister]

No. As I said earlier, we have protected counter-terrorism policing. We have also put money into an uplift in armed policing. The commissioner of the Metropolitan police has made the point that the Metropolitan police are well resourced and has a wide diversity of tools that it can use in countering terrorism. That is the point. It is not just about the funding; it is about ensuring they have the powers they need to deal with the terrorists—that is what we are determined to ensure.

[Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)]

As the Member for Aldershot, the home of the British Army, I was deeply alarmed to hear of the Leader of the Opposition’s reported announcement at the Glastonbury festival that, if in power, he would abandon Trident and utterly undermine the security and safety of our country. Does my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister agree that it is only her Government and the Conservative party that can provide the safety and security that our great country needs?

[The Prime Minister]

First, I welcome my hon. Friend to his place in this House. I am sure that he is going to be, as was his predecessor, a fine representative of the people of the Aldershot constituency. I join him in saying that I think people were shocked to hear that the Leader of the Opposition, who appears to support Trident in public, in private said that he wanted to scrap it. Only the Conservative party is clear about retaining our nuclear deterrent. In the case of the Leader of the Opposition, it appears that he says one thing to the many and another thing to the few.

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

Q7. After he was fairly defeated by my hon. Friend the Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), this Government have nevertheless seen fit to reward the defeated candidate by giving the unelected Ian Duncan a peerage and a job in the Scotland Office. Instead of this affront to democracy, and in the light of the need for a legislative consent motion at Holyrood, does the Prime Minister not think she should stop treating the Scottish people with contempt, do the right thing and give the Scottish Government a seat at the Brexit negotiations table?

[The Prime Minister]

We have, throughout the time we have had so far on the Brexit issue, been working with and talking to the Scottish Government, and indeed other devolved Administrations, and we will continue to do that. I hope and trust that the nature of the hon. Gentleman’s question means that from now on the Scottish nationalists are going to be focused on issues that matter to Scotland other than independence.

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

Is the Prime Minister aware of the current crisis in Venezuela, and is it an example of how an experiment in socialist revolution can go horribly wrong?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, and I hope the Leader of the Opposition has heard what he had to say. When we are talking about trade deals in the future, I sometimes think that the Leader of the Opposition and his shadow Chancellor think that the only good trade deals are with Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea.

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

Q8. The brave men and women in our emergency services have consistently put the safety of others first, especially in response to the terrible events we have seen in recent months. We all pay tribute to their professionalism, which is why I believe it is important that we give them all the resources they need to do their vital job. It is outrageous that in Scotland the police and fire services are required to pay VAT, which has cost front-line services £35 million—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Mr Cleverly, you are usually the embodiment of calm repose and potential statesmanship —take some sort of tablet, man! Mrs Fellows must be heard.

[Marion Fellows]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I shall repeat what I said. It is outrageous that our police and fire services should pay VAT, when that has cost the front-line services £35 million last year alone. Now that the Prime Minister has found the magic money tree, will she extend the VAT exemption to Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We have got the gist of it.

[The Prime Minister]

When the Scottish Government took the decision to merge Scottish police forces into a single force, Police Scotland, they were told that it would lead to VAT being paid by Police Scotland. They were advised that that was the position and they chose to go ahead with the merger.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Today is the festival saint’s day of St Alban, and his pilgrimage was celebrated on Saturday. What more can be done to protect all persons of faith who are being persecuted for their faith, particularly our students on campuses who are suffering large amounts of anti-Semitism?

[The Prime Minister]

I am happy to recognise St Alban’s day, as my hon. Friend has. She is absolutely right that this is important. Sometimes we talk a lot about people who are being persecuted for their faith in countries abroad, but actually we need to be very clear that, sadly, we do see people here suffering attacks, particularly anti-Semitic ones, on campuses. The Community Security Trust does a lot of work with students to provide support, and I am happy that the Government are supporting them. We are also supporting Muslim communities that are suffering from Islamophobia. There is no place for such hate in our society, and we must all work to stamp it out.

[Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)]

Q10. The current Prime Minister recently visited my constituency. Upon being asked about the precarious situation facing both Dewsbury and District hospital and Huddersfield royal infirmary, she stated that people were “scare-mongering”. Will she therefore use this opportunity today to reassure my constituents that all services will be retained at both hospitals, including full accident and emergency provision?

[The Prime Minister]

Yes, I was asked about Dewsbury A&E, and I can confirm that it is not closing. The service will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and the majority of patients will see no change to their service.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

The repeated claim that spending ever increasing amounts of money on overseas aid keeps this country safe has been shown by recent events to be utter nonsense. May I tell the Prime Minister that spending more and more money on overseas aid each year makes us look not compassionate to the public, but idiotic when that money is much needed in the United Kingdom? Will she promise to slash the overseas aid budget and spend it on priorities in the UK? I hope that she does not have a strange political aversion to pursuing any policies that might be popular with the public.

[The Prime Minister]

I can assure my hon. Friend that I do not have that aversion, but on this issue I do take a different view. It is important that, given the position that we hold and the fact that our economy is one of the largest in the world, we recognise that we can help those around the world. We are seeing millions of people, particularly girls, being educated as a result of the action that we are taking. That is important. I recognise what my hon. Friend has said: we have suffered from terrible terrorist attacks here in the United Kingdom, and our services have also foiled a number of terrorist attacks in recent months and years. It is important that we are able to use our aid money to help ensure good governance in countries so that we do not see the creation of spaces where the terrorists are able to train and incite others.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Q11. I must thank the Prime Minister and most of the Cabinet for visiting Ealing during the election, because my majority went up by 50 times. Some 53,000 EU nationals reside in the London borough of Ealing, and they would now like some clarity on this “fair and generous” offer, such as how much extra their settled status applications will cost them and why they will not be able to vote in local elections, as they can now.

[The Prime Minister]

I am grateful that the hon. Lady has described this as a fair and generous offer, as indeed it is a fair and generous offer, ensuring that people can stay here in the United Kingdom and that they will have rights here in the United Kingdom just as UK citizens do.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

A significant number of charities, including those looking after the most vulnerable disabled people in our society, are in fear of imminent closure due to the application of the national living wage to sleep-in shifts and the fact that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs is insisting on six years’ back pay despite the advice changing only last year. Will the Prime Minister ask HMRC to suspend any actions until we can find a workable solution?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has raised a very important issue, and I know that it is one that he particularly cares about. Of course, it is through the national living wage that we are making sure that pay is fair in all sectors, including in social care. On the specific point he has raised, the Department of Health and other relevant Departments are looking at this issue very carefully, because they want to ensure that enforcement protects low-paid workers in a fair and proportionate manner. We have invested more money in social care—as he will know, there was £2 billion extra in the Budget. We do need to look at this issue on a longer-term basis, but I can assure him that Departments are looking carefully at the specific issues that he has raised.

[Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)]

Q14. Does the Prime Minister think, like her Brexit Secretary, that it will be simple to deliver a free trade deal with the European Union?

[The Prime Minister]

The Brexit Secretary and I have both said over the past few months that a comprehensive trade agreement will be not just possible but easier than for other third countries negotiating trade deals, precisely because at the moment we are operating on the same basis as other countries in the European Union. Therefore, we are not negotiating from the same position as Canada and other countries from outside the European Union. So yes, I think we can achieve that comprehensive free trade agreement, and it will be good for the United Kingdom and good for the European Union.

[Ben Bradley (Mansfield) (Con)]

Does the Prime Minister agree that an Opposition leader who claims to be all things to all men and says one thing to remain voters in London and quite the opposite to leave voters in constituencies such as mine is actually no kind of leader at all? Perhaps that might be why voters in my constituency rejected his leadership in the recent election.

[The Prime Minister]

First, I welcome my hon. Friend to his place in this House. I was very pleased to visit his constituency during the election campaign, and he is absolutely right: what people want to know is what the position of the parties is on the question of Brexit. We are very clear that we want to see the country coming together, because we want to deliver on the will of the British people, which was that we should leave the European Union. It is precisely what this Government will do.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q15. I beg the Prime Minister, at this crucial time in our country’s history, to listen to the many friends that we have in Europe and in the rest of the world who fear that we are sleepwalking zombie-like to a disastrous deal with Europe. They have no confidence in the three Ministers in charge of the deal and believe that our country will be deeply damaged, in terms of both our economy and our role in the world, if we do not get our act together.

[The Prime Minister]

Formal Brexit negotiations have now started. There was a very constructive and positive start to those negotiations, with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Commission’s appointed negotiator, Michel Barnier. We have set up three working groups dealing with key issues initially, including citizens’ rights—I am pleased about that—and we have also started a dialogue on the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and that relationship, which is important for Northern Ireland but also for the whole of the United Kingdom. We have set out our objectives. We have published our White Papers. We will be bringing the repeal Bill before this House. We know the plan we have got. The party that does not know what its plan is for Brexit is the hon. Gentleman’s party.

[Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)]

The Prime Minister was crystal clear on Monday that the reciprocal agreements we seek on citizenship should include the people of Gibraltar. On Tuesday, the Spanish Foreign Minister sought yet again to suggest that Spain should have a unilateral veto on that. Will she make it quite clear that this posturing and game-playing is pointless and counterproductive, and that our commitment to Gibraltar is absolute, and perhaps send him a hearing aid?

[The Prime Minister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that issue. This Government’s commitment to Gibraltar has not changed and it will remain.

[Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

Suicide rates in Northern Ireland, particularly in my constituency, and issues of severe mental health are some of the worst in Europe, and indeed the developed world, and clinicians and others have pointed to the legacy of 30 years of terrorism and violence and the awful effects of that. Part of the money that we are investing this week will go to mental health care—extra investment in the health service. Is it not time that people recognised that this is delivery for all the people of Northern Ireland, across all sections of the community, and that it is going to help some of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged people in Northern Ireland? People should get behind it and welcome it.

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend makes a very important point on this. It is the case, as we said in the agreement, that we recognise the particular circumstances of Northern Ireland, which have arisen as a result of Northern Ireland’s history. As he says, there will be mental health issues that arise as a result of that. It is important that we put more into mental health generally across the United Kingdom, which we are doing; yesterday I visited a school in Bristol to see some of the first training that is taking place of teachers in schools to help them identify mental health issues among young people and deal with those. But as he says, that money is for the good of all people in Northern Ireland, across all communities.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I wonder whether the Prime Minister has had an opportunity to see the British attitudes survey published today, which stated that 75% of British people wanted to leave the EU—up 20% from last time. She will, of course, know that more than 80% of the British electorate voted for parties that want to leave the EU. She will also know from her extensive canvassing—and I know personally from mine—that thousands and thousands of people tell us, “The referendum decided the issue. Just get on and leave the EU.” Will she assure the House that she will make that her priority?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. What I have seen across the whole of this country is a real unity of purpose of people. For most people, regardless of how they voted in the referendum, their view is, “The decision has been taken—just deliver it,” and that is what this Government will do.

[Rachel Reeves (Leeds West) (Lab)]

With 9 million people in our country lonely all or most of the time, and given that loneliness is as bad for someone’s health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day, will the Prime Minister join the hon. Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) and me in encouraging Members across the House to attend the event organised by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness in Speaker’s House immediately after Prime Minister’s questions to find out what we can all do in our communities to tackle this blight in our society?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady has raised a very important matter, and I commend her and my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Seema Kennedy) for the work that they have both done as co-chairs of the Jo Cox commission. I indeed encourage hon. Members to do exactly as she has said. She has raised an important issue. We all increasingly recognise the impact that loneliness has on health. We have been able to put some support into the dementia-friendly communities programme, and the Cabinet Office is doing more by putting money in grant funds, particularly to help to tap the skills of volunteers over 50, to look at the issue of loneliness. It is an important issue, and hon. Members should recognise that and the work of the Jo Cox commission.

Point of Order

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lindsay Hoyle (Chorley) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I do not know whether you have been given notice by the Secretary of State for Health of a debate on the introduction of charges for blue badge holders at Chorley and South Ribble hospital, as well as at Royal Preston hospital. That seems to go against everything that we thought—the most vulnerable in society should not be penalised. Have you had any notice of a debate, Mr Speaker?

[Mr Speaker]

I have not, but I have a sense that by one means or another I will hear further about this matter, possibly today, but certainly in subsequent days, very likely on the Floor of the House and possibly also in conversations between colleagues, conceivably outside the Chamber. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman —we will leave it there for now.

Debate on the Address

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[5th Day]

Debate resumed (Order, 27 June).

Question again proposed,

That an Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, as follows:

Most Gracious Sovereign,

We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in Parliament assembled, beg leave to offer our humble thanks to Your Majesty for the Gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament.

Health, Social Care and Security

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I inform the House that I have selected amendment (i) in the name of the Leader of the Opposition.

12:54

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech fails to end cuts to the police and the fire service; commend the response of the emergency services to the recent terrorist attacks and to the Grenfell Tower fire; call on the Government to recruit more police officers and fire-fighters; and further call on the Government to end the public sector pay cap and give the emergency and public services a fair pay rise.”.

On occasion, much of what we do and say in the Chamber must seem to ordinary members of the public looking on like something approaching an elaborate game, but the Opposition believe that the amendment goes to the heart of public concerns. We wish to commend the response of the emergency services to the recent terrorist attacks and to the Grenfell Tower fire; we wish to call on the Government to recruit more police officers and firefighters; but above all, we call on the Government to end the public sector pay cap and give emergency and public service workers a fair pay rise. As we have seen in recent months, in times of national and personal crisis, it is to public sector workers that the country looks.

We have all seen and read about the firefighters who ran towards danger, into the blaze in Grenfell Tower to save lives. Some of us wondered whether we could have summoned up that courage. We all know about the national health service workers who came in off shift to save lives and help the victims of the terror attacks at Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park. We know of the gallantry and professionalism of the police and the transport police who responded swiftly to the terror attacks. My mother was a nurse, and I know that the dedication and commitment of our public service workers is above price. It is one thing for hon. Members to praise public service workers for their bravery, heroism and effectiveness at times of national emergency, but we need to treat public service workers fairly every other day of the year. That is what the Opposition think, and increasingly that is what the general public think.

Ministers will be aware that the latest British social attitudes survey revealed that eight in 10 people wanted more cash pumped into the NHS; seven in 10 people wanted more investment in schools; and six in 10 wanted higher spending on the police. I will come on to Ministers’ claims to have protected police budgets later, but the question that Ministers have to answer is: how long will they continue to peddle hard-line austerity? Their targets for closing the deficit are receding ever further, raising the question of whether savage cuts are counterproductive to encouraging growth. How long are Ministers going to pursue austerity when any parent who has a child at school, anybody who uses an accident and emergency department, and anyone who has an elderly relative in need of social care can see for themselves that cuts have consequences, and that there is a human price to pay for Tory austerity?

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I have much sympathy with the points that the right hon. Lady is making, and my colleagues and I will support the Labour amendment this evening. However, can she explain why in Wales, which is run by the Labour party, the number of firefighters has been cut by 20%?

[Ms Abbott]

It is not for me in this—[Interruption.] I think that the hon. Gentleman will find that the funding available to the Administration in Wales has been cut.

In her statement to the House last week, the Home Secretary said:

“We have protected the police budget from 2015.”

She went on to say:

“There has been a lot of scaremongering about changes to the budget, and I repeat here, in the House, that it will be protected.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 199.]

The Opposition are aware of the Government claim that the allowed increase in the council tax precept adds funds that will make good any shortfall, but this is a tax increase to provide funds, not Government protection for the budget. I wonder whom the Home Secretary is accusing of scaremongering. Is it Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, who said in March that policing in England and Wales was in a “potentially perilous state”, as Government cuts lead to investigations being shelved, vulnerable victims being let down and tens of thousands of dangerous suspects at large?

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way so quickly. What she is saying relates particularly to bobbies on the beat. Police are doing excellent work on knife and gun crime, particularly in hotspots; taking away bobbies on the beat has an undermining effect on otherwise excellent police work.

[Ms Abbott]

The public fully appreciate that community policing and bobbies on the beat are important, not just in respect of knife and gun crime but in providing the first line of connection and communication with the community when it comes to tackling terrorism.

I was wondering who the Home Secretary was accusing of scaremongering. Was it the president of the Police Superintendents Association of England and Wales, who said that

“There are now 34,000 fewer staff working in policing than there were in 2010, including 19,000 fewer police officers”?

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

On the right hon. Lady’s theme, has she heard Cressida Dick, the new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, talk about the need for more resources and say that the Met is stretched? Has she ever heard a Met Commissioner demanding more resources so publicly?

[Ms Abbott]

Government Members can mock, but Londoners are very concerned that within the overall levels of crime, there is rising violent, knife and gun crime. No, I have never heard the Metropolitan police talk so clearly about funding problems.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I need to make some progress.

When the Home Secretary accuses people of scaremongering, she should explain why every stakeholder in policing is saying that there is an increasing problem with Government cuts to policing.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Can my right hon. Friend tell me whether the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who just got up to complain about police cuts, is related to the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton who was in the coalition Cabinet that reduced the number of police officers by 20,000?

[Ms Abbott]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention, and I ask the House to focus on the information he has brought forward.

After seven years of Tory government, there are 20,000 fewer police staff, 10,000 fewer firefighters and 1,000 fewer Border Force guards. When the Conservatives came to office in 2010, they immediately cut Security Service personnel by 650; now they expect plaudits when they pledge an increase.

All ordinary public sector workers have faced pay freezes and pay caps, which have made them worse off. Between the coalition’s coming into office in 2010 and May this year, inflation has seen prices rise by more than 15%. In reality, whatever figures the Government want to throw around, public sector workers have had effective cuts to their pensions and seen large-scale job losses because of inflation. They have been asked to do more with less.

The Opposition say that asking the security services, and public sector workers generally, to do more with less is unfair, unworkable and counter-productive. It has led to low morale, difficulties in recruitment and retention—particularly in parts of the country where house prices are spiralling—staff shortages and gaps in services. Those public services are among the most important that any civilised society offers. In his remarks, my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) will highlight the effect of austerity and Government cuts on our NHS. The cuts in vital services—the police, the fire services, the Border Force and the security services—have been serious, and they come in addition to the cuts that have already forced out more than 20,000 police staff.

I turn to the counter-terrorism strategy. Labour welcomes the considered approach outlined in the Queen’s Speech; too often, the knee-jerk reaction of Governments has been further legislation. We believe that it is right to review what is happening in relation to the evolving terrorist threat and its many and varied sources and purposes, but the terms of the counter-terrorism review are crucial. Labour believes that the following questions must be addressed. Are there sufficient resources and are they properly directed? Are there gaps in the legislation, or is it catch-all and ineffective? What is the role of community policing in gathering intelligence? Sometimes, Ministers seem to think that community policing has no role in combating terrorism, but we believe that it does.

Is there a danger that communities are being alienated by Prevent, although good work is done under the Prevent badge? Should we review Prevent? How can community engagement be increased, and could we immediately take basic precautionary measures, such as installing barriers to cars and trucks? Should terrorism prevention and investigation measures, or TPIMs, be used more frequently, as Max Hill, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says? If so, should they be subject to better due process?

We believe that some of the answers to these questions are self-evident. If the Government announced today that they were going to introduce more barriers to trucks and large vehicles along some major thoroughfares, we would support them. Advice could be issued immediately to all elected officials not to remove existing barriers, as the Foreign Secretary did when he was Mayor of London. If the Government announced that they were going to halt and reverse the police budget cuts this year, we would support them.

The Government have announced a commission to tackle extremism. We welcome such a commission in principle, although some have suggested that it is being set up because the Government cannot make good on their repeated promises to introduce anti-extremism legislation. We note that there are already laws against incitement, conspiracy and murder. We are told that some perpetrators were known to the authorities.

I was at the Finsbury Park mosque with the Prime Minister, and more than one of the faith leaders raised the importance of a review of the Prevent strategy. In common with many members of the communities involved, we believe that, despite the good work that has happened under Prevent, the strategy needs to be reviewed. It needs not to run the risk of alienating communities; we have to work with all communities. The terror threat confronts us all, and we must all confront it together. If the Government want to discuss with us how we can help engage all communities in the fight against our common threat of terrorism, we will be only too happy to help.

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Abbott]

I have to make progress.

When I was at the Finsbury Park mosque last week, people there would have been concerned that Government Members do not want to take part seriously in a debate of this nature. I note that there was no promise of further legislation on counter-terrorism. Max Hill has said that the security services already have enough powers. The Opposition concur, and it now seems that the majority of the Cabinet also agree.

Resources remain the key issue in fighting terrorism. The Conservatives have constantly sought to portray Labour as not facing up to the challenges posed by terrorism, but in our communities—in the inner cities and in areas such as London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Manchester—we face up to the day-to-day threat of terrorism and disorder. Nobody takes those issues more seriously than Members on this side of the House. We speak for our communities, and for the parents concerned that their children may be drawn into terrorist activity. We seek to offer practical remedies and support, and to support the Government in strategies that do not run counter to our liberties and community support.

Talking tough on terrorism and antisocial behaviour is cheap. Like all decent services in a civilised society, security costs money. Records show that since 2010, the Tories have proved unwilling to spend what is necessary to keep us safe. We need only look at what has happened to police numbers and Border Force officials, the closures of fire stations and the cuts to fire officers. Labour is prepared to spend the money and commit the resources to keep us safe. In closing—

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Lady give way? Does she want to have a debate?

[Mr Speaker]

Order. At present, the shadow Home Secretary is manifestly not giving way.

[Ms Abbott]

I said at the beginning that from some of what we do in this House, it might appear to members of the public looking at us on their television screens or reading the newspaper that some Members of this House see this as a game. Labour is fully aware of the fear and horror with which the public regard recent terrorist outrages and the fire in Grenfell Tower. We are talking about practical measures, real community involvement and, above all, the resources to keep our communities safe.

11:30

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Amber Rudd)]

I agree with one thing that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said—that the response from the emergency services to the series of attacks and the tragedy at Grenfell Tower has been truly heroic. The brave men and women of our emergency services were able to suppress their own emotions of fear and anger. As she said, they rushed in to save lives, putting their own thoughts on hold for a while. I had the privilege of meeting the numerous police officers, firefighters and paramedics who were first on the scene in Manchester following the arena bomb, and in London after the Westminster and London Bridge attacks. It is because of their bravery that there are people alive today who might otherwise have perished. The same is true of the Grenfell Tower fire. Lives were saved because of the skills and sacrifice of the brave men and women of our emergency services. We owe them a huge debt of gratitude and we stand behind them.

Nobody thinks of this as a game. We want to engage and debate with the Opposition because there are important subjects to be discussed. We are all serious about what has happened, what could happen in the future and what steps we need to take.

The shadow Home Secretary raised her concerns about cuts to the fire service. Let me remind the House of some facts. The fire crew at Grenfell Tower was on the scene within six minutes, and more than 200 firefighters responded. Can she really suggest that numbers were inexcusably low? We should also remember that the number of fire incidents has halved in the past decade, but the number of firefighters has fallen by less than 20%. They do an incredibly good job.

The Government do not recruit fire or police staff; chief officers do. It is up to each fire and rescue authority to manage their resources, and to decide who to recruit and when. In fact, some fire and rescue services are reporting an increase in the recruitment of full-time firefighters. Public safety is an absolute priority for the Government. Under my watch, fire and rescue services and the police will continue to have the resources they need to do their important work.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Amber Rudd]

I will give way in a moment. I just want to address the clear points that the right hon. Lady made about resources.

Let us talk about the police. Since 2015, we have protected the police budget in cash terms. In order to maintain that, it is correct that chief officers have to maximise their access through the precept. To be able to say that we protect it in real terms, I have to draw attention to the police transformation fund. One of the differences between the Conservatives and Labour is that we know that we have to focus on outcomes. That means continuing the business of police reform and continuing to fund it through the police transformation fund. We are most concerned with outcomes—on how to get the best results for victims and communities.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State is of course right to talk about police reform, which is extremely important, but it misrepresents the Labour party to say that we are not interested in police reform. We introduced police community support officers when we were in government, and there was a constant period of reform then. The real point is that the Conservative party have cut budgets not since 2015, but since 2010. There has been a massive cut to the police budget, which is affecting my constituents in Wrexham.

[Amber Rudd]

I am delighted to have the hon. Gentleman’s support on police reform, which will continue. He is right that there were cuts between 2010 and 2015 but, as always, we must look at the outcomes. Crime fell by a third during that period.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary confirm that the Commissioner of the Metropolitan police, the head of counter-terrorism, the head of the National Crime Agency and the chair of the National Police Chiefs Council have written to her saying that the counter-terrorism, policing and protective security grant will fall by 7.2% in cash terms over the next two years?

[Amber Rudd]

I have received that letter and I will be speaking to all the individual leaders of those groups. The issue to which they are drawing attention is that they are under tremendous strain because of the events of the past three months. Additional resources are being deployed in order to work on the ongoing investigations into some of the terror events, including the investigation in Manchester. We recognise that and will work with them to see how we can support them.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State mentioned that there were 20% cuts to fire services across the country. On Merseyside, the figure is much higher. Since 2011, we have lost nearly 300 firefighters —that is a loss of 31%—and a third of fire engines. Both of the only two fire stations in my constituency are closing, which will make the situation less safe for my constituents. Will she look again at the funding for Merseyside fire and rescue service as a matter of urgency?

[Amber Rudd]

I would ask the hon. Lady: what are the outcomes in her constituency? What is the level of incidents of fire in her constituency? What work are those bodies doing? I would ask her to first look at the outcomes before coming back for more resources.

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is presumably not wholly taken in by the shadow Home Secretary posturing as a defender of people’s safety, when, in 1989, she—now famously—signed an early-day motion calling for the scrapping of MI5 and the Metropolitan police’s special branch.

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend raises such an important point. It is a sad truth that those on the Opposition Front Bench—not those on the Back Benches, but sometimes those on the Front Bench—have such a poor record on supporting the people who do such great work to keep us safe.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Amber Rudd]

I will make some progress first, and then I will come back to some interventions.

The Gracious Speech is about building on the Government’s strong economic record so that we can continue to invest in our priorities, such as the NHS and national security. Conservative Members know that it is only with a strong economy that we can fund our NHS, protect our elderly and back Britain’s defences.

The Gracious Speech we heard last Wednesday set out the Government’s legislative agenda for the next two years. It is a programme that will build on our strong record of achievement under the last Government. Crime has fallen by a third since 2010. Legal highs have been banned. More than 900 bogus colleges have been closed. Police and intelligence agencies have been given more powers and tools to keep the public safe. We have an ambitious programme of police reform, on which I am delighted to hear we may continue to get support from the Opposition. Some £100 million of funding has been provided to tackle violence against women and girls.

We have a proud record on the NHS. NHS spending has been protected. We have more doctors, more nurses, more midwives and more GPs. Last year, the NHS treated more people than ever before. Now we will build on the foundations we have laid, working even harder to create a Britain that works for everyone. Above all else, this is a Government committed to keeping families, communities and our country safe.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I, like the Home Secretary, want to hear about outcomes. Recently, the west midlands chief constable said that one of the outcomes for police there was that, as police officers are pulled away on to anti-terror alerts and more high-alert policing, call-outs on other crimes have to be downgraded. One of the things that was downgraded—this is the outcome of there not being enough police in the west midlands—was call-outs on domestic violence.

[Amber Rudd]

The past three months have seen an extraordinary series of attacks, which have put pressure on our police. They have dealt incredibly well with that by having mutual aid coming from different areas to support them. We recognise that there has been a particular surge, but I do not think the hon. Lady’s point—that we need to operate as though there were this level of attacks every three months—holds water. However, I will be engaging with chief police officers to find out whether they have the support we expect them to have, despite the additional work they need to do.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make some progress, and then I will come back to some more interventions.

In the last Parliament, we announced a 30% increase over five years in Government spending on counter-terrorism, increasing spending from £11.7 billion to £15.1 billion. We introduced measures to disrupt the travel of foreign fighters. We passed the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, which gives the police and intelligence agencies more of the powers and tools they need to keep people safe and secure.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

Further to my right hon. Friend’s answer to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), does it not increase pressures on the police when there are calls for days of rage and other activities on the streets that pull the police into London and take away resources from areas such as mine in Hertfordshire that have to provide mutual aid?

[Amber Rudd]

That is a very good point from my hon. Friend. We need to make sure that, at a time when such terrible national events are taking place, everybody gives out the message that we should support our police by having fewer protests of that type.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make some more progress.

We also legislated in the previous Parliament to strengthen our response to terrorist financing with the Criminal Finances Act 2017. We have protected overall police funding in real terms since 2015, and we have funded an uplift in the number of armed police officers.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Last Friday, I and a group of MPs from the west midlands met the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner, and they told us that funding for the police in the west midlands has been cut by £145 million, or 27%. That has resulted in the number of officers being reduced by 2,164, which is a quarter, and the number of PCSOs being reduced by half. It has also resulted in the closure of Dudley’s police station. Will the Home Secretary allow me and a group of my colleagues to come to talk to her about the terrible level of cuts her Government have imposed on west midlands police?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman puts it so kindly—I am so keen to have a talk on that topic. I assume that the figures he is looking at are from 2010; I have been referring to the figures from 2015, which have been protected in cash terms and in real terms. I would welcome a visit from him—perhaps to my police Minister—so that we can go through the figures and reconcile his thoughts with mine. [Interruption.] I do not think we are going to do that across the House right now.

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has just indicated that there is an uplift in the number of armed police officers. Does she recall that, the day I left office as police Minister in 2010, we had 7,000 armed police on the streets of Britain? We now have 5,500—a 20% drop. Will she reflect on the statement she has just made and correct it for the House?

[Amber Rudd]

I am afraid I do not particularly recall the day when the right hon. Gentleman stepped down, but I stand by what I said, which is that we are funding a significant uplift in the number of armed police. These officers are trained at a different level to those he oversaw as police Minister; they are much more effectively trained, to the high level required for counter-terrorism.

[Anna Soubry]

Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the way we now operate police officers means that the old days of a police officer being an accredited firearms officer have completely changed? Now we effectively have squads of crack officers, who are properly trained in all aspects of serious policing, and who, frankly, do a far better job than we have seen for many a long year.

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend is exactly right.

In addition to those armed police officers, we are in the process of recruiting security staff—

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make some more progress.

We are recruiting over 1,900 additional security and intelligence staff. To combat terrorism, we also work with technology companies to tackle terrorist and extremist use of their platforms. The UK has been leading in driving a global response on this subject. This week, leading communications service providers announced the formation of an industry-led global forum to counter terrorism, which they committed to following a meeting I had with them in March.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in the perfect utopian society—as Sir Thomas More would have it—we would have no police at all, so it is clearly not about numbers and vast amounts of cash, but effectiveness?

[Amber Rudd]

I welcome my hon. Friend to the House and thank him for his comments about wanting a much more peaceful world—I think that is something we can all endorse.

[Jonathan Edwards]

I have been listening with great interest to the Secretary of State, and she will surely welcome the private Member’s Bill being introduced by my colleague Lord Wigley in the other place, which calls for an independent resource audit for Welsh and English police forces. Will she look at that Bill and offer Government support?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for drawing my attention to it, and I will certainly take a look at it.

[Sir Edward Davey]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make some progress, but I look forward to coming back to the right hon. Gentleman.

In terms of what else we are doing to combat terrorism, earlier this month the Prime Minister and President Macron announced a joint action plan, which included measures to tackle terrorist use of the internet. We have Prevent, which the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington referred to, and I repeat my invitation to her to come and visit some of the Prevent initiatives. If people see them for themselves, they will find they do a really positive job in engaging with communities. In addition, the Channel programme, which offers voluntary tailored programmes of support to people assessed as being at risk of radicalisation, has supported over 1,000 at-risk individuals since 2012.

However, as we have, sadly, seen with the recent attacks at Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury Park, the country faces an escalating threat from terrorism—36 innocent people dead, 150 hospitalised, families torn apart, and communities left grieving. The Government must do everything in their power to defeat the scourge of terrorism.

Where we can learn more and improve, we will. That is why, as set out in the Gracious Speech, our counter-terrorism strategy will be reviewed. We will look at our whole counter-terrorism approach across Government, police, local authorities and the security services to ensure that they have what they need to protect our country.

If the review finds that further legislation is needed, the House can be assured that we will put this before Parliament. As I announced last week, there will also be a separate review of the handling of recent terror attacks to look at whether lessons can be learned about our approach to these events. This review will be conducted by the police and MI5, and I have asked David Anderson, the former independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, to provide independent scrutiny.

[Chris Ruane]

rose—

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to continue for a while.

We will establish a new commission for countering extremism to support the Government in eradicating extremist ideology in all its forms. Britain is a wonderfully diverse, inclusive and open country that many people proudly call home. Time and again, we have seen our communities come together, demonstrating unwavering acts of kindness, compassion and support for one another, but it is no secret that there are those in Britain who do not share our values—who do not share our compassionate outlook, and despise our way of life and wish to do us harm. That is what we saw in Finsbury Park, Westminster, London Bridge and Manchester. Extremism cannot just be ignored, and neither can it be wished or explained away. Extremists need to be confronted, and the narratives they use to weaponise people and breed this horrific violence need to be called out and taken head on, not afforded accommodation.

[Geraint Davies]

Does the Home Secretary accept that talk of Islamic extremism, in particular, is in danger of being misinterpreted as meaning “too much Islam” when in fact, of course, “Islam” is the Arabic word for peace; that the problem is those who pervert, distort and blaspheme in the name of Islam; and that the true Islam was shown by Imam Mohammed, who stood in front of the killer and said that life is sacred? Does she not want to pursue a route that says that the Islamic community should work with us to target those who would distort Islam and correct their interpretation, rather than talk about Islamic extremism, the danger of which is making out that Islam is the problem?

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. We all need to choose our words carefully, but we also need to call out what we believe this is. We should talk about radical extremist ideology, whether it is Islamic or far right, but we need to make sure that we are clear that we are equally hostile to both, and will take action where either is doing damage to society.

[Dr Julian Lewis]

Following up what the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said about the use of terminology, does the Home Secretary accept that there is a valuable store of experience from the past in the way agencies tackled the doctrines of fascism and Nazism, and subsequently of Marxism-Leninism, and that questions such as the use of vocabulary mean that we need a specialist agency to co-ordinate this effort in the future as we did successfully in those past instances?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his contribution. This may be something that the new commission for counter-extremism will want to look at.

Since 2015, we have had a Government-wide counter-extremism strategy, the first of its kind. At the heart of the strategy is a partnership with communities to make sure that we build on British values. We have published a hate crime action plan and funded additional security measures at more than 50 places of worship. We are also supporting 53 civil society groups that are confronting extremism in their communities.

However, defeating the evil ideology of extremism is one of the greatest challenges of our time, and there is more that we must be able to do. That is why we will have the new commission, which will support the Government to identify and eradicate extremist ideology in all its forms. Across society and online, we will work with communities, and public sector and civil society groups, to promote and defend our pluralistic values of democracy, freedom of belief and expression, the rule of law, mutual respect, and opportunity for all. The commission will advise the Government on what new powers might be needed to tackle the evolving threat. Work is under way on the design of the commission, and we will set out our plans in due course.

Turning to the future immigration system, the Gracious Speech included an immigration Bill that will allow the Government to end the EU’s rules on free movement of EU nationals in the UK, ensuring that we have the flexibility to create a fair and controlled immigration system. It will give us control over the numbers of people who come to the UK from the EU while welcoming those with the skills and expertise to make our nation better. What these rules look like will depend on the needs of the UK, and we are considering all the options of our future system very carefully. It is imperative that we understand what the impact could be on different sectors of the economy and the labour market, and that we make sure that businesses and communities have an opportunity to contribute their views on any future system. As now, new immigration rules will be subject to scrutiny by Parliament.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

An issue that has been vexing many of my EU constituents who have been here for many years is whether the Government will admit that such people now face an income threshold if they wish to bring a family member here to the UK. Many of them who are on low incomes—for example, nurses who are in band 5 and on below £22,000—will not be able to bring a family member here. Will the Home Secretary confirm that, and is she going to investigate what impact it will have on public services?

[Amber Rudd]

The Prime Minister made her statement about the EU nationals earlier this week. I urge the hon. Lady to reassure her constituents who fall into that cohort that they maintain these rights until at least when we leave the EU in 2019, and then after that they will have two years in which to apply. I cannot give her any more detail than that in terms of the other rights, elements of which are subject to the discussions with the EU at the moment. However, I would say to her, and to other Members here, that the Prime Minister was absolutely clear that those 3.2 million or 3.4 million people are going to be allowed to stay. We are yet to have additional discussions with the EU about elements of these rights. I hope that Members here will take that message back to any concerned EU citizens in their constituencies.

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary clarify whether it is her intention that after Brexit a different set of rules will apply to EU nationals and nationals from outside the EU who are visiting the United Kingdom?

[Amber Rudd]

Those discussions have not yet concluded. We have said that people will have this special right depending on from when we negotiate the cut-off date—whether it is when article 50 was invoked or when we actually leave the EU—but there will be existing rights in place for all those who can accumulate the five years and those who can, depending on when the cut-off date is, add to them because they arrived before that.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Amber Rudd]

Not now, I am afraid. I am going to carry on because I want to cover some of the other Bills that are going to be introduced in the next two years.

We will also bring forward a domestic violence and abuse Bill. It is truly chilling that, every day, women and girls across the UK are being subjected to the most horrific abuse in their own homes. I am incredibly proud of the work that the Conservative Government have done to support victims, bring perpetrators to justice, and prevent those vicious crimes from ever taking place. In the previous Parliament, we published our strategy to end violence against women and girls. We made it clear that everyone needs to play their part—friends, family, employers, health providers, and the police—and to support this we pledged £100 million of funding. We also brought in domestic violence protection orders and the domestic violence disclosure scheme, and introduced a specific offence of controlling or coercive behaviour.

Our focus on this terrible crime has contributed to improvements for women, but the number of people experiencing domestic abuse is still far too high. Despite record numbers of prosecutions and convictions, there are 2 million victims of domestic abuse every year in England and Wales, and that is 2 million too many. All too often, domestic abuse is not properly understood, recognised or dealt with, and that can leave a devastating impact. Our landmark domestic violence and abuse Bill is one part of our programme of work aimed at addressing this insidious crime.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

Of course the Bill is very welcome, but what can the Home Secretary say to reassure those who fear that the definition that is now going to be produced might not be strong enough to capture the level of emotional and financial abuse that terrorises too many women in the UK today?

[Amber Rudd]

I know that the hon. Gentleman has done a lot of work in this area. I reassure him and stakeholders who are, I hope, interested in what we are trying to do that we will be consulting widely to make sure that we get the Bill right, so that it delivers the strength of purpose he refers to. The fact that it will create a legal definition of domestic abuse to help to ensure that it is properly understood means that we will not have the same situation of isolated pieces of domestic violence not being added up into a pattern of a really grotesque form of domestic violence that some women have been subjected to.

The Bill will also create a new domestic abuse prevention and protection order regime. A new order to specifically tackle domestic abuse will lead to better protection and better prosecutions. It will ensure that if abusive behaviour involves a child, the court can hand down a sentence that reflects the devastating and lifelong impact that abuse can have. In addition, it will establish a domestic violence and abuse commissioner, who will stand up for victims and survivors, raising public awareness and holding local authorities to account.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will the Home Secretary also include in the commissioner’s remit the ability to look at those victims of domestic violence who are subsequently subject to a new form of abuse, namely being constantly returned to court by ex-partners demanding extra access to the children? That is a way to intimidate, bully and impoverish many of those who have the children in their care.

[Amber Rudd]

Absolutely. That is exactly the sort of issue that I would expect us to look at in the domestic violence Bill, to make sure that that sort of abuse does not take place. We want to be a society where domestic abuse is not tolerated, victims feel safe and supported and perpetrators are punished, and we look out for situations such as that raised by the hon. Lady. Victims deserve the best treatment and justice, and we will make sure that they get it. I very much hope that the Opposition will support the Bill.

Turning to health, as the Government continue to strengthen the economy, we can continue to invest in the NHS, supporting that public service on which we all depend. As we set out in our manifesto, we will increase health spending by a minimum of £8 billion a year in real terms by the end of this Parliament. We know, however, that wellbeing is about being strong not just in body, but in mind. This Government recognise that mental health should be given equal priority to physical health. That is why we will consider reform of mental health legislation and ensure that mental health is prioritised in the NHS. We will look at the Mental Health Act 1983 to make sure that the law is working for those who need support, and we will also publish a Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health, to make sure that best practice is being applied and there is sufficient access to support.

In 10 years’ time there will be 2 million more people over the age of 75. It is essential that they are able to live well and get the care that they need. The Government have already invested an additional £2 billion in social care to relieve pressure, but more needs to be done. That is why the Government are committed to listening to people’s views about how to reform the system. Full plans will be consulted on in due course.

This is a Government with purpose, determined to deliver the best Brexit deal to secure a strong future as we leave the EU.

[Anna Soubry]

My right hon. Friend will know that there is much concern on both sides of the House about the situation pertaining to women who live in Northern Ireland who seek terminations. They cannot get them in Northern Ireland—it is a devolved matter—and come over to England for them, but find themselves being charged by the NHS. While that is being resolved, will she give an undertaking that access to terminations will not be in any way affected and that women can still come here from Northern Ireland to get them?

[Amber Rudd]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are absolutely committed to healthcare for women, and that includes access to terminations.

We are a Government with purpose.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

rose—

[Amber Rudd]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will have an opportunity to speak on health at the end of this debate.

We are determined to deliver the best Brexit deal to secure our future as we leave the EU. We are determined to enhance our standing in the world and bring our United Kingdom closer together, and intent on building a stronger economy and a fairer society, taking action to keep families, communities and our country safe.

[Stella Creasy]

rose—

[Amber Rudd]

I am not going to give way further. The hon. Lady will have a chance to make her own remarks later.

We will be challenging extremism, protecting the vulnerable, giving mental health the attention it deserves and improving social care for the long term, putting ourselves at the service of millions of ordinary working people for whom we will work every day in the national interest, setting out a programme for a Britain that works for everyone.

13:44

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

I rise to address matters arising from the Gracious Speech pertaining to security. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) will address health matters later.

I will speak to the Scottish National party’s amendment (h), which urges the Government to exempt Police Scotland and the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service from VAT without further delay. In addition, the Scottish National party will support the Labour party’s amendment (i). The SNP has consistently opposed the Conservative party’s austerity agenda, and the manifesto on which we won the general election in Scotland indicated that, in these times, the pay cap is no longer sustainable and that we would look at it very closely. I am very happy to lend our support to the shadow Home Secretary. On police and fire service cuts, I am very happy to say that the Scottish Government have not imposed the cuts seen south of the border. I will come to that later.

I want to look in particular at the proposals for a counter-extremism commission; the proposals to review whether the police and security services have all the powers they need; and concerns that I and my party hold about the scope of the repeal Bill, particularly for justice and home affairs issues.

I also want to address the potential impact of Brexit on our security arrangements. The European Union enables European nations to come together not just for the common economic and social good, but to tackle crime and terrorism in the interests of all citizens across Europe. Last year Rob Wainwright, the current, British director of Europol, said that in the event of Britain leaving the European Union it would be very difficult to negotiate security pacts from outside the Europol bloc. He said that trying to do so would be a “damage limitation exercise”. We have yet to hear any detail about how the Government propose to address that problem. We need to look at it closely.

The Scottish National party has already welcomed the Prime Minister’s recent change in tone and rhetoric following the attack at Finsbury Park. We were very pleased to hear her equate all forms of extremism. We hope that that signals the beginning of a Government approach that will not single out any particular group in our community for counter-extremism or terrorism measures. We believe that measures to counter extremism are very important, but they must not be allowed to create division among our many diverse communities across the UK.

We continue to be very concerned that, despite the Government’s failed attempts to introduce a counter-extremism Bill in the previous Parliament, they have yet to offer any legally sustainable definition of extremism or British values. We are concerned, as I have said previously, that the new plan in the Gracious Speech to establish a commission to look at those matters risks bypassing parliamentary scrutiny and the need for legal certainty on the nebulous terms of “extremism” and “British values”. I was therefore pleased to hear the Home Secretary say in response to a question I asked last week that any commission recommendations will be fully scrutinised by this Parliament.

We have already heard about the Prevent strategy, which has been controversial, and concerns have repeatedly been raised about its implementation. May I respectfully suggest that the UK Government look at how we have implemented the Prevent strategy in Scotland as a model of how things might be improved? Although counter-terrorism is of course a reserved issue, the implementation of policies to counter extremism is the responsibility of the devolved institutions. In Scotland we have worked very hard to recognise that we have diverse communities and that they must all be allies in ensuring that all our citizens are safe. The delivery of Prevent in Scotland has benefited from positive relationships fostered with all communities in Scotland through years of regular engagement. We recognise that the way in which people are becoming radicalised is constantly evolving and changing. We must therefore remain vigilant and refresh our approach accordingly, but we must also continue to work with our communities, rather than against them, in making sure that terrorist messages will not resonate.

I now turn to the question of whether the police and security services have all the powers they need. The SNP believes that they do have sufficient powers at their disposal and that the real issue that the Government should be looking at is whether the police and security services have sufficient resources to fight terrorism. I am fortified in that view by the quote from Max Hill QC, the official reviewer of terrorism, that has already been referred to today:

“My view coming into the scrutiny which we are told the Prime Minister wants to conduct is that we do have the appropriate laws in place, and that essentially the police and security services, and those whose job it is to keep us safe, do have the powers at their disposal.”

It is already a crime to incite violence. People suspected of terrorist activity can be stopped and searched. People who aid terrorists are imprisoned and those convicted of plotting an attack can be locked up for life—so we have the powers.

During the passage of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 in the last Parliament the Scottish National party repeatedly urged the Government to concentrate resources on robust, targeted surveillance of suspects rather than subjecting the whole population to blanket, suspicionless surveillance. During the election campaign, and after the terrible terrorist atrocities in London and Manchester, the Prime Minister rightly faced difficult questions about the resources she is putting into targeted surveillance. She was Home Secretary for seven years and it is clear that her influence still holds sway at the Home Office—for example, in relation to the unrealistic and unobtainable immigration targets that continue to be set. The Prime Minister must face up to her responsibility for cuts to police budgets and police numbers in England, which have been dictated by her party’s narrow austerity agenda. That is why I am happy that the SNP will support Labour’s amendment.

It does not have to be this way. In Scotland, the Scottish Government have increased police numbers and in particular invested in increasing the number of trained police armed responders, while still balancing our budget. We have been able to do that despite the UK Government’s repeated refusal to remove the burden of VAT from Police Scotland. Police Scotland is the only territorial police authority in the UK unable to recover VAT. My Scottish Government colleagues and I have repeatedly raised this issue with the UK Government. I wrote to the Minister about the issue earlier this year. The SNP has tabled an amendment to the Loyal Address calling on the Government to rectify that anomaly, and today we again call on them to do so. They have recently rectified the anomaly for several other national bodies: it is now time to do it for Police Scotland.

Notwithstanding the Tory Government’s failure to rectify that anomaly, the contrast between Scotland and the UK in policing terms could not be starker: 20,000 police officers have been lost in England, but in Scotland we have maintained 1,000 more than the number we inherited when the SNP came into government in 2007. We have also taken steps to increase the number of police officers who are trained to carry firearms. In the days following the Manchester attack, Police Scotland was able to provide the heightened level of police cover, including armed policing, without having to call on the resources of the military.

We have also protected the police resource budget in Scotland, but in England the Home Office has cut the amount it spends on policing by 20% since 2011. It is time for the Conservatives to stop diverting attention from their under-resourcing of the police and emergency services and to follow the Scottish Government’s lead in giving them the resources they need.

I have already said that international co-operation is essential to keep Scotland and the rest of the UK safe from the threats of organised crime, cybercrime and terrorism. In this Parliament, SNP Members will call for continued co-operation across Europe and we will oppose any moves that would seek to use security co-operation as a bargaining chip in Brexit or trade negotiations with our European friends and neighbours. It is too important for that.

The Gracious Speech promised a new law on the protection of personal data, but we will not be able to continue to co-operate with our EU colleagues unless we abide by EU data protection and privacy protection law. In practice, there will be limits to how closely the UK and the EU27 can work together if the UK is no longer accountable or subject to the oversight and adjudication of supranational institutions, such as—most importantly—the European Court of Justice. We saw at the end of last year that the Court took a dim view of the provisions for data collection and retention in the Investigatory Powers Act 2016, as many of us warned would happen when we considered the Act. If the UK does not comply with EU law on data sharing and privacy protection, our former partners will not be able to share information with us under the laws by which they are bound. That would be a disaster for security co-operation and for business, universities and research.

I am concerned that the Gracious Speech does not mention any specific legislation on the many changes to justice and home affairs, even though the Government have confirmed that the repeal Bill will include powers to allow for changes resulting from the negotiations to leave the EU. It is vital that Ministers and civil servants are not handed vast powers to change our legal landscape without proper parliamentary scrutiny, particularly in relation to security matters. Legislative consent motions must also be sought for justice and home affairs matters, and I am delighted that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union and the Secretary of State for Scotland have all acknowledged that legislative consent will be sought for the repeal Bill.

Finally I turn briefly to the issue of human rights protections. During the election campaign, the Prime Minister spoke of ripping up human rights to fight terrorism. I suspect the attack on human rights was an attempt to distract from her own security failings and the impact of policing cuts in England. So I renew my request to the Home Secretary to confirm that nothing in the Human Rights Act or the European convention on human rights would prevent a robust approach to terrorism. Will she therefore confirm that there are no plans to “tear up” human rights to tackle terrorism? I would remind her that the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights has said:

“Effective counter-terrorism measures and the protection of human rights are complementary and mutually reinforcing objectives which must be pursued together as part of States’ duty to protect individuals within their jurisdiction.”

Terrorism is a fundamental attack on our way of life and of course we must respond robustly and appropriately but it is at such times that human rights must be protected and cherished, not attacked and undermined. With the announcement by the CPS today on Hillsborough, we see the prospect of justice being achieved after many years as a result of the Human Rights Act guaranteeing a proper inquiry into that disaster. If we ripped up human rights, we would undermine the traditions that we all share across the House and play into the terrorists’ plans to undermine our democracy and the rule of law.

13:57

[Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)]

I want to start by extending on behalf of all my constituents our most profound sympathy to the victims, and their families, of the horrific events that have recently taken place in Manchester, London Bridge and Finsbury, and the appalling Grenfell Tower fire. I think the whole nation was greatly taken by the Queen’s response after the fire that she was

“profoundly struck by the immediate inclination of people throughout the country to offer comfort and support to those in desperate need.”

It is incumbent on us all to measure our language as we deal with these events, and I wish to place on record my deep shock at the words that the shadow Chancellor has recently used—that the fire at Grenfell Tower amounted to murder. That is an inexpressibly appalling thing to say. In a civilised society, there can be no room for such talk. It is not normal, it is not politics as usual, it is disgraceful and it is intolerable. All of us in public life have a duty to measure with care what we say in an era of brutal untruths, and to try to retain the language of reason and proportion.

The Queen’s Speech is a moment for the Government to set out their programme and for the rest of the country to regain its sense of balance. I want, as do my constituents, to see the Government exercise resolution, prudence, integrity and humility at a very difficult time in our affairs. I also want the Government to exercise what Field Marshal Lord Montgomery rightly called “grip”, and to govern effectively and with vigour, determination and energy. I place on record that I think our Prime Minister has all those qualities in abundance and I strongly commend and support her. If the Government manage to do that, my constituents, to whom I am yet again most grateful for their confidence, will be content.

Quite apart from the immense complexities, difficulties and grave uncertainties of the Brexit negotiations, this country has more than its fair share of major issues with which the Government must deal. What is it in our system that seems to mean we cannot arrive at a sane national plan—unlike Denmark, the Netherlands or Japan—that deals efficiently, humanely and decently with care for the elderly in all its complexity? I say to the Government, “Just get on and do it. Work across all the parties, and with all the considerable expertise in this country, to get this done.” Incidentally, I worry very much about the denigration of expertise at all levels when a deeply complicated world demands it more than ever.

There are many issues that can no longer be shirked: reform of care for the elderly; housing policy; prison reform, including the training of prison officers to enable them to do their very difficult job better; skills shortages; and nursing and leadership in the NHS. The Government must exercise their will to see that they are dealt with. The Gracious Speech sets out a good way ahead: promote fairness and transparency in the housing market; tackle unfair practice in the energy market; secure good, properly funded schools, which is a very important issue in Mid Sussex; secure high-wage jobs for the skilled; and get an increasing living wage for those in work. I think our constituents expect us to see to it that that is all done, along with an unrelenting effort for the continued building of a strong economy in the safe hands of my right hon. Friend the Chancellor and, more obviously, a return to the Conservative facts of life of enterprise, aspiration, opportunity, wealth creation, sound money, good defence and, above all, the really effective running of our public services.

In my 34 years in this House, I do not think I have ever seen a way ahead that is more complex or difficult for our country, in particular the ongoing, desperately worrying low level of basic educational achievement in too many parts of the country; a separate lack of skills; low wages for too many; geographical economic and wealth inequality; intergenerational inequality; and what I am afraid to say is a very naive approach indeed to international trade relations. Leaving the single market will obviously restrict us from accessing the world’s most skilled peoples. Unless a good way is found to resolve that, it will further negatively influence our productivity. That is relevant to many of our industries, and of course to our universities, which are widely regarded as some of the very best in the world. My views on immigration are well known, but I have to say that in my judgment, persisting with the inclusion of students in the immigration targets makes no economic sense whatever. Surely it is absolute madness to have halved our student intake from dynamic India to the benefit of America and Germany. Whatever happens with Brexit, we should be wanting to attract even more of those talented young people to our country. This is all of a piece with the need for Britain to retain a global view of the world.

Britain seriously lacks key skills. There is a grave shortage of graduates in engineering and science, which is made all the more acute by the clampdown on immigration. I have to tell my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary that that is already dissuading important young talent from coming to these shores, as any employer of PhDs will confirm. I have a suggestion in this regard: the Government should scrap tuition fees for the core STEM subjects of science, technology, engineering and maths, all of which are critical for our survival as our transition from the industrial to the digital world goes on apace, a fact that hardly seems to have appeared on the Government’s radar.

Finally, may I make a respectful suggestion to the House and to the Government? I think pretty much all of us in this House are deeply concerned about the question of trust in public life. The Government have some very difficult tasks ahead of them. They need to remember that competence generates trust and respect. I want that to be their aim: to secure competent and effective government, and thus the trust of the people who did and did not elect us.

14:05

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

It is good to follow the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames), who always makes a thought-provoking speech. I join the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary in paying tribute to our police force and emergency services, who have dealt with so many difficult incidents in the past few weeks, and in expressing sympathy with the victims of both the terror attacks and the Grenfell fire.

The Queen’s Speech suggests that the Government are carrying on as if, in the words of the Prime Minister, “nothing has changed, nothing has changed.” In fact, very much has changed. The Prime Minister called the election wanting a landslide. Instead, she has a hung Parliament. That means that this hung Parliament has to work differently, and that the Queen’s Speech has to respond differently too. Many Members wish to speak in the debate today, so I will keep my remarks short and concentrate on two areas where the Government need to change course as a result of the hung Parliament delivered to us by the electorate: public services and the approach to the Brexit negotiations.

This week, the Government recognised the importance of investing more in public services in Northern Ireland. They have rightly supported additional investment in schools and hospitals in Belfast, but what about those in Birmingham, Bristol and many other parts of the country? I support the Democratic Unionist party’s request for more investment to stop school cuts in Portadown, but I want to stop the school cuts in Pontefract as well. The DUP is right to request more support for jobs in County Down but what about in Castleford and in other places across the rest of the country?

The Government cannot say to parents, patients and people who need the support of police officers right across the country that, as a result of this hung Parliament, they cannot have more support for their public services—that they will have to face further cuts to their public services, with teachers lost from our schools and services squeezed from our national health service—but those in Northern Ireland can have additional funding. They cannot say to Mark Rowley, Cressida Dick and the other police chiefs doing such a magnificent job in difficult circumstances despite being overstretched that the Government can somehow find £1 billion to support Northern Ireland and to support those in the Government keeping their own jobs, but they cannot provide the additional resources the police and emergency services need to support their jobs at this difficult time.

That is why the Government have to rethink. It would be easy to rethink the police cuts and to decide not to go ahead with the cuts to capital gains tax that the Chancellor has pledged. It would be easy to cancel those cuts and put the investment into additional police officers on our streets. It would be easy for the Government to recognise that if we care about recruitment and retention in our public services—in particular in our national health service, which in many parts of the country is struggling to recruit the nurses and doctors it needs—then continuing with the public sector pay cap will make it harder and harder for our NHS and all our public services to get the talented staff they need. In the end, that will cost all of us, including the Government, more in the long run.

The second area in which the Government need to change course is their approach to the Brexit negotiations. Britain voted for Brexit in the referendum and Parliament has voted to trigger article 50, but the Prime Minister did not win the free hand that she wanted for the Brexit negotiations. She asked for it, but voters said no. That means that the Government need to change their approach to the Brexit negotiations. If we are to get a deal that is not only the best for our country but is also sustainable—one that does not unravel in a year or two years’ time and does not end up undermined because there is so much disagreement, not just in this House but across the country—then there must be an effort to build a consensus around that deal as well, not just to get agreement in Europe but to build that consensus across Britain.

That is why I urge the Government not to keep pursuing the negotiations through a narrow cabal but instead to open up the process—to set up a cross-party commission to hold the Brexit negotiations or to find other ways to include more voices and more transparency, and to strengthen the powers of the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union, so that this House can properly have its say as well. I know that that means difficult ways of working and will be a challenge to those on both Front Benches, but they, and the whole House and the whole country, will benefit if we find a different way to do this.

[Joanna Cherry]

The right hon. Lady is making a powerful and persuasive speech as usual. I agree with what she has just said. Would she extend that to giving the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government a place and a say in the negotiations to leave the EU?

[Yvette Cooper]

I certainly think that the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government, and Northern Ireland too, need to be involved in this commission and this process, because it has got to work for the whole of the United Kingdom. I think that is possible, but only if all parts of the House and those on both Front Benches behave in a different way and recognise the responsibility that has been placed on us by the hung Parliament that we have been given. That means, too, that the great repeal Bill that the Government want to put forward can no longer be a Bill that simply accrues powers to the Government through Henry VIII powers, because in a hung Parliament the legislature simply cannot hand over huge power to the Executive. The legislature itself must be involved in those decisions, step by step along the way.

The right hon. Member for Mid Sussex was right when he said that the course before us is more complex than anything he or I can remember at any time. With a hung Parliament we will have to work differently, but that has to start with the Government. I urge them to start today by changing course on public services and, as the amendment before us asks, on public sector pay and supporting our public sector workers, but also by changing course in the approach to Brexit, in a way that can build consensus, not division. That ought to be the spirit of what the Prime Minister has said.

14:09

[Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the eloquence of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and an honour to be re-elected once again to represent the lovely New Forest East constituency.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr George Howarth)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman, but I should have announced that there is now a time limit of six minutes, which I think he was aware of, in order to accommodate as many people who want to speak as possible. Dr Lewis, your six minutes start now.

[Dr Lewis]

I have at least benefited from a few extra seconds as a result.

There is plenty to welcome in this Queen’s Speech, from the prioritisation of mental health to the forthcoming visit of Their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain, which will give us all a chance to show that our friendship with that great country is as enduring and immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. I will touch, however, on two other aspects of the Queen’s Speech, and they will not come as a surprise to colleagues who know of my areas of speciality.

The first is the reiteration of the Government’s pledge to continue to meet the NATO commitment to spend at least 2% of national income on defence. I am sorry to say that it is not enough. One of the things that the Select Committee on Defence managed to establish, through a great deal of hard work and original research by its professional and dedicated staff, was a comparison over the decades of what happened to defence with a graph showing something very different for other high-spending subjects. We found that in the early 1960s we spent similar sums—about 6% of GDP—on welfare and defence. Now we spend six times as much on welfare as we do on defence. In the mid-1980s we spent similar sums—about 5% of GDP—on education, health and defence. Now we spend two and a half times as much on education and nearly four times as much on health as we do on defence. In every year from 1981 until 1987, at the height of east-west confrontation, we spent between 4.3% and 5.1% of GDP on defence, yet even after the cold war had finished, even as late as the financial year 1995-96, we were spending 3% of GDP on defence—a total that does not include things such as war pensions and Ministry of Defence civil service pensions.

[Mrs Moon]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Dr Lewis]

I will happily give way to my fellow former member of the Defence Committee.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank the former Chairman of the Select Committee for giving way. He, like me, was at a dinner last night at which it was pointed out that at 2%, without pensions and all the other bizarre add-ons that the Government add to get this country to 2%, France will be spending €56 billion on defence; Germany, when it gets to 2%, will be at €70 billion. We are at £36 billion. How can we hold our heads up high and say that we can defend ourselves with sums like that?

[Dr Lewis]

The hon. Lady is a staunch defender of everything to do with the defence of this country, and she is absolutely right. It is a measure of the management downwards of our expectations that we are supposed to ring the church bells in triumph at our not falling below the bare minimum that NATO members are supposed to achieve. We really have to rethink this. We really should be looking at 3% of GDP, and not this bare minimum of 2%.

I want to turn mainly to what is said in the Queen’s Speech about the creation of a commission for countering extremism,

“to support the government in stamping out extremist ideology in all its forms, both across society and on the internet, so it is denied a safe space to spread.”

That implies, although it is not explicit, that the new body will be some form of executive agency. I want to hear from the Front Bench that that will be the case, because we are approaching a key point: it looks likely that the territory seized by ISIL/Daesh will be retaken from it. That will rightly be hailed as a considerable achievement, but we need to remember that only a few years ago no one had heard about ISIL/Daesh, and everybody was overwhelmingly concerned with al-Qaeda. It was unusual for a terrorist organisation to seize territory, because by doing that, ISIL/Daesh gave up the advantage of invisibility, which is what most terrorist organisations make maximum use of. However, I venture to suggest that when it has been removed from its territory and its moment has passed, there will be other groups that take its place, perhaps fighting in different areas and perhaps not trying to seize territory. This will go on and on, as long as there is no effective response to the underlying ideology.

This is not the first time that there has been talk of commissions of this sort. Back in 2013, David Cameron had a taskforce on tackling radicalisation and extremism. On that occasion, too, evidence was taken, but I believe that any future successful plan needs to draw on the similar threats that we faced and overcame in the past.

As I said in an earlier intervention, huge agencies were called into existence to counter other totalitarian ideologies. This rather massive book was never really meant to be published. It is called “The Secret History of PWE”. PWE was the Political Warfare Executive, and the book is a classified history of all the work that it did to counter fascist and Nazi ideology. It was published as recently as 2002. Another organisation, the Information Research Department at the Foreign Office, worked on a grand scale to counter the poisonous ideology of Marxism-Leninism.

What we need today is an organisation that is equally wide-ranging, equally proficient, and equally capable of answering the thoughtful interjection of the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on the subject of the vocabulary that we should use—whether we should use the terms “Islamic”, “un-Islamic”, or simply “violent extremism”. We need an agency to do that. Until we have such an agency, and until it operates to scale, groups will continue to crop up to implement the ideology, and we do not want that to happen.

14:20

[Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis). He mentioned the new commission for countering terrorism. I look forward to debating the issues surrounding the commission with him and with many other Members, and to listening to what the Government have to say. This is a very important initiative, and we need to get it right.

As the House debates any issue relating to security and home affairs, not just today but in the coming weeks and months, we must recognise what has happened in the last few weeks. There have been the terrorist outrages in Manchester, at London Bridge and at the Muslim Welfare House in Finsbury Park, and, of course, there has been the tragedy at Grenfell Tower. Those issues, and how the House responds to them, will be a measure of whether Parliament is serving the British people properly.

Having read the Queen’s Speech, I want to address some of those issues, and others that will occupy this Parliament. I intend to concentrate on three themes: sovereignty, security and regulation. Let me begin with sovereignty. As we debate the issues surrounding Brexit, we must bear in mind that criminals, terrorists and organised crime do not recognise borders. They love borders: they can hide from justice, and seek succour. How we as a country keep our people safe and secure will be partly determined by how we work with other countries. In the European Union we developed, over time, a set of organisations, policies and systems that was keeping our people safe: Europol, Eurojust, ECRIS—the European Criminal Records Information System—the Schengen information system, and the European arrest warrant. Those systems and policies help our people. They catch terrorists, they catch rapists, they catch murderers. As we debate our relationship with those very important crime-fighting systems, we have to get it right.

During the Brexit debate, some have said, “We will still be part of those organisations: do not worry.” Well, I do worry. I visited Europol in 2009, and met Rob Wainwright, the head of Europol, a Brit and a former MI5 agent. He led, and leads, the organisation very well, but after Brexit, it will not be a Brit who is leading it. Over a period during the setting up of those institutions—those crime-fighting mechanisms—the British Government, and parties of all colours, were at the centre of the development of rules for them. We will not be, after Brexit. I worry greatly about how those mechanisms will evolve. These are very important discussions. I also worry about the Government’s position on the European Court of Justice, which manages issues relating to the European crime-fighting institutions. I think that the rejection of the Court is a serious mistake on the Government’s part, and that they will come to rue it.

When it comes to security, yes, those European co-operation systems are fundamental, but so is the need for more police. We heard from the shadow Home Secretary about the mess that the current Government have made in the police. We have heard from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, that the situation is serious. The Government can quote figure after figure, but if they look at what is happening in our constituencies, they will know that cuts are affecting police on the ground. Since May 2015, my constituency has lost nearly 10% of our police officers, which is having a big impact: crime is going up in my area. The Government must stop these police cuts.

As we heard from the right hon. Member for New Forest East, the proposal for a commission for countering extremism prompts many questions. Will the commission be independent? Will it be accountable to the House? Will it reach out to all groups who want to help the Government fight extremism, and will it look at all causes of extremism? Common sense suggests that extremism must have multiple causes, including terrorist groups recruiting and the activities of hate preachers, but there is one cause on which I want to focus briefly, and that is Islamophobia.

Islamophobia is rife in our country, and we do not speak out against it enough. British Muslims play an incredibly important and positive role in our society, but that is rarely recognised, in the media above all. The reporting of some newspapers makes it appear that British Muslims are the enemy within, and the House should speak out against the press barons who allow such reporting. Just a few months ago, a headline in The Sun read “1 in 5 Brit Muslims’ sympathy for jihadis”. The press regulator said that that was “significantly misleading”, but the headlines still come. “British Muslims are killing our troops”, according to one newspaper. Other headlines read “Britain goes halal” and “Muslims tell us how to run our schools”. Those are outrageous headlines, and they are irresponsible. I hope that when the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary meet newspaper editors, that issue will be No. 1 on their list, because if we are not countering Islamophobia, we are not working against one of the issues that are creating extremism.

My last point concerns regulation. We must challenge the way in which we debate regulation. Regulations are not always bad; many are superb. I am afraid that Conservatives have an ideological block about some regulations. I was once told by the former Member of Parliament for Brentwood and Ongar that regulations were communist. I told him that “Thou shalt not kill” was a good regulation—and it was introduced before the time of Marx or Lenin.

14:26

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey).

When the national health service was launched in July 1948, it was launched on the basis of three core principles: that it should meet the needs of everyone, that it should be free at the point of delivery, and that it should be based on clinical need and not the ability to pay. Those principles continue to serve us very well; they are supported across the House, and they have been reinforced by the NHS constitution.

The extraordinary success of the NHS and public health provision lies in its delivery of increased life expectancy. Many people who now survive into adulthood would not have done so when I qualified as a doctor, some years ago. However, that extraordinary success hands us the key responsibility and challenge of ensuring that we can continue to provide and to meet the needs of everyone in the coming decades. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke of the importance of joint working across the House. Given that we now have a different parliamentary arithmetic, I agree with her, and I would extend that to the way we talk about funding of health and social care.

[Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)]

Last week I was told by Pauline that her mum, 79-year-old Sheila, who has dementia and heart failure, suffers from seizures and is unable to eat, go to the toilet or dress on her own, has been denied a funded place in a care home. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a scandal that needs to be resolved?

[Dr Wollaston]

The hon. Lady has made a very important point. We will all see similar cases in our surgeries. However, we will not resolve the problem by having constant arguments about how we are going to do so. What we must do is agree, across the House, on how we are to provide long-term sustainable funding. I commend the House of Lords Select Committee on the Long-term Sustainability of the NHS for its work on the provision of long-term sustainable funding for health and social care. I welcome the commitment from Ministers in the Gracious Speech to seek sustainable social care solutions, but I call on the Government to extend that to health, because if we continue to view the two systems in isolation, we will fail exactly the patients, and others, to whom the hon. Lady has just referred.

The parliamentary arithmetic is such that there is an additional responsibility on all of us to ask what we can achieve by the end of this Parliament and what we can achieve when the NHS reaches its 70th birthday next year. I would say that by working together we could achieve something really remarkable, and I call on all Members from all parties to work to make that happen.

I also very much welcome the proposals in the draft patient safety Bill, but I put it to the Secretary of State that we need to get to grips with the impact of the workforce challenge across health and social care on patient safety. I agree with others that it is time for us to think again about the impact of the public sector pay cap. There is no doubt in my mind that seven years of the cap are now having a significant impact on morale in the health service and across our wider public sector. Again, I think that the change in the parliamentary arithmetic following the message that we have had from the electorate is very clear. People value our public services and they want to see this matter addressed.

One way in which we can address the issues of recruitment, retention and morale is to deliver a fair pay settlement, and I hope that we can make further progress on that. Again, however, we will achieve the funding that is required for that through realistic cross-party working. During the election campaign, and in the manifesto, we tried to address the issues of intergenerational fairness in funding these services, and it might be that, as we look realistically at how we are going to fund our public services, we need to take ideas from all parties in order to achieve our aims, so that we can do something about public sector pay and improve the retention rates in our health and social care workforce.

Another area of the Queen’s Speech that I want to touch on is mental health, and I should declare a personal interest, in that I am married to an NHS consultant psychiatrist who is also the registrar of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. I very much welcome the fact that we are the party that legislated for parity of esteem, but we now need to translate that into practice. It needs to be translated into ensuring that the welcome extra funding for mental health actually reaches the frontline and delivers.

I am pleased to see the proposals in the Gracious Speech for a Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health, and I hope that the Secretary of State will look at the joint work of the Select Committees on Health and Education in that area and take note of our proposals and suggestions. I also hope that he will look again at the work done by the Health Committee on suicide prevention. Suicide remains the single biggest cause of death in men under the age of 50 and in young people of both sexes. This is a core challenge, and one of the issues that we identified is now in the Government’s proposals—namely, how we involve the families of those with serious mental health challenges in their care and treatment. That does not involve riding roughshod over the important principles of confidentiality. Often, it can involve simple things such as ensuring that mental health professionals are aware of the consensus statement on how to achieve consent.

I welcome the progress that we have made on reducing the use of cells as a place of safety for those with serious mental health problems. Their use is wholly inappropriate and I hope that we can make further progress on that. There is much more that we can do to improve mental health care, but we have some excellent proposals in the five-year forward view. This is all about implementation, and I urge the Secretary of State to do everything he can to ensure that the money reaches the frontline, that there is transparency about that and that we make further progress on improving the mental health of young people and adults alike.

14:34

[Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who chaired the Health Select Committee in the last Parliament.

It is now widely accepted that the adult social care sector in the UK is in a state of crisis. Over recent years, funding has fallen and demand has risen, and the sector has not kept pace. The Queen’s Speech has failed to address the long-term funding issues behind this crisis that are currently overwhelming not only the social care sector but the NHS. Our hospitals and surgeries are full, social care is on its knees and staff are working under impossible conditions in a system struggling to cope. The Government’s choice to provide less funding than the health service needs is compromising safe staffing levels. They talk about providing extra funding, but this is set against the backdrop of enforced savings in the NHS that are far in excess of the extra money that they tell us, in every debate, that the NHS is going to get.

It is wrong and counterproductive to look at social care simply as care for the elderly. Nearly 33% of all the people receiving long-term social care in 2015-16 were under 65 years of age. They account for almost 50% of the expenditure on social care, at approximately £6.6 billion a year. Working-age adults with a learning disability accounted for 33% of the total expenditure, at almost £4.6 billion a year. We need to recognise the full cost of social care in this country and decide how those costs are going to be met. In the fading final few months of the last Labour Government, tripartite talks took place between Labour Ministers, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats about how to meet those costs. Two Members who have spoken today—the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) and the hon. Member for Totnes—have emphasised that we need, as a nation, to take control of this. If any example is needed, it is the shambolic mess that the Conservatives got into during the general election campaign. Was there going to be a cap? Was there not going to be a cap? We need to take national action on this, and the sooner the better.

As a past officer of the all-party parliamentary group on smoking and health, I urge the Government to publish the new tobacco control plan. We have been waiting some 18 months for it now. A great deal was achieved under the previous plan: progressive tobacco control legislation was introduced; smoking rates among adults and children have fallen below the target levels; and rates of smoking during pregnancy are very nearly below 10%, which is a huge improvement on a decade ago. This is why Britain is a world leader in tobacco control, with the UK coming top in a European survey measuring the implementation of key tobacco control policies and passing legislation that goes further than the requirements set out in European Union directives.

[Mrs Main]

Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that those improvements might start to tail off, now that the EU tobacco directives include vaping, because it is becoming more and more difficult for people to take up vaping and get themselves off cigarettes?

[Sir Kevin Barron]

As I was saying, we have gone much further than the European directives have told us to do. My understanding is that the new tobacco control plan will have vaping in it. NHS England has told us that vaping is 95% safer than using cigarettes, and it is not a way to get into cigarettes. Some 2.8 million smokers have voluntarily gone on to vaping, which is 95% safer, and we need to ensure that the action plan for tobacco recognises that fact. More will need to be done to support vaping, perhaps in public places as well.

[Gloria De Piero]

rose—

[Sir Kevin Barron]

I will give way, for the last time.

[Gloria De Piero]

I declare an interest, as a vaper. Vaping is healthier and safer, but is this not also an issue of social justice? It is far cheaper to vape than to buy cigarettes and, as we know, it is poorer people who are most likely to smoke.

[Sir Kevin Barron]

Yes, indeed it is. Some people say that they do not like vaping because the products are produced by tobacco companies, but that is wholly wrong. I have had a running battle with the tobacco companies for decades in this place, and it is wholly wrong to use attitudes to vaping in that way.

[Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Sir Kevin Barron]

Very quickly.

[Vicky Ford]

I just wondered whether the right hon. Gentleman was aware that the European tobacco products directive, which makes things more difficult for vapers, was introduced by a British Labour Member of the European Parliament. At the time, the Conservatives in the European Parliament made the exact point that it would restrict vaping.

[Sir Kevin Barron]

I am very aware of that. I am also very aware that vaping is good for the public health, and I support it.

Moving on, one area where the NHS has contributed to smoking cessation is through the huge network of community pharmacies across the UK, which was treated shoddily by the previous Government. In January this year, the all-party parliamentary health group, which I chair, launched an investigation into the Government’s community pharmacy reforms, and the report showed that the reforms have dented confidence in the sector and raised questions about the Government’s commitment to developing community pharmacy services. The APPG heard, however, that community pharmacy remains well placed to address some of the NHS’s biggest challenges, and we made recommendations that will hopefully strengthen the sector’s ability to serve its patients and mitigate some of the negative impacts of the reforms. The overriding priority, though, is for the community pharmacy sector and the Government to come together again to develop and realise a shared vision of clinical services in community pharmacies. I hope the Government will take heed of the report and work constructively with the sector.

The reforms have been made and, as we all know, there has been a massive decrease in the money going into NHS pharmacies, and we need to take stock of that. The Health and Social Care Act 2012 gave the Government—Governments of all sorts—responsibility for reducing health inequality in this country and to promote public health and population health. Running down our pharmacy sector and community pharmacies is not the way to do that. Those health professionals should be helping to improve population health to keep pressure off the NHS, but we are not doing that very well at the moment.

I see that I just have a minute left, so I want to say that nearly all of that work is performed by our superb staff in the NHS, but we are all aware that staff morale across the NHS remains low. The situation has been worsened by real-term cuts in pay through this Government’s public sector pay cap. Current estimates state that over £4.3 billion was cut from NHS staff salaries between 2010 and 2016. These are the people who treated the victims of terror attacks and the dreadful fire in London just a few weeks ago. I think the electorate said in the general election, “No more of this.” The Government should remove the pay cap in order to retain and attract staff, resolve the workforce shortage and ensure safe patient care. I will be supporting the amendment if it is put to the House tonight.

14:39

[Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron), who made some extraordinarily sensible points. May I take this opportunity to associate myself, on behalf of my constituents in East Devon, with the earlier tributes paid to the victims of Grenfell Tower and the terrorist attacks? I also pay tribute to the extraordinary work of the emergency services and to NHS staff for their incredible efforts.

In the 2017 Gracious Speech, the only mention of social care, to which I will dedicate my speech, was:

“My Ministers will work to improve social care and will bring forward proposals for consultation.”

That is in line with the revised section of the 2017 Conservative manifesto, but no more details have been announced about the Green Paper or when it will be published. When it is published and goes out to consultation, it is vital that elderly people, who do not always have access to the internet, are given fair chance to respond and to put their views forward. I, too, believe that the recent election showed how worried people are about their future healthcare needs. While the system needs to be fixed, it is incumbent on the Government to have a frank and honest consultation on how we fund and provide social care for the most vulnerable in our society. The issue has been kicked into the long grass for too long, so I have two offers to make to the Government this afternoon.

Over 850,000 people in the United Kingdom are living with dementia—equivalent to the entire population of Devon—and that number is expected to double in the next 20 years. Over 12,000 people in Devon are living with dementia, 4,500 of whom are in East Devon. The number of over-65s in Devon will increase from 195,000 in 2015 to 264,400 in 2030—an increase of 35.5%. Seventeen per cent. of the UK population is over the age of 65, compared with 24% of the Devon population. Some 2.38% of the population is over the age of 85, compared with 6.25% of the population of Budleigh Salterton in my constituency. In other words, with those ageing demographics, the rest of England will look like Budleigh Salterton in 2050. East Devon has over 6,500 people over the age of 85 and about 40,000 over the age of 65, so my offer to the Government is this: if we want to get long-term social care right nationally, look at what the country will look like in 2050, which is what towns such as Budleigh Salterton look like now. If we get it right in Devon, we will get it right across the country. As a Devon MP, I am offering— I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) will also agree—to act as the guinea pig for getting social care right in this country. That is offer No. 1.

Offer No. 2 builds on what some of us tried to do with the Prime Minister some months before the general election when a cross-party group of us went to see her to talk about long-term care. We thought that the issue should be apolitical and that we should finally build on early reports to get things right. Our efforts were not taken up at the time, but in the new spirit of things following the election I believe that we would all be prepared to work together to make the offer again. Where better to start than to build on the “Fairer Care Funding” report—the Dilnot report—of July 2011, which contains many good things, not least a cap, but it also omitted other things, such as some form of insurance to cover the cap. We should leave nothing off the table, but a cross-party group should steer the Government forwards on this matter.

Those are my two offers. As a humble Back Bencher, I will work with other Back Benchers to get social care right in this country, and I offer up Devon, particularly East Devon, as the guinea pig or template for trying to get a social care system that is properly integrated with the rest of the NHS. If we get it right there, we will get it right across the nation, and everyone, including our electorates, will be enormously grateful to us.

14:47

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I primarily want to talk about the state of GP services, with particular reference to a temporarily closed surgery in Trimdon village in my constituency, to try to make a point about the crisis in GP services. While the closure is only temporary, the surgery will open again next month with limited services.

I want to start with a few words about the national picture. One in four patients now wait a week or more to see a GP or do not get an appointment at all. We are 10,000 GPs, 3,500 midwives and 40,000 nurses short of the number we need. Against a target 3,250 GP training places for 2016-17, Health Education England said that only 3,000 were filled. The number of GPs in this country dropped by nearly 100 in the year to September 2016, and in three years’ time the NHS will have 1,200 fewer family doctors than predicted because there is a struggle to fill training places. There has been a huge drop in the number of GPs in training. In 2016, 92 GP practices closed and 34 were merged with other practices. A survey of 2,000 GPs found that two in five plan to quit in the next two years. Since 2014, there has been a 150% rise in patients being forced to move practices due to record levels of closures—that is 265,000 people. Although the Government want to recruit 5,000 more GPs by 2020, one in three GPs are considering retirement in the next five years—about 10,000 doctors.

That is part of the background that has led to the temporary closure of the GP surgery in Trimdon village. The surgery is one of four operated by Skerne Medical Group—the other three are in Sedgefield village, Fishburn and Trimdon Colliery. The surgeries are very busy and service some of the most deprived areas not just of the county but of the country. In a letter to the registered patients who use the surgery in Trimdon village, Skerne Medical Group announced that the surgery would need to close on 21 June 2017 due to

“unprecedented circumstances with our clinical team and the continued difficulties in recruitment”.

Eighty-eight per cent. of residents in the area are registered with Skerne Medical Group, and the GP group has told me that the building housing the surgery in Trimdon village is not fit for purpose, which for me is a reason not for closing but for upgrading the premises.

I also understand that the GPs are preparing to expand their facilities in Sedgefield village, which is good news for the residents of Sedgefield, but I do not see why, if investment is due in Sedgefield, it cannot be due in surgeries such as in Trimdon village, especially when, considering the indices of health deprivation, Trimdon is one of the 10% most deprived areas of England and Wales—Sedgefield village is not. There is still a great need for Skerne Medical Group to keep the surgery open in Trimdon.

The House of Commons Library has provided me with figures on the amount and kinds of prescriptions issued to the residents of Trimdon. More prescriptions are distributed in Trimdon than in 95% of areas of England. Furthermore, prescriptions for gastrointestinal drugs—issued for ulcers, for example—are 48% above the national average. Prescriptions for drugs for cardiovascular issues are 50% above the national average. Prescriptions for drugs for breathing difficulties, including asthma, are 55% above the national average. Prescriptions for antidepressants, some of which are issued for chronic pain, are 51% above the national average, and prescriptions for painkillers themselves are double the national average. More than 40% of Trimdon’s population are over the age of 50, which is well above the average for the rest of the UK. Trimdon has an ageing population with chronic health problems.

I say this to Skerne Medical Group: “I know the issues, and I know you offer the best service you can, but I do not believe the closure of the surgery in Trimdon, be it temporary or not, will help the situation. Especially when there are expansion plans for the surgery in Sedgefield, surely the needs of Trimdon are also great.”

If the surgery in Trimdon is not fit for purpose, it must be made so. I can understand the problem with the shortage of GPs, because that is an issue not just for this practice but is happening all over the region and the nation. I know that the closure of the Trimdon surgery is temporary and that it is to reopen in July, offering only a limited service, but Skerne Medical Group came to see me about a year ago to say that it wanted to close the surgery permanently, which I said I would oppose all the way.

How can a village that is in the 10% most deprived areas of the country be left without a GP surgery physically situated in the heart of the community? Of course the medical group has other surgeries, but forcing an ageing population with high levels of chronic illness to use those other facilities will put pressure on those surgeries, extending waiting times even further. The crisis in GP provision must be looked at nationally, because it is now starting to affect people who really need that support and help.

14:53

[Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I wish to speak briefly on the Gracious Speech as my first modest contribution to the proceedings of this House. Before I go on, I pay tribute to my predecessor, Peter Lilley, who served in this House and served his nation for 34 years. Most hon. Members on both sides of the House will be aware of his distinction in high office, serving under the premierships of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, of his huge intellect and of his knowledge on a range of subjects. But they may be less aware of the genuine affection in which he is held by the people of Hitchin and Harpenden, which I know from every single day of the general election campaign, and of how effective he was as a local constituency MP, in addition to all the offices he held. I am inspired by his example.

I thank the people of Hitchin and Harpenden for sending me to this House. Hitchin and Harpenden, and all of our villages in between, are not just physically beautiful and historic, with a landscape and character unique not just in Hertfordshire but in England and this great nation as a whole; the people are what really make a place special, and my constituents are special, in a very good way. They are kind, open, tolerant and sometimes challenging—they do like writing letters—and it is a great honour to represent them here in this House.

I come to this House with no gilded lineage but as a child of immigrants. My mother, born in Britain but growing up in Nigeria, became a pharmacist. My father, born and bred in Nigeria, is now an NHS doctor. Both came to this country in the 1980s in search of a better life. In particular, they believe that a good-quality education is key, not just for giving a child—an individual—a decent start in life but as the foundation of the future health and prosperity of our society as a whole. They worked incredibly hard and sacrificed a lot—some might say too much—to pay for the best education that Britain could offer, and I was immensely fortunate in that. It was, indeed, an amazing start in life.

And it is education that I believe to be at the heart of everything. I believe we can do better. During the election campaign there was a lot of debate in my constituency, and I know in many others, about whether school funding is adequate and about the excessive bureaucracy that teachers still have to put up with. I happen to think that we need more of the former and less of the latter, but the debate on education needs to be bigger than that, more fundamental.

Are we truly preparing our children for the second industrial revolution we are living through, in which we do not know what jobs will be like in 10 years, let alone 20? Some hon. Members, on both sides of the House, obsess about the type of school, whether it be comprehensive, grammar or private, but should we not focus more on outcomes than on the form? How do we significantly raise both the morale and the standards of teachers everywhere in every school? I promised my constituents that I will bring a relentless focus to that area, and I intend to do so every single day I am in this House, and it starts with fairer funding for every school. In many areas, yes, that will mean more resources.

I enter this House at a time when we face serious challenges as a nation—not just Brexit or, indeed, health and social care but the challenge of creating the most dynamic, productive and technologically advanced economy in the world. Education is central to that challenge because it is our future. The world-class human capital produced by our education system needs to be combined with financial capital investment, with better infrastructure and with a more competitive, simpler tax system for individuals and businesses. That is what a 21st-century, new economy looks like.

Although all Conservatives believe in world-class education and a dynamic, forward-thinking free market economy, we must also consider the type of society we are building together—a just society that, in the words of my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, works for everyone. That means zero tolerance of discrimination. That means making sure that our increasingly diverse society of all creeds and races is more cohesive. That means that the poorest among us deserve the right to live not just in decent and, yes, safe social housing but that they also have the right to aspire to own a home of their own. These are the challenges of our age. These are the challenges that we need to meet. I look forward to working with colleagues on both sides of the House on meeting those challenges in our time.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I very warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) on a maiden speech that was both eloquent and self-assured. It was a contribution of the highest quality, and the reaction of colleagues bears testimony to the truth of what I have just said. In welcoming the hon. Gentleman to the House, I wish him every success in the course of his parliamentary career.

Colleagues, before we continue the debate I have a short announcement to make. The House will know that the election of Deputy Speakers took place today and that the ballot was closed at 1.30 pm. The counting has now finished. Before I announce the results, let me thank, and thank effusively, I hope on behalf of all colleagues, the hon. Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) and the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) for public-spiritedly serving as temporary Deputy Speakers during the debates on the Queen’s Speech. They excelled themselves in that role, they are great public servants and I think the House is extremely appreciative of what they have done. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

Let me also take this opportunity to pay a warm personal tribute to Natascha Engel. Natascha unfortunately lost her seat at the general election, but she served with real commitment and effectiveness as a Deputy Speaker in the last Parliament. That, of course, was service coming on top of a period of great distinction as the first Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. In all, Natascha served in this place for 12 years, and we thank her for the quality and commitment of her service. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

I shall now announce the result of the ballot that was held today for the election of Deputy Speakers. Mr Lindsay Hoyle was elected as Chairman of Ways and Means. Mrs Eleanor Laing was elected as First Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. Dame Rosie Winterton was elected as Second Deputy Chairman of Ways and Means. I congratulate all three colleagues who have been elected, and I greatly look forward to working with them. I also want to thank the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) for contesting the election, and for all that she has done and continues to do in this House, not least in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association work which she enthusiastically, and to great effect, undertakes. I am sure we are going to hear a great deal more from her in the years to come in this Chamber. The results of the count will be made available as soon as possible in the Vote Office and will be published on the internet. I hope that we can have one last expression of congratulations, with a suitable, “Hear, hear” to victorious colleagues and thanks to the hon. Member for City of Durham, after which I am keen to proceed with the debate. Well done! [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]

15:03

[Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)]

May I begin by paying tribute to my predecessor, James Wharton, who showed a strong commitment to international development and worked hard for his constituents? I also wish to thank the Member of Parliament before him, Dari Taylor, who served Stockton South tirelessly for 13 years and was a formidable advocate for our community.

Some of my colleagues have been excited to see another doctor in the House. Members have told me about their bad backs and other problems that confidentiality and common decency prevent me from divulging, but I am afraid I have bad news for them: I have left my prescription pad at home. However, they can join me in keeping fit at my 6 am boot camp if they want. I am a big physical activity enthusiast, and I hope to encourage colleagues to lead active and healthy lifestyles. So Mr Speaker, I invite you and other hon. Members to set your alarms for tomorrow morning.

Stockton South is a diverse place with a proud history, a strong community and vast potential. It includes a large part of the town of Stockton, a vanguard of the industrial revolution and the birthplace of some of the finest ships to set sail. Innovation and industry have been a cornerstone in Stockton since the first tracks were laid for the Stockton to Darlington railway, and that is still evident in many of the businesses across the constituency. Today, Stockton shows strong leadership in regional arts; we are proud to provide sanctuary to refugees; and we have a vibrant voluntary sector and good-quality schools.

Stockton South also includes Yarm, which has a healthy small business community; Eaglescliffe, which has the leading manufacturing business, Nifco; Ingleby Barwick, which is home to many public servants, among others; and Thornaby, which has a proud history as an RAF base, protecting Teesside’s industry during the second world war. Thornaby was the place where Margaret Thatcher walked over the rubble that was once the Head Wrightson steel foundry—her infamous “walk in the wilderness”. The people of Stockton South have asked me to dispatch Thatcherism into the wilderness.

The diversity and tolerance among people of all faiths, beliefs and backgrounds in Stockton South is to be cherished, but, sadly, there is also diversity in terms of wide health and socioeconomic inequalities that cannot be tolerated. The life expectancy for people in some parts of my constituency is 10 years less than for those in others—10 years’ difference in life expectancy at birth. As a family doctor, every day I have seen too many people who have been left behind: people battling mental health problems, besieged by loneliness, and people with learning disabilities who have preventable illness. This holds people back and drains their potential. Not only is it unjust, but it is damaging to all of us. When a person’s health becomes so poor that they cannot work or someone’s father dies a premature death, we all lose.

Sadly, the people who have the most to gain from preventive healthcare are the people least likely to have their cancer screen or their diabetes check. We must challenge this so-called “inverse care law”, whereby those most in need are least likely to access healthcare. We need the most effort to be made to improve the health of the most vulnerable. We should invest in making pregnancy and the first 1,000 days of life from conception safer and better for people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. That is where the evidence tells us the greatest gains can be made. We should remodel our healthcare system so that prevention is given the status and resource now afforded to our treatment services. Prevention really is better than cure.

This Queen’s Speech did not have anything to say about health inequalities or about our lack of investment in public health. Every single person who cast a vote in this election wanted so much more from this Queen’s Speech, and they have been let down. The parents who told me they will have to wait three years for their child to get an assessment for autism—they wanted improvements. The families of people with dementia, worrying about the cost of care—they wanted clarity. The hard-working nurses facing 10 years of pay caps—they wanted fairness. An inspired and rejuvenated electorate have sent us here to create change. What an opportunity we have to listen to their voices. From many ordinary mouths came one extraordinary message: we must listen and we must act.

15:09

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in response to the Gracious Speech, and to follow both the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami)—two new Members. I have to tell the hon. Member for Stockton South that, having ruptured my Achilles twice in the last two years, I will be probably be looking at a pass note for the 6 am boot camp, but it is always reassuring, particularly for me, to have another doctor in the House.

May I also praise my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden for his contribution? His constituents will be reassured by his words today, including none other than Dora Scott, a constituent in Kimpton who is in her 90s and who also happens to be my aunt. We will both be keeping an eye out for him.

In the time that I have, I wish to focus on social care and its impact on health. Bexhill and Battle perhaps has a higher proportion of retired people than many other constituencies, and that requires me to speak up on their behalf. All politicians tend to do this when they sit on the Government Benches, but I urge us to get some form of consensus on this pressing issue for all our retired constituents.

It causes me great concern that despite the extra money that the Government put into the social care system, radical reform is absolutely required. I absolutely welcome the £2 billion that the Government put in earlier this year, but that remains unfunded, due to the failure to get the tax system to pay that extra amount. I also welcome the 3% levy on council tax bills, but in my constituency, where there is a smaller proportion of council tax receipts, it falls to people to pay even more. That concerns me for another reason that was prominent in the election campaign: intergenerational fairness. Is it right, for example, that my younger constituents, who do not have a home of their own, are saving as hard as they can, are paying private rent and cannot afford a deposit, are paying more and more on their council tax bills, which means that a home of their own is even further out of sight? We must look at not just funding, but radical reform, which brings me to the manifesto on which we stood.

[Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

The hon. Gentleman mentions funding. Does he think that England should see a change in the Barnett consequentials as a result of the Northern Ireland deal—the grubby deal or the protection money that has been offered to the Democratic Unionist party? I am talking about £30 billion to £40 billion for England, which would help greatly in the case that he mentions.

[Huw Merriman]

When I looked at the winter fuel allowance and the amount of money that we would put back into health as a result of the changes, I was concerned that, under Barnett, some of that money could end up funding Scotland, when Scotland already has the ability to make those decisions about funding. My concern is that as we devolve ever more powers to Scotland, we are not also asked to devolve ever more finance as well.

Let me come back to my main thread. With respect to social care, consensus and intergenerational fairness, I think that we should consider the ideas in my party’s manifesto. Those ideas were worthy of more thought than was afforded to them by the Opposition parties. I also found it incredibly distressing that our vulnerable constituents were receiving election literature through their letterboxes saying, “Under the Conservatives, you will be forced to sell your home in order to go into residential care.” That was put out by the Liberal Democrats, when, in fact, our manifesto was changing that current practice. They were completely misinterpreting the position—and, worse, to a group in our communities who are particularly vulnerable to that type of scare tactics.

Let me turn to pensions. Representing a constituency such as mine, I absolutely agree that we need to look after those on pensions, especially those who have been on fixed incomes and have not had much of a return over the past few years. It is true to say that the triple lock has ensured a 22% increase in pensions, whereas earnings have only risen by just over 7% and prices by only 12%. Again, we must look at intergenerational fairness and ask ourselves how we can ensure that, as well as equipping our elderly and retired constituents to ensure that they can continue with good means, we also look after those who will ultimately fund them.

I am absolutely delighted that this Government are pushing ahead with the consultation exercise. When it comes to contributions to social care, we should ask those who can afford it to take some form of individual responsibility. They should make those payments themselves; otherwise we will effectively see the taxpayer subordinated to those who end up inheriting under the system. Yes, I agree that those people have worked hard all their lives to create their nest egg and for their house, but ultimately I want to ensure that people have the best-quality social care, and that will not happen unless we reform it.

I ask all Opposition Members to think about intergenerational fairness, and to ask those people who can afford it to make more of a contribution, which means that those people starting off on the ladder, who have to think not only about buying a property but saving for their advanced age, have that opportunity as well. Without taking that type of adult decision, we will never get any further in reforming social care.

In my last 30 seconds, Madam Deputy Speaker—congratulations on your return—I make a plea on behalf of my schools. At a school hustings, at which there were candidates from all three parties, I told pupils that there was no point in getting something today, because they, more than any other generation, would have to pay for it tomorrow. Despite what has been said about our party’s popularity with the young, more people in that school voted for the Conservative candidate than any of the others, because they recognised that we have the policies to deliver for them, as well as for those who are retired.

15:16

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker—and my right hon. Friends the Members for Chorley (Mr Hoyle), and for Doncaster Central (Dame Rosie Winterton)—on your election to a fantastic role in which you will support the Speaker. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) on a confident maiden speech. He made a good impression on the House today, and I am sure that he will do so again in the future. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) and congratulate him on his maiden speech. He will bring great knowledge to this House. As his seat was a Labour gain in this election, I am particularly pleased to see him in his place.

This was the eighth election that I have fought in Delyn constituency, and the seventh that I have won, so I am certainly pleased to be back. I have never gone into an election knowing that I would win, and this one was particularly tough. It is important that, having returned to this House, I represent all the people of my constituency and ensure that the issues that are important to them are raised.

The Prime Minister called this election on Brexit. The Queen’s Speech is largely about Brexit, but the issues that my constituents brought up on the doorstep were anything but Brexit, most of the time. They were arguing about jobs, security, public spending, austerity and, particularly, security and policing. I wish to focus on the latter, not least because in the middle of this general election campaign we had the horrific events in Manchester, Borough Market and, latterly, Finsbury Park. We also remember the incident in this House earlier this year, when a brave police officer lost his life defending our liberties.

It is important that we focus on security and policing, and I will touch on four areas. I want to know how the Government intend to increase police numbers and change their policy—an issue also raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). Our focus on policing has changed following those incidents and the acceptance that austerity has been a difficult challenge for the community. I want to know what progress is being made in improving the number of armed police. I want to know what happens in relation to Eurojust, the European arrest warrant and Europol, to which the Government have not made any commitment in discussions to date. I want to know what plans they have to look at terrorism legislation as a matter of course. Policing has changed dramatically over the past seven years of this Government.

We know the figures, but they are worth repeating: we had 144,235 police officers on the streets of Britain in 2010. We have lost 21,376 officers since then. We had a reduction of over 6,000 police community support officers in that period. The number of firearms officers, which the Home Secretary seemed to trumpet in her contribution today, has reduced by over 1,337 in that period.

Those reductions are important because we need to focus on how we re-embed the police in this country. Police on the ground help reassure communities, help strengthen neighbourhood policing, and help with the big challenges of terrorism. Police embedded in the community pick up intelligence and recognise some of the challenges of vulnerable adults—challenges posed by both the fascist right and, at the other end of the spectrum, extremist Islamist terrorist potential. That policing on the ground makes a difference. Looking at the current challenges, we should never forget that police officers, in their reduced numbers, are significantly stretched.

[Mrs Moon]

My right hon. Friend, having served as a Minister with responsibility for policing, will remember the inputs of the Ministry of Defence police in providing security and stability for much of our most important national infrastructure. Is he aware that there is to be a £12.5 million cut in Ministry of Defence policing in this year, which means that fewer armed police officers will be available to support Home Office police?

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I want to challenge the Government, in the winding-up speeches, to say what the Government mean when they talk about an uplift in the number of armed police officers. We have a downlift of more than 1,500 armed police officers.

I praise the speed and effectiveness of the response in London, and indeed in Manchester, but the events in London happened within one mile of a significant concentration of armed police, here in central London. If those events had happened in some parts of the country, there would have been great difficulty in effectively getting an armed police response at the speed that we would expect, and that was delivered by brave police officers here in London.

More police officers are now reporting sick because of stress. The number of police officers who have taken sick leave each year has increased by about 1,500 since 2010. That is because they are under pressure, because they do not have the numbers that there were in the past. It should also be remembered that police officers do not do 24-hour shifts. Police officers take holidays. Police officers sleep. Police officers have time off. Those police officers whom we have are very thinly stretched.

We should also recall that the police officer cohort is ageing; nearly 50% of officers are now in the higher age range. Unless we recruit effectively and speedily, we will not have the level of policing that we would wish to see in our community at large.

I mentioned the European arrest warrant and the European matters that we face as part of Brexit. On Monday, in answer to a question that I asked her, the Prime Minister said,

“As regards Eurojust, Europol and the European arrest warrant, those will be matters for…negotiations”—[Official Report, 26 June 2017; Vol. 626, c. 321.]

I am very sorry; they should not be matters for negotiation. They should be things that we, as a United Kingdom Government, are committed to participating in in the future. We need the European arrest warrant, Eurojust and Europol to ensure that we tackle crime, stop terrorism, bring back to this country people who have committed heinous offences here, and export to other countries people who have committed heinous offences there. I want a commitment from the Government as soon as possible that they will commit to the European arrest warrant, Eurojust and the European security co-operation measures that make so much difference to our lives and our security. We shall be voting against the Queen’s Speech tonight, and we are right to do so until we get clarification on those key issues.

15:23

[Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)]

All Members will have their own examples of mental health casework. Often, those constituents will have attended an advice surgery or sent an email for help about a different problem entirely. It could be housing; it could be employment or welfare; it could even be a problem involving the criminal justice system. But it soon becomes clear, after a few questions and a little bit of probing, that the underlying problem is one of undiagnosed—or unsupported—mental illness.

Poor mental health weakens people’s life chances, and many of the effects of deprivation further aggravate the impact of mental illness. Sadly, an increasing proportion of cases from our surgeries involve children suffering from poor mental health. I welcome the Green Paper on children and young people’s mental health, and I am pleased that the Government have committed £1.4 billion for child and adolescent mental health services by 2020. That is absolutely the right thing to do. It will transform mental health treatment for children and young people. We all need to ensure that it is properly directed and spent in those areas where it was intended to be spent, because it is a shocking fact that one in 10 children in this country have a diagnosable mental health condition.

I am pleased that the Prime Minister launched the expansion of the mental health first aid training scheme in secondary schools yesterday. It is essential that we do more to deliver early intervention to support people’s mental health, rather than relying so heavily on acute mental health services once conditions have deteriorated, sometimes to the point of psychosis. It is the difference between treating an illness and just tackling the immediate symptoms—a distinction that would be so obvious for physical health that surely nobody would argue against its existence. That means ensuring that training for GPs allows them to identify mental health conditions in patients who present with a completely different illness, and ensuring that continuing professional development allows GPs to keep up so that more senior GPs also have the necessary understanding of mental health. It means securing access to successful programmes such as Improving Access to Psychological Therapies—introduced by the previous Government and continued by this one—and other talking therapies, where alternatives to drug-based treatments are appropriate.

I am pleased that the Mental Health Act 1983 is to be reformed. It was doubtless introduced with the very best of intentions and has certainly had many beneficial effects, but in too many cases the starting point seems to be that it treats people with mental illness as threats that need to be contained, rather than as patients who need treatment and support. Of course, there are times when people need to be detained, for their own protection or that of those around them, but then the focus must be on medical treatment rather than, effectively, imprisonment.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

In terms of providing that support in the right environment, would my hon. Friend like to show some appreciation of the Government for the mental health hospital that recently opened just down the road from my constituency? It is a £40 million investment, and will go a long way to providing that kind of support in the local community.

[Mike Wood]

I absolutely agree. As part of the increased capital investment that the Prime Minister announced earlier this year, the £10 billion capital investment for the national health service will mean not only that new buildings such as the one to which my hon. Friend referred—the new hospital in Sandwell in the west midlands is an example—become more common, but infrastructure such as the new urgent care centre at my own local hospital in Russells Hall is provided so that our NHS can become more effective.

The Secretary of State should take great pride in the changes that he has introduced to guidance on section 135 and l36 powers, which mean that a safe place should usually be a place where patients can receive medical help, rather than the default position of a police cell. It is time for those changes to be given a statutory footing, and I hope that the new Bill will deliver that. There should be parity of esteem so that people with mental health conditions receive the same respect and equivalent status, and are treated with the same dignity, as people with physical health conditions. It is a positive step that that has been legislated for, and I hope that we will see more and more efforts to make sure that that commitment becomes a reality for constituents who receive treatment for mental health conditions.

If I may briefly speak of my own experience of the health service. As some hon. Friends know, I received rather more direct and personal experience of our hospitals, GPs and outpatient clinics than I had planned at the beginning of the year. I should like to place on record my thanks to the doctors, consultants, nurses and support staff who were all absolutely fantastic in keeping me alive so that I am here now. It has also given me the chance to work with the UK Sepsis Trust and the formidable Ron Daniels. I hope that during this Parliament the Secretary of State will have a chance to look at calls from the trust for simple measures that it is estimated would save perhaps a quarter of the 44,000 lives that are lost as a result of sepsis every year in the UK. They include instigating a national registry to record accurately the true burden of sepsis, raising awareness nationally, and looking at commissioning levers to deliver best practice and reinforce that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I call Dr Philippa Whitford.

15:31

[Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, and my congratulations, too, on your re-election.

I echo what the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said when highlighting the fact that across all four NHS services the biggest challenge is the increased demand from an ageing population, with huge and growing workforce challenges. That has been aggravated by Brexit. There has been a 95% drop in nursing applications from the EU, along with a prolonged 1% pay cap. Members have rightly paid tribute to the emergency services after the terrorist attacks and the appalling Grenfell fire. It is now time that we met the rhetoric with a decent salary.

It is a bit strange to combine a debate on security with a debate on health, but when I made my maiden speech two years ago during a Queen’s Speech debate I highlighted to the Government the fact that their first priority was the security of their citizens, not by replacing weapons of mass destruction but by providing the security that comes from knowing that there is a roof over your head and food on the table. It also matters what kind of roof it is. The people of Grenfell were failed by local government scrimping and saving on cladding and sprinklers, and by successive UK Governments, who did not act on previous warnings. The issue of cladding and sprinklers was first raised as a result of a fatal fire in my constituency in 1999, when a disabled man lost his life. That was 18 years ago.

[Anna Soubry]

Does the hon. Lady not agree that it is absolutely imperative in the wake of this terrible tragedy that we wait to establish the facts? One fact that we know is that the local authority had almost a quarter of a billion pounds in reserves, which is a good indication that it was not about scrimping and scraping. There may well have been other serious failures, but we await the full public inquiry, and we will then establish all the facts.

[Dr Whitford]

I am not saying that the local authority was scrimping and saving because it did not have money; it was because it was not spending the money. It used cheap panels and it did not put in sprinklers. Some 600-plus buildings across London and England are covered in panels that clearly contain flammable materials. We hear from Camden that fire doors were missing, despite millions of pounds having been spent. As Ben Okri says in his poem, there has been a focus on surface and appearance rather than on the substance of such buildings and the protection of people who live in them.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I always listen to the hon. Lady with care and respect, but I appeal to her to look at the evidence base before making the remarks that she has. Words are important. We have established an inquiry that will establish the facts and make recommendations. Until then, with the greatest respect, I think that her remarks are premature.

[Dr Whitford]

The hon. Gentleman may feel that my remarks are premature with regard to Grenfell, but they are not when it comes to Lakanal, Irvine or other terrible fires that were clearly shown to relate to cladding and where sprinklers could have made a difference.

We have been repeatedly warned over the past 18 years and we have not taken action. The people in Grenfell died not only because of fire regulations, but because of inequality. They lived in the richest borough in the richest city, yet they were among the most poor and vulnerable. That tower stands like a black monolith shadowing the whole city and this place. The people in it were not well served.

We see people dying in Grenfell, suddenly—the drama and the horror. Yet people die of inequality, poverty and deprivation all the time. There is a 20-year gap in longevity between the richest and poorest, both in life expectancy and healthy life expectancy. Some 1,400 children under 15 die every year as a direct result of poverty—that is like the roof of a secondary school collapsing on them every year. If that happened, surely we would take action.

[Anna Soubry]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Dr Whitford]

For the last time.

[Anna Soubry]

I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison): I have a lot of respect for most of what the hon. Lady says. However, does she agree that no one side in this place has an exclusive hold on the moral things that guide us? All of us come into this place to make life better for all our constituents. The eradication of poverty runs deep to the roots of conservatism as it does elsewhere in this House.

[Dr Whitford]

If the right hon. Lady had listened to what I was saying, she would have heard me say “UK Governments”. I talked about a period of 18 years, which involves not one but repeated Governments, who have been complacent and not taken action.

The children who die because they are born into poverty die of low birthweight, chronic illness, suicide, road traffic accidents and—poignantly—house fires. Children who live in poverty suffer from hunger, malnutrition, cold and damp houses, and chronic illnesses. They lose their chance to succeed at school and to have the life opportunities that a lot of us take for granted.

The number of children living in poverty is now approaching 4 million and is expected to reach 5 million by the end of this decade; that is an indictment on everyone in this House. On average, 28% of UK children live in poverty, but that average hides the inequality across the UK. There are wards in the north of England where the figure reaches the high 40s—nearly half of the children in such areas grow up in poverty. Those children will not have decent life chances—and if we think that money is being saved, we are wrong: we will be picking up the pieces later in their lives when they end up with addictions or in the criminal justice system.

We need to tackle the situation now. The biggest driver of ill health is poverty and the biggest driver of poverty is the decisions that we make. We had welfare Acts in 2012 and 2015, and that was when child poverty stopped falling and started to rise. We need to change the situation. As the Prime Minister keeps saying, we have a responsibility to every single person across this country, and that includes children.

[Vicky Ford]

It is great to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. Is the hon. Lady aware of the news released by the Office for National Statistics today? Of the 28 EU countries, the UK has the fifth lowest rate of child poverty. There is more to be done, but surely that is a very good start.

[Dr Whitford]

That may come down to a matter of definition. Last year, this House had a Government who were trying to get rid of child poverty by simply putting a line through it with a pen and removing the title from the Social Mobility and Children Poverty Commission. They wanted to abandon the Child Poverty Act 2010 and the commitment to end child poverty, and to stop measuring income because—oh, let’s face it—the money within a family does not contribute to poverty.

[Joanna Cherry]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Dr Whitford]

I am sorry, but I am running out of time. We all have a responsibility to the children across the United Kingdom to invest in their future and not to allow them to be cast aside, or we will pay the price later. This needs to change now. That is how to change health and to protect NHS services.

11:30

[Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)]

I am delighted to see a fellow Scot in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker; many congratulations. It is also an honour to follow the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford).

It is an honour to speak for the people of the constituency of Gordon. My constituency was formed in 1983 and has since been loyally represented by two Members. Malcolm Bruce represented Gordon from 1983 until 2015. He was an able and well-admired Member of Parliament, becoming a member of the Privy Council in 2006. He was knighted in 2012 and became a life peer in 2015 as Lord Bruce of Bennachie.

I also pay tribute to my immediate predecessor and former First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond, who was elected to represent Gordon in 2015. He was first elected in Banff and Buchan in 1987, served at both Westminster and Holyrood and was a parliamentarian for 30 years—30 years as a public servant dedicated to his cause. I wish him all the very best.

The traveller through Gordon starts in the hills of the west, first coming to Huntly, the home of the Gordon clan. Heading east, they experience the howes and valleys, taking in the Garioch and Inverurie, on to Ellon and the coast at Newburgh and Balmedie. This is good, productive land on a scale that can compete, dominated by family farms. The constituency takes in large parts of the north of the city of Aberdeen. Expanding rapidly during the boom years, it has shown remarkable resilience. It is industrious and has adapted to lower oil prices, and I look forward to the city region deal linking the city and shire.

Gordon has a diverse and resilient economy driven by locally grown entrepreneurs. It is an area of enterprise and employment, where the number of registered businesses has grown from 4,500 to 5,200 over five years. Having seen downturns in the North sea before, many supply companies have moved their focus to exports outside Europe: exports of personnel with expertise developed in the North sea, technology built and manufactured in the north-east and unique engineering techniques applicable to other industries. Offshore oil and gas is focused on efficiency. It is a long-term investor and needs stability.

The downturn in oil and gas has taught us to promote other industries, such as tourism, which was long neglected. Gordon is rich with castles, stunning and bracing beaches and access to limitless outdoor pursuits. The area is well served by hotels and restaurants and very well served by golf courses, even one owned by the President of the United States. Industry, however, has been hurt by punitive business rates in the north-east. During the oil boom, there was a froth of high rents. Business rates increases of 100% to 200% are not unusual and coincide with a fragile recovery. The business sector recognises that it must contribute, but excessive rates damage employment, investment and sentiment, and we are at risk of displacing jobs. The Scottish Government committed that every penny raised locally would stay local. It was none other than my predecessor, the former First Minister, who made this change to regional finances. I ask that the north-east regional councils get to keep the extra funds raised, allowing councils to mitigate the business rates rises if they so choose.

All three of the north-east constituencies of Scotland are geographically dominated by farming. Farming in Scotland is the bedrock of the food and drink industry, which turns over £14 billion a year. It accounts for 19% of total manufacturing, and supports 360,000 jobs. As that bedrock, agriculture deserves our support to achieve efficient production and a fair share of the high street price.

In the light of today’s debate, I implore the Minister to highlight the plight of health provision in Gordon and the north-east of Scotland to his counterpart in the Scottish Government. Aberdeen Royal Infirmary serves 600,000 people. We depend on its continued expertise; it is of the utmost importance that it preserves its international reputation as a teaching hospital. In the last few years, it has been at risk of playing second fiddle to the hospitals of Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The people of Gordon would ask us to respect the geography—it is three to four hours’ travel time to the central belt—and to look again at the shortage of doctors and nurses in the north-east. Gordon, like so many other areas, has an ageing population, and I would encourage the Minister to bring the debate out into the open on how we best prepare for demands on our services in the future.

Gordon and the whole north-east makes a huge contribution to the Scottish and UK economies, paying for the services we all depend on. It is not an area of privilege, but an area of hard work, an area of new start-ups and reinvention, and an area of enterprise and employment. Gordon is an outward-looking constituency, a confident area and an area of optimism and growth, ready to embrace opportunities, including Brexit. Through the democratic process, Gordon has fiercely defended its place in the United Kingdom.

I would suggest to Opposition Members that this country needs to talk up its opportunities, talk up its position in the world and be positive about the road that lies before us.

15:46

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

I warmly welcome you back to your place in the House, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) on an excellent maiden speech, and welcome him to the House—I am sure he will serve his constituents extremely well.

I welcome the focus, prioritisation and investment in the Queen’s Speech in regard to mental health—parity of esteem must be achieved. I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests and to my background in psychology.

In Scotland, we have a mental health Minister. We also have continued prioritisation and someone who will lead that forward. I am extremely happy to be named the mental health spokesperson for the SNP in this House, where we are also prioritising the issue of mental health.

A number of decades ago, in the 1990s—unfortunately, that shows my age—I started as a young psychologist in the NHS. At that time, patients could wait for up to a year to receive treatment, which was absolutely ineffectual. They came with their problems, one year after those problems had started, but their problems had often changed or multiplied. So I welcome the fact that we have been trying across the United Kingdom to establish waiting times. That is an important step forward for all.

Time is crucial in the delivery of services. It is extremely important that additional funding goes to those on the frontline—to clinicians. Most reviews since the 1990s that I sat on as a clinician sought to increase the number of management staff in our NHS, but it is extremely important that funding goes to the frontline and to the key professionals who will deliver the services—in relation to mental health, that has to be mental health practitioners. I would welcome some words from the Secretary of State about ensuring that staff on the frontline are prioritised when funding is produced.

The training of staff is also crucial. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) spoke about the impact of Brexit, and we cannot take that lightly. It is extremely important that we have workforce planning. In recent weeks, I have been contacted by concerned psychologists.

[Dr Whitford]

Does my hon. Friend recognise the impact that Brexit will have on staffing? We have a 95% fall in EU nurses registering to come here, and up to 60% of doctors in a General Medical Council survey said they would go back. That would obviously threaten staffing in the north-east—an issue the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) raised.

[Dr Cameron]

As always, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which goes to the crux of this. With Brexit looming, we must ensure that our NHS and our social care services continue to be adequately resourced and staffed. Those are crucial issues, which I would certainly wish to be taken forward.

In recent weeks, I have been contacted by a concerned psychologist stating particular worries regarding funding for their profession. If we are going to place mental health as a priority at the core of what we do, then surely we have to ensure that funding for the placements of clinical psychologists continues. I would very much welcome comment and reassurance from the Secretary of State in that regard.

On services for people who have autistic spectrum disorder, very many constituents with families come to see me who are concerned that their children may merit a diagnosis of autism but still continue to find that the situation can be difficult. I am sure, given the background reading that I have done, that it is the same right across the United Kingdom. Diagnosis as early as possible is absolutely crucial to ensure access to services so that children can meet their full potential. What level of funding will be made available, and will any be ring-fenced for diagnosis, particularly for those with specific needs such as autistic spectrum disorder?

In child and adolescent mental health services, there is a real issue of demand at the current time. Prevention is absolutely key, as is early detection. That means that teachers will have an important role, alongside parents, and they must have a point of contact in primary care that they can reach in order to ensure that treatment and support can be taken forward. There is concern from professional bodies in relation to in-patient beds being made available within the locale. I have recently been reading reports saying that one patient from Somerset—a child—was sent for care in the highlands, 587 miles away. Use of out-of-area in-patient beds has apparently risen by 40% from 2014-15 to 2016-17. That really must be addressed. The knock-on effect of slashing mental health beds may be that the A&E bed figure lists are down, but we need particular investment in mental health beds and ring-fencing of money for mental health beds and services.

The very important aspect that we sometimes forget is mental health support for carers. Carers often feel at the very forefront of a crisis when that crisis happens. We must look at services and funding to protect carers to ensure that they have access to the support that they need at their greatest time of crisis.

Public sector pay has been discussed widely across the House today, and obviously pay recommendations must be reviewed. Many nurses and allied health professionals have been receiving a pay level which, given inflation, has meant that they have been, in effect, receiving a pay cut. This has to be taken forward positively. We cannot just rely on our crucial health services at the time of need; we must also walk the walk by ensuring that we pay them effectively and fairly, and give them the justice that they deserve.

15:53

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

It is delightful to see you back in your rightful place, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is also a delight to follow the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron), because I too want to talk about mental health services, particularly those for children.

It is sadly the case that many young people have very troubled existences in school, and it sometimes takes quite a long while to get a diagnosis that they are suffering from mental health problems. I am sure that over the years all colleagues will have seen desperate parents coming into their surgeries to raise this issue. As a parent myself, I can honestly say that there is nothing more desperate than feeling that one’s child is friendless, singled out, left out, and somehow missing out on what should be one of the happy periods of their lives.

I suggest to the Secretary of State that as we go forward with child mental services we look at how we can seamlessly integrate them with the schooling that children are receiving, or often missing out on as a result of their conditions. Parents who come to visit my surgery tell me that too often there are two silos where they are raising the same issues and problems—the school system and the child mental health services system—and they are having to do so over and over again because there is no transference of knowledge about the individual’s case. Parents have been put in the dreadful situation of being pursued by a school because it thought that the young person was truanting, when in reality they were unable to leave their room because they could not escape the utter mental trauma they were experiencing. It took a huge amount of work to ensure that that young person got some degree of education at home.

The way forward for many of our services is for them to integrate with others. I make the plea that child and adolescent mental health services be better hooked up with educational services. Different groups of professionals should not be prevented from discussing matters with each other, because that makes the situation worse. If a child or young person is experiencing a period of ill health, bad health or a crisis, that information should be seamlessly conveyed to the school. I know that there are all sorts of issues to do with protection of privacy, but if a young person’s opportunities to gain educational qualifications are slipping away and it is impossible for them to be home schooled or receive tutor support at home because of a lack of dialogue, we need to address that. That is why I am pleased about the proposed Green Paper, which will address how families can access information about mental health and treatment for loved ones, and how the Mental Health Act has been implemented on the ground.

We should look at the issue across the board, including the role of pharmacies. Many of us spoke in the debate on that subject in January. There is an argument that pharmacies should be encouraged to do more and not just be paid for the number of prescriptions they dispense. I repeat that we need to bring different services together. Some hon. Members have talked about loneliness and others about dementia. I am absolutely certain that pharmacies can play a part in the seamless transition I have mentioned by providing not only drugs and other forms of care but a listening service. I want pharmacies to do much more and for them to be encouraged to integrate more with other aspects of social and GP-led care in areas such as mine, where the National Pharmacy Association has its headquarters.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady has outlined the importance of pharmacies. Does she agree that money should be set aside for frontline GP services? One way of doing that would be for them to work closer with pharmacies to ensure that they can give an all-inclusive picture when someone visits their GP.

[Mrs Main]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Some people have described the Queen’s Speech as thin, but I think it touches on key points and gives us a chance to flesh things out and submit our views on what should happen. I want pharmacies to provide more support to other services than they do at present.

The West Hertfordshire Hospitals NHS Trust, which provides acute care services in my area, has been struggling for a considerable period, but I pay tribute to it, because it is now turning around some of its problems. I visited it recently and I am pleased to say that it now has a complete hold on hospital-acquired infections and has refurbished and upgraded some wards. The Herts Valleys clinical commissioning group has also launched a new community perinatal mental health team, which is starting to work with families. I believe that visionary approaches can be taken, using current resources, to ensure that we get the most out of our national health services.

It is a shame that this place focuses on the negative. I was frankly shocked to hear the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford)—this is how I understand what she said, but she can correct me if I am wrong—seem to support the claim by the shadow Chancellor, the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), that families and individuals had been “murdered” by political decisions over recent decades. That was an atrocious comment for him to make in public at Glastonbury.

[Dr Whitford]

rose—

[Mrs Main]

I will give way in a moment, because I am sure the hon. Lady wants to respond. In these difficult times, it is deeply irresponsible to whip up resentment in political groups—the shadow Chancellor said that this had happened over decades—when we do not have the results. Building Research Establishment in my constituency is doing the panel testing, and we should have a period of reflective calm. There are still unidentified remains in that building, and it is deeply irresponsible to pass judgment on what caused the fire. I do not think it should ever be acceptable to suggest murder without any evidence—it is a very harsh thing to accuse people of.

[Dr Whitford]

rose—

[Mrs Main]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, as I am sure she would like to distance herself from the concept of murder.

[Dr Whitford]

If the hon. Lady had paid any attention, she would recognise that I did not use that term, and I talked about Governments. The fire in Irvine in 1999— 18 years ago—identified the issues with cladding and sprinklers. That is many Governments ago and a long time in which this place has not taken sufficient action on tower blocks.

[Mrs Main]

In this period of deep distress and anguish, when many things remain to be found out and many lessons to be learned, it behoves us all not to use this as a political football. I hope that in future we will stop doing so.

I am delighted that the Queen’s Speech has a real focus on mental health, but I make a particular plea to the Secretary of State to work with education services and child and adolescent mental health services to ensure that young people do not end up, during troubled periods in their lives, missing opportunities to gain the qualifications and make the friendships and relationships they need. It is a tragedy that young people feel so isolated. When they reach adulthood, the continuity of services drops off a cliff, with no pick-up from adult mental health services. We should take seriously the need for a seamless transition to wellness for young people, and I am pleased that the Government have decided to spearhead that campaign.

16:01

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I congratulate you on your election today, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The Queen’s Speech set out no strategy and no answers to solve the crisis of both staffing and funding in the health service. Back in the 1980s and 1990s, when the Conservatives were in power for so long, we saw a massive crisis, and that has been repeated under the Conservative Governments of the last seven years. There is not enough funding and not enough staff. The Government have done nothing to solve the crisis, but it needs funding.

Take trolley waits, for example. A recent Library paper says that in 2012-13 there were 152,754 trolley waits, and in 2016-17 there were 563,901. That is a disgrace, and it shows that the NHS needs to be funded properly. We have talked about the GP crisis, and the Library paper says that the estimate for this year is that the number of GPs will fall—although the number is now calculated differently. In my constituency and others, people cannot get to see a GP when they want to, and there is a real crisis in GP practices.

NHS deficits are still a problem and are estimated to be at least £7 billion. Some commentators claim that not even that figure is high enough to be correct. More than 100 NHS trusts have a deficit—when I last spoke to the chief executive of Warrington and Halton Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, the deficit was about £5 million. We know the stress and worry the staff face because they do not have the resources they need.

Clinical commissioning groups have not been mentioned much, but the Government fragmented the health service through the Health and Social Care Act 2012 and it is not clear where to go for a decision or to get something done. I have regular meetings with my clinical commissioning group, and it has a serious funding problem, as do many CCGs. What will the Government do about that? I also ask the Secretary of State, who is in his place, why Halton CCG is mainly working in collaboration with Warrington CCG and not with the other CCGs in the local health economy, as it should. I have already raised that problem with the CCG, but it has not done anything about it. I hope that the Secretary of State will look into that.

The Care Quality Commission said clearly last year that social care was at a tipping point. The delays have been discussed many times in the House, and the Secretary of State knows that I have raised them. The Library paper states that delayed transfers were 24.5% higher in 2016-17 than in 2015-16, and 64% higher than in 2011-12. This is a real problem. The Government, despite talking about a Green Paper, have still not come forward with a strategy. There needs to be proper funding for local councils—my council has had £57 million cut from its budget—and proper funding for the NHS and the health economies of each area.

Education is the other big issue that is raised with me. Again, the Government have not set out a strategy, and the Queen’s Speech does not address it in the way it should be addressed. There are cuts taking place. I have been talking to headteachers in my constituency and they are making cuts as we speak, particularly in teaching assistants, but some are talking about cutting teachers as well. This mess is best summed up by reading an extract of a letter from a headteacher in my constituency:

“At my school, we manage the budget prudently and we have rising numbers so have received similar funding for 17/18 as for 16/17. In fact there has been a small increase of just over £1,000. Despite this, without any planned increase in spending on teachers or resources, I am unable to balance the budget. The increased costs for areas such as Employers NI, pension contributions, apprenticeship levy, salaries and utilities has meant that I don’t have the capacity”—

I stress this—

“to set a balanced budget without making reductions and using our carry forward. For 2018/19 the school will almost certainly need to undertake a re-structuring programme to reduce staffing costs. This will inevitably impact on the teaching and learning, at a time when we have increasing pupil numbers.”

I talk to teachers and headteachers on a regular basis and I know the stress they are under. It is not just an issue of better pay—although, of course, they would like more pay—but one of workload, which is a key factor in the problems and stress they face. I want to put on the record my praise for teachers and their work. The Government’s proposed new funding formula will see huge cuts in all but one secondary school in my constituency. That will not address the problem; it will make it worse. The new funding formula is not up to scratch.

Finally on education, further education colleges have been cut and cut over the years. We talk about apprenticeships and the need to ensure that we have the skills to improve productivity. We need to ensure that our further education colleges, which can deliver them, have the funding they need to do so. We cannot achieve an improvement in productivity and skills without that.

In the few seconds I have remaining, I want to talk about defence and security. We have heard about police numbers. My constituents tell me that they want more police in their community and on the streets. We have specialist security, police and intelligence teams, but my constituents want more police officers on the street.

The Government have cut and cut the armed forces. We now have our smallest Army since the Napoleonic wars. At a time when there is so much stress in the world and so many challenges, that is appalling. The Government should increase the amount of money available for our security and armed forces.

16:07

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

It is good to see you back in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker.

We have been treated to a range of excellent maiden speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). They obviously have the measure of this place already, because not one of them is left in the Chamber, but in his absence, I reassure the hon. Member for Stockton South that we can never have too many doctors in the House.

I welcome the commitment in the Queen’s Speech to improving social care, and I welcome the plans for a consultation. All of us who have gone through the general election process—certainly on the Government Benches—will be aware of the importance of this issue. We may even recall the 2015 manifesto commitment, on which we stood, to implement something that looked a little bit like Dilnot. Most of us at the time thought that was a jolly good idea.

Our public services are all about pooled risk. That is what the NHS and our social services are all about—in everything, it seems, except for dementia and other chronic and long-term conditions that require ongoing care. For most of us, they will not actually be that expensive. Mercifully, for most of us dementia care will not be expensive. It is a condition that affects us right at the very end of our life and very few of us will require institutional care. For a few of us, however, it will be expensive. For those people and their families it will be a matter of huge importance, as many of us, particularly those of us on the Government Benches, found out a few weeks ago to our great cost. It seems reasonable that we should indeed have a Dilnot-style cap on our liability for these extraordinary costs that affect a few of us—a number of our families. It is surely right that we should do so, and I have no doubt that that will come out loud and clear in the consultation.

I very much welcome the commitment to mental health in the Queen’s Speech. I am particularly interested in mental health so far as it relates to the criminal justice system. It is welcome that we should be revising the Mental Health Act 1983. It has been a good piece of legislation and has served us well, but it is due for revision and updating. Some 10% of women and 30% of men in the criminal justice system have had some involvement with mental health services, or had to access acute mental health services prior to their incarceration. Ninety per cent. of people in the criminal justice system have some form of mental health problem. That is a huge indictment not, I would suggest, of the service, but of all of us. It is absolutely right that in our general attempt to reduce the rate of incarceration in this country, which is far too high, we focus particularly on the people in the prison system who have serious and significant mental health problems.

I very much welcome the focus on general practice articulated by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and his Ministers. The service, it has to be said, is under pressure. It is certainly running hot, and my worry about the medical workforce—GPs, hospital doctors and nurses, and everybody who works in our NHS—is that we risk allowing the well of good will not just to get low but to run completely dry.

It is absolutely right that we should now look at removing the cap on pay for public sector workers, and that we should think in particular about those working in our health services. These people give far more back to the service than we give to them, in terms of the package, and those of us who go into medicine, healthcare or social care understand that. We do it because we want to give something back. We are altruists, but that only goes so far. When we have to support our families, pay the mortgage and deal with everything that bears down on people in their working lives, it is pretty rotten to see salaries increasing, rightly, in the general economy but not in the public service. It is absolutely understandable that the Government, as a big employer, should seek to contain cost. As an evangelist for reducing our deficit, I will support that, but there comes a point—I welcome the Government’s indication that it is rapidly approaching—when we have to look at pay settlement for those who work so well for us in the public sector.

I am absolutely obsessed by outcomes in healthcare; the Secretary of State will know that, because we have discussed it. Healthcare outcomes in this country languish behind those of countries with which we can reasonably be compared, and I do not mean the OECD average. I mean countries such as France, Germany and Holland. On Britain’s disappointing position in the league tables, we must do more to improve on things such as bowel cancer and cervical cancer, on which we are overtaking France and Germany respectively. We need to do that right across the board. I am left with the conclusion that because money, inputs and outcomes are causally related, we have to get the funding right.

I hope very much that the Government will consider again the proposal put forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) and my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) that we should achieve consensus through a cross-party commission on this issue, so that we can discuss, in the NHS’s 70th anniversary year, how to get sustainable funding for our NHS and make sure that this great national institution is fit for the next 70 years.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. It will be obvious to the House that a great many people still wish to speak. I have to warn the House that after the next few speakers, I will have to reduce the time limit on speeches to four minutes. I so appreciate the good wishes that everybody has given me on my re-election this afternoon, but I realise that I will not get any more now. That is fair enough; we will try to get everybody in. Still with six minutes, I call Gill Furniss.

16:14

[Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker, and congratulations on being back in the Chair.

During the election campaign, I spoke to many doctors, nurses and other NHS professionals in my constituency, as well as service users, and listened to what they said about the state of our NHS and social care. At each and every meeting, I listened to people, many of whom felt demoralised by the state of the profession after seven years of this Tory Government. From longer waiting times to missed A&E targets to the cancelling of operations to record numbers of nurses leaving the profession, the NHS has suffered greatly since 2010.

The anger and frustration felt during the election campaign were reflected in the result: a vote that reduced the number of Conservative Members and wiped out the majority of the Government. The public have simply rejected the Tories’ austerity agenda. I hope I shall be forgiven for being hopeful—like many others—that that would be reflected in the Queen’s Speech, which, instead, reflected a continued total disconnect between the Prime Minister and Government and the wider public.

The Queen’s Speech failed to begin to tackle the issue of chronic underfunding in our NHS. Among the top 10 economies in the EU, the UK spends the smallest proportion of its GDP on health: 9.8%, compared to a 10.4% average. If the UK only half-matched the EU average, there could be 35,000 extra hospital beds and 10,000 more GPs, and the cuts in public health budgets could be reversed.

After the election, the Prime Minister and her Ministers appeared to be listening to the electorate when they were reported to have said that austerity was over. Sadly, that was just Tory rhetoric, and far from the reality. Only this week, secret cost-cutting plans drawn up by the Tories were leaked, suggesting shocking details that could pose further danger to our NHS. Reports suggest that NHS managers are being told to “make difficult choices” to curb overspending in a drive to cut costs. Full details of those plans have not been announced; in fact, I do not believe that the Secretary of State had any intention of announcing them before the leaks occurred. Instead, they are being worked out secretly behind closed doors. They could lead to even longer waiting times, rationing of care, job losses, and ward closures in hospitals. I am deeply concerned about what that could mean for my constituents, and I ask the Government to disclose the plans fully for the purpose of public scrutiny. The NHS belongs to the public, and should therefore be accountable both to Members of Parliament and to the public at large.

As for pay, while workloads have increased, nurses have been handed a 1% pay cap for seven years in a row. That does not even cover the rise in inflation. During the election campaign, the PM said that nurses went to food banks “for a variety of reasons”. I suggest that the only reason is that the Government have made them £3,000 worse off since 2010, while continuing to give tax breaks to the richest.

We know that their current conditions are causing more staff to leave the NHS out of desperation. Many of those vacancies are left unfilled. According to the Royal College of Nursing, there are 40,000 registered nurse vacancies in England, and an average vacancy rate of 11.1%. The rate has doubled in the past three years, and we are seeing the effects in NHS hospitals up and down the country. Furthermore, the Government’s shambolic approach to Brexit has created a feeling of uncertainty among EU nationals. No wonder the number of applications from EU nurses to work in the UK has plummeted by 96% since last year.

Nurses and doctors are not crying wolf when they warn us about the health and safety issues that are arising from the lack of proper staffing levels. Has the Secretary of State made any assessment of the impact of the drop in applications on the NHS, and, if so, what action does he propose to take to ensure that it does not affect the health and safety of patients?

The proposal in the Queen’s Speech for an immigration Bill provides no details to reassure those EU citizens currently living in the UK. Labour has been calling for all their rights to be guaranteed since the referendum was decided. I concede that the Prime Minister has finally made an offer for EU citizens, but it is a half-hearted one at best, containing little clarity.

I welcome any suggestion that would help and support the NHS, and I therefore welcome the Government’s commitment to reforming mental health legislation to give it greater priority. However, last Wednesday the Prime Minister gave no assurances that no mental health trust would see its budget cut this year, as 40% of them did last year. If the Government want to be taken seriously, they must back their rhetoric with the financial support that is needed. They have not done this. It is clear that the Prime Minister will find the money to cling to power, but not to secure mental health spending.

Finally, the debacle over the dementia tax revealed that this Government will gladly force the most vulnerable, particularly those suffering from long-term debilitating diseases such as dementia, to cover their own social care bill entirely. Surely we need to merge health and social care to get the best results, but we must pool the risk and not let the most vulnerable fend for themselves in old age.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

To make a maiden speech, I call Alex Burghart.

16:20

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. How very nice it is to see you back in your rightful place.

I am honoured to stand before the House as the newly elected Member for Brentwood and Ongar, that most beautiful constituency in the most beautiful county of Essex in this, our most beautiful country. At the heart of our community is the Brentwood-Shenfield-Hutton conurbation, a very hive of Thatcherite prosperity. We have the UK headquarters of Ford, a major BT office, many hundreds of people who work hard in the square mile to feed and fuel the City, and a large number of small, medium and large enterprises built by the sweat of local people. We have high employment and high home ownership. We have good schools. I would not say that our mission should be to make the rest of the country more like Brentwood and Ongar, but there are certainly parts of the country that could benefit from being more like it.

Brentwood is surrounded by the numinous beauty of the much-neglected Essex countryside, which contains many wonderful rural villages. I think just of one: Greensted by Ongar. It is mentioned in the Domesday Book, when it had 44 families and 520 pigs, which makes it slightly larger than it is today. It also has a small wooden church, which is unremarkable but for its beauty and its age, both of which are very great. You see, it is the oldest wooden church to be found anywhere in the world. It was built in the mid-9th century, and it is a somewhat stirring thought that some of those families mentioned in the Domesday Book might have shared the space that we can occupy today.

Such things matter to me not because I am a sentimental old fool—although I am—but because I was for a long time a student and a teacher of medieval history. One of my friends was kind enough to suggest that that was the perfect training for becoming a Conservative MP, and in that they may have been right, but perhaps not in the way they intended. I see a great many resonances between that period and our own. Let us take the peasants’ revolt of 1381, which started on the high street in Brentwood. It was a rebellion against vexatious taxation levied by a distant, overbearing Government. I warn the House that my constituents’ attitude to taxation has changed very little in the intervening 636 years.

I think also of the writings of the Venerable Bede, who said that in the mid-7th century, the East Saxons formed a great friendship with that great man of the north, King Oswiu. In our own time, the people of my constituency formed a great friendship with another great man of the north: Sir Eric Pickles. For 25 years, he was a great servant of his constituency, his party and his country. He was much loved, and he will be much missed. Sir Eric and I are alike in some ways. He and I are both great defenders of a property-owning democracy. But we are not alike in all ways. He is a great man and a great Yorkshireman, to boot, whereas I am a mere novice and a man of Wessex.

I was born in Dorset, the son of two state school teachers who taught me everything I needed to know about the importance of hard work, of family, of education and of home. While those are all things that are important to my constituents today, I suspect that they were important to the people of my area in the mid-14th century and, who knows, maybe in the mid-7th century. I would not go so far as to say that they are everything, but we are nothing without them. That view has been reinforced in me through my work with the Centre for Social Justice, which was founded by my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), and by my work in the Department for Education on the Munro review of child protection, which was established under the aegis of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

Wherever in our country we find an absence of work, wherever we find families who have been broken by poor mental health, addiction or domestic abuse, wherever we find children failing in schools or families struggling with home life, we find the social problems that are so knotty. They are the challenges of our time, and the best of way tackling poverty and those problems is by tackling the root causes. We have a good record of that in government: we have record employment; we have 1.8 million more children in good and outstanding schools; we have a troubled families programme that helps 400,000 families with complex problems to get back on their feet; and we have a huge programme of house building. But there will always be more to do in this area. This House will face many challenges in this Parliament—historic challenges. To quote a former Prime Minister, we will

“feel the hand of history upon our shoulders.”

Who knows—but we may at times find its hand on other bits of our anatomy. The challenge of social justice is something that will continue throughout this Parliament and beyond, and I am here to try to do my part and to serve my constituents.

16:26

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for choosing me to make my maiden speech in this debate, which is of such crucial importance to our nation’s future. It is a pleasure to follow the entertaining speech of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart). It is a particular honour for me to have the privilege of representing Edinburgh West 20 years after the late Donald Gorrie first won the seat for the Liberal Democrats. He was a great servant to the area, first as a councillor, then an MP, and then an MSP. He was succeeded by John Barrett and then Mike Crockart, who was replaced two years ago by my immediate predecessor, Michelle Thomson. I am sure that her powerful, moving speech on International Women’s Day, in which she revealed her own teenage trauma, was an inspiration to many.

Now it is my privilege to serve the communities of Edinburgh West. I know that each of us is confident of our constituency’s uniqueness, but few sights can compare with the majesty of our three bridges across the Forth. Whether arriving in Edinburgh West by land, rail or air, those three bridges seem somehow to encapsulate the essence and history of British engineering and its success. From the stark red girders of the 19th century Forth bridge, now a world heritage site, to the distinctive 1960s architecture of the road bridge, to the striking 21st-century sleekness of the soon-to-be-completed—we are promised—Queensferry crossing, all were created along the route of Queen Margaret’s 11th-century crossing, from which the community in their shadow takes its name: South Queensferry. It is just one of our many socially and culturally diverse communities, which include, in the west, Newbridge, Ratho, Ratho Station, and Kirkliston. Then there is Branton, Cramond, Muirhouse, Davidson’s Mains, Blackhall, Drumbrae, Drylaw, Corstorphine, and Murrayfield, whose stadium is of course home to Scottish rugby union, where we look forward to greeting the other nations of the United Kingdom—often with trepidation.

However, Edinburgh West is also home to one of Scotland’s most celebrated couples: Tian Tian and Yang Guang, the UK’s only giant pandas. Some Conservative Members may be relieved that, since the general election, they are no longer outnumbered in Scotland by the pandas. I reassure them that I sympathise; they are not alone.

The constituency is also a key driver of the region’s economy, which is dependent on European trade and European citizens who work in the health service and other sectors and who now find that they are under threat from Brexit. Edinburgh airport—a key link between Scotland and the international market—the royal highland show, which is crucial to agriculture, the RBS headquarters and a new bottling plant for one of the world’s leading drink companies all represent an economy now tensely awaiting the outcome of the next two years of negotiations.

Although we are an area that benefits from being home to many such companies, our communities are not without their challenges. They are challenges that are common to many across the UK: pressure on public services, rising household debt and overstretched health and welfare services. There are also local issues, such as the controversial proposed new flightpath into Edinburgh airport, the threat to our green belt, and the pollution along St John’s Road.

I intend to dedicate my time here to working with groups that take on those challenges, such as the award-winning Tenants and Residents in Muirhouse, the Corstorphine community, which is currently working to rebuild its historic public hall, and many others who campaign tirelessly to improve the lives and welfare of their neighbours. I promise to be their voice on the issues that affect their lives, their livelihoods and their health. I will work on their behalf for the open, tolerant society I believe in and that offers opportunity for all and protects our human rights. And I will remain true to the promise I made on the doorsteps of Edinburgh West last month, to stand up for the constituents’ view, as clearly expressed in two referendums and the recent general election, that although their overwhelming preference is to remain at the heart of the EU, they will have no truck with independence, and are determined that that will be as part of this United Kingdom.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I thank all Members for the support that has been given in the election of Deputy Speakers. Like Mr Speaker, I pay tribute to Natascha Engel, who will be missed on both sides of the House.

16:31

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

It is good to see you back in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I start my four minutes by paying tribute to the amazing maiden speeches we have heard this afternoon from my hon. Friends the Members for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), for Gordon (Colin Clark) and for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart), and the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). It is great to follow the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine).

I will focus my short time on social care and the pay cap. I will not go over the same ground as my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), because she echoed everything I wanted to say. My message to Ministers is that the consultation is much welcome, because we cannot kid ourselves. The current social care system is not working. I echo that we need to move health and social care together by commissioning them together, paying for them together and delivering them together. Until we do, we are just rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship.

My plea to Ministers is that the consultation is not just about how we fund social care, because we will be missing a trick if we just do that. We need to consider the structure of social care and the population we aim to serve. When the system was set up many, many years ago, with the NHS looking after healthcare and local authorities looking after social care, the population we were caring for was very different. We now look after a much older population who have many comorbidities who need multiple services. We are now looking after patients who are living with diseases that people used to die from; those patients often die from something else completely. It is a different population, and we need to structure the service around their needs and what works best for them.

I declare an interest in the pay cap. Having worked as a nurse from 2010 to 2015 under the pay cap, I know exactly how difficult it is and how challenging the finances are. Most nurses I know work in their hospital bank to supplement their wages. Let us look at the issue seriously. On the whole, nurses were initially very understanding of the pay freeze, but we are now seven years into this, with no end date in sight. We need to support nurses and all healthcare professionals in this situation because, unless we do, the £3.7 billion that we currently spend on agency fees will only increase as people vote with their feet. Nurses make life-and-death decisions on every shift. It cannot be right that they are paid, on average, £34,000—the Royal College of Nursing disputes that figure, saying that the real figure is £26,000 a year, as most nurses are paid, on average, in bands 5 to 6—yet hospital managers, who make important but not life-threatening decisions, are paid on average £45,000 a year and senior managers are paid £75,000 a year. We need to look at the pay structure for nurses, as well as the pay freeze.

I have a final point to make. When the Labour Government were in control they had a great opportunity in 2004 to deal with that situation under Agenda for Change, but they wasted that opportunity. They wanted to reduce the wage bill by £1.3 billion and they downgraded nurses from the General Whitley Council to the Agenda for Change banding structure, with many nurses losing pay and grades as a result. Let us not pretend that when the Labour Government were in charge they did any better.

16:35

[Mr Stephen Hepburn (Jarrow) (Lab)]

I wholeheartedly support the vibrant campaigns to save our precious NHS and social care that are going on around the country, not least in South Tyneside. These are some of the noblest causes our country has. These things are under threat from austerity, and I want to raise a few issues today.

First, it is disgraceful that on the 69th anniversary of the NHS we are talking about the possible downgrading and closure of my local hospital in South Tyneside, but that is exactly what is happening. Next week, a bogus consultation exercise will start—it is one that we know only too well from our experience in the area. In Jarrow, we had an NHS walk-in centre used by 26,000 people a year, but it closed following the very same Mickey Mouse consultation exercise. The same is now going to happen to South Tyneside hospital. This week, there was a crowded meeting in the Jarrow Alberta club, which was organised by the Save South Tyneside Hospital group, who are demanding that the hospital stays open. There is only one reason why the hospital is under threat—Tory Government cuts.

Secondly, we are experiencing a national crisis on social care—it is a crisis caused in Downing Street and a crisis that can be solved in Downing Street. One word explains why our elderly and vulnerable are left unwashed, unfed, neglected and frightened; once again, it comes down to cuts—Tory Government cuts. Local councils have seen their grants cut by up to 50%. As the leader of South Tyneside Council, Iain Malcolm, has said,

“Adult social care is at a tipping point”.

Thirdly, let me deal with the issue facing cystic fibrosis sufferers. More than 10,000 people suffer from that life-threatening condition, half of whom will die before their reach the age of 30. The drug Orkambi has the potential to change that, and it is available through health services around Europe. It is recognised in this country by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, but it is not recognised by this Government, because, once again, of cuts, cuts, cuts.

I know people are going to be saying, “Where do we get the money from?” I will tell them where we can get it from. We can get it from the same magic Tory Government money tree that can give the Democratic Unionist party a £1 billion bung to save their necks in office. We can find it from the same magic Tory Government money tree that gave the top 1% of richest people in this country tax cuts. We can get it from the same magic Tory Government money tree that gave the richest 2% of estates in this country a tax cut. And we can get it from the same Tory Government magic money tree that gave the top 5% of richest corporations in this country tax cuts. That is where we will get the money from. I look forward to voting against this Queen’s Speech tonight and voting for a Queen’s Speech that will bring fairness to this country.

16:39

[Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)]

It is good to see you again in your place, Mr Deputy Speaker. The new Parliament gives us an opportunity to renew a commitment to address the significant challenges Great Britain faces. Following the general election, the majority of people I meet want us to work together to address these challenges in the interests of everyone. That is certainly the case as regards health and social care. People expect, want and deserve our commitment to work together to ensure that they get the care, respect and compassion they deserve.

This is an immense subject, and there will be many more opportunities to debate how healthcare, the NHS and social care are supported to meet the increasing demand. For now, I wish to refer to just a few areas using the experience in west Cornwall and Scilly in my constituency of St Ives. It is imperative that we increase efforts to integrate services. In Cornwall and on Scilly, GPs and healthcare workers have drawn up impressive locality plans that bring together services, which promise to improve patient care and to make better use of resources so that more people can be treated. However, progress is slow, as these efforts are frustrated by processes and external managers.

I have raised in this House before the Edward Hain community hospital, which was closed due to fire safety concerns in February 2016. Despite considerable local will and determination, the community beds remain closed even though hundreds of patients have been resident in urgent care hospitals, which is not the best place for them or good for the hospitals concerned. The community hospital remains closed because no one NHS body will take responsibility for reopening the beds.

Let me move further west and slightly overseas. On St. Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly, there is a united effort to integrate health and social care. However, progress is painfully slow. The islands have a community hospital and a council-run care home. Patient care would be even better if those services were brought closer together. There is wide agreement to do that, but islanders became dangerously close to losing their care home because of a lack of progress towards that integration and shared service provision.

There is an urgent need to integrate services so that patient care and use of resources are further improved. There is also a need to train, support and pay adequately our care and support workers. That will reduce the pressure on urgent care as we will be able to improve care in the community.

Cornwall council, our local authority, received an extra £12 million from the Treasury in April, yet three months on, the council has not made it clear how it intends to use those additional funds. It is vital that the council gets on and addresses that issue.

It is also important that, during this Parliament, considerably more is done to remove the pressure on health and care services. Prevention, improved education and understanding expectations are key to that. Healthcare specialists, GPs and consultants have made it clear to me that much more must be done to provide education for us all so that we are empowered to look after our own health and well-being long before we present to an NHS provider for treatment. That is true for diabetes, which is a condition that has such an impact on people’s lives. Better education, better use of community pharmacy and specialist health professionals and advancement in technology offer a brighter future for people with this condition and I urge the Government not to lose sight of their ambition to deliver these measures for those who suffer from diabetes.

In my constituency, I have found that people are unclear about where to turn for diagnosis and treatment. As a result, they present to urgent care centres when another service may be more appropriate. A great service could be delivered and considerable pressure on urgent care reduced if we can give, during this Parliament, greater clarity on who people should turn to when they are in need of care.

16:43

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure, Mr Deputy Speaker, to see you back in your place. All is well with the world when you are back in the Chair.

May I begin by congratulating new Members from across the House on their maiden speeches, particularly our new friends from different political parties who are representing constituencies in Scotland?

My remarks will primarily focus on defence and international security. I am sure that I am not the only Member of this House who was dismayed by the fact that defence got so little attention during the election campaign, which explains why defence has been given such a poor showing in the Queen’s Speech, adumbrated by the fact that not a single Defence Minister has appeared at the Dispatch Box in the past five days.

That said, I should like to start on a note of consensus. I think that we can work with the Government on the Bill on flexible working for the armed forces. There is much to be welcomed in the fact that the Government are now looking at that seriously, as it is a model that works elsewhere in the world. Our manifesto committed to making the case for having an armed forces representative body on a statutory footing—something that is the norm in countries such as Germany, the Netherlands and Denmark. Our serving personnel should be properly represented within the military, and with defence policy decision makers. We look forward to making that case here in Parliament.

I should also like to express our continued frustration at the lack of a national shipbuilding strategy. In the previous Parliament, the Government continued to move the goalposts and avoided being up front with the country on what was happening here. Despite continual attempts by hon. Members on both sides of the House, the Government continued to duck and dive. Well, the time for ducking and diving on the national shipbuilding strategy is over. If it is not written, get it written. If it is written, the Government need to get it published.

More fundamental was the grave omission from the Queen’s Speech of a new strategic defence and security review. The previous SDSR was based on the premise that Britain would still be a member of the European Union. Given that it has not taken Brexit into account, its risk analysis, and ultimately its conclusions, surely require updating with some considerable urgency.

We will also hold the Government to account on their actions abroad. On Monday the Defence Secretary gave a very helpful briefing on the current situation in Syria, which I thank him for, but we remain concerned about the deconfliction lines between Russia and the coalition forces. We would also like to hear a bit more about what the Government are doing to tackle the poison of Daesh online.

There is something more profound that we would like to see change, and that is the defence posture of the United Kingdom Government. We would like to see not only a shift away from the militaristic projection around the world that relies on Trident, but a shift towards defending our own waters and those in the Icelandic gap and the high north. This is a massive dereliction of duty on the Government’s part in keeping their citizens safe, and it is also a dereliction of what we owe our allies. It was the former United States General and NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, Philip Breedlove, who described the north Atlantic as NATO’s lifeblood and the transatlantic link. So I plead with the Government to please face up to their responsibilities in the high north.

I do not have time to cover everything, but however long we are here for, I will be sure to get round to it.

16:47

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

All of us must listen and learn, and one lesson I take from the recent election is that we on the Government Benches must explain our values to a new generation and explain why our approach gives people opportunities and a chance to make the most of their lives, and funds the public services we care about. We must get on with the job we have been asked to do, see through a good Brexit, heal divisions in our society, sort out housing, set out how we will fund public services sustainably, and tackle the sense people have of being overlooked too often by those in authority.

In this Queen’s Speech, the patient safety Bill, creating an independent body to investigate patient safety, should help achieve exactly that for the NHS. It should give people a safe space to speak up, driving a stronger culture of listening and learning—applying lessons from the airline industry—so that patients are less likely to suffer the consequences of mistakes.

The commitments on mental health, along with the £1.4 billion of extra funding for children and young people’s mental health announced in the last Budget, address one of the great concerns across society, particularly among young people. I particularly welcome the introduction of mental health first aid training for teachers, so that more children get mental health help at school.

Providing social care as more people—thankfully—live longer is one of the great challenges we face as a country, and one that, I am afraid, Labour shirked in this election. We committed an extra £2 billion in our last Budget, but we know that is not enough for the longer term, and it is time to have the conversation about the contract between generations—about whether younger people, struggling right now to afford a home, to buy or even to rent, who are likely to work for more years than their parents, should really be the ones to pay for older people’s care.

[Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)]

I was surprised to hear the hon. Lady mention the references to social care in the general election campaign. Does she support what the Conservatives put forward, and the abandonment of the cap on care costs that they had previously committed to implementing?

[Helen Whately]

I hope that we will consult on a cap, but I welcome the fact that we took the issue head on and came up with a plan that would fund and improve social care to address exactly the point that I am referring to. We need to make sure that it is not the younger generation—people of working age—who fund much of the bill for social care.

As with social care, we face growing costs for the NHS, and the Government have put more money where it is needed—an extra £8 billion more annually by 2022 compared with this year. We can do that because we have a strong economy—3 million more jobs since 2010; rising wages; and unemployment at its lowest for over 40 years. That economic growth changes lives for the better, and it pays for public services.

While I differ from the official position of the Democratic Unionist party on issues of equality and women’s rights, I thank DUP colleagues for their support and responsible approach in helping us to make sure that we have a Government. That is in contrast to the Opposition, who made it clear in their manifesto that they would put our economy and British livelihoods at risk. People voted for change in the election, but they did not vote for a socialist revolution. Britain deserves better. We should be an open, optimistic and united country: a great place to do business, with a strong economy that pays for world-class public services, where everyone has the chance of a decent job and a better life and people contribute their fair share because we all have a stake. I urge Members from all parts of the House to come together in the national interest and back the Prime Minister to get on with the job.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

I call Jess Phillips.

16:51

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—rightfully returned. I rise in this debate about health and security to speak about how the two things collide. I am pleased to see in the Gracious Speech that there is going to be a domestic violence and abuse Bill. I await the details of what exactly that means and look forward to working with the Government on the real action that is needed. I think I speak for every victim of domestic violence when I say that practical action and resources are what is needed, not more words written on goatskin.

No one will be surprised to hear that domestic violence is damaging to a person’s health. There has always been an argument, and it remains the case, that the Department of Health must do more to join the fight to tackle the issue, which for many years has been the poor relation. The fight has been left to local councils and the Home Office. I hope that tomorrow we will get to vote on real action by the Health Secretary that will really help vulnerable women in the United Kingdom—I am talking about the inequality that exists when it comes to abortions in this country.

I do not needlessly conflate the two issues of domestic abuse and abortion. Creating a world where women control their bodies and their lives is the beginning, middle and end of tackling violence against women. I have met hundreds of women who were kept pregnant as a pattern of their abuse. I remember one case where a young woman was held down by her husband’s brothers while he raped her to get her pregnant, thus ensuring her captivity. I have met victims of human trafficking brought to this country for their ability to bear children and reap the financial benefits for their slave owners. “The Handmaid’s Tale” is not a dystopia to me: I have met women whose wombs kept them captive. I will never forget sitting on the domestic homicide review of Natasha Trevis, a 22-year-old Birmingham mom of three murdered by her partner. During his trial it emerged that he learned of Natasha having an abortion after it was “let slip” by a social worker in the days leading up to the murder and was seen as the key motive. No one can tell me that the desire to control a woman’s reproductive rights by this man was not an act of abuse. She was 22 and on her fourth pregnancy.

The state must never collude with this abuse, let alone perpetrate it. By turning some women away from having abortions in any part of the UK we make a political act to control their bodies. We do not have to be culturally or religiously sensitive to our devolved nations or their persuasions. The Health Secretary has a real chance to help women who travel to this country by offering them safe, free abortions here in England. We would not tolerate other cultural practices such as female genital mutilation, so why do we tolerate this? Today I am here simply to ask for a change in health policy in this country. I want our NHS in England to provide a safe haven to the women of Northern Ireland.

While we are talking about wombs and how some want to tell women what they can and cannot do with theirs, I wanted to give a shout-out to my mate Ruth, a midwife. While the rest of my mates were chatting on WhatsApp last night about “Love Island”—Marcel, totally for the win—she was working a night shift as a midwife. She trained as a nurse first, then as a midwife; she has worked for the NHS for 19 years. For every hour she worked last night, like every night, she was paid £12.09. My baby took two hours to be born. I nearly died in those two hours and so did he, but both of us are here to tell the tale. I think that is worth more than £24.18. It seems that Ministers do not agree.

16:55

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

It is always difficult to follow such a powerful and passionate speech, but I will do so because I feel just as passionately about what I am going to talk about—the draft patient safety Bill, which I truly believe will do a great deal to assist my constituents and all of us who care about patient safety. I hope that it will embed a new culture of learning lessons in the NHS.

I am deeply concerned about how the NHS is often defensive when something goes wrong. It is not always transparent; the medical profession can be very hierarchical. Believe you me, as a former senior civil servant and Government lawyer, I know about hierarchies—not least from when I worked at the Ministry of Defence. The NHS is much worse than many of the organisations for which I have worked. It is right that we should focus on outcomes, not inputs.

Anybody who has ever met me will know that I talk about the Horton general hospital within about a minute of starting a conversation, but there may be a few new Members who have not yet heard that my hospital, in which I was born, is under threat; I reassure them that in Banbury we talk of little else. I am proud to have been re-elected with an increased vote share to continue the fight for all my constituents. Most of my constituents accepted the Conservative message that to have a strong NHS we must have a strong economy. But however they voted, I will continue to fight to save the Horton on behalf of them all.

[Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Victoria Prentis]

No.

Last week, I visited the Grange primary school, where I met seven and eight-year-olds. They had grasped the two main issues: we are worried about the safety of poorly babies and about mummies who have to spend up to two hours in the latter stages of labour in their cars going to the John Radcliffe hospital. Those children reminded me of my seven-year-old self: I, too, made a speech in defence of the Horton general hospital in my primary school a few minutes’ drive from where I was last week. It is noticeable that the pupils grasped some of my concerns about patient safety better than some of the members of the clinical commissioning group, whose meeting I also attended last week. The children understood how quickly babies can become high-risk during labour. I have many reasons for losing sleep over the safety of the mothers giving birth in my constituency, and we have significant challenges in the year ahead.

In the minute remaining to me, I shall quickly discuss governance issues. Yesterday, we heard that the chief executive of the CCG would be retiring, as will the clinical lead. I am concerned that the architects of the transformation process will be disappearing halfway through it. I really beg them to stop the consultation process at this point and start again—regroup. Let us listen to patients. We have a problem with recruitment. As I have said before in this place, for want of a nail the shoe was lost. I am concerned that the lack of two obstetricians means that thousands of women in my constituency will be unable to give birth close to home.

In Banbury, Bicester and the villages that I represent, we concentrate on doing the right thing. Our companies adapt to the challenges of Brexit. We are building five times more houses than the national average. We need healthcare that is kind, safe and close to home. The draft patient safety Bill will strengthen our resources to fight for the Horton general hospital, and I really welcome its inclusion in the Gracious Speech.

16:59

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is good to see you back in your place, Mr Deputy Speaker. Indeed, it is rather good to be back in mine after everything that has happened.

Those of us who occasionally glance at Twitter while we are listening attentively to speeches in the Chamber may have noticed that the Government appear to have told the media today that they may be relaxing the pay cap that has been strangling public sector workers for many years. The Minister was gracious enough to look at the badges that many of us are wearing, although he has declined to wear one. Given that we have heard no announcement, I do hope that he may be about to let the House know what the policy will be for the millions of public sector workers.

[Margaret Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the issue of low pay is really sapping morale in the national health service, and that we really should do something about pay in the NHS in this, its 70th anniversary year?

[John Woodcock]

Absolutely. The cap is not only unfair to those workers who are just scraping by; it is becoming a barrier to delivering the first-class care that patients need.

Given the way this is being done, the Government are beginning to look like they are, to quote the now Lord Lamont,

“in office but not in power.”—[Official Report, 9 June 1993; Vol. 226, c. 285.]

Now, I have not been one to lavish unnecessary praise on our Front Benchers over the past two years, but it increasingly looks like the Opposition are driving the agenda in this country on behalf of people who are, frankly, sick of the way in which they have been taken for granted by the Government, and who gave that message strongly at the ballot box. It is so important that the Government put this right. Lord Lamont’s speech back in 1993 could have been made today. Back then, he said:

“There is something wrong with the way in which we make our decisions…there is too much short-termism, too much reacting to events, and not enough shaping of events.”—[Official Report, 9 June 1993; Vol. 226, c. 284-285.]

That is exactly what is happening now. The Government have lost their authority and are drifting. There are some welcome consequences—for example, the hateful message, “Bring back foxhunting”, is absent from the Queen’s Speech, and grammar schools have gone by the wayside—but this is no way to run a country.

My constituents want to know the future of the NHS sustainability and transformation plans. In my area, Lancashire and South Cumbria has more than £300 million of cuts on the table. If those cuts were applied proportionately to Furness general hospital in my constituency, we could lose our prized A&E and our hard-fought-for maternity unit. These cuts are not sustainable and are not in the long-term interests of the country. We need a Government who will take a grip for the long term and not be buffeted from pillar to post by events.

I end on an issue on which I hope there is consensus between Members on both sides of the House: the domestic violence and abuse Bill. It is really good that this has been brought forward, but it is concerning that, after the Government talked this measure up, it will now appear in draft form. If that means that the Government will take the time to get it right and bring forward the strongest Bill possible, that is all well and good, but when the Government’s majority is propped up by another party that does not share the culture and world view of many of the Conservative Members whose views I respect on issues such as women’s rights, which the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) mentioned, I have to wonder whether there is some nervousness about what the definition of abuse will be.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jackie Doyle-Price)]

indicated dissent.

[John Woodcock]

The Minister shakes her head, but will she tell me whether that definition will take into account the full need to deter the horror of financial control and emotional abuse, as only a strong definition will? If it will, the Government can rely on full and hearty support from Labour Members. If it will not, we will push them to finish the job properly.

17:04

[Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock). It is also a pleasure to be back in this place, and I thank the good people of the Yeovil constituency for sending me back here.

It appeared to me during the election campaign that people in the south-west really did understand what was at stake, and in my patch they voted overwhelmingly for the return of a Conservative Government and against any change to the Government. In part, that was because we will have high-quality public services only if we have a strong economy and a sensible plan for delivering those services.

I am very proud today to wear the tie of Yeovil district hospital, which is one of our nation’s vanguards when it comes to trying properly to integrate social care with healthcare. That has to be one of the main planks of a policy that will allow us to provide a high-quality service to our older generations in the future. Things are going very well: the hospital is performing according to its targets, its waiting times are down, and although things are challenging there, morale is actually very good.

I welcome the idea that there might be a bit more flexibility in how we pay our people, because recruitment and retention is a big issue in primary care, acute care and social care, and that is a major challenge for us. We have to look at the overall packages, and we have to incentivise good behaviour in our hospitals and in the whole sector.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

While the hon. Gentleman is talking about recruitment, will he comment on the fact that although the Government scrapped the nurse bursary, saying that they would fund an extra 10,000 nursing places, they have so far not funded a single nursing place?

[Mr Fysh]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. When it comes to the student loans system, I am keen to make sure that loans are made at a reasonable interest rate. Broadening the availability of loans and training places is also massively important, and I want to come on to that.

In Yeovil, we have a potential project to train more nurses and healthcare professionals locally. I would like to put in a plug for Yeovil College, which wants to set up a new facility to do that in conjunction with the district hospital. It is only by doing that that we can attract good people to the south-west to take part in this massively important work.

Another part of attracting people is having affordable housing. We have heard how some on public sector salaries—and on private sector salaries—find it hard to afford private market housing. That needs to be a major focus of the Government going forward. It is absolutely one of our values in the Conservative party to try to create more housing in the right places at the right price, so that young people can get on the housing ladder and take part in society.

With our ageing population, we will need to spend more money on our public services in general. We have serious challenges on that front, but the difference between the Government and the Opposition is typically that we want to plan properly for how to pay for those things, whereas the Opposition just think we can spend the money and borrow more and more. That is just not the case, and I for one will always try to come up with things that we can do.

We should be looking at the pension system. I see no reason why those who are very wealthy in retirement should have the same entitlement to a state pension as those with less money. I think we could save about £4 billion or £5 billion if the very wealthy did not have the same entitlement, and I am very happy to share that idea with Ministers.

All this depends on our having a very constructive and smooth approach to the Brexit process. That will clearly be a focus of this Parliament, and we need to make sure that it happens correctly. We need to work together on both sides of the House to make sure that we get a good Brexit that we can be proud of in the future. Compromise will be needed on both sides.

17:10

[Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)]

The issues that I wish to discuss encapsulate how the Health and Social Care Act 2012 is, day by day, weakening the fundamental foundations of the NHS; they include disparities in salaries and pay rises, lack of scrutiny and accountability, severe deficiencies in financial governance with regard to public moneys, and an emerging culture in which bosses feel they can act with impunity.

When I asked the Prime Minister about pay rises given to the Liverpool clinical commissioning group board, that information caused uproar and disbelief in health circles and among the wider public. While frontline staff were subject to the pay cap, the board gave themselves increases of between 15% and 81%. The chair got a 50% increase, taking him to £150,000; a practice nurse got 62%, taking her up to £65,000; and the chief executive and the finance director got 15% each. The board had only two non-exec directors; one was paid £105,000—a 42% increase—while the other got £55,000, a 25% increase. Deloitte’s limited-scope review confirmed that there were serious failings in governance, conflicts of interests, and payments to the board and non-exec directors that fell outside existing guidance. Only the chair of remuneration has resigned. The whole board who gave themselves these pay rises have not been held to account at all.

I alerted Simon Stevens to a cavalier attitude to contracting, including in the Liverpool Community Health NHS Trust break-up, in which the CCG insisted on a clinically unsustainable contract figure of £77 million, and then hid behind weak, low-ranking NHS Improvement employees. The conduct of the CCG in these matters fell well below that which would be required in commercial circumstances and should be investigated.

I alerted NHS England to the CCG’s handling of the SSP Health surgery contracts. One of the failing practices was allocated to the CCG chair’s practice. Several other surgeries went to Primary Care Connect, an organisation that did not even exist when the bids for these surgeries were opened and had only one director, who happened to be a former GP member of the governing body. I have had complaints from right across the city about how this was handled. The CCG is cutting clinical funding to vital organisations, telling them, “Don’t talk about it because you’ll be biting the hand that feeds you.”

[Stella Creasy]

My hon. Friend is describing an absolutely shocking case, which is about the treatment of NHS workers in her constituency. She talks about people being told not to talk about it. Today we have heard this Government say that they have heard our message about the importance of proper pay in our NHS, and now they are trying to shut that down because they are frightened about the reaction on their Back Benches. Is that not a terrible indictment of how they intend to run our country?

[Rosie Cooper]

It is a terrible indictment; the NHS is doing exactly these things. The CCG employed a senior administrator, paid them £70,000, and then seconded them to the GP Federation—a private company. While giving itself huge pay rises, cutting cash to organisations, and making unilateral financial decisions that threw NHS organisations into crisis decision making, it still found £14,000 to sponsor a “women of the year” dinner. NHS England has indicated that the financial governance is poor, but not fraud, because the Health and Social Care Act was so loosely written in this regard. I ask the Secretary of State whether the Government intend to tighten the rules to prevent such outrageous decisions being made ever again. Highly paid auditors who passed each year’s accounts without qualification did not notice. The ultimate accountable body is NHSE; so far, it has investigated remuneration governance, not governance generally, and it has taken no action against the accountable officer, the finance director and the board, who have shown them themselves to be failing in their duties. To me, this says institutionalised dishonesty bordering on corruption.

Sadly, I believe that the NHS is now so used to fudging and mudging that not sticking to the rules is becoming acceptable practice. We need to recalibrate our response to bad behaviour and make sure that the people who show it are held to account. We need an independent, systematic investigation into Liverpool CCG—and indeed the wider Liverpool health economy. Will the Health Secretary ensure that Liverpool CCG is independently investigated, and that any failings are openly addressed to ensure that this cannot and is not happening elsewhere in the country? After all, this is our taxpayers’ money.

17:15

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

I am honoured to follow that amazing speech by my hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper). To say that addressing the corruption of Liverpool CCG should be a Government priority is an understatement. It is an example of privatisation by stealth and corruption that has no place in this country.

Throughout today’s debate there has been a lot of talk about British values, but what do we mean by British values? Do we mean the bravery of those doctors, nurses, firefighters and police officers who ran to help those being attacked by terrorists? Do we mean those who ran into Grenfell Tower to help people at a time of distress? Do we mean those we have been insulting with a 1% pay rise, year on year, driving them into poverty? Do we mean those NHS workers who between 2010 and 2016 have lost £4.3 billion in cuts from the NHS staffing budget? Is that who we mean when we talk about British values? Or do we mean the 42% of NHS workers who do unpaid overtime to keep the NHS going?

Perhaps we mean the teachers and teaching assistants who have been trying to subsist on that 1% pay rise. We rely on them to teach British values and to tell our children about the need for reflection and decision making based on the analysis of facts, not personal gratification, and to make judgments based on equality, fairness and opportunity for all. Yet today disadvantaged children in this country are, at 173 percentage points, not ready for school at age 5. The gap grows at every stage in life, from play group to university. How can that be part of the British values espoused and promoted by this House?

British values used to be espoused by our pride in our armed forces and their capacity to provide security around the globe, but they have now been hollowed out. The right hon. Member for New Forest East (Dr Lewis), my colleague on the Defence Committee, has addressed the massive underfunding of our armed forces. We fudge our 2% commitment to NATO by including in it pensions, GCHQ funding and even overseas broadcasting. The gap in our defence budget is between £10 billion and £20 billion. Our armed forces are being bled dry and our capability to defend this country is diminishing day by day. We need a rapid review and a new assessment of the capability of our armed forces and of how we intend to fund them and keep our place in NATO. Our place there used to be critical and highly respected, but now, sadly, it is viewed as offering little to our allies. Yesterday at the land warfare conference in London, we were told by American invitees that

“your military is too small. There is no question about that”.

That is to our lasting shame.

17:19

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to speak in this debate, and I congratulate you on being returned to your position. I thank the people of my constituency of Ealing, Southall for returning me to the House of Commons with an increased majority. It is a pleasure to follow so many illustrious Members. I have enjoyed listening to their speeches and contributions.

I want to remind hon. Members on both sides of the House of two important intertwined topics that in the past have secured important cross-party support, but sadly last week were not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. While there is still much work to do on ensuring effective treatment—we can dream of eradication—tuberculosis is normally spoken of in the House in an international context, but I want to talk about the prevalence of TB and antimicrobial resistance in this country, and the lives that that ruins.

Many believe TB has been eradicated here. That is not the case, and there are thousands of cases annually in the UK. Some 40% of those cases occur in London, and most affect people born outside the UK. It is a disease that hurts the least well-off because of poor housing, overcrowding and poor health services. They are seven times more likely than the better-off to contract TB.

International and British efforts have been ineffective in developing modern treatments, and there is still no effective vaccine for adolescents and adults. The current treatments are seriously deficient, they require six-month pill regimens, the treatment is painful and patients can often develop side effects, such as temporary paralysis, which deter them from completing the course. That exacerbates the issue of antibiotic resistance, a serious problem in this country across the whole health sector.

Currently, treatment for drug-resistant TB involves a gruelling two-year course of 14,000 pills—they can have severe side-effects, including permanent deafness—as well as eight months of intravenous injections. It is little wonder that less than half of those who start treatment complete the course. But it is not just under those trying circumstances that the completion rates for courses of antibiotics are unacceptably high. Too often, patients will feel better and not quite finish their course of antibiotics. That is driving the epidemic of resistance, a horrible and present threat to the way we do healthcare in this country. I hope that the Government will look at how we can ensure that patients are properly educated about the treatment they are taking.

While internationally we are focused on Brexit, I hope that the Government can take steps to ensure that we are not ignoring this serious issue; to ensure that no more lives are lost to this ignored killer; and to reassure thousands undergoing painful and dangerous treatments daily that we will help.

17:23

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate you on your election, Mr Deputy Speaker. I also pay tribute to the many excellent maiden speeches we have heard this afternoon.

I thank the people of Kingston upon Hull North for returning me to the House for the fourth time. The Prime Minister started this election on a “strong and stable” mantra, but she ended it “just managing”, getting by with the best help money can buy from her friends in the Democratic Unionist party.

I campaigned for re-election on the basis of my record as a constituency Member of Parliament, and a manifesto that I believe was much like a modernised version of Labour’s 1945 programme, combining hope and radicalism with a patriotic commitment to the security and unity of our nation. Labour lost the election, but that combination will see our day come again.

Large parts of the Tory manifesto were dropped from the Queen’s Speech, with no dementia tax; the retention of the pension triple lock; no means-testing of the winter fuel allowance; the retention of free school lunches, a policy first pioneered in Hull; and no return to the 1950s on grammar schools or even to the 1850s on foxhunting. However, many plans remain for further cuts to schools, our local NHS and local policing. Recent events show that we need to look again at the magnitude of the cuts to our emergency services over the past seven years. As a Hull MP, I appreciate the value of these services. In 2007, just 10 years ago, we had floods in Hull and I recall how important the work of the police and the fire service were. What happened at Manchester Arena, London Bridge, Grenfell Tower and even in New Palace Yard reminds us how vital these services are, which is why tonight I will be supporting the amendment to the Queen’s Speech to scrap the cap on public sector pay. The Government seem to be in some confusion about their position on the cap. I hope we do not see another omnishambles from the Government over this Queen’s Speech.

On other Government policies that need to be dropped, I hope we will see the end of the gerrymandering scandal of cutting the size of this elected House under the false guise of cost, while increasing the size of the unelected other place. Sadly, the Gracious Speech did not include any reference to the WASPI women’s fight for transitional help, or to those affected by the contaminated blood scandal, the worst treatment disaster in the history of the NHS. Today, we finally saw some individuals charged for the Hillsborough disaster. After Andy Burnham’s brilliant valedictory speech in the Commons exposing the extent of criminal behaviour in the contaminated blood scandal, we wait to see whether the Government will do the right thing and order an inquiry into what happened.

I noticed mention in the Gracious Speech of further legislation on High Speed 2. As a Hull MP, I find this rather galling. Tory Ministers recently blocked Hull’s privately financed rail electrification scheme—our High Speed 1. The space industry Bill poses the real possibility of commercial space travel happening before the Selby to Hull rail line gets electrified. I wonder what will happen to the northern powerhouse as the Government find £1.5 billion for the new Northern Ireland powerhouse. If Hull were to have the same treatment as Northern Ireland, we would get an extra £209 million of funding: enough to pay for the rail electrification, and to reverse the cuts to the councils and the police.

I will continue in this Parliament, as I did in the previous Parliament, to campaign for a fair deal for Hull, and to make sure the Brexit deal we get is best for this country and my constituency.

17:27

[Ian C. Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) and to take part in this very interesting debate. There has been a very strong message from this Chamber on public sector pay. One great advantage of general elections is that the voters tell us what they want to talk about. The Prime Minister may have wanted to have an election on Brexit, but on the doorstep public sector pay was a huge issue in my constituency, and, I suspect, in constituencies up and down the country.

The strong message from the campaign was that the country has had enough of inequality. I am a member of the Nationwide building society. Its chief executive receives £3.5 million per annum, on top of all the additional support he receives. That is a building society, not a bank, and a mutual organisation that I support and am a member of. I do not have a bank account, because I do not like banks very much at all, but the chief executive of my building society receives £3.5 million a year. We have been talking about hourly rates of £9 and £10 an hour for midwives who save people’s lives. The message for Government Members, regardless of which way they vote this evening, is that this is coming: this argument has been won. I urge the Government to reconsider their position and do what those of us on the Labour Benches want them to do, because they will have to make up their mind and do the right thing in due course.

In the short time available, I would like to focus on criminal justice. This was another massive issue in my constituency during the election. The message from my constituents is that they recognise that community policing, which the Labour Government carried forward magnificently when in office, introducing police community support officers and funding police officers in every ward of my constituency, has been undermined since 2010 by the huge cuts to police budgets that were introduced first by the coalition Government. I listened with some hilarity to some of the observations made by Liberal Democrat Members about the dreadful police cuts. They had Cabinet Ministers in the Government that implemented them, so I listen to their arguments with some incredulity. I want to see the re-establishment of proper community policing, not only in Wrexham but up and down the country.

There is one area that I want to highlight for the Home Secretary in the short time available. She referred to the legislation on legal highs that was introduced in 2015 and which has already been amended once. I have a message for the Home Secretary: it is simply not working, and there is a crisis with legal highs in many town centres up and down the country. We need to look at that in the Queen’s Speech as a matter of urgency, because unless the legislation is amended huge amounts of public money will be spent on trying to enforce legislation that is simply incapable of doing the job for which we drafted it. Will the Government therefore please go away, look at the issue of legal highs and the legislation that has already been passed, redraft it, consult, reach out, recognise that they do not have an overall majority, speak to the people who want to try to solve the problem and work with the Opposition to resolve this important issue?

17:31

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It will surprise no one that there is a close link between poor mental health and problem debt—it will probably surprise no one that I wish to talk about it either. Three times as many adults with mental health problems report debt or arrears than those without mental health problems. The debt charity StepChange recently asked its clients how debt affected them. Over half said they had been treated by their GP or a hospital for debt-related physical or mental health problems. Whatever the root cause, that combination can have devastating consequences for people’s lives, resulting in a vicious downward spiral of worsening debt and worsening mental health.

One thing that the Government could have done in the Queen’s Speech was to introduce a statutory breathing space for those in problem debt—a period of protection against further interest, charges, collection and enforcement action for up to one year while people seek help with their debts, hopefully from a free debt advice agency. That would help them to stabilise their financial situation. It is not a controversial proposal—it was in our manifesto and the Conservative manifesto—so it is really disappointing and quite puzzling that it did not appear in the Queen’s Speech. I hope it will appear in some form later on.

A breathing space would be a win-win for everyone. Creditors would get a greater proportion of their debt repaid. For the state, a breathing space would help to mitigate some of the £8.3 billion cost of problem debt to the public purse, which includes £1 billion in health costs, by reducing demand for debt-related health services. For the individual, the chances of recovering from financial difficulty would be greatly improved, through delivery of the right support for people when they need it most. Household debt is high by historical standards and consumer borrowing is heading towards levels not previously seen. I hope that the new Government will address this seriously. A breathing space would be a really good place to start.

I would also like to mention something that came up before and during the election when I visited schools in my constituency. Under the funding formula, 89% of my primary schools are losing money, as is every secondary school. I spoke to one young pupil, aged 11, who said, “What’s going to happen to our nurture unit?” This is where pupils who are stressed or having a bad time at home can go to take time out and be supported. That is one of the first things that could be cut by the loss of £116,000 to that school. The demand on NHS services will surely go up if such units are forced to close in my constituency. The pupils are aware of these units: that young man called it the heart of his school. To take the heart out of that school would indeed be wrong.

There is another notable lack: the WASPI women. Women working in the caring professions who expected to be able to retire are carrying on beyond their expected retirement age rather than enjoying the happy and healthy retirement that they anticipated.

Good health involves more than just NHS services. Access to advice and information, the ability to live debt-free, support from schools for children who need it, and the possibility of timely and affordable retirement all reduce pressures on the health service, and on other services. I hope that the Government will take that into account when considering their legislative programme.

17:35

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Let me begin by thanking the great people of Dudley North for sending me here to speak up for them. I promise them that I will work as hard as possible to represent them and speak up for them for the duration of the current Parliament, and that I will keep the promises that I made before the election, including a promise to speak up for patients and staff in Dudley.

Today I want to set out my concerns about a new £5.5 billion contract to provide health services in Dudley for the next 15 years. This proposal is completely unprecedented in the NHS. On Friday 9 June, Dudley’s clinical commissioning group issued a contract for what it calls a multispecialty community provider, which will be worth between £3.5 billion and £5.5 billion. It will provide a range of services, including community-based physical health services, some existing out-patient services, primary medical services, urgent care and primary care out-of-hours services, adult social care services, mental health services, learning disability services, end-of-life care, and activities currently carried out by the CCG. The closing date is as soon as 19 July, and the new contract will run, incredibly, from April 2018 until 2033. What sort of organisation issues a contract for 15 years? A contract of this size and length has never been tried anywhere else in Britain. It is being advertised abroad, and I understand that anyone can bid for all or part of it.

I have tabled 60 parliamentary questions, asking the Secretary of State—I am delighted to see that he is present—to meet me, and people from Dudley, to discuss the proposal. I plan to send a survey to local residents to find out their views, because I do not think that the consultation carried out so far has been in any way adequate.

I definitely want to see an NHS that focuses on patients, and makes it simple for patients and their families to find their way around. I think that the present NHS is too fragmented, and confusing for patients and their families and carers. Far too often people are told to speak to someone else, or to consult another department or organisation, and there are obvious difficulties for older people moving from hospital to social care. However, it worries me that what is being proposed has not been tried anywhere else, and I should like to know more about the risks associated with such an approach.

For example, how is it possible to predict what will happen over the next 15 years in the light of all sorts of issues—the impact of new healthcare technologies, new drugs, workforce changes, public spending, and three general elections? I want to know how local people will be involved in the new organisation. What say will they have in healthcare in Dudley over the next 15 years? How will staff be affected? Will they all be transferred to the new organisation? Will the organisation that wins the contract be able to sell it on after a few years, and what would happen to the staff if it did? Could healthcare businesses such as UnitedHealth Group or Virgin Care bid for part or all of the contract? I am also worried about the impact on our local hospital, Russells Hall. What would happen if another provider won a major part of the contract? Could that undermine the other services provided at the hospital, given that hospital finances are so interwoven?

I am asking Ministers to answer the questions that I have tabled as a matter of urgency, so that local people have all the details before the deadline falls in just over a fortnight. I am asking the Secretary of State to meet me, and people from Dudley, to listen to our concerns about what I think is an absolutely unprecedented proposal.

17:34

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), I begin by thanking the good people of my constituency for returning me to this place. I pledge to continue to work as hard for them as I can.

We lost two good people of Walthamstow during the election period, and I want to pay tribute to them for their work in our local community: Eleanor Firman, who was a passionate campaigner, and Councillor Nadeem Ali, who had so much to give the country and whose life was brutally cut short. Both of them would have been joining me to look at this Queen’s Speech and asking what it could do for our local healthcare services. They would both have been passionate advocates for our campaign for the future of Whipps Cross hospital, 40% of whose buildings were built before the NHS came into existence. It treats 450 people every day at its A&E, the highest figure in the country. If ever there was a group of NHS workers who deserved a pay rise, it is the nurses and doctors there. That is why I and many others on the Opposition Benches are rightly furious when we hear the Government saying that they have got the message but see that they are not acting.

Over the past seven years, we have seen how austerity has torn the social and economic fabric of our country, and we can now see how threadbare things are. We look at the Queen’s Speech and see a need to echo the call for investment in policing. We have a massive amount of gang crime in Walthamstow, and the cuts that the Government are talking about simply will not help. Many of my constituents have raised deep concerns about education and school funding cuts, as they see teachers having to buy goods for their schools. They see the rising levels of personal debt and, like my hon. Friend the Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), they are worried about that. They also see the sustainability and transformation plans ruining our NHS.

What is missing from this Queen’s Speech is as important as what is in it. The Government say that they are committed to equality, but many of us know that the fight for equality is not just about defending existing rights but about the advances that need to be made. It is women from Northern Ireland who will pay the price for the coalition deal that the Government have made unless we in this House speak up. The ruling in June this year was very clear that those women were being discriminated against as UK taxpayers in their access to abortion rights. The Secretary of State, whatever his personal views on the matter, has the ability to provide the funding to enable those women to access services here. Thousands of women have to travel from Northern Ireland, and I do not understand why a decision made in Belfast should influence what happens in my hospital in Walthamstow or in other hospitals across this country.

[Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)]

I respect the hon. Lady’s genuine interest in this subject, but it is important for the House to recognise that this is not a matter for Belfast; it is a matter for NHS England.

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman and I are on the same side in agreeing that it is for English and Welsh MPs to decide what happens in English and Welsh hospitals. The Secretary of State needs to listen to the opinions of Members on both sides of the House and act accordingly.

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the cost of an abortion for women from Northern Ireland, at around £900, is dividing the women who have money from those who do not, as well as adding greater stress for women having to make that difficult decision?

[Stella Creasy]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend. The fact is that those women are UK taxpayers contributing towards the cost of the NHS, yet they are unable to use NHS services at all when they are in England. That is the issue we have to resolve. I put the Secretary of State on notice: if he does not change his mind, there are plenty across this House who will support legislation to change it for him. I ask him to do the right thing and ensure that we have equal access to abortion for every UK taxpayer.

The same principle about what is missing from the Queen’s Speech applies to Brexit. I support calls to ensure that membership of the single market is on the table when we negotiate with our European counterparts. With 750,000 jobs in London alone dependent on it, and one in 10 of my neighbours being European nationals, the idea that we would take those issues off the table before we even start talking to our European counterparts seems crazy. The Secretary of State for Brexit says that Brexit will be as complicated as a moon landing. Certainly, many of us thought that he was on another planet, but the Government have to think again about crashing back down to Earth and damaging the economy and the lives of the people of this country through their approach to Brexit.

This country is clearly at a crossroads. There are divisions on many different issues, and there is no doubt that Britain is facing some real horrors. We have seen the horrific events at Grenfell Tower, and the terrorist attacks at Finsbury Park, London Bridge and Manchester. We have a choice: we can either offer this country hope and certainty about what happens next, or we can continue to be divided. We on the Opposition Benches are clear that those who argue that we cannot settle our differences through democracy at the ballot box are wrong. I believe that there is a responsibility on all of us to show every community that their concerns will be heard, and that their causes will be equally valued and listened to. It is certainly my intention to do my bit during this Parliament to make that happen. That is why I have tabled my amendment, and I am so pleased that Members throughout the House have supported it. I hope that Members will continue to listen to the arguments, put personalities aside and start looking at good policies, because the people not only of Walthamstow and Northern Ireland but of Great Britain need and deserve nothing less.

17:45

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank the constituents of Hampstead and Kilburn, who helped me to increase my majority from 1,000 to 15,500. It is a pleasure to be back here. I also want to thank the nurses and doctors at the Royal Free hospital in my constituency. Members will be aware of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, but they may not be aware that 12 people from the tower were rushed to the Royal Free for treatment, including two who were placed in intensive care due to the extent of their injuries. The nurses and doctors of the Royal Free responded diligently, with speed and professionalism. I put on the record my thanks to them, and I am sure that other Members will join me in doing so.

Many of the doctors and nurses who treated the people from Grenfell Tower are EU citizens, which is what I want to focus on today. In February, I voted against triggering article 50 because I did not feel that EU citizens had been reassured about the security of their ability to stay in this country. Since the vote, I have submitted freedom of information requests to NHS trusts that reveal the extent to which our local NHS services depend on EU nationals. In total, EU nationals make up 15% of professionally qualified and clinical staff, 21% of nurses and health visitors, and 50 of the 350 midwives employed by the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust. EU nationals also make up 10% of both specialist doctors and consultants. As Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of Nuffield Trust, said back in January:

“There are already a number of reasons to be concerned about the workforce: this”—

Brexit—

“could be the last straw.”

A Commons Library report from April underlined our NHS’s dependence on EU nationals, with 60,000 members of staff coming from EU countries. To be frank, the Prime Minister’s feeble attempt to satisfy the EU nationals living here is just not enough. The fact that she has asked all EU citizens who have applied for permanent residence to reapply for settled status shows how little respect she has for those people, who are already suffering from high stress and anxiety as they go through a burdensome application process. I want to quote a nurse, Karen, who is 40 years old. She says:

“Before the Brexit vote, we used to have hundreds of applicants in nursing. Now, we barely see 50. All staff are tired and worried about what will come next. In my department, 60% of nurses are EU citizens and already five of them have handed in their notice. I am an EU citizen myself and I’m already making plans to leave the UK for good. The healthcare system will collapse and I don’t want to be part of it.”

Whichever Member laughed while I was reading that out should be ashamed of themselves.

The Prime Minister needs to offer some kind of security to EU nationals. If she does not, the healthcare system will be in serious jeopardy. I will continue to fight in this House for the 17,000 EU nationals who live in Hampstead and Kilburn, many of whom work in the Royal Free and have shown how dedicated they are to our health system in this country.

17:48

[John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)]

I have three points to make on health and social care. I was just reflecting on the fact that when I retired from Parliament in 2010 following boundary changes to the Selby constituency, I followed the example of Sir John Major and went straight to the cricket. In my case, it was Headingley, not the Oval, and I was quickly reminded of my new status in life. I had a pint of beer in my hand as I walked in front of the packed grandstand and this big Yorkshire voice boomed out from the back saying, “Ey, lad, you can’t put that on expenses now, can you?”

I am now pleased to be representing Keighley as the seventh Labour Member to do so. I will not be following the example of the second such Labour MP, who crossed the Floor to the Conservatives in the 1940s to shouts of, “You dirty dog,” which were ruled out of order by one of your predecessors, Mr Speaker, but I will try to live up to predecessors such as Bob Cryer and Ann Cryer, who are legends. Indeed, I now share with Bob Cryer one claim to fame: the House of Commons Library tells me that we are two of the three Members of Parliament on either side of the House since the war who have represented two different marginals with majorities of fewer than 500. I also thank Kris Hopkins, my predecessor, for his service to the House. As an MP for Keighley and as a Minister, he served with the same distinction as he did as a soldier for our country.

I have three quick points. First, Airedale general hospital is the institution that unites my diverse constituency—from the multi-faith communities of Keighley through Brontë country and Haworth to Ilkley—and the hospital is under strain. Last year, the Care Quality Commission said simply that it did not have enough doctors. The hospital has a really good reputation, but we are looking to the next Budget. The Secretary of State for Health will be judged on how much money he can extract from the Chancellor for the health service.

Our social care is in crisis. Age UK says that 1 million over-65s do not receive the care they want. Many of the big care providers are under financial strain, so I hope the Secretary of State has a plan in case one of them keels over in the next few months. I visited the Hollycroft care home in Ilkley, which is due to close. Four Seasons, which manages the care home, assured me that all the workers would get three months’ pay, but it now seems to be going back on that—I hope Four Seasons revises its opinion. In short, we need to value all care workers more, we need to pay them more and we need to provide more training and more career paths.

Finally, on the financing of social care, my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron) referred to the discussions in 2010, which are where the solution lies. One in six of us will require social care during our life, and the now Mayor of Manchester said in 2010 that we can either fund it individually or we can fund it collectively, perhaps by levying 10% or 15% on all estates. No doubt the likes of Lynton Crosby would say that is a death tax, but who cares about his opinion now? Certainly not Conservative Members. We need to be bold and collectively insure ourselves by financing social care for the long term. It is not a death tax; it is a tax that would give life to those of us who need social care later in our lives and enable us all to be sure that we can pass on a great part of our estate to our children, or to whomever we want.

I look forward to making further contributions in this House. I feel that I am in the centre of power on these Benches, next to the Democratic Unionist party.

17:49

[Paul Girvan (South Antrim) (DUP)]

It is a great honour and privilege to be called to speak in this House, and that privilege has been given to me by the people of South Antrim. The area is very dear to my heart. I was born and reared there, and it is in my blood.

Many Members have spoken today of the wonderful constituencies they represent. Well, they obviously have not seen South Antrim, which most definitely is a wonderful constituency. It stretches from Lough Neagh right through to the Bann. We have a wonderful river, a six-mile water that runs through three of our major towns: Templepatrick, Antrim and Randalstown.

I am a Ballyclare man through and through. For those who do not know anything about Ballyclare, some people say there is only one road in and one road out; well, I can tell the House that those are very important roads to me. The area I represent has a number of small villages that were built up around what was a very extensive linen industry. Unfortunately that industry no longer exists, but our strong and vibrant agricultural businesses are a key employer in the area. Those businesses need help to ensure that they are there for the future.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, Mr Danny Kinahan. Danny and I, though we were on opposite sides, were the best of friends during the election. I do not know whether Danny will still say that now that I have taken his seat. It was somewhat of a battle, and we knew it would not be an easily won seat. When we won, I congratulated Danny on the way he fought his campaign. I have spoken to him since, and I can say we will remain friends. That is a good way to be, because political life is somewhat daunting, in that people receive their P45 in public, on a stage, and it is not always a pleasant experience.

Before that time, I worked for the then MP for South Antrim, Dr William McCrea, who served the constituency well for many years. I want to pay tribute to the hard work that William and Danny have put in, and I hope to continue it; indeed, I vow to do so. We want to focus on a number of areas. Danny was working on areas associated with the military, which I feel very strongly about; I want to ensure that we do not have a witch hunt against our military in relation to issues that are going on.

The constituency I represent is very strong on the Union, which is why it has always returned a Unionist. I am a great believer in the Union, as we benefit from the liberties that we gain by being part of the United Kingdom. We should hold on to that dearly, and I, as a Unionist, will fight to ensure that we do.

I have listened to many speakers this afternoon, and I have enjoyed the maiden speeches. Some of them were a lot more articulate than mine, but I can say that I speak with fervour for the area I represent. I have a great love for it, and I have worked for it as a councillor and as a Member of the Northern Ireland Assembly—I resigned my seat to be here. I can only say that it has been an honour and a privilege to represent the area, and I will do so again to the best of my ability.

17:56

[Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)]

First, let me pay tribute to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) for an eloquent maiden speech. He speaks with true pride for his constituency; it is clear that he is very proud of the community he comes from and now represents in this House. Secondly, I wish to thank my constituents for returning me as their Member of Parliament for the second time in 13 months. We are a little election-obsessed in my constituency, although I am hoping for a period of calm, as I am sure are my constituents. Serving in the House of Commons is the greatest honour imaginable, and I am extremely grateful to my constituents for returning me to this place.

In recent months, some of the most dreadful tragedies of modern times have been met with the resolve of those in our public services, who, through their bravery and skill, have surely saved far more lives than were lost. The emergency services in my constituency are world-class. Although they are often strained by the budgetary cuts of this Government, my constituents often remark on how hard-working and friendly our local police, fire and ambulance services are. They have my utmost gratitude and support for protecting our towns and villages, and I am proud to share the same community as them.

I was disappointed that the only mention of the emergency services in the Gracious Speech was in a vague allusion to police powers. We should not take our emergency services for granted, but under this Government I feel that has become the norm. Instead of heaping praise on the police, fire and ambulance services, and listening to their expert advice on how they could be better supported, this Government have cut to the bone at every opportunity. The fire service, whose heroics have been recognised again in the recent Grenfell fire, has seen 10,000 personnel and 41 stations cut since 2010. The police, to whom we personally owe our lives and health for keeping us safe during the Westminster attack just beyond our gates, have seen 20,000 officers cut in that same period. Our armed police, who during the London Bridge attacks neutralised the situation in minutes, have been reduced in number by 1,000.

We live in unprecedented times, and the first half of 2017 will be recorded in history as a time of tragedy for our country. I challenge any Member to stand before this House and say that they believe the Government have best supported our emergency services to tackle such events; the services themselves clearly believe they have not. The Police Federation has made it clear that the police are struggling under Government cuts, saying that there is no ignoring the fact that the police simply do not have the resources necessary in the light of recent events. Previously, as Home Secretary, the Prime Minister accused the Police Federation of “crying wolf” over the impact of the Government’s cuts. Clearly, the Government believe that they know better than the police.

The Fire Brigades Union has made it clear that firefighters do not have the resources that they need. It says that cuts have put the public at risk, which is evidenced by the increased number of fire deaths. It says that firefighters could soon lose their lives as a result of cutbacks, and that many no longer feel safe or supported. The Government believe that they know better than the fire service and have pressed on with austerity measures regardless.

In the Gracious Speech, there was no indication of increasing resources for emergency services. Instead, the Government signalled that there would be legislation to paper over the cracks with increased powers. I will wait until the Bill is debated before giving my further thoughts on increasing police powers, but I am concerned that yet again, this ignores the lack of funding and resources.

Only last week, the Home Secretary conceded to this House that police resources are very tight. Austerity may initially have been driven by ideology, but now that even the Home Secretary understands the strain, it is only dogma that continues to drive implementation of the cuts. It does not have to be like this, and under a Labour Government, it would not be. As long as the Government ignore our emergency services and their cries for increased resources, they cannot pretend to protect our country.

18:00

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my good and hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore). It is a pleasure to make my first speech in the new Parliament. It is a privilege that I feared might elude me, going into the snap general election. I was trailing in the polls, and had a majority of just 428. The betting odds were 10:1 against me. Returning to Westminster, one of my so-called hon. Friends went so far as to call me Lazarus Lynch, returned from the dead, politically at least. Having increased my majority from 428 to 5,376, despite the odds, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the Prime Minister for carefully selecting Halifax as the place where she launched her manifesto. She parked her tanks firmly on my lawn; however, not only did those tanks misfire, but the engines seized up and the tracks completely fell off, giving me the chance to continue my work, standing up for the good people of Halifax.

With that in mind, there is a lot to do, and the Queen’s Speech failed to provide answers of any substance, but I wish to focus, in the short time that we have today, on our emergency services. My community, as well as those up and down the country, has never been so aware of the invaluable work that those services do. Over the past few weeks, with the terrorist atrocities in London and Manchester and the Grenfell Tower tragedy, we have seen the emergency services at their very best. It is a workforce of which we as parliamentarians, and as a country, can be incredibly proud, but it is a workforce that is tired and that we have let down.

The emergency service workers whom I know and whom I have spent time shadowing are pragmatic, and know just how vital their work is, so they get on with the job. However, there are fewer of them than ever before; they are asked to work harder and are stretched thinner, and as a result of the public sector pay cap they are paid less than they should be. It is surely time that we ended the public sector pay cap, which is demoralising our emergency services. The starting salary for a police constable is £19,700 in some forces, and £22,000 for a firefighter. The weight of the work that we ask them to undertake, and the risks that go with it, are not, I am afraid, reflected in their pay.

Emergency service workers face enough risks as a consequence of their job without a small group of shameful individuals making their job even harder by deliberately seeking to assault them. I launched my “Protect the Protectors” campaign last year, after having to call 999 while out shadowing the police. The lone officer I was out with found himself surrounded by an angry mob when a routine call very quickly escalated.

Many emergency service workers who have been subject to horrendous assaults while at work described feeling like they had suffered an injustice twice: first at the hands of the offender, and then again in court when sentences were unduly lenient. As the ballot for private Members’ Bills is taking place this week, I very much hope that I might be in a position to relaunch my ten-minute rule Bill from last year, which would seek to ensure that sentences for assaulting emergency service workers and NHS staff reflected the seriousness of the crime. I make this plea: if any hon. Members are drawn in the ballot and would like to discuss the Bill further, please let me know.

Crucially, we must restore numbers. The police and crime commissioner in West Yorkshire, Mark Burns Williamson, and Chief Constable Dee Collins last week joined the growing number of PCCs and chief constables taking the unprecedented step of admitting that reduced numbers are affecting frontline capabilities. West Yorkshire police has lost 1,200 officers since 2010, which is a 20% reduction of the force. The Home Secretary talks about an uplift in firearms officers to respond reactively to the threat of terrorism, but those officers just come from elsewhere in frontline policing, which again reduces the numbers in response policing, neighbourhood policing and policing elsewhere on the frontline, and makes proactively stopping terrorism even tougher. Chief Constable Dee Collins is extremely concerned about the impact that the loss of officers is having on neighbourhood policing in particular.

Finally, a police officer recently asked me why there is not an emergency services covenant, in the same spirit as the armed forces covenant. I very much hope that the Secretary of State will consider that request and respond to that officer in his reply to the debate.

18:04

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I thank the people of Wirral West for returning me to this place.

We learn from this Queen’s Speech that the Government intend to do nothing to stop the fragmentation and undermining of the national health service that the last Conservative Government pursued with so much determination. In my constituency, many are very concerned about Cheshire and Merseyside sustainability and transformation plan’s shortfall of just under £1 billion and what that will mean for the service. The Government could have chosen to address that, but instead they have left services in Wirral and elsewhere across England to struggle to maintain levels of care. Board meeting papers of April 2017 show Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust with an operating deficit of £11.9 million in 2016-17. The effect is being felt by patients and staff, and targets for A&E waiting times, bed occupancy rates and GP referrals are being missed.

Staff morale is rock bottom across the NHS, bringing with it recruitment and retention problems. We have seen junior doctors striking and looking for work abroad. The Royal College of Nursing criticised the Prime Minister’s failure to scrap the public sector pay cap in the Queen’s Speech, and warned that failure to do so will result in an historic ballot of 270,000 nursing staff, signalling a summer of protests by nurses. But it is not only clinical staff who deserve fair pay. In my constituency, NHS administrators from the Wirral Community NHS Foundation Trust are seeing their roles downbanded from band 3 to band 2, which would mean they are paid below the Living Wage Foundation’s voluntary living wage for the first five years of employment. I recently met some of the women affected and they told me of how clinical staff, some on band 7, are being required to carry out some of their administrative tasks. That cannot be an efficient or effective way to run a service. It is an attack on the pay and conditions of administrative staff who play a vital role in the delivery of safe patient care. Hardworking clinicians should receive the full administrative support that they need to deliver care, from staff who should be valued for the important part that they play in the delivery of services in our NHS.

In addition to the cuts and rationing of the STP programme, the Government have quietly ushered in further initiatives, putting the squeeze on the national health service. The Naylor report recommends the accelerated sell-off of NHS land and buildings. The capped expenditure programme undermines the very founding principles of the NHS and requires senior health managers in 14 areas of England to think the unthinkable and impose strict spending limits in their areas. That will result in longer waiting times, closure or downgrading of services, job losses, ward closures and rationing of care. Essentially, the Government are no longer saying, “Do more with less.” They are just saying, “Do less.” Less care and fewer treatments will lead to poor health outcomes for our nation.

While the Tories’ NHS privatisation agenda has been clear for years now, their policy on adult social care, announced in the manifesto just a few weeks ago, demonstrates their approach to social security. Instead of pooling risk and developing a collective response to shared societal problems, they are replacing that approach with an ideology of, “Sort yourselves out. You’re on your own because this Government won’t help you.” Labour Members take a different view. We would restore and protect the national health service and establish a national care service of which we can all be proud.

During the general election I heard from hospital consultants from Arrowe Park hospital, the Royal Liverpool and Alder Hey, and their shocking testimony revealed a picture of overstretched staff in an under-resourced service. One consultant I spoke to said he felt that in future only the rich will have access to doctors. That is indeed a bleak vision for the future of the NHS from people on the frontline, and the Government must now take responsibility. I urge Conservative Members to change course, restore our NHS as a public service and give NHS staff the reward they truly deserve. Today we are asking colleagues to vote to end the public sector pay cap. In the light of all that public sector workers do for us, that is the very least they deserve. We owe it to them, but we also owe it to ourselves and the next generation. As we approach the 70th anniversary of the founding of the national health service, our finest social institution, let us cherish it, protect it and show how we value the staff who work in it.

18:08

[Gerald Jones (Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney) (Lab)]

May I first thank the people of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney—the constituency where I was born, raised and still belong—for doing me the honour of re-electing me to represent them in this place?

As we come to the last days of debate on this year’s Gracious Speech, it is difficult to find positive things to say, mainly because the speech is devoid of detail. Clearly, this is no reflection on Her Majesty but a reflection on the shambles of the Government who are camping out on the Government Benches. The speech is indeed a threadbare document, which has highlighted the Tory party’s inability to put forward a proper programme of government.

We know that the Tory-led Governments since 2010 have promoted the mantra of austerity. We know that austerity is a political choice. After seven years of austerity, we know only too well the effect that it has had on our communities and our public services. As a former county councillor, I have seen at first hand what the Tories’ austerity agenda has done to local services—services that many, many people use and appreciate. Services such as leisure centres, libraries, youth centres, Sure Start centres and many, many more have been cut or closed as a result of Tory austerity. Under the previous Home Secretary, who is now Prime Minister, since 2010 we have seen police numbers cut by 20,000. South Wales police and Gwent police, who cover my constituency, have, like other forces across the country, lost police officers from the frontline. That has had a huge impact on the police service and its ability to deliver a visible assurance to many communities. The police have got on with the job, because they are professional people who serve our communities, but the service that they provide is under huge pressure. Something that has all but disappeared is neighbourhood policing. In my constituency, the ability of the police to provide effective neighbourhood policing teams in our communities is just not there.

A few years ago, most electoral wards had a police constable and possibly two police community support officers not only to engage with the community and solve low-level crime and deal with nuisance behaviour, but to gather intelligence about the issues brewing in the areas that they covered. That does not happen anymore, and the teams that once covered one electoral ward now cover five or six wards, so the level of engagement is minimal. Some may say that neighbourhood policing is not important and that there are higher priorities—they may have a point—but in many communities the lack of neighbourhood engagement and reassurance from the police is coupled with cuts in youth service provision or leisure services, so once again, as in the 1980s and ’90s, communities have to manage disaffection and disengagement among some of our young people— and other sections of the community, for that matter.

Taken alongside the other concerns of 2017, including Brexit, low wages, zero-hours contracts and the rise of food banks—all issues on which the Tories have failed to act—we are beginning to see a bleak picture, which is why I support the amendment introduced by the shadow Home Secretary.

Finally, I would like to express concern about the deal between the Tory party and the DUP. We have been told over the past few years that there is no money to invest in public services, yet money has been found to cut inheritance tax, income tax for the top earners and corporation tax, so money is available when it suits. There is no clearer example of that than the latest deal with the DUP. The Tories are so desperate to cling to power that they have offered up to £1 billion to cover Northern Ireland over the next two years. This is great for Northern Ireland, but the same should apply across the United Kingdom. In Wales, we have seen the Welsh budget cut by 8% since 2010. Public services are suffering and the communities that I represent, many of which are deprived, are among those that are the hardest hit.

Furthermore, the deal does nothing to safeguard the Union of the United Kingdom. In fact, it helps to sow further division. The Conservative and so-called Unionist party has done more to put the Union at risk over the past two years than at any other time in my memory, and that is deeply regrettable.

18:12

[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

First of all, it is good to be back after two years’ enforced sabbatical. I thank the 50.5% of my constituents who voted for me, and the 49.5% who did not: I wish to serve them all. I also wish to declare an interest. In my two years’ enforced sabbatical, I spent 18 months on a voluntary basis visiting other legislatures, Parliaments and politicians to discuss the issue of mindfulness, and I was also paid for a six-month period to do that.

I shall begin with some stark statistics. The World Health Organisation says that by 2030, the biggest health burden on the planet will be depression. We are heading that way, as we have a crisis in mental health in this country and across the western world. A parliamentary question that was answered some years ago revealed that 32.3% of young people between 15 and 25 have one or more psychiatric conditions. Some 90% of prisoners have psychiatric conditions when they enter prison, and 78% of students, according to the National Union of Students, suffer from stress, anxiety or depression. Those are terrible statistics, but the most worrying statistic of all is that in 1991, 9 million antidepressant prescriptions were issued; last year it was 65 million. There has been a huge increase in the issuing of antidepressants in this country.

There are alternatives. Improved Access to Psychological Therapies—IAPT—was introduced in 2008. It is a runaway success, but it needs more funding. Mindfulness was approved by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence in 2004 for repeat-episode depression—in other words, the worst type of depression has the best response to mindfulness. Yet its take-up within the national health service has been minimal. I urge the Minister to look at why.

The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) made an appeal to her hon. Friends to look to the expertise in the House to help develop mental health policy in this place. I urge Health Ministers to look at the “Mindful Nation UK” report, which was put together by the all-party parliamentary group on mindfulness. At its launch 18 months ago, there were three Conservative Ministers: the sports Minister, the hon. Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch); the former mental health Minister, the right hon. Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt); and a former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan).

There is consensus on this issue. I urge the Minister to work on this consensus, across all parties, on the important issue of mental health and mindfulness. I am talking about not only helping people who may be unbalanced to get back to a balanced position but about human flourishing, which mindfulness can help with. Our report considered mindfulness in education, the criminal justice system, the workplace and healthcare. Mental health should not be in a silo. Policy should be developed across the piece.

I welcome the inclusion of mental health in the Queen’s Speech, but Ministers and the Prime Minister will be judged on deeds, not words. We need the money to take forward these measures.

18:16

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

I thank the people of Bradford West for re-electing me and putting their faith in me by sending me back to the House. I want to echo the words of many of my colleagues over the last two weeks and pay tribute to all the victims affected by the horrible acts of violence we have seen. I also pay tribute to our emergency service personnel and the tremendous job they do for us on a daily basis.

In the Queen’s Speech last week we got the first glimpse of the Government’s proposal to have a commission on counter-extremism. Although we will all be interested to see the make-up of the commission and more about the proposal, I cannot help but feel that it may be a way for the Government to devolve responsibility for some of the more difficult decisions that need to be made and more difficult questions that need to be answered.

As we move further into the space of what the Government term “non-violent extremism”, I urge that any proposal ensures that the 15 points raised by David Anderson QC in his 2015 annual report are fully considered. They form a very sound basis on which to assess the reasonableness of such a move. Given that the Government are still falling short of finding a full and encompassing legal definition of extremism or hate speech, the further attachment of counter-terrorism policy to safeguarding, community cohesion, integration and thought is an area in which we should tread extremely carefully, with extreme sensitivity and great oversight.

As the Joint Committee on Human Rights said in the previous Parliament, we should legislate only where there is absolute need or a clear gap. However, I have concerns, as do many others, that we are still failing to learn the lessons of our current programmes. Community cohesion cannot be forced from the top down; we need to empower communities to find their own solutions, and Prevent has become toxic. We must protect against the alienation of those who should be most prominent in tackling extreme views. The issue is not just about engaging, but listening to and hearing their concerns: we need to treat them as motivated by our shared goal of a safer, more secure nation.

Here in the UK, Muslim communities have suffered a number of terror attacks and hate crimes: from the brutal murder of Mohammed Saleem and Mohsin Ahmed to the terror attack in Finsbury Park, and from petrol bombs thrown at many mosques to the verbal and physical assaults of Muslims—Muslim women in particular. Let us not pretend that Muslim communities do not share the same goals. Let us work together, incorporating the concerns of all, to build a stronger strategy to keep ourselves safe and secure. The Government still resist a new full and independent review into the successes and failures of the Prevent programme. I call on them to change that position.

We must recognise the need to protect police budgets. Further cuts are simply not sustainable. My region has lost nearly 20% of its police officers and, although the force may be recruiting now, it is still far short of where it once was. Crime is changing, but community policing is essential. It is how we build trust in police forces. Local knowledge is paramount to rooting out extremism. With this must come a renewed commitment to having representative police forces. With the police service only being 5.5% black and minority ethnic, it is still in no way reflective of the communities it serves, and that presents barriers to local engagement.

As the Government propose to introduce a digital charter, I encourage them to revisit the report by the Select Committee on Home Affairs at the end of the last Parliament. During those sessions, it became evident that the large social media companies had failed to tackle the issue of hate and extremist content on their platforms. The charter may be a welcome tool, but we must recognise that regulating online space will present exceptional challenges. The Government should tread extremely carefully, and with extreme sensitivity and great oversight.

11:30

[Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)]

It is good to be back.

It was 10 minutes past 8 in the evening on Friday 19 May when I realised the election campaign was going to get a whole lot more interesting than I thought it would be when it was called. I was sitting in a room in a public school outside Guildford, taking part in BBC Radio 4’s “Any Questions?” programme. The first question from the audience was whether the Government were taking the support of pensioners for granted with the pronouncements they had made a few days earlier on the funding of pensions and social care. Listeners to the radio will not have heard this, of course, but in that room I could tell that the audience did not need to wait for the panel to pronounce before they made up their minds on that question. The sense of indignation and outrage was palpable. In that moment, I knew that if that was the feeling of those small “c” conservative voters in the heart of Tory Surrey, the electorate were most certainly on manoeuvres in this election and that the outcome would be a lot more unpredictable than any of us had imagined.

Of course, the policy of making people pay for their social care to the point of their own impoverishment was quickly qualified and taken off the table but, as we all know, perception is everything in politics, and the damage was done. That ill-fated policy was one of the reasons that a Government with a majority went into an election and lost it. We are promised in the Gracious Speech that there will be a review of social care and, presumably, its funding. I am concerned that the thinking behind that ill-fated policy is still alive and well on the Conservative Benches, and that it may yet come forward as ruminations continue on public policy in this area, so I will spend this brief time dismissing that thinking and saying that it should not form part of our thinking.

There is a perfectly coherent and legitimate point of view on the political right that says that the funding of public services should be transferred from the state to the individual. It is wrong and I disagree with it, but I understand the point of view. To my mind, that point of view is invalidated and becomes incoherent and unjust when we say that it will be applied only to people who contract debilitating and incurable diseases, because we are then talking about the epitome of double jeopardy. We are talking about people who have the misfortune to become ill. We would be saying that they will not only suffer the pain and worry of that, but that they will be forced to fund their own care to the point of losing their savings so that they and their families will become much poorer than they would otherwise be. That seems an outrageous suggestion, and that was what lay behind the indignation of the audience in that room.

We do not know which of us will fall ill and which of us will remain healthy. That is why every civilised society turns for answers to the concept of social insurance, where we all pay in with the hope that we will not need to draw down on the policy, but with the expectation that, if we need to, the care will be there and we will not have to pay for it ourselves by becoming poor. That principle must underpin any review of social care funding. People will throw their hands up, aghast at the potential cost. But the Scottish National party Government in Scotland, with support from other parties, have maintained for 10 years free personal care for the elderly. That service is provided for 77,000 older people in Scotland. To do that across the UK would perhaps cost £7 billion or £8 billion, which is a very large amount of money—1% of our gross national product—but that is the question we are presented with as this review continues.

18:24

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is an honour to contribute to the debate on the Queen’s Speech. I am so delighted to be back in this place, and I thank the people of Batley and Spen for returning me with the best majority, apparently, since 1966. Having experienced two elections in the last year, I would like to put it on record that I am itching for a third so that Labour can finally be the party of government.

As I learn more about my role as an MP, I am very excited to hear my first Queen’s Speech. Sadly, it was not a grand, sweeping statement about the destination of our country, but more a postcard from the edge—a flimsy echo of the Tory manifesto, short on vision and lacking ambition.

While there is a lot to say about what was not in the speech, I will choose two topics to discuss: extra support for the NHS, and carers. Yesterday, we heard the Secretary of State admit that a privatised service was not up to scratch, leaving hundreds of people in harm’s way. We have heard about nurses visiting food banks, and now there is news that the Government might be about to renege on their promise to fund 10,000 extra nursing places.

The A&E in my constituency is still set to be downgraded later this year, and concerns remain about the future of Huddersfield A&E, with the entire Kirklees area potentially being left without a 24/7, fully functioning, fully funded and dedicated A&E. I am extremely grateful to the voting public for the fact that there are now four Labour MPs in Kirklees, and we are united in our mission for a better NHS that listens to the needs of the people it serves.

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to stop the STPs in their tracks right now so that we can prevent the dangerous downgrading of hospitals and the loss of our accident and emergency centres?

[Tracy Brabin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. One of the highlights of the general election campaign was when the shadow Health Minister came to Batley and Spen, where he launched the Labour manifesto on health and said that, on the first day of a Labour Government, we would pause the STPs and seek consultation.

Of course, the decisions made by CCGs and trusts across the country are born out of the fact that they need to deliver more on tighter and tighter budgets. Recently, I was informed that surgery for my constituents will soon be delayed by up to six months if they smoke, or for a whole year if they are overweight, with a high body mass index. Now, of course, we do need to improve public health, and 14% of adults in north Kirklees smoke, while 24% have a BMI of over 30, but we must be able to do better than denying care at the point of need. As a local paper pointed out, some of our incredibly talented local rugby stars have a high BMI. Surely we are not going to deny professional sportspeople surgery on health grounds.

While I am opposed to these changes, I hope Ministers understand that these decisions are having to be made because of their austerity. They are the ones asking our CCG to make £15 million in savings this year, after it already made £11 million in savings last year. The people of this country, and the people of Batley and Spen, have had enough, and it has to stop.

The omission of any mention of carers in the Queen’s Speech is enormously disappointing. Our country has an army of unpaid carers—some 6.5 million—and I would like to take this moment to praise these selfless people, who often do more and go further, without recognition or seeking a reward.

Recently, one of the 10,843 carers in my constituency—a woman about to retire, who is looking after her 35-year-old disabled daughter—asked me to help her with a problem. Her carer’s allowance—a sum of £62.70—had been stopped because she is now eligible for a state pension. When I asked whether she had phoned the relevant authorities to check whether it was correct, she said she had, but she was told it is not something that often comes up, because most people her age with disabled children had given up and stuck them in a home. I find this brutal and unfeeling, not to mention lacking in common sense, especially when we consider how much the state would have to pay if this lady’s daughter was cared for in a home. In Kirklees, the average residential care cost is £520 per person, per week.

That raises the question of why the Queen’s Speech said nothing about protecting our NHS or looking after our amazing carers. The only answer is that it was not a Queen’s Speech for us, the people, where our leaders have a vision to improve lives and to build a better country that includes kindness, tolerance, generosity and humanity; it was a political manoeuvre to protect those in power, and I cannot commit to supporting it. While for me this might mean three elections in 18 months, I say bring it on, because to me it could not be more obvious: this country needs a Labour Government.

18:30

[Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)]

I imagine that those sitting on the Government Benches and their new helpers in the DUP would usually find the security day in the Queen’s Speech debate part of their natural territory, but the lack of defence-related issues in either their grubby deal or the Queen’s Speech itself shows how much we have moved away from being what could be called a normal Parliament.

From my perspective as the newly re-elected MP for Dunfermline and West Fife, this week has been a very proud week indeed, as the largest ship ever built by the Royal Navy, HMS Queen Elizabeth, left Rosyth in my constituency for the first time to begin her sea trials. She is testimony to the men and women in Rosyth who played a part in her construction. The Queen Elizabeth and the Prince of Wales, along with the Goliath crane, have become part of the West Fife skyline. There is also sadness that the Queen Elizabeth will be leaving us, but no doubt she will be back very soon for adjustments following the sea trials and refits into the future.

The carriers are a great way to measure the current state of the MOD, central as they are to the stated aims of the strategic defence and security review. This capability will involve the deployment of many of the UK’s premier platforms and people: the Type 26 frigates, the Type 45 destroyers, the Astute class submarines, the P8s, and, not least, the F-35Bs that will fly from the flight decks of the carriers. In the previous Parliament, I asked many questions about the composition of the carrier group and the platforms that make it up, and I intend to continue that during this Session—not that I often got an answer from the Minister. The Government have been exceptionally vague on the individual elements of the carrier group and whether they will even be able to deploy both carriers simultaneously.

The time constraints imposed on me today mean that I will not be able to go into all the issues around the deployment of the carriers. However, three issues need to be discussed in future debates: first, the manning levels within the Royal Navy; secondly, the problems around the F35B; and, thirdly, the Government’s ongoing failure to deliver a shipbuilding strategy. First, on manning, as in the NHS, a 1% pay cap is having a detrimental effect on the ability of the services to keep the personnel they need in post. The Royal Marines are already being sacrificed for this. The submarine service is allegedly 25% short of full manned strength. We can see that this is far from being an abstract debate.

The F-35Bs represent the most expensive military procurement project in the world. Each F-35B plane costs about as much as 10 DUP MP votes in this place, so it is a great investment from the Government in making sure that this works. The workers in Govan need the reassurance that they can continue their work on the Type 26 frigates. First, there were 13 ships, and that was then reduced to eight, with five Type 31 frigates added in. The Parker report failed to inform us that the shipbuilding strategy would be published, and we now have something quite different. I think that the Minister is in the process of announcing three frigates, but we will wait to see how that comes out next week.

[Stewart Malcolm McDonald]

Is it not incumbent on all of Scotland’s elected Members of Parliament to hold the Government to account on the roll-back of that promise of the 13 ships that were supposed to be built on the Clyde and in Scotland?

[Douglas Chapman]

Certainly every single MP who represents a Scottish constituency should be fighting for these ships, fighting for these jobs, and making sure that commitments given in previous years are upheld and delivered in full.

In conclusion, I will fight my hardest on behalf of the Rosyth workforce, to make sure that as many jobs as humanly possible come to our constituency, but we cannot forget the workers on the Clyde and elsewhere across Scotland who depend on MOD contracts to ensure that we have a fighting force fit for this century.

18:34

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)]

On behalf of Her Majesty’s Opposition, may I associate myself with the tributes paid by Members on both sides of the House to the extraordinary efforts of our public servants who have been tested in recent weeks and months and who never faltered? They make us proud, and we pay tribute to them today.

It is my happy task to congratulate the six hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches today. My hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams)—a Labour gain in the general election—will bring to our debates considerable clinical experience from which we will all benefit. As someone who recently ran the London marathon, I may join him for the 6 o’clock boot camp to which he has invited us—but only if the Secretary of State comes along as well.

We also heard fine maiden speeches by three Conservative Members, each of whom follows in the footsteps of parliamentarians who have made immense contributions to public life. On the basis of their maiden speeches, the House will be confident that all three of them will also make a huge contribution to public life in the years ahead.

May I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine), who made an excellent maiden speech? I believe she also made a point of order earlier this week, so she is quickly finding her feet in this place.

The hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) made an excellent speech. He said that he was worried that he was not articulate, but he was incredibly articulate. He talked about his concerns for the agricultural industry in his constituency. Given how valuable his vote is going to be in the House of Commons, I think he will get the investment he will be calling for.

A number of retreads also made fine speeches. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the House my hon. Friends the Members for Keighley (John Grogan) and for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane) and the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey).

An immense number of Members spoke in the debate. I cannot do justice to all the contributions, so I apologise in advance, but a few of them interested me. The right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) made a typically fine, gracious and thoughtful contribution. I was interested to hear him say that he believed we should abolish tuition fees for certain subjects. He is almost a Corbynista, it would seem. We will send him a “Jez We Can” T-shirt in the post.

I mean no discourtesy to the right hon. Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire), but I did not realise that he is now on the Back Benches. I remember his time as a very good Foreign Office Minister. He made a very thoughtful speech, and on that basis I think he deserves to be elevated back to the Front Bench. The hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) made a typically thoughtful contribution. I hope that in the coming weeks she will be suitably elevated to a position that enables her to speak more widely on NHS matters.

Members of my own party also made some excellent speeches. My hon. Friends the Members for Dudley North (Ian Austin), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) all talked about the disastrous fragmentation of the national health service and raised deeply serious concerns about the way in which outsourcing takes places. I hope that the Secretary of State will respond to them when he sums up. It is noteworthy that more Labour than Conservative Members spoke in this debate. When it comes to the NHS, it seems that Tory MPs know they can no longer defend the indefensible.

With that in mind, may I pass on my personal congratulations to the Secretary of State on his reappointment? I did not expect to see him in place—I am not sure whether he expected it either. When an anonymous Tory MP learned of the Secretary of State’s reappointment, they were said to be baffled and told The Huffington Post:

“He was the most toxic thing on the doorstep among public sector workers”.

I do not know whether that Tory MP is in the Chamber tonight, but if they are, let me tell them that we are delighted that the Secretary of State is still in place, and we will be reminding public sector workers in every constituency of that.

I also wish to send my warm regards to David Mowat and Nicola Blackwood. They were dedicated public servants, and I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could pass that message to them.

We have a national health service with waiting lists close to 4 million; 26,000 people waiting for more than two months for cancer treatment; 560,000 people waiting on trolleys in corridors; the 18-week target downgraded and abandoned, a move in breach of the NHS constitution and the 2012 regulations; and vacancies for 40,000 nurses, for 10,000 GPs and for 3,500 midwives. We have seen applications for training plummet following the axing of the bursary, and today the Secretary of State stands accused of reneging on his promise to fund new nurse training places.

What was in the Queen’s Speech for the NHS and social care? Nothing, and no attempt was made to rise to the challenges that our NHS faces.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Health and social care integration is prized on both sides of the House. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is jeopardised by Government plans to base it on pounds and pence, not the needs of people?

[Jonathan Ashworth]

I welcome my hon. Friend to his place, and he makes a valid point.

We will engage constructively with the Government on mental health, but if they genuinely want to improve mental health provision, why not ring-fence the money going to CCGs and end the scandal of the raiding of child and adolescent mental health budgets to plug wider gaps in the NHS?

We welcome the measures on patient safety, and we will engage positively with them.

During the election, in secret, the NHS was told to carry out something called the capped expenditure process. Up and down the country, local NHS bosses were asked to “think the unthinkable”—rationing of treatment, cuts to services and the closing of wards. I challenge the Health Secretary to tell us, here and now, when he learned of the capped expenditure process. When did he order the NHS to introduce it? When did he sign off the plans? Why was the NHS told to keep it secret? I challenge him to abandon the capped expenditure process and give the NHS the money it needs.

The Gracious Speech ignored hard-working public sector workers. For seven years they have been expected to do more and more on less and less. Nurses have been forced to use food banks to make ends meet. The Health Secretary told the NHS Confederation that he had sympathy for underpaid NHS staff, but sympathy will not put food on the table. Nor is it good enough for the Prime Minister’s press spokesperson to brief the lobby after Prime Minister’s questions that the issue is under review, but then say three hours later that the policy has not changed—a U-turn on a U-turn. The Government cannot even do a U-turn competently. What a shambles. It could be described as weak, unstable and chaotic. Public sector workers deserve a lot better.

This is a self-defeating policy. To all the Conservative Members who have spoken out and said that public sector workers deserve a pay rise, I say we can give them a pay rise tonight if those hon. Members join us in the Lobby. The Gracious Speech should have been an opportunity to take action to support our hard-pressed public sector workers. Instead they will get nothing, and No. 10 has confirmed today that the policy has not changed. A pay rise for nurses, paramedics, police officers, firemen and women—for all public sector workers who live in all our constituencies—is fair and affordable. It would also mean Barnett consequentials for Northern Ireland. On behalf of the 5 million public sector workers, including the 1.2 million in the NHS, I proudly support our amendment and urge Conservative Members to join us in the Lobby tonight.

18:45

[The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)]

I thank the Opposition for choosing to have this debate on security, health and social care. Like the Home Secretary, the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow Health Secretary, I want to start by paying tribute to the amazing work of our emergency services in the recent terrorist atrocities. There are many stories, but two in particular sum up for me just how brilliant they were. The first was of an anaesthetist who picked up his daughter from the Manchester Arena when the bomb went off. He checked his daughter was safe, dropped her off at home and then went straight to work at Stepping Hill hospital. He worked through the night, and it was only in the morning that his colleagues realised he had actually been there when the bomb went off.

I also want to mention the paramedics who arrived on the scene at London Bridge. They arrived minutes after the incident. Gunfire was still happening and they thought they were being fired at, but they walked straight into that gunfire. When I met them, they said they were just doing their job, but I think that shows that there is no such thing as “just a job” in the NHS; it is a vocation. On behalf of the whole country as well as this House, I want to thank them for showing us the NHS at its best. I want to record the fact that it is not just in times of tragedy that our NHS is there for us; it is there seven days a week, 24 hours a day.

We have had a good and wide-ranging debate this afternoon. I congratulate, as the shadow Health Secretary did, the Members who made their maiden speeches; we heard some fantastic ones. I start with my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami). It is great credit to him that his mother is a pharmacist and his father is an NHS doctor. It is marginally less credit to him that he became a lawyer, but only marginally. He spoke with great passion and fluency about the importance of education. It was an excellent and moving first contribution to this House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), a notable Conservative gain in the election. He spoke with great eloquence about the attractions of his constituency, including castles, beaches, restaurants and a golf course owned by the President of the United States. As for his campaign to get the Scottish Government to do more to deal with NHS staff shortages in his area, it is unusual for me to be on this side of the argument, but I can wholeheartedly support his campaign.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) for his excellent speech. A teacher of medieval history, he taught us about the 9th century church in his constituency and the need to learn the lessons of the peasants’ revolt against excessive taxation. I can assure him that on the Conservative Benches we do not need to learn those lessons; we have reached enlightenment.

I thank the hon. Member for South Antrim (Paul Girvan) for his beautiful panegyric to his stunning constituency. He spoke very powerfully against witch hunting in the military and very powerfully in favour of the Union; both positions will have strong support on the Government Benches.

I welcome to the Labour Benches the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams). It is excellent to have another doctor in the House. He is, I think, the first ever Member to invite all hon. Members to join him at his 6 o’clock boot camp. As the shadow Health Secretary said, I feel as Health Secretary that I should set an example and join him, but unfortunately I have an unavoidable diary clash; that is a phrase he will learn to use as a new MP, I am sure. His passion for dealing with health inequalities came through loud and clear, and did him great credit.

I also want to thank the hon. Member for Edinburgh West (Christine Jardine). She talked about the majesty of the three bridges across the Forth. For a couple of my teenage years, I grew up under one of them. She was absolutely right to want to reassure EU citizens working in the NHS of the vital importance of their role. I hope the Prime Minister’s comments this week will give them reassurance that we are seeking a deal that gives them the same rights to live and work here as UK citizens.

I apologise for not being able to mention all of the many other contributions, but there were some important themes that I want to touch on. A number of Members talked about the possibility of developing a more cross-party consensus on difficult issues around health and social care. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) spoke powerfully on that point, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire) and my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston). I would make this point. Governments of all colours always seek to get consensus on difficult policy issues, and this Government are no different. However, it takes two to tango, and we have had two elections in a row that the Labour Opposition have tried to turn into referendums on the NHS. If those on the Opposition Front Bench are willing to engage, then we on this side of the House are most certainly willing to do likewise.

[Yvette Cooper]

On an issue on which I hope there will be consensus across the House, the Secretary of State will, I hope, have heard the words of the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley), who said that whether women from Northern Ireland can get an abortion in the English NHS is a matter for the English NHS. Will the Secretary of State agree to change the rules, so that Northern Ireland women do not have to pay in England for an abortion, if they need one?

[Mr Hunt]

I agree that all women, in all parts of the United Kingdom, should have the same rights to access healthcare. I note that a consultation on this matter is about to happen. The most important thing is that the voices of the women of Northern Ireland are listened to in that consultation.

We had powerful speeches on mental health, in particular from my hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) and the hon. Members for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) and for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), but also from many others. Mental health is a very big priority for the Government, particularly children and young people’s mental health, because half of all mental health conditions become established before the age of 14. It is particularly important to have better links between the schools sector and the NHS if we are to crack this problem. We have a Green Paper coming up later in the year that will seek to address that.

We also had a number of important speeches on the workforce and morale, including from my hon. Friends the Members for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) and for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), a doctor and a nurse respectively, who spoke with great authority. We also heard from Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), for Halifax (Holly Lynch), for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Halton (Derek Twigg), who touched on issues around GP recruitment. On pay, all Members will recognise that whichever party is in power, we have to do the right thing for the economy. People will recognise that in the very difficult period that we have just had, it would not have been possible to increase the number of doctors by nearly 12,000 and the number of nurses in our wards by nearly 13,000 if we had not taken difficult decisions on pay. What I can say is that we will not make our decision on public sector pay until the pay review body has reported. We will listen to what it says, and to what people in this House have said, before making a final decision.

I want to mention what my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley South (Mike Wood) said about his battle against sepsis. Everyone in this House, on all sides, is totally delighted that he won that battle, but how typically selfless of him to use his speech to talk about the 44,000 people every year who do not win their battle against sepsis. We will look carefully at what he said about a national sepsis registry. I also thoroughly agree with what my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) said about leadership in the public sector and the NHS. I look forward to more discussions with him about that.

On security, the shadow Home Secretary basically tried to turn an argument about public safety into an argument about austerity. However, I would gently say that for a shadow Home Secretary to protest about austerity in policing when she herself wanted to cut MI5 and the Met’s special branch, and when her leader wanted to cut the armed forces, is patently absurd. What she never mentioned is why we got into austerity in the first place: a global financial crash, made infinitely worse by profligate spending and a failure to regulate the City of London by the last Labour Government.

The shadow Health Secretary, the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth), spoke eloquently about the NHS.

[Ian Austin]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Mr Hunt]

I am going to make some progress. The shadow Health Secretary talked about underfunding of the NHS. He did not, of course, mention the new £43 million emergency floor at Leicester Royal Infirmary, which opened in April and is benefiting his constituents. There are indeed funding pressures in the NHS as we deal, like all countries, with the pressures of an ageing population, but they would be a whole lot worse if we had followed the advice of the Labour party in 2010 and cut the NHS budget; or followed the advice of the Labour party in Wales, which did cut the NHS budget; or followed the advice of the Labour party in 2015, when it promised £5.5 billion less than the Conservatives. The difference between this side of the House—

[Jonathan Ashworth]

rose—

[Mr Hunt]

I will just make my point. The difference between this side of the House and the other side is not the desire to fund the NHS, but the ability to fund it through a strong economy, and that is exactly what we did. By 2014, we had created 2 million more jobs and the fastest growth in the G7, and what was our first priority? The NHS. Its budget has gone up by £6 billion in real terms since 2014. That is a 7% rise, and it is £2.6 billion more than the Labour party promised in 2015.

[Jonathan Ashworth]

Our advice was to put an extra £7 billion into the NHS this year, but will the Secretary of State tell me whether he thinks it fair that the people of Northern Ireland will receive an extra £1 billion—which I do not begrudge—while there is not a penny piece of extra investment for the English NHS? Is that fair?

[Mr Hunt]

Let me tell the hon. Gentleman that our manifesto was very clear: it referred to an extra £8 billion for the NHS, funded by the strong economy that Labour can never deliver.

When the hon. Gentleman talked about problems in the NHS, and problems in care in the NHS, it sounded as if all those problems had started with the Conservatives. He did not mention the most challenging and difficult problem that his party left behind: the legacy of atrocious care at Mid Staffs, Morecambe Bay and many other trusts. Unlike the last Labour Government, we did not sweep those problems under the carpet. We did the opposite: we introduced the toughest inspection regime in the world. Thirty-five trusts went into special measures, and 20 exited from those special measures. Wrexham Park, George Eliot, Hinchingbrooke, Cambridge, Morecambe Bay, Tameside and East Lancashire went from special measures to good standards. The proportion of NHS patients who say that their care is safe has never been greater.

[Stella Creasy]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State has just announced a consultation on access to abortion in English hospitals, but as far as anyone is aware, no such consultation exists. Can you inform us whether there will be a written statement on the consultation, given that Members on both sides of the House are concerned about the issue and no information has been given, and whether we will be allowed to test the will of the House on the matter?

[Mr Speaker]

I have had no notification on that subject, but knowing the hon. Lady as I do, I feel sure that she will return to it before long.

[Mr Hunt]

This is the difference between the two parties. The Labour party wants to use the NHS as a political football. We want to make it better for patients, and that means difficult decisions to grow the economy so that we can fund the NHS, and difficult decisions to raise standards. The party of the NHS, however, is not the party that uses it to milk votes; it is the party that fights to make it better for patients. That is why it is the Conservative party that is making those difficult decisions. It is the Conservative party that is on the side of patients. It is the Conservative party that is seeing the highest standards of care for cancer, mental health conditions, strokes, heart attacks and nearly every major disease category that we have ever seen in the history of the NHS. It is the Conservative party, not the Labour party, that is the party of the NHS.





Question put, That the amendment be made.

18:59

Division 1

Ayes: 309

---

Labour: 255
Scottish National Party: 35
Liberal Democrat: 12
Plaid Cymru: 4
Independent: 1
Green Party: 1

Noes: 323

---

Conservative: 313
Democratic Unionist Party: 10

18:17

The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Ordered, That the debate be resumed tomorrow.

School Funding Formula (London)

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Commons Chamber

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Christopher Pincher.)

[Mr Speaker]

If, inexplicably, there are right hon. and hon. Members who do not wish to hear the debate on the school funding formula in London, I hope that they will courteously leave the Chamber quickly and quietly, so that we can all listen to the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable).

19:16

[Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)]

Mr Speaker, may I express my appreciation for being able to speak from these Benches again, after a two-year lapse, and to take advantage of the real privilege we have of being able to raise in an Adjournment debate matters of acute concern to our constituents? I wish to raise the issue of school funding, which proved to be one of massive importance during the election campaign, not just to me and my constituents, but to many others.

Let me give some examples of the kind of problems that have surfaced. I have visited three primary schools in the past week, one of which has already had to seek a parental contribution of £120 a head from each parent in order to balance its budget. Another had to put a proposition to the parents to go on to part-time schooling for one day a week, but that has subsequently been withdrawn in favour of a parental contribution and redundancies. This pattern is now being repeated throughout my borough and many others.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I can confirm that we face exactly the same issues in the London Borough of Sutton, and I believe that every secondary head has written to me expressing concerns, for instance, about requiring schools to cut back on the A-level options that are available. Does my right hon. Friend hope, as I do, that the Minister for School Standards will respond positively and set out how London can benefit from the bonanza that was available to the Democratic Unionist party in the past couple of weeks, so that we can see the right level of funding in our schools as well?

[Sir Vince Cable]

My right hon. Friend anticipates a point I was going to make, but he is absolutely right to say that this problem is widely shared. Several elements have contributed to this anxiety in the schools sector, one of which is that we have had flat or falling funding in nominal terms per pupil, certainly over the past couple of years—it is a small fall but it is significant. Much more seriously, there has been a very big increase in costs. Costs that were previously borne by central Government are now being offloaded on to individual schools. Some of them are obvious ones, such as national insurance contributions, which have added a couple of percentage points to the payroll—that is 80% of the cost of a typical school. The increase in pension contributions is another.

One particularly bizarre item causing considerable puzzlement in schools is the apprenticeship levy. I can perhaps claim some authorship of the original ideas behind the levy, from the coalition years, but none of us ever intended that it would apply to schools. The training of teachers, and indeed other professionals, does not go through an apprenticeship route. It appears that this is being introduced because people in maintained schools are regarded as council employees, and of course the whole direction of Government funding is to move in the opposite direction. In addition, there is a completely bizarre distinction between academies and non-academies. I wonder whether the Minister, in discussions with his colleagues, can lift what is not a massive but an extremely irritating and, at the margin, onerous burden on schools. It is something that would help significantly, and the burden is clearly inappropriate.

The consequence of these changes, together with the new funding formula that the Government have mooted, is very significant indeed. The National Audit Office has estimated that, between 2014-15 and 2019-20, which is when the funding formula comes in, there will have been an 8% real cut overall in English schools. The Education Policy Institute, which has done a parallel study and is broadly in favour of the principle of the funding formula, notes that the cut is something in the order of 6% to 11% in the narrower period of 2016-17 to 2019-20, with more than half of primary and secondary schools facing cuts of that magnitude.

Let me take the discussion very specifically to the funding formula, which is how I couched this debate. I have no objection—I do not think that any of us possibly could have—to the principle of trying to achieve fairness in the allocation of funds. It is a perfectly desirable objective. Although there is never likely to be much of a consensus on this, striving to achieve better fairness in distribution is a perfectly acceptable philosophical principle. I am not coming here to make a particular whinge about my own Twickenham constituency and borough, because, as the figures net out, we are not significant losers. Indeed, on some calculations, there may be a small gain, but that is not the case in many parts of inner London, which will be hit very severely. None the less, there are some very serious problems with the funding formula as it is due to be applied, and I just wanted to raise them with the Minister in the hope that he can give us some confidence that they will be addressed.

My first concern is that, clearly, it is much easier to introduce a new funding formula when budgets overall are flat or rising than when they are falling. It is a simple matter of common sense. Some secondary schools in my constituency face 3% real cuts to meet the funding formula. If that were done at a time when their budget was flat and others were rising, one can see how they could accommodate it, but imposing on already very stressed financial budgets real cuts as a consequence of the formula is just making this deeply, deeply unattractive.

The informed estimate is that if the Government were to bring in the funding formula while ensuring that no school actually loses in absolute terms, it would probably cost them £335 million. That sounds a lot of money, but, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out, in relation to some of the other transactions of the past 48 hours it probably is not all that significant. Can the Minister clarify a commitment, which I think was made in his party’s manifesto, that the Government will ensure that no school is absolutely worse off as a result of the formula? That would certainly help to lubricate the whole process.

My second concern is different and has nothing to do with money. It is about the centralisation of decision-making that is a consequence of this new formula. At present, there is a significant degree of flexibility for local authorities in moving money within the funding blocks, particularly within the school block. That enables local authorities to take account of local circumstances. In my particular case, we have a significant number of problems in the secondary sector. This involves a significant number of outer borough pupils, the fact that we have a large number of pupils who go into the private sector at 11 or thereabouts, and more challenging demands on the secondary sector. There is an understanding locally that, effectively, there should be a cross subsidy from primary to secondary. That is the result of local circumstances, and people understand that and accept it. Under the funding formula, such local, particular concerns can no longer be taken into account. One of the practical consequences in my area is that the secondary schools, which have particular needs, will be very savagely hit, because the cuts will fall on them disproportionately. As I understand it, there will be very little capacity in the Department for Education or with regional commissioners to handle the kind of local negotiation that would be required to take account of such particularities. I ask the Minister to try to ensure that as we move to a new funding system, it does not become hopelessly over-centralised. There is a real danger that we have a Soviet style of financial allocation that takes no account of local circumstances.

My third concern is about special needs and disadvantaged pupils who fall within the special educational needs block. As the Minister knows, funding for that at a local level is a complete mess. Local authorities are not funded up to anywhere remotely near the level that is required to meet the special needs of statemented pupils. The new plan system, which was passed in the last Parliament, requires substantial funding, which is simply not available. Local schools are having to use out-of-borough private providers of special needs education, which is often very high cost. Indeed, one of the things the Government should think about is a Competition and Markets Authority referral for some of these institutions.

Whatever the reasons, local councils have run up very large deficits on their special needs budgets. They are having to use school block money in order to support it. Many schools are in great difficulty as a result of the financing of special needs, so much so that schools that were regarded as centres of excellence are now trying to deter people from coming because of the extra cost involved, and a pass-the-parcel system is developing with special needs, which is deeply unhealthy, and completely inimical to good schooling.

A fourth concern I have about the proposals as they currently stand is that all kinds of perverse incentives are built into the rather complex formula that the Department has evolved, one of which is that it penalises high achievement. I happen to represent a borough where 50% of schools are regarded as “outstanding” and the other 50% “good”. It is a very high achievement area. Parents have very high expectations: schools deliver. Under the formula, high achievement will be penalised, and the funding is being redirected to schools in which there is low achievement. One of the utterly perverse consequences is that schools in London, particularly in inner London—areas such as Hackney, Lewisham and Lambeth, which 20 or 30 years ago were regarded as dreadful sink schools—are now very high-achieving schools in terms of value added, and those schools will need significant amounts of funding.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very good point. Certainly in Wokingham, which has very low per-pupil amounts and good-performing schools, we feel there is a problem. Was not the idea of the reform to have a higher absolute amount for every pupil in the country, because there is a basic cost wherever you are being educated?

[Sir Vince Cable]

Yes, indeed. The right hon. Gentleman makes the important point that it is not just a question to read having a basic amount of funding, but an evidence base for what the cost of running a school actually is. I worry that as the formula is currently devised, there is no evidence base. Wild guesses have been made about the differential costs of secondary and primary schooling, and we need objective studies of what it costs to run a school, so that the formula can work well.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

rose—

[Sir Vince Cable]

I just want to round up and come to a conclusion, to give the Minister a plentiful opportunity to reply.

My final point is that in addition to all the difficulties I have mentioned, there is a high level of uncertainty about how the new formula will be applied. Some of our secondary schools, which will face deep cuts, are protected up to a point by the maximum 3% cut—the floor that has been introduced—but we do not know for how many years that will continue. If they take painful corrective measures now, will they have to continue to do so? There is uncertainty about how the growth of pupil numbers will be accommodated. I believe that a system of retrospective prompt rebating could easily be set up and would make the planning of school finances much easier.

To round off my comments, I think there is an acceptance on both sides of the House that funding distribution needs to be looked at in a fair framework. That cannot happen in the current environment of large-scale cuts across the board, and I sincerely hope that the Minister will look at some of the other points that I have made about the need for much more decentralisation and flexibility in decision making, which will make it much easier to carry the reform through.

19:30

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

May I begin by congratulating the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) on his first speech in this Parliament and welcome him back to the House of Commons?

The Government want to ensure that all children, regardless of where they live, receive a first-class education. Over the past seven years, we have made significant progress. There are now almost 1.8 million more children in schools that are rated good or outstanding compared with 2010. Thanks to a curriculum that ensures that all children are taught the core knowledge that they need to be successful, to the promotion of evidence-based teaching practices such as Asian-style maths mastery and systematic synthetic phonics, and the hard work of hundreds of thousands of teachers, standards across England are on the rise. According to the latest international figures, secondary school pupils in England outperform pupils in the other nations of the United Kingdom.

The anachronistic way in which funding is distributed across the country is not fair and is in need of reform, so over the past six months I have spent a lot of time meeting teachers, headteachers, parents, governors and hon. and right hon. Members to discuss fairness in the school funding system. As a result of those conversations, I have never been more convinced of the need to grasp the nettle and address the unfairness of the current funding system. The data that are used to allocate funding to local authorities are over a decade out of date. Over that period, for example, the free school meals rate has almost halved in Southwark and has more than doubled in Dorset, but the funding that each local authority receives has not responded. It is not right that local authorities with similar needs and characteristics receive very different levels of funding from central Government. That results in a situation where, for example, a school in Barnsley would receive 50% more funding, with no other change to its circumstances, if it were situated in Hackney. That is not a rational, fair or efficient system for distributing money to our schools.

That is why the Government have gone further than any previous Government in reforming school funding, and why the Queen’s Speech made it clear that we are determined to introduce a fairer distribution of funding for schools. In doing so, we will ensure that all schools in England are funded on a consistent and transparent basis that reflects local needs. We will set out our plans shortly, and, as outlined in our manifesto, we will make sure that no school budget is cut as a result of the new formula. That will be particularly important for six schools in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency. The other 23 schools would all see a rise in funding as a result of the national funding formula. I hope that that addresses one of the concerns that he expressed.

In March 2016, we launched the first stage of our consultation on the national funding formula. We asked for views on the principles that should underpin it and its overall design. Those principles included using robust data to ensure that funding is matched to pupil characteristics and the importance of transparency in the way in which funding is allocated. Over 6,000 people responded and there was widespread support for reforming the current system and for the principles that we set out, including the issue that the right hon. Gentleman raised of low prior attainment, which he queried. Allocating extra funding for pupils who begin school behind their peers is, I believe, absolutely right. There is no perverse incentive, because it is the child’s attainment in the predecessor school that is relevant: nursery school if they are going to primary school, or primary school if they are going to secondary school.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

It is absolutely right, of course, that we should invest in pupils with low prior attainment, but does the Minister agree that that should not be at the expense of schools that, for whatever reason, do not hit the criteria on low prior attainment, English as an additional language or free school meals? They should have the funding they need to provide a full, rounded, liberal education.

[Nick Gibb]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point. We have had many discussions on these and other issues—regarding not only schools in his constituency, but f40 schools across the country. I feel strongly that schools with children who come from deprived backgrounds, with all the challenges they bring, should receive extra funding through the formula in addition to the money that comes through the pupil premium. I also strongly believe that we need to ensure that children who start school behind their peers catch up. Funding, I hope, will help ensure that they do. My hon. Friend is right, however, that we want to ensure that schools without any of those characteristics are properly funded. We can do that when a strong economy is generating the revenue to pay for those funds.

[Bob Blackman]

One of the issues that the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) did not raise was rising rolls, particularly in London. The birth rate and the influx of people coming to London with young children require schools to accommodate more children, but the money lags. Will the Minister consider that aspect? If schools are not going to lose out over all, the per-pupil funding will be crucial in London to make sure that money goes to the schools as rolls rise.

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: as pupil numbers rise, so funding for schools will rise as well, because it is based on a per-pupil approach. We are spending record amounts on school funding—£41 billion this year—and that is set to rise further as pupil numbers rise.

In December last year, we launched the second stage of the consultation on the detailed design of the formula. As part of the consultation and to ensure maximum transparency, we published detailed illustrative impact data for all schools and local authorities, and that enabled us to hold a truly national debate during the three months of the consultation. During that period, as I said, I met parents, teachers and governors. Both the Secretary of State and I met hon. Members from across the House. We received more than 5,000 letters on the national funding formula and held more than 10 debates in the House. We received more than 25,000 responses to the consultation itself.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the Minister for meeting me and the heads of Wilson’s School and Carshalton High School for Girls a few months ago. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) said, irrespective of what the Government do about the funding formula, significant funding pressures come from the apprenticeship levy, pensions, national insurance and the additional recruitment costs that schools face because of the shortage of teachers. How will the Minister address those cost pressures?

[Nick Gibb]

The right hon. Gentleman has anticipated my comments, as he did his right hon. Friend’s. I will come to those issues. On the apprenticeship levy, schools can use apprenticeship levy funds not only for training support staff, but for training teachers. We are developing a teacher apprenticeship and the Government have asked Sir Andrew Carter to help develop a high-quality teaching apprenticeship to enable schools to draw down funding available through the apprenticeship levy.

We will publish our response to that consultation in due course. We will build on the strong support for the basic objective of reforming the current system as well as addressing the detailed issues and concerns raised throughout the consultation. We remain committed to working with Parliament and bringing forward proposals that will command consensus.

The right hon. Member for Twickenham raised the issue of introducing a national funding formula at this moment. We felt that at a time of constraints on budgets it was even more important to introduce such a formula to ensure that the unfairnesses are ironed out—more important than when budgets are rising.

Not only do we want the system for distribution to be fair; we also want to ensure that every school has the resources it needs to deliver a world-class education for every child. We have protected the core schools budget in real terms since 2010. We have given record levels of funding for our schools, and we set out plans to increase funding further in our manifesto, as well as continuing to protect the pupil premium to support the most disadvantaged pupils in our schools.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will not.

We recognise that schools are facing cost pressures and we will reflect on the message that people sent at the election about the funding of our schools. We also know that how schools use their money is important in delivering the best outcomes for pupils. We will continue to provide support to help schools to use their funding in cost-effective ways. The Government have produced tools, information and guidance to support improved financial health and efficiency in schools. Those tools are available in one area of the gov.uk website.

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

I am a school governor at a local primary school in my constituency. You say that we need help to find efficient ways of spending the money in the school. I have to tell you, from personal experience, that, as a group of experienced governors, we have done absolutely everything we can to be as efficient as we possibly can. The next thing to go will be teaching assistants and teachers. I have respect for what you say but—I am sorry—I just do not think that any more tools will help. What would help is more money. That is what we need.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I just say very gently to the hon. Lady, who is already well and truly making her mark, that the word “you” implies the Chair, and I have not made any statements about any of these matters? The hon. Lady is new, but extremely articulate, and I know that she will get to grips with these things very quickly.

[Nick Gibb]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but there are ways in which we can help schools to become more efficient with the available tools such as reviewing the level of efficiency, investigating levels of expenditure against other similar schools and other benchmarking tools that are on the website. The best way for schools to know what is effective is to share best practice. There are case studies on the gov.uk website, showing, for example, how a school in Leicestershire supports other local schools to develop a strategic three-year budget plan and thinks through its staffing model to best meet the curriculum. It also shows a school in Barnsley that has made significant savings by introducing a more efficient working pattern for support staff, and a school in my county of West Sussex that used a data-led approach to designing its curriculum and strategic staffing plans.

Earlier this year, we introduced a schools buying strategy to support schools to save more than £l billion a year by 2019-20 on their non-staff expenditure. The strategy includes the introduction of school buying hubs, which are regional units designed to communicate with and provide procurement support to all schools in the area. The hubs will provide expertise and specialist advice on procuring and managing catering and cleaning contracts, for example, to help to deliver better value in school buying. Alongside procurement advice, they will provide market intelligence, help with complex contracts, and promote local collaboration and aggregation.

The Government are building a digital buying platform to enable schools to compare prices more easily and to access a wide range of suppliers. School business management is an important and increasingly skilled profession. To support school business managers and help them to share their market knowledge, we will provide support to create new school business manager networks in areas of the country where they do not already exist. We will also create a network leaders forum to bring together leading members of the many networks, creating face-to-face opportunities to share knowledge and best practice on a national basis.

We will also provide schools with more access to better national deals. We have introduced a new deal on multifunctional devices—printers and photocopiers—this year. On average, schools could save more than 40% by using this arrangement, and up to 10% by making use of our national energy deal. The Department will work closely with schools—including the school the hon. Lady is a governor of—and suppliers to ensure that deals are easily accessible to schools and tailored to their needs.

Improved procurement will help free up resources available for teaching pupils, but to maximise these resources, it is also essential for schools to deploy their staff effectively and efficiently. This can be achieved through reducing unnecessary workload—that is where the Government have a key role to play—and making use of the full set of resources on the gov.uk website that support schools’ efficiency and financial health.

We are continuing our extensive work with the profession, teaching unions and Ofsted to challenge unhelpful practices and reduce workload, so that teachers can concentrate on teaching, not bureaucracy and paperwork. In February, we published the findings of the 2016 teacher workload survey, an update on how we are meeting our commitments to tackle workload, and details of further steps we will take, including an offer of targeted support. Earlier this year, we also published the school workforce planning guidance to help schools to make well-informed decisions about their staffing structures, and schools should always carefully consider their individual context and the mix of staffing roles they require.

In summary, this Government will continue to support England’s schools by providing more funding than ever before, by making sure that the funding is distributed fairly and to where it is needed most, and by helping schools to achieve more with that funding, with a focus on sustaining and improving the rapid progress our children and young people are making under this Government.

Introducing fair funding will be an historic and necessary reform—the biggest change to school funding for well over a decade. Thanks to the determination of this Government to address issues of unfairness in our society, we will have a clear, simple and transparent system that matches funding to children’s needs and the schools they attend. It will enable all schools, regardless of where they are situated in the country, to provide the very best education for pupils and an excellent education system.

Question put and agreed to.

19:46

House adjourned.

Written Statement

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Written Statements

Wednesday 28 June 2017

EU Transport Council

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Written Statements

[The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)]

The only Transport Council under the Maltese presidency (the presidency) took place in Brussels on 8 June. The UK was represented by the UK’s deputy permanent representative to the EU, Katrina Williams.

The Council adopted a general approach on lorry and bus driver training (driver CPC directive) as well as Council conclusions on road safety and the EU’s maritime priorities. All three were widely supported by member states. The UK intervened to support the road safety conclusions, welcoming the elements related to safer road infrastructure and connected and autonomous vehicles, and highlighting the UK’s safer road fund.

Under any other business, a range of items were discussed. The Commission presented its new mobility package of proposals which aims to modernise the road transport framework and strengthen the competitiveness and social standards of the EU road haulage sector. Some member states supported stronger social standards in the road transport sector while others felt the Commission’s proposals did not sufficiently support liberalisation in the sector. A number of member states called for the political and geographical balance of the proposals to be carefully considered.

The presidency provided information on the progress of the trilogue discussions with the European Parliament on professional qualifications in inland navigation directive and the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) regulation. Overall member states welcomed the substantial efforts of the Maltese presidency in negotiations to date with the European Parliament.

The Commission presented an overview of the “Open and Connected Europe” aviation package which was published on the morning of the Transport Council. The package includes a proposal to revise regulation (EC) No. 868/2004, guidelines on airline ownership and control, guidelines on public service obligations and best practice on minimising air traffic control disruptions.

Sweden provided information on her approach to protection against acts of terror in road transport in light of the terrorist attack that occurred in Stockholm in April. The UK intervened to express its solidarity and emphasise the importance of this issue and of sharing best practice, supported by other member states. Those who intervened offered condolences to the UK following the London Bridge attack on 3 June.

In addition, the Commission updated the Council on recent developments on aviation security and the Netherlands asked the Commission to provide information on their work on social issues in aviation. Luxembourg urged member states to speed up the implementation of the European rail traffic management signalling system (ERTMS) and presented the work she had done to develop a blue-print EU cycling strategy. Germany flagged the high-level dialogue on connected and autonomous driving that would take place in Frankfurt on 14 and 15 September and the Estonian presidency presented its work programme for its presidency beginning 1 July 2017.

Over lunch Commissioner Bulc led a discussion on an initial strategy at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from ships.

[HCWS15]

House of Lords

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Wednesday 28 June 2017

15:00

Prayers—read by the Lord Bishop of Peterborough.

Oaths and Affirmations

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

15:06

Several noble Lords took the oath or made the solemn affirmation, and signed an undertaking to abide by the Code of Conduct.

Terrorist and Extremist Propaganda: Online Sources

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Question

15:08

Asked by

[Lord Naseby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what measures they are taking to combat terrorist and extremist propaganda released through multimedia channels, particularly social media, videos, the internet, and other online sources.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, before I begin, I wish Muslims here and all round the world Eid Mubarak.

The Government have been clear that there should be no safe space online for terrorists and their supporters to radicalise, recruit, incite or inspire. We continue to work closely with industry to come up with innovative ways to tackle terrorists’ use of the internet.

[Lord Naseby (Con)]

Is my noble friend aware of the detailed and excellent work done by the Henry Jackson Society, which proves that if a radicalised individual sees material such as a beheading video, he or she is likely to act within two to three weeks? My noble friend mentioned industry, but is she further aware that Facebook, Microsoft, YouTube, Google and Twitter have teamed up to make the servicing of hostile material very difficult? Nevertheless, that does not cover encryption of messages, there are no financial penalties as there are in Germany, and videos are taken down only when there is a complaint. Against that background, will Her Majesty’s Government move with all possible speed to ensure that the agreements between those companies are tightened up even further, and look at the other elements that I have mentioned?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, my noble friend is right that the move to actual radicalisation can be very quick indeed. I pay tribute to the Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit, which since 2010 has helped to secure the removal of 270,000 pieces of material from the internet by social media providers—8,000 a month in 2016 alone. The CTIRU was the first of its kind globally and continues to be world-leading in its operation. My noble friend mentioned encryption, and we support the use of strong encryption. However, we must also ensure that, in tightly prescribed circumstances, our law enforcement and security and intelligence agencies are able to access the communications of criminals, including terrorists.

[Lord Singh of Wimbledon (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that what generally passes for religion is not only ethical guidance for sane living, but a sometimes oppressive culture and a shared history often bent or moulded to dislike or hatred? It is such material that is used to radicalise people. Does the Minister agree that there should be open debate about these things and that this aspect of religion should not be protected by political correctness if we want a truly healthy society?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord, as always, makes insightful points. Of course there is a big difference between religion and culture and it is often in the attempt to conflate the two that we come up against such horrible types of terrorist activity. The Prime Minister said the other day that we must be prepared to have difficult conversations and I totally agree. Just because conversations are difficult does not mean that we should not have them, and they may lead to a much smoother way forward.

[Lord Paddick (LD)]

My Lords, the Government realise that the only effective sanction against overseas pornographic websites that refuse to implement age verification is to ask UK internet service providers to block those sites. Bearing it in mind that it would be disproportionate to block sites such as Facebook and YouTube, how do the Government intend to deal with terrorist and extremist propaganda if technology companies do not do enough?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord is absolutely right. I pay tribute to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, who has spent an extensive amount of time over the past few weeks and months talking to communications service providers. Only on Monday, Twitter, Facebook, Microsoft and YouTube announced the formation of a global internet forum, primarily to counter terrorism but also, through that collaborative way forward, to tackle some of the things that the noble Lord mentioned, such as extreme pornography.

[Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as in the register. The internet is also the place of initiatives that help to counter terrorism—think of the incredible relief that many victims of terrorism have felt by using social media and gathering information and news. Does the Minister agree that it is as essential to protect an open and free internet as it is to make sure that we take down the videos to which the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, referred? Can I ask that, in the digital charter announced in the manifesto and in the Queen’s Speech, we do as much to revert to some of the original spirit of the internet as we do to address the challenges that we face in 2017?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Baroness is absolutely right not only that the internet is a useful tool to challenge this sort of activity, but that freedom of speech and use of the internet are important in our society. There is a fine balance between freedom of speech and speech that is downright extremist and hateful. That is why we have adopted our approach, which is to take down extremist material and put up a counternarrative, in the meantime, helping to educate people about the dangers of radicalisation.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, following that answer, can the Minister tell us what definition of “extremist” the Government are using?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The Government are not using the definition of extremism which I know the Metropolitan Police has designated the noble Baroness with. “Extremist material” refers to content that is assessed as contravening UK terrorism legislation.

Government-commissioned Research

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Question

15:16

Asked by

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are planning to take to register externally commissioned research in a standardised public register, as recommended by Sir Stephen Sedley in his report Missing Evidence: An Inquiry into the Delayed Publication of Government-commissioned Research, published on 2 June 2016.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, Ministers understand the importance of ensuring that government research can be easily accessed. Departments can already publish research in a single place, the GOV.UK website, and the Government Digital Service is making it easier for users to find the information they need on this website. More widely, we remain in close dialogue with Sense about Science, which commissioned the report, and with the research community to understand how the Government’s digital channels can better serve their needs.

[Baroness O’Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Sir Stephen Sedley’s report estimates that about £2.5 billion a year is spent on government-commissioned research, which is a very large sum. It is intended to provide an evidence base for public policy. However, much of this evidence is then lost, missing or unfindable by people for whom it is relevant. Commissioning departments, other departments and the public at large cannot find out what has already been done. Past research is simply lost and may have to be duplicated. Does the noble Lord agree that not having a co-ordinated register of this research is a very big waste of taxpayers’ money?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The noble Baroness has rightly summarised the recommendations made by Sir Stephen Sedley. Basically there are two problems, one of which is the availability of research and the other its accessibility. On availability and putting it in the public domain, Sir Tom Scholar, the Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, has recently written to all Permanent Secretaries reminding them of the protocol which obliges them to put research into the public domain as soon as possible. On ease of access—finding the data—the Government Digital Service is sharpening its navigational and taxonomy tools in order to make it easier for users to find the information they need.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure that the House is reassured by the noble Lord’s response. He mentioned two problems, but surely the third is that much of this research shows that government policies have little basis in evidence and, therefore, departments are not keen to allow it to be published. Is he aware of the debate in relation to pharmaceutical companies and the publication of research that has not worked? There has been a big change in attitude by a number of the companies and they are now committed to full transparency. Given the sensitivity of those companies, I would have thought that the Government could take the same approach.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

Sir Stephen Sedley made it clear that:

“There is no recent evidence of the indefinite suppression of research”.


The problem he identified was not suppression but delay. On medical research, the Chief Medical Officer, Professor Dame Sally Davies, told the inquiry that the systems in place now support publication and said:

“Although a decade or more ago there may have been more of a problem with research being delayed, clearer guidance and publication frameworks in place today mean there isn’t a major problem anymore”.

[Lord McNally (LD)]

My Lords, is not the beauty of Sir Stephen’s suggestion that it brings two benefits? It prevents Ministers commissioning backside-covering reports; and, if published, it gives other departments and the taxpayer the value of the research that they have paid for. I am a little worried that the matter is in the hands of the Treasury. Will the Minister draw the attention of the First Secretary, Mr Damian Green, to this matter and suggest that he should circulate an “action this day” memo?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The responsibility for publication does not rest with the Treasury, it rests with the individual department that has commissioned the research. The protocol makes it quite clear that research should be published as soon as possible. A number of the recommendations are being taken forward by the Government Digital Service and by relevant departments. But I will certainly bear in mind the noble Lord’s suggestion that there might be a fresh initiative by my immediate boss, the First Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office.

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, the June 2012 Civil Service Reform Plan, in a section on the components of open policy-making, set out the ambition to have a:

“Shared, transparent evidence base from all sources in accessible format for all to interpret”.


Is the Minister satisfied that, five years on, this reform has been effectively implemented? If not, he may wish to refer to another section of the reform plan, which says of the Civil Service that,

“its culture can be cautious and slow-moving”.

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I am sure there is room for progress, but I note that the UK is a world leader on open data and, in 2016, for the third year running, ranked first in the world on the World Wide Web Foundation’s Open Data Barometer.

[Baroness Hollis of Heigham (Lab)]

My Lords, we all know of circumstances in which government research has been published after the relevant debate in this House. We all know that government research has been published in the long vacations or vacations where there is no access to it or ability to scrutinise it or interrogate Ministers about it. In other words, delay is effectively suppression in too many fields. Will the Minister please take seriously the very real and pertinent points made by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Neill, in order to help the House of Lords in its primary function, which is scrutiny?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I certainly agree that research should be released as soon as possible and it would be wrong to suppress it for political reasons. As I said a moment ago, Sir Stephen said he found no indication that research had been indefinitely suppressed. However, he went on to say that delay could be damaging or unfortunate. The protocol that I referred to gives advice to departments on the timing of the publication of research. I will do what I can to make sure that is adhered to.

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that there is public concern about the failure to publish the report on the funding of terrorism, which is particularly in our minds now in light of recent events? The concern is that the delay may be to cover our commercial interests, perhaps in parts of the Middle East where we have been selling arms. Is delay operating as suppression in this area?

[Lord Young of Cookham]

I say with respect to the noble Baroness that I am not briefed on that report, but in the light of her question I will of course make inquiries and let her know the answer to those representations.

Industrial Strategy

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Question

15:23

Asked by

[Lord Haskel]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will introduce their industrial strategy.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Prior of Brampton) (Con)]

My Lords, our industrial strategy Green Paper was launched on 23 January. Following extensive consultation, we intend to publish a White Paper in the autumn.

[Lord Haskel (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for that Answer. At least we have taken a first step away from austerity. Perhaps I may ask him the question everybody else out there would like to have answered: will he confirm that the funding laid out in the Autumn Statement 2016 will be made available in full, plus the substantial increase in grant funding to be awarded through UKRI, which was also promised in the Autumn Statement, so that money for innovation will not be spread too thinly?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

I am very happy to give that assurance. As the noble Lord will know, UKRI will receive an additional £4.9 billion over the period to 2021. Much of that resource will go through UK Innovate into a number of productivity schemes. I hope that will be, as he says, a creative alternative to austerity.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister is very well aware of the importance of catapult centres in the industrial strategy. Will he now say what his plans are for maintaining funding for the current level of catapult centres and for opening new centres?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the catapult programme has, on the whole, been a huge success, but not all catapults are performing as well as others, so we are now undertaking a review of the catapults to identify those that have been performing well and those that have not. There is no intention that I am aware of to reduce the funding of all the catapults.

[Lord Lansley (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend confirm that it continues to be the Government’s intention to publish sector strategies following up the consultation to which he referred? Is he able to say whether an early sector strategy will relate to life sciences? In doing so, will the Government also be able to bring forward relatively speedily a positive response to the accelerated access review?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, the sector strategies will be an important part of the industrial strategy and the life science strategy is probably one of the furthest forward. It will, I assure my noble friend, include proposals to improve access to the NHS.

[Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)]

My Lords, I am sure the Minister is aware of the Social Mobility Commission’s Time for Change report, which urges the Government to commit to speedy reform to avoid unsustainable social division, particularly with the regions being left behind with very uneven pay and skill levels, employment rates, job quality and access to high-level qualifications. Will the Government accept the commission’s call to use the industrial strategy to address this imbalance, which will, of course, show a more committed effort towards the regions than the fact that there have been three northern powerhouse Ministers in four years?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

My Lords, I would say that probably the single most important objective of the industrial strategy is to address some of the regional imbalances that the noble Lord refers to. We have seen London and the south-east do extremely well over the last few years, and we will carry on supporting London and the south-east to continue doing well, but there is no doubt that many parts of the country have been left behind, with many people on stagnant and falling earnings. That is absolutely a key priority for the strategy.

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, will the Minister please confirm to the House that the defence growth strategy will fit within the Government’s industrial strategy?

[Lord Prior of Brampton]

There will be many sector strategies and the Defence Growth Partnership is one that we hope will be part of the industrial strategy.

Agriculture: Foreign Workers

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Question

15:27

Asked by

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering]

To ask Her Majesty's Government what discussions they have had with farmers and growers on access to foreign workers; and whether they intend to reintroduce the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my farming interests as set out in the register. We are fully seized of this issue now and for the future. These matters have been discussed by the Secretary of State and the Minister of State with key stakeholders over recent weeks. The Government will commission advice from the Migration Advisory Committee. Working with business and communities, we will develop a future migration system which works for all and meets labour market needs in this sector.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. From his regular meetings with farmers and growers, he will be aware of the critical shortage of vegetable pickers and growers, with a 17% shortfall this year—in May alone there were 1,500 job vacancies. Will my noble friend assure the House today that he and the Home Office will review the seasonal agricultural workers scheme with the utmost urgency with a view to its reintroduction? If we have a weak pound, as we have at the moment, and if we have an uncertain position with returners, in particular, who are down by 50%, and with new workers coming to pick from the European Union, will my noble friend assure us that this will be reviewed with regard to the rest of the season and, in particular, to next year and the years ahead?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, the seasonal agricultural workers scheme is kept under careful, ongoing review. Indeed, when it was stopped in 2013, Defra established a SAWS transition working group, which continues to bring industry and government together to monitor the situation. I absolutely agree with my noble friend: it is very important that we work very closely with this sector. We have wonderful produce in this country; it is something that I know the Secretary of State and the Minister of State are fully seized upon and we are working not only, obviously, for the harvest of next year but the harvests later on—

[Lord Cunningham of Felling (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

Oh. I am afraid, my Lords, that there is plenty of time. I want to reiterate that it is taken very seriously indeed.

[Lord Cunningham of Felling]

My Lords, is not this gratuitous delay on the part of the Government damaging our agricultural, horticultural and fruit-picking industries unnecessarily? Is not the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, quite right that the seasonal workers scheme worked perfectly well? People came and then they left. There was no problem. This is not an immigration problem at all. It is a problem of seasonal workers doing essential jobs for our basic agricultural, horticultural and growing industries.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, as the noble Lord will know, from 2007 to 2013, the scheme was for Romanian and Bulgarian people who wished to come here. Obviously, there has been a scheme since after the Second World War, but that is precisely what it was. After 2013, there was full freedom of movement for those countries. There are 171,000 more EU nationals working in this country now than there were a year ago. The point is that there are many, very welcome EU nationals coming. Obviously, with the review that the Migration Advisory Committee is undertaking, we need to see what further work we need to do to ensure that we have labour to produce our very important produce.

[Baroness Parminter (LD)]

My Lords, I live in Godalming, where we have one of the largest soft fruit farms in the country, employing 2,500 people. The owner has said that the business will collapse without access to EU workers. Does the Minister agree with me that retaining access to the single market is the best way to ensure that we have a future supply of affordable homegrown soft fruits?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, what will be essential to ensure that our wonderful produce is picked is that we have the labour force to do it. That is why the noble Lord, Lord Cunningham, is right: we need to review where we are, because there will be changed arrangements. Having met some people who are running a fruit farm, I am fully seized of the importance of the labour force that comes overwhelmingly from parts of eastern Europe, which we have very much welcomed and is so important in gathering in our harvest.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

My Lords, we are leaving the European Union, so I do not really see what that has to do with it. The original seasonal agricultural workers scheme operated with people coming into this country from 130 nations. It was essentially universal. They came, they worked and they went home. Migration has nothing to do with it. Why are we not opening up our vision, if we are leaving the EU, to say, “Let’s widen the scheme”? It has nothing to do with migration. We had a perfectly workable scheme until it changed. I fully admit I was partly responsible. I used it at MAFF and then when I got to the Home Office I had to start closing it down because of what was happening with our EU accession partners. But the fact is, we are leaving, so it does not have to be European based any more.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is precisely why the Home Office and Defra have asked the Migration Advisory Committee to look at this with regard to the long-term needs of an important sector of our agricultural industry. That is one of the things I am looking forward to hearing about. As I said, to put it in context, between 2007 and 2013 the only element of the scheme was to deal with the Romanian and Bulgarian situation.

[Baroness Masham of Ilton (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interest in farming. Will the Minister make it easier for seasonal workers to come in from Australia and New Zealand to clip sheep? Is he aware that my sheep are still waiting to be clipped because my British sheep clippers are getting older and they have a big backlog this year?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, that is one of the things we will want to look at as we leave the European Union.

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, this is not about just seasonal workers or unskilled workers. As the Minister will know, some 80% of vets in our abattoirs, who enable them to operate with the right welfare standards, are EU citizens. How are we going to retain those skilled and much-required people who are currently keeping our food processing industry moving?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am most grateful to the noble Lord because I was at the BVA and RCVS reception yesterday, where I know a number of noble Lords were also in attendance. This is an important issue and an element of the negotiations that we want to deal with as promptly as possible. Yes, we do rely on and warmly welcome the support we have from EU national vets, who are hugely important to us.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend the Minister please confirm that the migration advisory group will consult the Commonwealth Secretariat and Secretary-General in relation to opportunities for workers to come from Commonwealth countries, as there is a great expectation that there will be new opportunities within the Commonwealth?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

I am certainly pleased with and will take back what my noble friend has said. It is an important point to make.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)]

My Lords, historically the agriculture sector has been one with low wages and exploitation. Will the Minister commit, as my party has done, to reinstate the Agricultural Wages Board? I would also like to raise the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority, which does a fantastic job. Its remit has expanded but its resources have gone down so, with the potential problems following Brexit, will the Minister look at increasing the resources for that excellent organisation?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I know that the noble Baroness has raised this during the Queen’s Speech debate—I read an excerpt from Hansard. The agency does a good job in monitoring living standards and certainly ensures that workers receive at least the national living wage. It is not alone in this sector: there is the Association of Labour Providers and the Fresh Produce Consortium. All are working hard to ensure that the standards we would all wish for people who come to this country to work are the best that they can be. I cannot promise to accede to the points that she has made, but it is certainly important that these organisations are working hard to ensure that there is well-being among people who come here—and many people come back. One thing I have noticed at many of the fruit farms is families and people coming back to this country. We sometimes beat ourselves, but this country is seen as a good place to work in.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD)]

The Minister is of course aware that asylum seekers who come to the UK are not allowed to work for the first 12 months. If that was overturned and perhaps reduced to six months, would it not help the labour force considerably?

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, again I cannot promise, but I will certainly put that point to colleagues. The employment situation in this sector is seasonal. Part of the issue, and the point of this Question, is that we have seasonal demand for people to come and help us with our soft fruit and vegetables, and their processing. I am grateful to the noble Lord, but I do not think that I can comment any further.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that these people are not only seasonal but highly skilled? They are often written off as unskilled workers, but they contribute something essential to our agricultural and horticultural industry.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, this produce is very vulnerable and the skills in picking fruit are therefore important—it is very perishable. There is, of course, skill in ensuring that we get our soft fruit in safely. We are now self-sufficient in strawberries for much of the year, which are a wonderful product, and there are many whom we rely on in the workforce from the European Union.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, apart from some of the emerging practical problems that have already been raised today on seasonal workers, and despite what the Minister has said, is the real issue not the fact that these EU workers no longer feel welcome here? Is it not the case that this is a problem entirely of the Government’s making? They have sought to make these workers bargaining chips in the EU negotiations and have said nothing publicly about the value they bring to our economy and wider society. It is no wonder if fruit growers and so on are reporting that people who have come time and again, year after year, now say they will no longer come. They do not feel welcome here.

[Lord Gardiner of Kimble]

My Lords, I refer the noble Baroness to what I just said, which was that 171,000 more people from the EU have come to work here than there were a year ago—171,000. That does not suggest to me a climate in which people feel unhappy or unwelcome. They are very welcome and are vital in this industry and in others where they work. I honestly do not think that what she is saying is borne out by the labour market statistics. It is very important in this climate as well to remember that saying people are unwelcome can often engender the sorts of comments that I know all of your Lordships would say are reprehensible and undesirable. We need to create a climate in which this country sees the value of people coming here and working here, often doing jobs that some of our own people have, in recent times, not sought to do. They are very important to us.

Armed Forces (Flexible Working) Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:40

A Bill to make provision for members of the Regular Forces to serve part-time or subject to geographic restrictions.

The Bill was introduced by Earl Howe, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Conscientious Objection (Medical Activities) Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:41

A Bill to clarify the extent to which a medical practitioner with a conscientious objection may refrain from participating in certain medical activities; and for connected purposes.

The Bill was introduced by Baroness O’Loan, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

House of Lords Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:41

A Bill to restrict membership of the House of Lords by virtue of a peerage; to make related provision about disqualifications for voting at elections to, and for membership of, the House of Commons; and for connected purposes.

The Bill was introduced by Lord Elton, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Creditworthiness Assessment Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:42

A Bill to require certain matters to be taken into account when assessing a borrower’s creditworthiness.

The Bill was introduced by Lord Bird, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Immigration Control (Gross Human Rights Abuses) Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:42

A Bill to enable the Secretary of State, or an immigration officer to refuse entry, or to vary or curtail leave to enter or remain already granted, to a person who is a non-UK or non-EEA national who is known to be, or to have been, involved in gross human rights abuses.

The Bill was introduced by Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Local Government Elections (Referendum) Bill [HL]

1st reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

First Reading

15:42

A Bill to make provision for the holding of referenda in relation to voting systems in local government elections.

The Bill was introduced by Lord Balfe, read a first time and ordered to be printed.

Queen’s Speech

Wednesday 28th June 2017 Lords Chamber

Debate (5th Day)

15:43

Moved on Wednesday 21 June by

[Lord Forsyth of Drumlean]

That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty as follows:

“Most Gracious Sovereign—We, Your Majesty’s most dutiful and loyal subjects, the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled, beg leave to thank Your Majesty for the most gracious Speech which Your Majesty has addressed to both Houses of Parliament”.

[The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Baroness Anelay of St Johns) (Con)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to open this debate on Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. It is also a privilege to be addressing the House for the first time since I was appointed as Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the EU. I follow in the footsteps of my noble friend Lord Bridges, to whom I pay tribute for his unstinting work not only in the department but here in this House. I also pay tribute to officials in the FCO and in my new department of DExEU for the support they provide, because a Minister can only be as good as the team behind them. I have certainly been helped by people who could play in the premier division in any country in the world.

Today we are debating a programme of legislation put forward by the Government for the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. Before I start, I will put on the record how much I value the diversity of views that noble Lords bring to such debates. Clearly, we shall witness some of that diversity today. It strengthens the whole process of our legislative scrutiny.

It was just over one year ago when the British people voted to leave the EU. At the general election, 11 months after that instruction was received, the two main parties, both of which are committed to leaving the EU, received more than four-fifths of the popular vote. This shows the support among the great majority of British people that we should accept the referendum result and leave the EU. The Government are respecting the instruction of the electorate and delivering in the national interest. I shall listen with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, when presents his views, because clearly they do not quite fit, I would say, with ours.

We are now building a future relationship with the EU that works in the national interest. This process is one of the biggest issues facing the Government in a generation. Her Majesty’s gracious Speech has outlined vital legislation to deliver a smooth and orderly exit from the EU, and we are debating that today. This will enable the UK to have more say over how we manage our affairs and forge new trading relationships with European partners and others across the world.

Last week, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union started the negotiations on the withdrawal of the UK from the European Union under the Article 50 process. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has tabled an amendment to today’s Motion that focuses on the negotiations. She will see from what I say today that we have much in common on the economy, security, securing tariff-free and barrier-free trade and protecting rights.

Where we diverge from the Labour Party is that we have been clear about the mechanisms through which we want to secure our current markets and open up to new ones. We want a deep and special partnership that should be underpinned by ambitious agreements on free trade and customs, covering goods and services and seeking the greatest possible tariff-free and barrier-free trade. So far the Labour Party has not been quite as clear about whether it wishes to leave the customs union or the single market, which are the basic questions in this debate. I look forward to listening to her shortly.

We have also been clear that we cannot accept a deal that punishes the UK. Any good negotiator knows that you cannot go into a negotiation saying that you will accept any deal at all. There will be a long road ahead, but the destination we are seeking is clear: a new deep and special partnership with the EU, one that enables prosperity for both the UK and the EU while protecting the rights of citizens and giving certainty to businesses as early as possible. That new partnership will of course look, feel and be different from membership of the EU. We understand and respect the EU’s position that the four freedoms of the single market are indivisible.

However, we intend that through our future relationship with Europe our close co-operation on economic and security matters will continue. That is why we are seeking ambitious agreements on free trade and customs covering goods and services, and seeking the greatest possible tariff-free and barrier-free trade. It is why we will continue to work with our European partners to fight terrorism and uphold justice across Europe. Recent terrorist attacks across Europe are attacks against every one of us and have highlighted why we must work together, continuing to co-operate to fight the threat from terrorism and extremist ideology.

The Government have been clear, however, that taking back control of our own affairs includes regaining control of our borders and setting our own immigration policies. We are also clear that to respect the referendum outcome we cannot end up being half in and half out of the EU. So we will be leaving the single market and customs union. I know that is a matter to which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, will address himself in more detail shortly in presenting his amendment. Clearly we differ on these matters.

Continued membership of the single market would require maintaining all four freedoms of movement—for goods, capital, services and people—so it would mean no control over immigration, and being out of the EU but a member of the single market would mean complying with the EU’s rules and regulations that implement those freedoms but without having a vote on what those rules and regulations were. Remaining in the customs union would restrict our ability to seize on our new freedoms in trade to create jobs and lift living standards. Britain must get out into the world, forge its own path, and be a true beacon for free trade. In leaving the customs union, Britain for the first time in over 40 years will be able to take full advantage of growing markets across the world, including those outside the EU, where the European Commission says that 90% of future growth in world trade will come from.

At the outset of these negotiations, we are prioritising some of the biggest challenges facing us. We are putting citizens first. We want to reach a reciprocal agreement for EU citizens in Britain and UK nationals in Europe as quickly as possible. That is why on Monday we published our policy paper: to outline our fair and serious offer for EU citizens.

Another early priority for the negotiations is our determination to ensure that we protect the common travel area and that nothing is done to jeopardise the peace process in Northern Ireland—a matter on which this House has taken great interest.

These negotiations will be complex and at times difficult, but we have made a positive start and we want to maintain that momentum. However, while we are confident that we will reach the right agreement, we must also be prepared for any outcome. That is why we are also seeking to put in place, as announced in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech, a legislative programme that will provide for continuity of our national systems and legislation as we leave the European Union.

Following the 30 March White Paper, Her Majesty’s gracious Speech confirmed that the Government will introduce a repeal Bill. The Bill aims to maximise certainty for individuals and businesses as we leave the EU. It is in no one’s interest for there to be a cliff edge, so the laws and rules that we have now will, wherever practicable, continue to apply. This gives the maximum possible certainty to individuals and businesses about their legal rights and obligations as we leave the EU, and provides the basis for a smooth and orderly exit.

The Bill, which will be guided through Parliament by my department, has three main aims. First, it will repeal the European Communities Act 1972. It ends the authority of EU law in the UK and transfers the powers to the UK from Brussels. It will convert EU law into domestic law. This maximises certainty, not only for individuals but for businesses and consumers, by ensuring that the rules do not simply disappear or change overnight on exit.

Secondly, it will give Ministers here and in the devolved Administrations the power to amend EU law as appropriate. This will mean that we have a functioning statute book on day one after exit. The Government expect that the return of powers from the EU will lead to a significant increase in decision-making powers for the devolved Administrations. Thirdly, the Bill will support our exit negotiations and future trade deal by ensuring that we have a continued level playing field between us and the EU based on the same rules.

I know that when the Bill comes before this House it will undergo rigorous scrutiny, as it should, but I believe that noble Lords will recognise its essential nature in preparing our statute book for exit. We must be able to deliver a functioning UK statute book by the day we leave the EU. It is vital for all across the United Kingdom that we provide certainty at that time.

The repeal Bill will be complemented by seven further main Bills that will support a smooth and orderly exit from the EU across a range of issues that affect the public, business and government. These will be led by the relevant department as they are presented to Parliament. Some of my colleagues on the Front Bench in this House have already spoken in some detail to these, so I shall simply mention them briefly today, just for completeness and to round out the debate.

A customs Bill will ensure that the UK has a standalone customs regime on exit. As it stands, the EU customs code applies directly in the UK. This Bill will provide flexibility to accommodate future trade agreements with the EU and others and ensure that changes can be made to the UK’s VAT and excise regimes.

A trade Bill will cement the United Kingdom’s status as a leading trading nation, driving positive global change through trade, while ensuring that UK businesses are protected from unfair trading practices. It will put in place the essential legislative framework to allow the UK to operate its own independent trade policy upon exit from the European Union.

An immigration Bill will underpin the new immigration system for EEA nationals. It will allow for the repeal of EU law on immigration—primarily free movement—that will otherwise be saved and converted into UK law by the repeal Bill, and will make the migration of EU nationals and their family members subject to relevant UK law once the UK has left the EU. The Bill will allow the Government to control the number of people coming here from Europe while still allowing us to attract the very brightest and the best, as we have enjoyed in recent years.

A fisheries Bill will enable the UK to exercise responsibility for access to fisheries and management of its waters. The agriculture Bill will ensure that after we leave the EU we have an effective system in place to support UK farmers and protect our natural environment. It will provide stability to farmers and protect our precious natural environment for many generations to come.

The nuclear safeguards Bill will establish a UK nuclear safeguards regime as we leave both the EU and Euratom.

The international sanctions Bill will support our role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council and a leading player on the world stage by establishing a new sovereign UK framework to implement international sanctions on a multilateral or unilateral basis. The Bill will return decision-making powers on non-UN sanctions to the UK and enable the UK’s continued compliance with international law after the UK’s exit from the EU.

Before concluding, I would like to say a few more words about Parliament’s role over the coming period. The Government have engaged extensively with Parliament and will continue to do so throughout the negotiations. We intend the negotiations to be as transparent as possible. On Monday, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union gave a clear commitment to update Parliament after each round of formal negotiations. I can confirm today that it is my firm intention to provide similar updates to this House.

There will be times when we need to preserve our negotiating position, as indeed the EU Committee of this House has acknowledged. There should be an appropriate balance between transparency and confidentiality. The Committee noted that,

“certain elements of the forthcoming negotiations, particularly those relating to trade, may have to be conducted confidentially”.

However, we are certainly clear that a transparent and open approach will best provide the certainty that the public, businesses, trade unions and civil society are seeking.

Throughout the process of withdrawal the Government will ensure that Parliament is able to fulfil its proper constitutional role to scrutinise the negotiations and our programme of domestic legislation. At the end of the negotiation process we are clear that both Houses will have vote on the final agreement before it is concluded. We expect and intend that this will happen before the European Parliament debates and votes on the final agreement.

As noble Lords are aware, the parliamentary Session will run for two years, reflecting not just the importance and urgency of getting Brexit right but allowing proper and full democratic scrutiny in both Houses.

Today, I have set out the Government’s approach to delivering on our commitments to the British people. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and noble Lords, Lord Adonis and Lord Armstrong, will shortly set out alternative views that do not accord with the Government’s approach. Some are closer to ours than others. My noble and learned friend Lord Keen will respond to their Motions more directly at the end of this debate when we have clearly listened to what has been said.

We have started negotiations to secure an exit deal in the national interest that works for the whole of the UK. We want to get the details of our exit right and to establish a deep and special future partnership with the EU. We want to underpin all of it through legislation that enables a smooth and orderly exit from the EU. One thing is clear: it is only by doing so that we can deliver what is in the best interests of all the people of this great country—this union of countries. It is for everybody, wherever they are, whoever they are, whatever their background. We must serve in the best interests of each and every one of them.

15:59

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)]

My Lords, in rising to speak to my amendment, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to her new role. I first heard her speak outwith this Chamber at the memorial meeting for the late Lord McIntosh of Haringey, where I witnessed her affection for a Member of these Benches. I shall not try to emulate him, so shall not presume on the same affection—but I judge that we will be able to work together to enable the House to play its full role in the enormous task of how to engineer a Brexit that works for all. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, whose humour, patience and erudition we will miss. We look forward to his contributions from his new—perhaps freer—vantage point.

It is a year since the referendum, but we await answers to a plethora of questions as to how the Government plan to take us out of the EU—probably the biggest leap as a nation since the 1939 decision to go to war. I do not wish to talk down the non-Brexit measures in the gracious Speech, but they are revocable. Brexit is not—and how we leave will have a lasting impact. So on this side we will work to achieve a departure that promotes jobs and the economy, safeguards our security and the environment and benefits all our nations, cities, regions, towns and rural communities, such that all might prosper from the new landscape that the Government envisage.

One issue is our role on the international stage. By pooling our influence with 27 other countries, we have gained real clout in the world, promoting human rights and playing a leading role in the Paris climate accord. We need to ensure that our future trade, security and diplomatic relations, and the tone of our withdrawal, preserve as much British influence as possible.

As we have heard, we are due eight Brexit Bills. All will impact on our economy, but they will not cover many areas of the negotiations where we want a deal that puts jobs and the economy first, gives full access to the single market, allows levy-free and border-check-free movement of goods, and upholds the Brexit Secretary’s pledge to achieve the “exact same benefits” as now. We are not alone in seeking this. Interested parties, from the City of London to trade unions, are united in the view that jobs and the economy must be the priority. Given that the EU accounts for almost half our exports, it is unsurprising that representatives of almost every sector make the same point: 17% of exports pass through Dover, some 7,000 lorries a day. Even aside from the Irish situation, the Government must set out how frictionless trade can continue.

While post-Brexit laws should, of course, be passed by our Parliament or the devolved Administrations, it is irresponsible to ignore the importance of dispute adjudication to any international agreement. With the negotiations under way, the Government must either drop their arbitrary red line on the European Court of Justice or set out a feasible alternative. Without this, they will struggle to achieve their aims. The Wellcome Trust, pointing out that science is a driver of economic growth, stresses the importance of pharmaceuticals and life sciences maintaining free access to European markets. But those markets need harmonised regulation, which will be complicated if the Government rule out any role for the European Court of Justice. If the Government’s ideological red line on the ECJ could perhaps become pale pink, the potential of British science, and other sectors, to enhance British competitiveness would improve.

Meanwhile, there are urgent matters, such as family law, where civil justice co-operation provides certainty, with automatic recognition and enforcement of judicial decisions across the EU. Despite any loss of these being,

“felt … profoundly both by … families … and by our … court system”,

Sir Oliver Heald mistakenly suggested to our EU Committee that the repeal Bill could cover these. In fact, there is no means by which these reciprocal rules can be replicated in the repeal Bill. So I ask the Government: how will they replace this cross-EU regime for which there is no satisfactory fallback? Recognition and enforcement of court judgments is of course equally important for insurance, insolvencies, contract law and investment in this country, so they must be part of any Brexit deal.

Retaining access to EU databases will be vital in the fight against international crime and terrorism. Are the Government willing to share some sovereignty for this and for our continued involvement in Europol, Eurojust and the European arrest warrant, while of course maintaining EU privacy laws?

Although we welcome the entrenchment of EU regulations into domestic law, the repeal Bill cannot cover EU agencies, reciprocity, intelligence sharing, joint recognition and supervision of standards or mutual recognition of qualifications. To take just one example, we belong to 34 EU agencies and, without a settlement, the European Medicines Agency will no longer be able to approve UK products for use in the EU. Without the European Chemicals Agency, are the Government going to allow companies to import whatever chemicals they like, with no oversight? There are equally urgent questions over future participation in the European Food Safety Authority and in Euratom. All these help to keep the public safe.

With regard to immigration—I am sorry that this, rather than jobs and the economy, is still a priority for the Government—there are two aspects: the EU citizens already here and the longer-term approach. For the latter, we must base our policy on the needs of communities and the economy. Despite what we heard from another Minister earlier, farmers have already been hit by a lack of migrant workers to harvest fruit and vegetables. There was a 17% shortfall in May, leaving some critically short of pickers and our summer strawberries at risk—just as Wimbledon is opening.

The chairman of the UK’s largest supermarket warns that a cap on immigration would have a,

“materially detrimental effect on the UK economy”.

The hospitality industry stresses that we do not need just doctors and engineers but chefs, cleaners and front-of-house staff. With 17% of construction workers coming from the EU, what future is there for major infrastructure projects without this vital resource? The director of the Wellcome Trust pleads—given that great science is built on great talent—that we need to welcome EU researchers, technicians, innovators and students, who help our universities help us. But, since the referendum, there has been a chill on this flow of talent, with Wellcome’s Sanger Institute, which sequenced a third of the human genome—and which I had a small part in opening—seeing a halving of PhD applications from EU nationals.

On the human level, as this House made clear in supporting the amendment to the Article 50 Bill, people should not be used as bargaining chips. The Prime Minister’s offer is too little, too late—and it is conditional. I hope that the Government will listen to this House a bit more, and will work in partnership with our European neighbours and our devolved authorities. Indeed, it is not clear how the Brexit Bills will accommodate devolved competencies, including food safety and environmental protection. Can the Minister confirm whether the Scottish Parliament will need a consent Motion for the Brexit Bills? Perhaps the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, would be the most appropriate person to answer that question.

The Government must improve their consultation with business, consumers and trade unions—I am delighted that they were mentioned, but the consultation with them has been insufficient—and, indeed, with all industries dependent on mutual recognition of qualifications and standards. There has been a sad lack of engagement, with the CBI commenting that the Government,

“found it tough to listen to business on Brexit”.

It is true that a new forum for business has just been announced, but there are no similar proposals for consumers or, indeed, other significant groups. Ministers will hear calls from industry for time to adjust to the final deal. Acceptance of a phased transition is urgent, so that, as the Chancellor—although, I think, not David Davis—says, we avoid unnecessary disruption and dangerous cliff edges. Indeed, this is the Institute of Directors’ main worry. At the very least, it asks that replicating the EU’s common external tariff while we finalise the free trade agreement should be an option, and with early reassurance on this to help businesses that may otherwise activate contingency plans to relocate.

The Government must also engage with Parliament. A meaningful vote was mentioned. I think that I heard the words “expect to have this” before the European Parliament vote. Earlier, we were promised that this would happen before the European Parliament vote. Perhaps, in replying, the Minister could clarify that that will be a meaningful and timely vote.

In moving the humble Address, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, who I think is not in his place, claimed that the,

“rapturous enthusiasm on the Benches opposite for Jeremy Corbyn, is matched only by their relief that he is not running the country”.—[Official Report, 21/6/17; col. 10].

I have to tell him that he was wrong. I would be very happy to be standing at that Dispatch Box rather than this. But I also say to him and to the Minister that I would approach her job with immense trepidation. She is carrying an invaluable Ming vase across a highly polished floor. In the Government’s hands is the future of our economy, and thus the well-being of our people. How the Government negotiate our future with the EU will have immense consequences for the nation—our businesses, workers, consumers, young people and trade unions—for generations to come. As the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury said last Thursday,

“trade deals, customs unions, single markets, financial passports are all without use unless they … serve individuals, communities and … society”—[Official Report, 22/6/17; col. 39].

I believe that neither this House nor—certainly—the Opposition is out to block Brexit, but we will work to get the best for Britain. Late tonight is not the time to vote on this one issue, but we will ensure that there are other opportunities for the Lords to provide Ministers with advice on the negotiations. We trust that they will listen.

16:13

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I spent last weekend at a conference in Italy of experts on European international politics, where I met people from many different European countries with whom I had worked for many years, and one by one they all asked me to explain what seemed to them to be the complete incompetence of the British Government, their failure to develop a coherent approach to negotiating Brexit in the year since the referendum and their illusion that the UK holds all the cards and that other EU Governments will have to agree to its terms when it finally sets them out. I was particularly struck by the comment two Irish participants made—that they see a sad contrast between the sense in Dublin of a political culture at last breaking free of its past, while in England we seem to be wallowing yet again in imperial nostalgia.

We have now reached the point when the Government cannot avoid grappling with the hard detail of the future relationship between the UK and the EU. All trade negotiations have to grapple with hard detail: trade-offs struck, concessions taken and granted. Every time a Minister attacks those who ask questions about the details of Brexit as “unpatriotic”, people on the continent, as well as here, become more suspicious that the Government still do not know the answer: that the phrase in the Queen’s Speech that promises,

“a deep and special partnership with European allies”,

which we are told will somehow guarantee “seamless” cross-border trade without membership of the customs union or the single market, continuing co-operation on internal security without membership of Europol, and continuing co-operation on foreign and defence policy without participating in the EU’s multilateral meetings, is as meaningless as “Brexit means Brexit”. David Davis told the CEO summit yesterday that negotiating a comprehensive free trade agreement will be “simple”. That is nonsense: all multilateral trade negotiations are fiendishly complicated.

One of the justifications given for this early election was to prevent the House of Lords obstructing the Government’s path to Brexit by asking awkward questions. The justification for a second Chamber is precisely to ask difficult questions, to require the Government to provide coherent answers and to ask the Commons to think again if they cannot provide such answers. I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, as the Minister who will attempt to provide those answers; she is very brave to step into the breach and to take this on—I mean that in the best “Yes Minister” way. This House is entitled to ask for sufficient time to examine the necessary legislation in detail. I hope that in winding up the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will provide us with some idea of when the Bills will reach this House and will give us an assurance that delays in Bills reaching this House will not provide an excuse for the Government to attempt to rush them through at the last minute.

The Prime Minister in her preface to the Conservative manifesto for the election stated, bluntly:

“Brexit will define us: our place in the world, our economic security and our future prosperity”.


So we might have hoped for some indication during the election campaign of what Britain’s future place in the world might be. “A global Britain” is as empty a phrase as “Brexit means Brexit”. Liam Fox’s travels suggest that he thinks closer links with New Zealand and the Philippines can replace trade with France and Germany. The illusion that Indian leaders retain so much affection for British rule that they will offer us a special trade deal still hangs around the Department for International Trade. A Canadian has told me that one British Minister recently referred in conversation with them to strengthening the ties that bind “the white Commonwealth”; at least he did not talk about “the Anglo-Saxon races”, though there are echoes of that concept on the Europhobe right.

There is an enormous gap between the windy rhetoric of global Britain regaining its status as a great power and the way our allies see us. The Financial Times last Saturday quoted one Washington expert’s view:

“For the foreseeable future, the US-UK special relationship is irrelevant … Britain has decided to remove itself completely from the chessboard”.


Boris Johnson has irritated all his European colleagues without impressing Governments from elsewhere. He promised last December that he would be making a series of speeches on Britain’s future international strategy, but I have not been able to find anything coherent in his speeches since.

Last Sunday’s Telegraph had yet another article suggesting that Hong Kong should be our model in our future role. Daniel Hannan MEP—the leading Conservative ideologue of Anglo-Saxon exceptionalism —declared in last Thursday’s Daily Mail that our future relationship with the rest of Europe should be modelled on Switzerland or Guernsey. Great Britain as a “Greater Guernsey”—what wonderful ambition. An island to which rich people emigrate to avoid taxation: the real citizens of nowhere, moving to the Channel Islands to escape national control. Of course, the leave campaign was funded largely by such citizens of nowhere, who made their money through offshore companies in Gibraltar and the Caribbean and want to promote a deregulated British economy that would become an offshore financial centre.

The promise of the repeal Bill shows that the Government have so far resisted the pressures from hard Eurosceptics for the bonfire of regulations which they promised would follow, so “taking back control” will in practice mean wholesale incorporation of European regulations into domestic law. This House will wish to examine closely how far the Government intend to follow the evolution of European regulations after we have left in order to maintain the “seamless” cross-border trade they assure us they will maintain in the same way that the Swiss, not to mention the Channel Islanders, follow the rules negotiated by others in Brussels. If so, we lose, rather than regain, effective sovereignty, and we continue to follow the judgments of the Court of Justice of the EU, in spite of the irrational hatred which Conservative Europhobes have for that “foreign” court.

I note the contradiction between the Government’s declared support for the rule of international law in all other areas and the passionate hostility to the European Court of Justice, on which British judges have sat since we joined the EU. London is a global centre for international arbitration and civil and commercial law, including European law. We will clearly need an agreed legal framework for future relations with the EU in which the ECJ will have to play a role to,

“provide certainty for individuals and businesses”—

again, to quote the Queen’s Speech.

The Government have said very little so far about the costs of Brexit, which will be considerable. One of the most blatant lies of the leave campaign was that leaving was a one-way bargain—all benefits and no costs. European agencies, which served British as well as other national needs, will have to be replaced by new national agencies. If the Government are serious about taking back control of our borders, we will need a substantial increase in border agency staff, coastguards and maritime patrol ships and aircraft. There will, of course, also be indirect costs, but the direct costs of replacing the common services which the EU has provided, from aviation to pharmaceuticals, must be capable of estimation, and the Government should offer Parliament that estimate.

No senior Minister has yet touched on the importance of maintaining the good will of our continental neighbours through these negotiations and after our departure. Over the last year some Ministers have appeared to believe that relations with China and Saudi Arabia will become more important than those with Germany, France, Italy or Spain and that authoritarian countries are more natural partners for Britain than our immediate and democratic neighbours. That is one of the greatest illusions—or lies—of the Eurosceptic camp. British prosperity, British security and British values are most closely linked to the interests and values of our democratic neighbours. Over the last year, the Government have lost the respect of our continental partners. This House will wish to press the Government to work to regain that respect and good will as vital to a successful negotiation and to our future relationship after we leave.

16:22

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood (CB)]

My Lords, I shall confine myself to the three amendments being proposed to this Motion.

As a remainer, I confess to great sympathy with the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, but regretfully, although the tide of popular opinion may indeed be starting to turn in its favour, I fear that too few people will come to recognise, before it is too late to reverse the Article 50 process, just how damaging to our interests Brexit could be. Therefore, I cannot see the proposal as practical politics. Both the main parties support Brexit and the Liberals have hardly benefited from opposing it.

On the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter —not least that the Government deliver “the exact same benefits” as we currently have in the single market and customs union—I make two brief comments. First, on her proposition that,

“no deal is the worst possible deal”,

surely not. Of course no deal would be awful, but unless one is simply unable to imagine a set of terms even worse—perhaps the so-called “punishment deal”—there must inevitably be circumstances in which negotiations will fail, and this is no more than the Union itself recognised in its published negotiation guidelines. They state that the Union,

“will be constructive and strive to find an agreement. This is in the best interest of both sides. The Union will work hard to achieve that outcome, but it will prepare itself to be able to handle the situation also if the negotiations were to fail”.

So too should we prepare ourselves.

The second point to make on the proposal from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, is that it strikes me, dare I say it, as nakedly opportunistic. It calls for the obviously unattainable. It is the last word in having one’s cake and eating it. It is based, of course, on a number of absurd pre-referendum assurances by some Brexiteers. No doubt it makes political sense—but in reality, it makes none.

I come to the regret Motion of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, which, as I understand it, essentially calls on the Government to accept that our route out of the EU should be by way of reasserting EEA membership rights—in the future as a non-EU member, such as Norway, Iceland and Leichtenstein. We would thereby continue to enjoy full participation in the single market. That is the route recently canvassed by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, and, in last Thursday’s debate, by the noble Lord, Lord Howell.

Until recently, I confess to having shared the widely held view that the Norwegian option is the worst of all worlds, involving all the liabilities of EU membership without even a seat at the table. Let me now make seven necessarily brief, and perhaps oversimplified, points to the contrary.

First, EEA membership would avoid the cliff edge and give us time to negotiate more satisfactory, long-term trade relations with the rest of the Union.

Secondly, the rights of free movement would be less absolute than at present, there being in the EEA no concept of common citizenship, as in the EU. The right relates not to persons generally, but rather to workers, with certain limited derived rights for their families. It provides, therefore, some scope for restrictions on immigration.

Thirdly, we would recover control of our fishing grounds and agriculture, being no longer subject to the common fisheries and agriculture policies of the EU.

Fourthly, our contribution to the EU budget would be smaller and, to a significant degree, would depend on whether we choose to join various programmes that require funding.

Fifthly, EEA states retain full sovereignty. Unlike in the EU, Brussels legislation has no direct effect; rather, all legislative change relevant to the EEA—on which the EEA states will already have had the chance to comment—has to be approved, first by the EEA states collectively and then by each such state’s national parliament.

Sixthly, the EEA does not forbid trade negotiations with other countries. In other words, we would be able to pursue free trade agreements on a global basis. Dr Fox and his team would be in business.

Seventhly, and finally, we would no longer be subject to the jurisdiction of the ECJ. I happen to think, in common with the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and others, that the ECJ has been absurdly and unfairly demonised by Brexiteers, and that it is a huge mistake to make ending subjection to that court, particularly in the context of future supranational relations—the European arrest warrant and so forth, as the noble Lord explained—a red-line issue. In any event, in the EEA that objection is substantially met. In the EEA, the broad equivalent of the ECJ is the EFTA court, and while certainly that court takes full account of the ECJ’s jurisprudence, there are two important differences. First, the national supreme courts of EFTA states are not obliged to refer questions of EU law to that court; and secondly, unlike preliminary rulings of the ECJ in EU countries, EFTA court decisions are, strictly speaking, advisory only and not legally binding in the national court.

Taking those points cumulatively, I suggest that this solution gives effect to the referendum result, meets the Brexiteers’ core objections to continuing membership and maximises the prospect of a successful long-term future.

16:29

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, I have followed with interest the debates on the Queen’s Speech over the past week. I have been encouraged to hear assurances from the Leader of your Lordships’ House and various Ministers of the Government who seek to govern with humility and to forge cross-party agreement where they can. That is as it should be, regardless of the numerical strength or weakness of the Government.

Many issues raised in the Queen’s Speech and the Government’s agenda give us the best opportunity to have that wider consensus. No area is more important than that when it comes to negotiating Britain’s departure from the European Union and to forging a new relationship—a deep and special partnership—with the EU. Indeed, the reality is that there is no way in which a minority Government can hope to get all their legislation relating to Britain leaving the EU through Parliament without the help of others. The Government need to make a virtue out of that necessity.

The challenge now is to negotiate a Brexit for the common good. How do we make Britain’s departure from the EU a good news story for the poor, the unemployed and those whose wages and living standards have been falling? That is no easy task. The Government’s most recent poverty figures showed that 14 million people live in poverty in the UK. Numbers started to rise last year, and research published by the Joseph Rowntree Trust projects that by 2020-21 there will be over 1 million more children in poverty than there are now.

The real incomes of the poorest tenth are set to be lower in 2020 than they are today, while those in the middle and at the top will see their incomes rise. With inflation rising, earnings growth weak and many tax credits and benefits frozen, life is set to get harder for those at the bottom over the next few years. It was therefore welcome news in the Queen’s Speech that the Government have promised to increase the national living wage,

“so that people who are on the lowest pay benefit from the same improvements in earnings as higher paid workers”.

My hope is that the increase will be up to what the Living Wage Commission, which I chaired, recommended. Playing catch-up is not good enough. I hope that the Government will take what was recommended. Many FT index companies are already paying that amount of the living wage.

Some hold that leaving the EU will only impoverish existing marginal and vulnerable communities further. These voices need to be heard rather than silenced. They need to be drawn into the debate as to the type of economic model that we need to encourage human flourishing post-Brexit and how that understanding should shape the Government’s negotiating strategy to leave the EU. Only by doing so will we be able to bridge the deep divisions exposed by the vote to leave the EU and the recent general election. It is evident that within government we need a more collegiate and consensual approach.

Beyond government, in the latter’s dealing with Parliament, the media and the electorate, the approach needs to be more transparent and more broadly based. Conducting the negotiations in a positive and constructive tone requires the Government to ditch once and for all the confrontational and threatening language that they have used since the referendum. Fiery slogans such as “No deal is better than a bad deal” might play well with Eurosceptics, but they do little to build the partnership between the UK and the EU that the Government have always said is their fundamental objective. “No deal is better than a bad deal”. Does that mean, for example, that we will cut all our diplomatic ties with the 27 remaining EU countries if we get a bad deal? Is that what it means?

To deliver the objective of partnership, the Government need to abandon fights over issues that are either marginal or where the UK has no hope at all of winning the argument. The dispute over the sequencing of the negotiations is a case in point. When the row of the summer becomes the row-back of the summer, the Government lose face and political capital. Disputes like this merely illustrate that the Government still need to understand the processes of Article 50. But all is not lost. It was encouraging to see the Prime Minister’s statement of 25 June that she wanted,

“all those EU citizens who are in the UK, who’ve made their lives and homes in our country, to know that no one will have to leave. We won’t be seeing families split apart. People will be able to go on their living their lives as before”.

The proposals are a good start, but this is one of the thorniest issues to be resolved in the negotiations and the devil will be in the detail. I therefore humbly encourage the Government to take a broad and opened-minded attitude to this matter. The simplest solution would be to codify clearly and comprehensively the rights of EU citizens in British law and to take March 2019 as the cut-off period. Going forward, the motivation of both sides should be good will, justice, compassion and the rule of law.

What would help the Brexit negotiations more than anything else is a greater degree of realism. I have every confidence that the Government will reach agreement within the timescale set by Article 50, but we need to recalibrate expectations that a new relationship with the EU can be negotiated by March 2019. Most experts hold that it is unlikely to be completed and ratified this side of 2025. This is where we need a cross-party commission, maybe even a royal commission akin to the Privy Council, to look creatively at the possible options and to offer impartial but honest advice to the Government on the best transitionary and final arrangements. Its size should not be too large. As Queen Elizabeth I said in her speech on her accession to the throne:

“a multitude doth make rather disorder and confusion than good counsel”.

She shrank her Privy Council from 30 to 10. I am certainly not looking for a place on such a body, but I suggest that keeping the UK in the single market and the customs union until the end of the transitional period when any new relationship with the EU comes into force may help us. I recognise that this is not unproblematic, but looking to use membership of the EEA, as the noble and learned Lord has just suggested, could be a stepping stone to a still unknown destination and would give both sides not a cliff hanger but a gentler slope.

The outcome of the general election offers the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland an opportunity for a fresh start, not to turn our backs on leaving the EU but rather to learn the lessons of the last year and deliver and manage our leaving the EU in a way that provides for the long-term flourishing of this country.

16:36

[Lord Hunt of Wirral (Con)]

My Lords, perhaps I may first declare my interests as set out in the register and say what a privilege it is to participate in this debate on the humble Address. Humility is not necessarily a virtue that many voters associate with politicians, but it will be vital in the weeks and months ahead.

On 8 June, the Conservative Party increased its vote from 11.3 million to 13.7 million, winning more votes than Labour ever did under Tony Blair, but we did not win a majority of seats. No one won. No vision of the future of the nation triumphed. No vision of Brexit triumphed. So we now have to work together to find a new common ground. I welcome what the most reverend Primate just said about a good Brexit and a fresh start, but that is never achieved by starting from one or other extreme of the argument.

Last year, the electorate decided that we should leave the political structures of the European Union, and that must and will now happen, but it was not a vote to end ties with our closest neighbours and friends, it was not a vote to rebuild a border across the island of Ireland and it was not a vote for economic self-mutilation. The new common ground must recognise all of that.

I strongly believe that talk of “soft Brexit” and “hard Brexit” is hugely unhelpful. Each term seems to mean whatever any individual wants it to mean. “Nothing propinks like propinquity”, as Ian Fleming wrote in Diamonds are Forever, a phrase often recalled and re-coined by US diplomat George Ball. What matters most now is not Brexit per se but the new “deep and special partnership” we must rapidly forge with our European friends and allies.

I commend to your Lordships the speech made last Wednesday in another place by Kenneth Clarke, the Father of the House—although I reassure him that he is much younger than several of my colleagues in this place. He recommended that Brexit,

“will have to be carried by … an extremely sensible cross-party majority that the House could easily command if we were able to put in place some processes to achieve it”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/6/17; col. 84.]

It was another great Conservative who never became leader of my party, Rab Butler, who described politics as the art of the possible. Brexit is now all about the art of the possible. It falls not just to Ministers but, above all, to Parliament—to both Houses of Parliament —to forge that vital new relationship with Europe. It is we, by ourselves and of ourselves, working with Ministers and across all parties and none, who must build a new, broad and positive consensus.

Happily, we are not alone in our quest for a new arrangement with the rest of Europe that will satisfy a broad spectrum of political and business opinion. I strongly commend the work of the Modern Europe think tank and the paper, not readily noticed, published last August by a distinguished group including Sir Paul Tucker and Jean Pisani-Ferry, a senior adviser to Emmanuel, now President, Macron. Their Proposal for a Continental Partnership is highly reminiscent of the arguments once compellingly put forward by Lord Hurd of Westwell for “variable geometry” in Europe. In business, in diplomacy and even in politics, flexibility is prized more than ever—the one sure antidote to corporate monoculture. So why do we not look now for the bespoke answer to Brexit, too? That will require an orderly withdrawal, a stable transition and a trading relationship with the European Union based on mutual, barrier-free market access.

This is no time for inchoate anger, for brash triumphalism or for putting the interests of party above those of the nation as a whole. Let us not be bound in shallows and in miseries. In a spirit of comradeship, let us all work together to build a new, positive and optimistic consensus as we look to create our new “deep and special partnership”—a special relationship, dare I say—with our most proximate friends and allies in the world, who are of course our friends and allies in the European Union.

16:42

[Lord Adonis (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg to add to the Motion for the humble Address the words,

“but regret that it contains no proposal for Her Majesty’s Government to seek to negotiate continued membership of the European Single Market and Customs Union”.

Perhaps I may first extend my sincere condolences to the Minister on her new appointment. The noble Baroness has an unenviable task. Brexit is a revolution that devours its children. It has consumed three Prime Ministers: Margaret Thatcher, John Major and David Cameron; it is now on to its fourth, Mrs May. In the past year alone, it has decapitated a Chancellor, neutered a Foreign Secretary, and two of the four Ministers in the Department for Exiting the European Union have already exited. I advise the Minister to join them as soon as possible and seek a less demanding job, like Secretary-General of the United Nations.

The reason that Brexit is so difficult is that the policy of withdrawal from the central economic institutions of the EU is so unviable. It will cause deep and lasting damage to the UK’s trade, investment and international standing. It is a hard-right, nationalist policy, and it is no more viable as a governing idea than the hard-left socialism of Tony Benn and Arthur Scargill in the 1970s and 1980s.

Nothing demonstrates this unviability more than the fact that those of its proponents who have held responsible offices under the Crown never advocated it while they did so. Margaret Thatcher signed the Single European Act—just as she created more comprehensive schools than any other Education Secretary, she did more European integration than any other Prime Minister. The noble Lord, Lord Lawson, was her right-hand man throughout. Indeed, he wanted to go further and join the exchange rate mechanism. At his right hand was the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, who delights the House in explaining why he was so pro-European then and is so anti-European now. The noble Lord, Lord Owen, tells us very decisively that we are better out, but we have all enjoyed the celebration of the Gang of Four in the West End play “Limehouse”, and the Limehouse Declaration promised that Britain would be,

“a constructive and progressive force”,

within the European Community. As for Boris Johnson, 20 days before he led the leave campaign, he was Mayor of London, urging an expansion of the single market in services and capital and unrestricted migration within the European Union.

Running through fields of wheat may be a terrible thing, but when, on the most important issue facing the country, politicians say one thing but do another, the public really should beware, particularly when they keep political company with Nigel Farage, Geert Wilders and Marine Le Pen. My mentor and lodestar was Roy Jenkins, arguably the most successful Minister of the last generation besides Margaret Thatcher. His political maxim was: “On great questions always go for principles, not details; and always argue to solutions, not to conclusions”.

On the European question, the detail is fearsome. Like other noble Lords, I have been wading through the detail of the EEA, EFTA, the WTO, the single market and the customs union; what it means to be inside the EEA, EFTA and the single market, but outside the customs union, like Norway; or inside EFTA and the customs union but outside the EEA and the single market, like Switzerland. I have read with profit an erudite paper by the noble Lord, Lord Owen, on whether the UK automatically leaves the EEA on leaving the EU, because one clause makes Her Majesty the Queen a contracting party, whether we are in or out, while another appears not to allow the actual territory of the United Kingdom to join the EEA if we leave the EU. Amid all this turgidity, I did at least experience one moment of pure joy: EFTA, which some Brexiteers recommend as our staging post out of the EU, has an equivalent of the European Commission: it is called the Surveillance Authority. I look forward to that Orwellian construct being sold to the Daily Mail.

Rising above the detail, there is one overriding principle: if we are leaving the EU, we should not jeopardise our trade with the EU, because upon it depends the jobs and prosperity of tens of millions of British people. As a rule of thumb, trade halves as distance doubles. Some 44% of our exports of goods and services go to the EU, because the EU 27 comprises all our largest neighbours. The solution here is clear and simple: stay in the customs union. Furthermore, our greatest relative trade advantage is in services, where non-tariff barriers are the main obstacle to trade. To reduce those barriers, there has to be a regulatory union, not just a tariff union, which is precisely what the single market is and why Margaret Thatcher pioneered it. The solution here is also clear and simple: stay in the single market.

There is a notion put forward by Ministers that, in the foreseeable future, our neighbours could be replaced or overshadowed as our major trading partners by the extremities of the world. This is pure fantasy. Even if it were a principle of action worth pursuing, it is negated in practice by the fact that the customs union itself is our gateway to trading with the rest of the world. The EU has 45 trade agreements covering 74 nations outside the EU. In addition to the 44% of exports going to the EU, a further 17% are covered by these 45 agreements. That figure of 45 will rise to 46 this Saturday when the EU’s free trade agreement with Canada takes effect. So, in total, more than 60% of our trade is with the EU or third countries where we enjoy free or preferential access by virtue of customs union and single market membership.

To take but one example of what this means in practice, in the first four years of the EU’s trade agreement with South Korea, which came into force in 2011, the UK’s exports of cars to Korea rose from 2,000 to 13,000. That is through just one preferential trade agreement. Liam Fox has to renegotiate that one plus 45 others just to get past first base in boosting non-EU trade, and he has to do that once he has secured a new treaty covering all our EU 27 trade in the first place. All this has to be done by a Department for International Trade which as yet has only a handful of experienced trade negotiators and whose Permanent Secretary is still Her Majesty’s consul-general in New York.

The Government’s Brexit policy is basically one of trying to fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon. It is an interesting and very challenging idea, but do not jump in for about three centuries. A recent cartoon in a Dutch newspaper depicts the Prime Minister whacking herself over the head with a mallet, with a bubble saying, “No deal is better than a bad deal”. All this would be comic if it were not so serious. The noble Lord, Lord Price, the International Trade Minister, told your Lordships’ European Union Committee recently that he and Dr Fox are making “trips around the world” to find out,

“how we might mitigate the impact”,

of Brexit. The way to mitigate the impact of Brexit is not by the gratuitous accumulation of air miles. It is by staying in the customs union and the single market.

As for the notion that everything is going to be solved by technology—that we can set up border controls in Northern Ireland, Dover and Calais but they will be magically invisible and frictionless—that policy would last about as long as the Government’s social care policy when the frictionless and invisible border controls become queues of trucks on the M2 and M25 stretching to Watford.

I turn to the vexed question of immigration. Last June, the British people did not vote for fewer jobs and more poverty, but they do appear to have voted for more control over immigration. This is a difficult issue for me. I am the proud son of a Cypriot immigrant—a postman for 35 years, who loves this country and who put far more into the Treasury than he ever took out. The anti-immigrant rhetoric of the leave campaign, particularly Nigel Farage’s disgraceful “Breaking Point” poster, made me—and, I think, many others in the House—physically sick.

However, I approach this, too, from a point of principle. Any state worth the name must have control of its borders. Here is the crucial point: an absolute, unlimited right of free movement is not an indispensable requirement of free movement of goods, services and capital. The doctrine that we cannot have one without the other is a false doctrine—we are not dealing with the Holy Trinity, one and indivisible; we are dealing with EU doctrine, which is mortal and fallible—and is in fact contradicted by the most cursory examination not only of other customs unions but even some federal states.

I agree with President Macron’s adviser Jean Pisani-Ferry, to whom the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just referred, who said recently:

“There can be no doubt that the Leave campaign tapped into seams of genuine concern about the scale and speed of immigration. Free movement of workers is not indispensable for the smooth functioning of economic integration in goods, services and capital”.

[Baroness Goldie (Con)]

My Lords, this is terribly well informed and hugely entertaining but a very long five minutes.

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I thought I was moving an amendment to the Address. I thought the Government would give me a little longer to speak. In that case, let me cut to the end. I did have more I was going to say.

The issue that is clearly at the heart of my noble friend Lady Hayter’s amendment is “exact same benefits”. I suggest that this is a form of words which obscures a real and fundamental difference between us. The key question is: what happens if, as is almost certain, David Davis proves unable to negotiate these exact same benefits? Are we to crash out of the single market and the customs union, or are we to seek to stay in? The Prime Minister has made it clear that, in this eventuality, she would seek to crash out, but the right thing for the country is surely that we do precisely the opposite and stay in.

There are precisely 639 days between now and 29 March 2019, when on present policy we will automatically leave the EU on terms likely to be very bad for the UK. At a different historical crossroads, in 1963, Martin Luther King urged:

“This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action”.


If we do not make a stand today, there are not many days left.

16:55

[Baroness Smith of Newnham (LD)]

My Lords, I believe that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, may just have taken my five minutes. I am also aware that when the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, suggested that she would like to swap places with the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, it is because we on this side of the Chamber can all see the noble Baroness, Lady Goldie, looking very cross when we go beyond five minutes. So I realise that I had better try to stick within five minutes and not lose the House with this first definite Back-Bench speech.

The idea of Brexit is a very new concept. It may seem as if we have been talking about it for centuries—like those teaspoons of water—but in fact the Oxford English Dictionary suggests that the idea of Brexit goes back only to 2012. It may be that we have talked about it on every day since 2012. I certainly remember the first time I heard the word “Brexit”. It was in a Liberal Democrat working group and I thought, “This is a very bad word because it sounds as if the idea of leaving the European Union is concrete and might actually happen”. I was clearly right to be rather worried about the concept of Brexit.

Five years on, Brexit has managed to have a referendum and a general election, where the Prime Minister said that she needed a bigger mandate to get a smoother transitional period for Brexit. Well, that did not go very well, did it? We do not now see a Government with an enhanced mandate for Brexit or a strong and stable Government. We see a rather weakened Government, and perhaps a greater opportunity for us to talk on a cross-party basis about Brexit and how the country moves forward.

The Queen’s Speech gave Brexit top billing. In the gracious Speech, we had the idea of making a success of Brexit and the eight pieces of legislation that are to be brought forward, as the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, mentioned. Taking back control will, it seems, take a long time—not just a 12-minute speech from a Member of this House but the next two years for this and the other place to think through the legislation that will be needed to ensure that when we finally leave the European Union we do not fall off the cliff edge.

In the notes associated with the gracious Speech, the Prime Minister said that Her Majesty’s Government would respond “with humility” to the views of the electorate. Can the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, tell Members whether that will mean a greater willingness on the part of the Government to listen to what the Opposition might want to say? I wonder whether they will understand that when amendments are put forward in a spirit of genuine scrutiny in a genuine attempt to make legislation better, it does not always mean that we are being unhelpful and that sometimes it would be better to stop and listen.

This time last year, some of us were talking about cross-party responses to the vote to leave the European Union. After I had mentioned that, it was pointed out to me that at the time it was not my party’s policy to look at cross-party solutions. So I am quite relieved that, since then, the outgoing leader of my party has suggested to the Prime Minister that she should think about working on a cross-party basis. Various Members of your Lordships’ House have talked about that today, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. The point of dealing with an issue such as Brexit is that whether we wanted to leave the EU or not, it is something so cataclysmic for our country that we need to get it right—and it makes more sense to do that working together than simply being oppositional for the sake of it. But that of course means members of Her Majesty’s Government also being constructive, and listening.

For the last year, Members of your Lordships’ House with, I would suggest, only two exceptions—the noble Lord, Lord Pearson of Rannoch, and whoever the fall guy is on the Government Front Bench—have all said that we should guarantee the rights of EU nationals resident in the United Kingdom. In July last year, I raised the issue for the fifth time in three weeks with the fourth different Minister. The Minister who had to respond on that occasion was the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen. I am delighted therefore that he is in his place today and that whereas Prime Ministers, Chancellors and others, including Ministers for DExEU, have left office, he is still here to answer questions. I would like to know whether he is able to guarantee that the costs of applying for residency and the rules that will be in place will be simple. At the moment, we are told that they will be brought forward in due course. I am winding up now. This time last year, Ministers had two stock answers. One was, “Nothing changes until the day we leave”. The other was, “This is a matter for the next Prime Minister”. I am assuming that the noble and learned Lord will not be saying the latter today—but we can live in anticipation.

17:01

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster (CB)]

My Lords, I have made no secret of being an unregenerate remainer, but that is not the burden of my song today. We are where we are, and the question is how to get the best possible outcome.

On 23 June 2016, the British electorate decided to vote, by a small but clear majority, for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union. That vote was in effect an instruction to Parliament and the Government to do what was necessary to give effect to that decision. On 29 March this year, the Prime Minister notified the European Union of the United Kingdom’s intention to leave the European Union, an act she would surely have postponed until after the election, if she had known at the time that she was going to call an election so soon.

On 8 June, the British electorate were specifically asked to vote the Government a larger majority in the House of Commons, to give them greater strength and stability and to strengthen their hand in their negotiations with the EU. The electorate not only declined to do so, they voted to deprive the Government of the small overall majority which they had enjoyed and, in effect, to leave them as a minority Government, dependent on the support of members of the Democratic Unionist Party, dearly bought with the promise of a large sum of taxpayers’ money. The electorate are speaking with an uncertain and inconclusive voice. The Government have lost strength and stability. They have lost their authority to speak with a clear and strong voice for Britain in the negotiations with the EU. If the history of minority Governments in this country is any guide, they have months, not years, to survive.

Those negotiations are going to be very long, complex and difficult. Their outcome will be of crucial importance for the future prosperity and success, and perhaps the coherence, of the United Kingdom. As the Prime Minister understood when she decided to call the election, the Government who undertake these negotiations need to be strong and stable, with the prospect of being in office for a full parliamentary quinquennium. What is more, as this debate is showing, there seems to be no clear agreement in the country, or in the Government or indeed in the Cabinet on what sort of outcome we should be seeking to achieve in these negotiations. Those responsible for conducting the negotiations need to make up their collective minds about what the objectives should be.

Whether you are a remainer or a leaver, it cannot be sensible, and it cannot be in the national interest, that these negotiations should be carried forward by a Government so lacking in the strength and stability they sought to gain, so deprived of authority to represent the country, so unclear about their negotiating objectives and so unlikely to survive for long enough to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion, even within the 21 months remaining under the Article 50 timetable.

I feel very sorry for the Prime Minister. When she goes into the European Council chamber, I am sure she is greeted by her fellow Council members with courtesy and, for the most part, genuine friendliness but, as she must be uncomfortably aware, they must inevitably be wondering to themselves how much longer she will be coming to their meetings and whether they should be making concessions to someone who may well no longer be Prime Minister when the final deal comes to be struck.

We have today a country that is deeply and dangerously divided on many issues. The future relationship with the European Union is the biggest of them, and one that not only divides the nation but distracts political and public attention from many other issues that are in themselves no less pressing. I do not really believe we are ready to enter into these negotiations, and I believe it is strongly in the national interest to put them on hold for the time being until they can be resumed under the auspices of a Government who have the strength and stability to represent the UK with authority, who are sustained by a greater degree of consensus than now exists about the outcome we wish to achieve and who have a reasonable prospect of being in office for long enough to be able to bring the negotiations to a successful conclusion. This would make it necessary to stop the Article 50 clock, which is ticking remorselessly away. To this end, we shall need to withdraw for the time being the notification of our intention to leave the EU that was contained in the Prime Minister’s letter of 29 March 2017. That could be reactivated in due course when we are really ready to carry out the negotiations.

That is the purpose of the amendment that I am proposing to the Address in reply to the gracious Speech. It is a course of action that I believe is imposed upon us by the realities of the situation and is in the national interest.

17:07

[Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lord Hunt in appealing, perhaps in vain, for rather more cross-party consensus on this issue.

I also want to follow, from a different perspective, what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, said, deploring the nature of our debate, the empty phrases there have been and the tilting at windmills that has gone on. We have heard a tremendous amount about objections to a “hard Brexit”, but the people who say that so seldom define what they actually mean by it. I can think of three or four meanings of the term. Another phrase that has aroused ire has been the Prime Minister’s statement that no deal could be better than a bad deal. By saying that, the Prime Minister never meant her goal was that she was aiming at no deal. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, said, it is obvious common sense that it would be ludicrous to say any deal was better than no deal; that would not put British negotiators in a strong position and it is an illogical statement.

We all know that in politics a good cry works wonders. We see the phrase “the single market” waved around as though that was an argument in itself. The question is not the single market but membership of it. Why should membership of the single market have any advantage over a free trade deal with it? That is the real question. Most puzzling of all—I was amazed by what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said—we also get the phrase “the customs union” waved around as though it was an argument in itself. I thought we had come a long way; I thought we believed in free trade. Many of those who advocate remaining in the customs union, behind the tariff wall, are those who used to deplore the stalling of the free trade talks and the Doha round. One would have thought they would have been well beyond the idea of a customs union, an idea that I think is completely outdated. Then we are told, “Well, we must have a Brexit for jobs and for the economy”. We can all say amen to that; it is precisely the object of the negotiations.

I listened with great admiration to the speech of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury when he talked about the need to remove or lessen the toxicity of this debate. He appealed for more mutual understanding. He put forward the idea of a joint commission. I do not agree with that, but I understand and agree with the spirit behind his idea. We should not be against co-operation, we should not be against consultation with other parties, if it is done seriously and sincerely. In fact, the manifesto positions of the two main parties have an awful lot in common. I say the two main parties because I obviously exclude the Liberals, who seem to have adopted the position of Bertolt Brecht in 1953 after the East German uprising, when he sarcastically stated that the Government should dissolve the people and elect another. It ought to be possible to transform the public mandate for Brexit into a political consensus between the main parties.

It is hardly surprising that the position of the two main parties has been converging because, although it is not popular to say in this House, the public recognise the need to control our borders, not least at a time when the population increased last year by 580,000 people. Of course, with control we will still be able to have come as immigrants into this country people with the necessary skills, or the necessary unskilled people to fill certain jobs, but the public have made it very clear that they wanted tighter control of our borders. Once one has accepted that, once one has also accepted free trade, the logic is inescapable that one must leave the single market.

There is so much that we agree on, so much that was agreed in the two manifestos, such as the position of EU nationals, in principle. We possibly need some transitional phase—only in the sense of implementation —in order to have no cliff edge. The noble Lord, Lord Hill, the former Commissioner who has so much experience of the EU, advised this House—I think he was advising the Brexiteers particularly—that we should watch our rhetoric because, he said, Brussels follows what is said and what is written in the British newspapers; it follows our debates. I agree, but that advice applies to both sides; it applies to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, and the Liberals as well. They should be careful of their language. Whatever our views, it is in the interests of everyone and in the interests of the country to get the best deal. There will be ups and downs in the negotiations. Pouncing with glee on any remark made by Monsieur Barnier or any moment when some request by the British side has been rejected is not helpful or in the national interest. The wrong rhetoric here can give the wrong impression in Brussels.

Brexit has not been altered by the election result: 580 MPs ran on manifestos that promise to honour the referendum result and explicitly to leave the single market and end free movement, and this House by consensus should support that.

17:13

[Lord Mandelson (Lab)]

My Lords, in the spirit of the noble Lord’s plea for cross-party agreement, perhaps I may say how much I agree with his successor as Chancellor of the Exchequer. I agree with Philip Hammond when he said that we cannot retain the trade advantages of EU membership without shouldering certain costs and compromises. These are precisely the costs and compromises which the Government’s inflexible red lines rule out.

After Brexit, we can trade with the European Union —of course we can—but on our present trajectory, the frictionless border and preferential treatment that we currently enjoy will be things of the past. Let us assume that the Government get through the withdrawal phase of the negotiation. The Government say that they want to negotiate a deep and ambitious free trade agreement that is as good for services as it is for goods. But even if we achieve an agreement to eliminate tariffs on goods—and that is the easier hurdle we will have to cross—we will face considerable customs costs and barriers unless we stay in the EU’s customs union, with its streamlined bureaucracy, its automatic mutual recognition of standards and assured origin rules governing trade. In principle you could still seek something like this via a negotiated customs agreement—but this would be less robust; it would be neither quick nor easy; and we would still have to show considerable flexibility to get it.

On services, at the point of departure we will have regulatory harmonisation, but we will have to continue this model to maintain the status quo in cross-border trade in services. The alternative is to lose our rights and our automatic access, and no amount of wishful thinking will change this. Any free trade agreement worth its name, furthermore, will have to ensure a level playing field in competition policy and state aid, as well as in tax, social, environmental and regulatory measures and practices—and all subject to enforcement by the ECJ or some equivalent body if our market access is to be sustained.

These are the facts of which Philip Hammond is acutely aware, and which the Prime Minister chose to obscure in her original Lancaster House speech, when she talked of some form of “regulatory co-operation” with the EU, which she thinks will preserve sovereignty on both sides while simultaneously creating full market access for goods and services. This is not going to happen—unless, of course, she means that we are going to exercise our sovereignty by freely aligning ourselves with European rules and regulations over which we will have no control following our departure from the European Union.

People say to me that, in trade, “Leaving the EU is like a divorce in which you can then pay to get all the access you want”. This is not so. It is not just about money, it is about rules—rules for access, especially for cross-border trade in services. That is why at every stage in this negotiation we will face difficult choices in deciding how far we take our regulatory autonomy outside the single market versus securing our current trade in it.

We know where the hardliners will come down. They will come down for maximum autonomy. But they should also tell the truth about the implications of this for our future trade and prosperity. This is what lies at the heart of Philip Hammond’s disagreement with his colleagues. He knows that those who want Brexit at any cost are prepared to give up any amount of trade for the sake of the sovereignty they crave. He tries to mask this disagreement by saying, “Let’s leave the single market and the customs union by means of a slope rather than a cliff edge”. That is certainly very sensible as a temporary way of protecting cross-border trade and the integrity of pan-European supply chains, but it postpones rather than eliminates the ultimate difficult choices we face, including what concessions we will make for visa-free travel for EU citizens with jobs to come to here in the UK. That is why I suspect he privately hopes that, once on the slope, we will not leave it—an eternal slope that stretches for ever into the far blue yonder.

We can only enjoy the exact same benefits of the single market and the customs union—and we have to face up to this and be clear with ourselves and the public in recognising it—by staying in them in some form. This is the real choice facing us as a nation. We must grasp this nettle and be honest about the implications either way. Parliament must provide this clarity by coming clean and being truthful with the British people that there are more options available to us than a hard deal or no deal—options that, yes, will leave us with less autonomy as a nation but which will give us none the less, very importantly, more prosperity, more economic growth and more to spend on those vital schools, our healthcare, our policing and our security. In my view, the British public are slowly beginning to wake up to this reality.

17:20

[Lord Jopling (Con)]

My Lords, I want to enlarge on two issues that I have spoken about in your Lordships’ House previously. First, on the Brexit negotiation itself, I have always been an enthusiast for remain; I was desperately disappointed with the result of the referendum—but this is where we are. The nation spoke, and we should let those who led us into Brexit pursue their policy. They made extravagant and sometimes arrogant claims, but let them show what has never been shown before: the full implications of Brexit. We cannot go on in this House fighting the referendum all over again, which I fear we are hearing too much about. I spoke last year criticising those in the House who were talking about a second referendum. Likewise, I would be very unhappy to see any of the three amendments being agreed tonight. We should leave the Brexit enthusiasts to get on with it—one hopes while listening to advice—and then, in 2019, we shall see whether the negotiations lead to a triumph or a catastrophe. If it turns out to look like either a triumph or a catastrophe, of course Parliament will be in a position, with the promised vote of both Houses, to make a judgment. Much will then depend on whether public opinion regards Brexit as a triumph or a catastrophe. If Parliament were then to reject the deal, then, and only then, would there be a case for a second referendum, which would be only one of several future options.

I turn to the second issue that I want to raise. We were told that there is going to be an agriculture Bill, and I want to refer to the implications of Brexit for agriculture. I repeat my interests in agriculture as a farmer. In Monday’s debate, some reference was made by the noble Baroness, Lady Parminter, and my noble friends Lady McIntosh, Lord Colgrain and the Duke of Wellington to the importance to agriculture of import levies. I remind the House that after the Conservative defeat in 1964, for the 1966 and 1970 elections the Conservative Party adopted a new form of agricultural support in the form of import levies. That was, of course, before we joined the European Community. It was clear then that to move to import levies had little effect on shop prices for food. Indeed, if you were to perpetuate import levies in future, that would have even less effect on the price of food because food is becoming less and less a part of the household budget and farm gate prices have become less and less part of shop shelf prices.

I am concerned about talk that I hear about moving to a free trade policy for agricultural products. I just make the point that if we were to do that United Kingdom agriculture would be hit hard twice over, first, by moving away from the present system, where we have protection by EU import tariffs on third-country imports, and a second time by having to face the prospect of our exports going to the European Union and having to face its external tariffs, which would continue. I believe it is essential, in the negotiations and in the Bill that is promised, that we do not set aside the chance to perpetuate the import tariffs that currently exist. They are, frankly, much the neatest way of supporting agriculture, which everybody seems to say is necessary. On both sides of the House I hear the desire to continue to support the agricultural industry.

17:25

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech started with Brexit and ended with the estimates and other measures but, in reality, we all know that Brexit is the beginning and will most likely be the end of this Parliament, and that is a tragedy. It is a tragedy because the UK has so many pressing challenges from which we will be distracted by a process which will do us incalculable harm. It is a tragedy because already the country is poorer. The slide in sterling, the consequent rise in prices and stagnation in wages have made us all worse off. It is a tragedy because we are more divided than ever. The referendum split us almost down the middle. The election, which was supposed to deliver a decisive mandate, instead left the Prime Minister and Government weakened and served only to underline the continuing division in the country. Today, the Conservative Cabinet is unable to maintain even the semblance of a united front on Brexit. Its divisions are daily played out in public for everyone to see.

It is a tragedy because as a country we are already diminished, our integrity sacrificed to the absurd and morally bankrupt notion that you can or should carry out your negotiations on the backs of the lives of millions of fellow European citizens who, because of our failure to honour our promises, live today in uncertainty and continuing distress. We had a solemn obligation to provide those European citizens with the guarantees that the Vote Leave campaign had promised them. By doing so, we would also have helped to provide the reassurance that British citizens in the EU also so desperately need, but we did not. Instead the Government waited more than a year and then, on Monday, published a policy paper that offers no certainty at all. Instead of upholding our promises to EU citizens, we have offered a set of proposals for negotiation and nothing more. It is, therefore, worth recalling the commitment that was made by the leave campaign; on this at least they spoke clearly and unequivocally:

“There will be no change for EU citizens already lawfully resident in the UK. These EU citizens will automatically be granted indefinite leave to remain in the UK and will be treated no less favourably than they are at present”.


There is no ambiguity in that, no caveat that these matters would be dependent on negotiations, no qualification at all. Every Brexiteer in the Government, every Brexiteer in the House of Commons and every Brexiteer in this House should be reminded of that statement every single day. It is their badge of shame, but they have hung it around the neck of this country.

Though I decry the failure to provide certainty, I at least give a muted welcome to the publication of the Government’s policy paper on safeguarding the rights of EU citizens and British citizens in the EU. I do so because it at least sets out some sort of framework for the rights that EU citizens will have post-Brexit and a bad deal, as we know, is better than no deal at all. The Government state in their policy paper that a fair and reasonable fee will be charged for EU citizens gaining settled status in the United Kingdom. I put it to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, that as the EU citizens concerned find their status changed and their lives disrupted as a result of a decision in which they had no part, the only fair and reasonable fee is no fee at all. If he will not accept that, will he at least agree with me that the current fee of nearly £2,000 for indefinite leave to remain would be neither fair nor reasonable but an outrage?

The gracious Speech tells us that repealing the European Communities Act will provide certainty for individuals and business, when it will do the opposite. It tells us that legislation will ensure that the United Kingdom makes a success of Brexit, when legislation alone can do no such thing. It tells us that a new national policy on immigration will help achieve that success, when it is far more likely to impoverish us all.

The people who will pay the price for Brexit in lost jobs, squeezed living standards and reduced opportunities will not be the champions of Brexit—the super-elite of proprietors and editors, offshore millionaires and former Cabinet Ministers. It will be, as it always is, those who can least afford it who will have to pay the price for the ideological zeal of others.

I hope and pray that in this Parliament some sense will return and that the majority who could ensure a sensible and pragmatic approach to Brexit will come together across party lines and prevail. I will make my contribution tonight by supporting the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in the Division Lobby.

17:31

[Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)]

As the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, pointed out at the start of our debate, it is odd that we come to the EU so late in our debate, given that it is so central to the country’s position.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, and welcome her back to her bed of nails. I also pay tribute to her predecessor, who filled the gap between Anelay and Anelay with great distinction—Bridged the gap, I should say.

There are many odd features to the situation in which we find ourselves. It is very odd to start a negotiation in which you are demandeur by laying down the things that you will not accept. You are demandeur, but you say from the word go, “We will not have the ECJ. We will not have free movement. We will not have this customs union. We will not have the single market. We will have no EU law and no EU regulation”. That is a very odd way to begin. It is very odd to conclude, without any parliamentary or public consultation because the election was not about Brexit—Brexit was the excuse and not the subject of the debate in the election—that the definition of Brexit which the referendum called for is the one based on all the things with which we will have no truck in future.

It is even odder to do so, when you think of it, given that Mr Johnson in the referendum campaign told us repeatedly that no one was even talking about leaving the single market. Therefore, if the electorate were absolutely clear that we should leave the single market, they must not have believed Mr Johnson. That is unthinkable, surely. It is odd to start a negotiation by alienating the others through insulting them for the concerns they have expressed about President Trump, not going to their meetings and accusing them of intervening in our election. That is resented across the channel, I have to tell noble Lords. It is resented and I cannot remember a time when this country was so isolated and impotent in Brussels as it is now. I say that very seriously.

It is odd, if we want a deep and special relationship, not to have proposed one. A year after the referendum, we have still put forward no plan, suggestion, outline or proposal for how one might in future organise co-operation on foreign affairs, security, anti-terrorism, the environment, energy and a range of subjects such as research and universities where we hope the Prime Minister means what she says. If she means what she says, it would be very good to prove it. Where is our proposal? The treaty requires the divorce lawyers to look, before they finish, at the framework for the future relationship. Where is our draft framework? If we were to put forward, positively, a framework for the future relationship, that would change the atmosphere of the negotiation.

It is also odd to put ideology above pragmatism, and to pay so little attention to people who are directly affected. Business warns that leaving the customs union would seriously damage manufacturing, particularly manufacturing that relies on complex, just-in-time supply chains. Take cars: the motor industry employs about 800,000 people now, directly or indirectly, and it gets 60% of its components from elsewhere in the EU. A hard Brexit, with an exit from the customs union—it is not the tariffs but the customs union’s duties and bureaucracy which really hit just-in-time component supply—would render probably more than 50% of British motor car production unprofitable. That is a very alarming thought, and business is saying this to government. I am not yet convinced that government is listening.

Business and the City warn of the hit to the service industries, particularly finance and the fast-growing digital economy if we leave the single market. Here I say, with great regret, to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, that for the first time I have detected a hint of naivety in him. There is a difference between selling to the single market and being a member of it. When we can no longer craft the rules, I have to tell the noble Lord, they may over time come to be skewed against us—that is just possible. If we could no longer guarantee free access to our 500 million market, our business and foreign investors will look for a host country which can, and some are already doing that. Of course, the gracious Speech talks of forging new trade relationships around the world, and maybe over time we will. However, the analysis that the Treasury is not allowed to publish shows that the economic benefits of future FTAs with the EU and third countries would be considerable, but considerably less than the cost of quitting the customs union. We lose on the deal. The NIESR estimates that the numbers are 5% on the upside and 22% on the downside.

On farming, I heard the noble Lord, Lord Jopling. I worry about the quadruple whammy for the farmer: less migrant labour, lower subsidy, restrictions on sales to their biggest export market—the European Union—and, possibly, cheaper imports as quotas are abolished. He is right to warn us. Mr Fox’s new friends around the world will be targeting the British food market as they seek reciprocal concessions from us. Remember that trade negotiation—the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, knows it better than anybody else—is a mercantilist arm-wrestling. It is a rough, tough game. Read the Trump inaugural speech.

But does it all have to be like that? I do not think so. On the single market, it is not that I am convinced by the Norway option, which used to be Mr Farage’s option, and which was so well explained by my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood in our debate this afternoon. When we leave the EU, the provisions of the EEA treaty will no longer apply to our territory, so getting into the EEA would require us to go around to the front door, which is EFTA. We would have to apply to join it, and I am not sure that its present membership would be all that keen to see us. One thinks of rowing boats and elephants. However, my noble and learned friend Lord Brown is on to a very good point. I am not sure that membership of the EEA is the answer, but we could be proposing something similar right now—we could be making a proposal. We should be making a positive proposal. As for a customs union with the EU, which is the key to avoiding a hard border in Ireland, Norway does not have one, while Turkey does but it does not extend to agriculture. We could, however, try proposing one that did apply to agriculture, and we could do that right now.

The best way to maintain growth and jobs and to lessen the economic heat is to put our pride in our pocket, stop drawing self-harming red lines, change our tone, try diplomacy and seek to stay in or closely alongside the single market and the customs union, which successive UK Governments, whose members include many in this House, have worked so hard down the years to build. That is why I sympathise with all three amendments but I particularly welcome the one proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

I apologise, but I would like to add one 30-second point concerning diplomacy in these islands. In December, the Scottish Government, as the noble Baroness knows well, put forward their White Paper making a strong case for the United Kingdom staying in the single market. On 19 January, the Prime Minister announced at Lancaster House that we would not stay in the single market. There had been no response to the Scots and there was no prior warning to the Scots; nor have the Scots—or, I believe, the Welsh—seen the repeal Bill, which we are about to see at any moment. There was no consultation on the White Paper or on the Article 50 letter and, as I understand it, no consultation on this week’s citizens’ rights paper. I, like the Prime Minister, believe that the union is “precious”, but that is no way to defend it. She needs to come good on her July promise—which I warmly welcomed—to build UK positions in this negotiation, and that means making a reality of consultation with the devolved Administrations. We need less arrogance and more democracy, at home as well as abroad.

17:41

[Baroness Hooper (Con)]

My Lords, in the interests of time, I shall move directly to the main focus of my remarks, which concerns the overseas territories. These issues may be niche business but, after all, the devil is in the detail. They were not mentioned in the Queen’s Speech or in my noble friend’s otherwise admirable introduction. I, too, wish her the best of luck in her new department.

I start with border issues. It is not just for Northern Ireland that there is a problem. Two of our overseas territories have borders with EU countries. The first is well known in your Lordships’ House and figures in the European Union Committee report that we debated in March. I speak, of course, of Gibraltar. The second may come as a surprise. It is Anguilla—one of the smaller overseas territories in the Caribbean—which has a border with metropolitan France in the shape of the island of St-Martin.

I am aware that assurances have been given by Brexit Ministers to the Government of Gibraltar—for example, pledging to defend and protect not just Gibraltar’s sovereignty but its economic well-being, and stating that the United Kingdom will not enter into any new agreement with the European Union that may be relevant to Gibraltar if the Spanish Government try to exclude Gibraltar from the application of such agreements. It would be helpful if, in winding up, my noble and learned friend confirmed that those assurances will be adhered to during the Brexit negotiations. I hope that he will even be able to give us additional comfort.

In Anguilla’s case, we are talking of a marine border. The islanders suffer an effective curfew in that each night French St-Martin closes its border with Anguilla, denying the only viable access to the island. Incidentally, Anguilla is also rare among our overseas territories in that most of its developmental aid comes from the European Union and there is no UK equivalent to which it is currently entitled.

All the overseas territories are anxious about our exit from the European Union, whether in relation to the replacement of current EU funding, educational opportunities, environmental research and regulation—which impinge on the considerable biodiversity of the overseas territories—climate change or, as in the case of the Falkland Islands in particular, fisheries regulation. The Government must ensure that the interests of all these tiny territories are not forgotten or swept under the carpet. I would be glad of confirmation of this from my noble and learned friend.

I will make two other different points. In the brave new world that we are told awaits us post-Brexit, we expect to enter into bilateral trade agreements all over the world. I hope that Latin American countries are included in the preliminary meetings and discussions being undertaken by the relevant Ministers. I look forward to discussing the possibilities more when we consider the proposed trade Bill.

My final point is this: like others, I am generally unhappy at the tone of some of the Brexiteers in seeking new arrangements with our partners in the European Union. It seems unnecessarily belligerent. Members of the other place who suggest that if the Lords attempt to oppose the Brexit process they will,

“be courting … the kind of political meltdown we have not seen for a century or more”,

should realise that these exaggerated statements invite more moderately minded people to take exception and maybe even consider amending or opposing the Bill in an equally belligerent way.

Like my noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, I hope that we will be able to forge a new special relationship with all those countries with which we have been working, for the most part happily, over the last 50 years. We should not just be looking for the best deal.

17:46

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, there have been many excellent reports on Brexit from the House of Lords Select Committees. I declare membership of the Home Affairs Sub-Committee. But none of these committees has discussed the specific impact of Brexit on children. Today I shall call for government action. Children are our future and Brexit could influence that future without our children having had a say.

I am concerned about many aspects of children’s rights and welfare under Brexit and I am grateful to many charities and academics who have expressed similar concerns. I am particularly grateful to Professor Helen Stalford from the Children’s Rights Unit at Liverpool University for her incisive analyses. I am grateful to Eurochild for issuing, last week, a call to action on Brexit and for seeking dialogue with EU and UK negotiators.

I shall reflect briefly on three issues: children and employment, the rights of migrant children and family law. I shall touch on concerns about children from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The main purpose of my speech today will be to call on the Government to set up a special investigation into the effect of Brexit on children, and to agree to meet interested experts and respond in detail to their questions.

First, on children and employment, following Brexit, the UK will be free to amend any domestic law or policy on employment equality. That could impact negatively on the children of workers and on child poverty rates. Workers under 18 could be affected by pregnancy and parental leave directives or health and safety standards. Migrant children will probably no longer fall under the EU free movement provisions unless a special arrangement is negotiated. They will no longer benefit from automatic rights of entry and residence, and will not necessarily have access to equal pay as they enter adolescence. Their parents may not be able to claim benefits for them and they may have to pay higher fees to access higher education.

The EU can ensure that public law decisions to protect children can be enforced in countries of which the child is a non-national. One advantage is cross-border recognition and the enforcement of family judgments, including contact and residence issues in member states and child maintenance arrangements. EU law places an emphasis on children’s rights and is quick and easy to apply. In the future, will we have to reach bilateral agreements on family law with other countries?

Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have all expressed reservations on Brexit, fearing, as a Scottish Government report says, fundamental change in public services, the law and the economy. YouthLink Scotland has called for young people to be heard in Brexit negotiations, and I agree. The Wales Observatory on Human Rights has pointed out the probability of the loss of EU structural funds and projects to tackle poverty and improve youth employment. The Children’s Law Centre in Northern Ireland fears the real possibility of destabilising the Good Friday agreement. An assumption of continued membership of the EU permeates the peace process and was not considered in the decision to hold the referendum. Many projects that support vulnerable young people in Northern Ireland are funded, at least potentially or in part, through the EU—as is the peace process itself. Over 600 children a day cross the border to attend school; many have cross-border health appointments.

I have related but a few examples of how child rights and welfare may be negatively affected by Brexit. We must now ensure that the calls for action are heard—calls to listen to children and young people, providing assurances that the existing rights of children are protected, not just in the UK but across Europe, and that the peace process in Northern Ireland is respected.

Brexit negotiations are proving to be lengthy, time-consuming and expensive. Many House of Lords Select Committee reports foresaw this. But in the midst of the turmoil we cannot risk the rights and welfare of children. If we do, we will not be forgiven—nor should we be. Surely it is better to slow down, think, consider options and get this right for children. I look forward to what the Minister has to say on this and to further discussions on this vital topic. Will the Government listen to concerns about Brexit and children? Will they ensure that the welfare of the child is paramount, as enshrined in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child?

17:51

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I will concentrate on the economic framework for the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, both in general and with regard to the implications for Wales. Other important matters for Wales, such as the cynical bypassing of the Barnett funding formula to buy the DUP, can perhaps be pursued another day.

Let us first recall the background to the general election. The Prime Minister called it supposedly in order to get a mandate for her approach to the Brexit negotiations. She clearly felt that she did not have a clear mandate from either the previous election manifesto, when her party advocated remaining in the EU, or from the referendum. That certainly gave her a mandate to leave the EU, but no mandate for negotiating any specific alternative relationship with the EU, which should have been central to an exit strategy. The Prime Minister was right to seek a new mandate in these circumstances. She needed democratic endorsement of the principles that she had outlined in her Lancaster House speech and the subsequent White Paper. She needed a mandate because, up to then, quite simply, she did not have one for those or any other proposals.

Sadly for her, she still does not, for it all blew up in her face. The general election has not given her a mandate for her approach to the Brexit negotiations, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral, acknowledged earlier. So we in this Chamber, notwithstanding the Salisbury/Addison convention, have every right to consider each proposal on its merits and not be expected to rubber-stamp what we in all conscience may believe to be a mistaken way forward. Both Houses have the right to consider, approve or reject the package that may eventually be negotiated with our EU partners. That should always have been the case: for if the Parliaments of each of the 27 other member states have the right to reject the final agreement, surely, on any basis of equity, so must we.

If Parliament were to reject such an agreement, it would trigger one of two options before final ratification. There could be a general election—and if the Government lost, it would be a matter for a new Government, depending on the mandate that they had secured, to renegotiate, to quit the EU without agreement, or to withdraw the Article 50 application—as EU partners have indicated is possible. Alternatively, a second referendum could approve ratification, with a refusal to approve leading to a withdrawal of the Article 50 application and the UK remaining in the EU. Knowing that these are options awaiting this battered Government two years down the road, the most sensible way forward now would be, as other noble Lords have suggested, to seek cross-party agreement on the type of Brexit that might command widespread support. That needs all parties to recognise that Brexit is going to happen—something that I find hard to swallow—but that the type of Brexit has to accommodate the economic needs of these islands.

I believe that the key principle is that of full single-market participation. That was proposed by the Welsh White Paper, which got cross-party support in the National Assembly. Its principles have the support of the Scottish Government and of individual politicians in Northern Ireland. This approach would require the EU to accept some controls over open-ended migration, but an acknowledgement by the UK that those coming here specifically to work would have the right to do so. It would deliver the free movement of goods and services without tariffs or technical barriers, and as such it would overcome the difficulties for trade between Ireland and the UK. It could also solve the Gibraltar difficulty.

This would hopefully allow the UK to negotiate at least associate membership of certain EU-based organisations such as Euratom, the Erasmus programme and Europol. We would need to respect EU regulations which provide a level playing field for traded goods. That, presumably, is the Government’s intention, since the repeal Bill does not, of itself, change any EU regulations that currently apply to the UK. The repatriation of powers over matters that have been devolved to Wales and Scotland should automatically be transferred to the devolved Administrations. If there is a case for UK co-ordination, let that come about by agreement, not by central diktat.

The single-market participation model would provide a status that would be analogous, though not identical, to that currently enjoyed by Norway. During the referendum, some advocates of Brexit recommended Norway as a model of the way forward. I noted with interest the points made earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, with regard to EEA status. We will, none the less, be outside the EU. As such, we in Wales, who have benefited so much from EU structural and regional funding, will expect that funding to be fully replaced by the Treasury, as promised at the time of the referendum.

Brexit will dominate this Parliament and might well define its duration as well as its agenda. The election result has told us that the people do not see any one party having a monopoly on wisdom. They instructed us to find a consensus. I appeal to Ministers to seek new levels of co-operation—and in that I echo the noble Lord, Lord Hunt—both between parties at Westminster and also between London, Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast, and, I suggest, Dublin. The survival of both this Parliament and this Government depends on such new thinking—as does a sensible outcome to the Brexit crisis.

17:57

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords, like everyone else who wishes to speak in this debate, I have a great deal to say, but perforce I am constrained by time limits, so I shall be brief, noble Lords will be pleased to hear. I will say a few words on exiting the EU and then a few on the current position regarding defence.

I am not a fan of referendums. I was surprised when David Cameron called one and not entirely happy. But we had one. This Parliament abrogated responsibility to the people and the people have spoken, much to the distress of many others, I know. But to those who want to stop Brexit—and I have heard one or two speeches that seemed to say they would like to—I say that we must listen to the democratic decision of the people. I was particularly struck by what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. He made a very good speech, but he was ignoring the fact that we had had a referendum and its result.

I am not going to pretend that this is easy, but leaving means that there is no jurisdiction for the ECJ. I have always believed that our courts—there are several distinguished jurists here; I see one at least—should be admired and are not the enemies of the people. But why do others seem to trust judges from other countries that do not have a history of admiring the rule of law or a history of incorruptibility over our own judges? I do not.

Leaving means not being in the single market, as indeed David Cameron downwards said during the referendum campaign. Most of the rest of the world is not in the single market. I will name two places, one big and one small: the United States and Hong Kong. They seem to do pretty well without the single market.

It is the same with the customs union, and here I agree with my noble friend Lady Anelay on the Front Bench. Although I have disagreed with her on one or two other issues in this regard, I agree that if we remain in the union we will give up our sovereign control. The people voted to take back control. I also believe in democratic accountability, as do most people in this House. So I ask: to whom is Jean-Paul Juncker democratically accountable? Indeed, it seems that his position is the antithesis of democratic accountability.

What surprises and to a certain extent distresses me is the lack of confidence among many people in the United Kingdom. It is not easy, but why do some run down the United Kingdom and consider that people on the continent do better? I point out in particular the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, with whom I have always got on pretty well—on one level. I do not think that the Europeans necessarily have the answer to everything and that we should run ourselves down. Why, at the beginning of this tortuous and difficult process, do we think that EU negotiators will be brilliant, while our own negotiators will be hopeless? There is after all only one UK Parliament—in a bit of disarray at the moment, one might say—but there are 27 other countries with Parliaments, there is the European Parliament and there is Wallonia, whatever that may have to say, to which the negotiators in the EU will be answerable.

Furthermore, some people seem to put the interests of EU nationals living here over the interests of our own citizens living in the EU. I personally wish no ill to EU nationals living here, who I am sure are mostly marvellous and excellent people, but I see my first duty as a Member of this House as to stand up for UK citizens.

Finally, what is the future of the EU? Has the eurozone crisis gone away? Will Macron and Merkel, known I think as the Mercron coalition, solve all the problems of migration, among other things? We shall see. I certainly do not foretell the future, but I will make one little prediction: that in 10 years’ time, very few people in this country will say, “I wish we had stayed in the EU”.

In the limited time available, I should like to turn briefly to defence matters. Our forces have been critical to the defence of Europe for well over a century. I spent a year of my life defending western Europe against the Soviet Union in the Cold War. I should like to say to my noble friends on the Front Bench, who I hope will take this message home, that the situation in defence at the moment is dire and has certainly not been helped by the depreciation in sterling over the past year. A headline in today’s Times states, “‘Your Army is too small’, Americans warn Britain”. At a conference yesterday, the Chief of Staff of the US Army, General Milley, pointed out that you need boots on the ground. You need manpower, or indeed people power, not just for war but to assist a civil power after a disaster, such as happened after the terrorist incident in Manchester recently. We have too few people and we need to increase defence spending. Also at the conference was Professor Cohen, who said that,

“your military is too small. There is no question about that”.

The National Audit Office published a report on the equipment plan from which I shall quote:

“The affordability of the Equipment Plan is at greater risk than at any time since its inception. It is worrying to see that the costs of the new commitments arising from the Review”—


the SDSR—

“considerably exceed the net increase in funding for the Plan”.

Today, the British Social Attitudes survey was published. It reveals that 39% of people now think that there is insufficient spending on defence, up from 17% 20 years ago. That says something about the way they are noticing how things are deteriorating.

In conclusion, if we are found wanting and not capable of defending our country, and indeed Europe, our interests and our values, because we have put other spending priorities first, the British people will want to know why those who are trusted with our defence did not pay sufficient attention to the problem.

18:03

[Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to focus on the role of Parliament, and specifically the role of this House, in delivering the Brexit legislation. This may seem slightly arcane in the context of some of the strategic issues that we have heard about in the debate, but those who campaigned to take us out of the European Union fervently asserted that this would restore the sovereignty of the Westminster Parliament. If indeed we are to take back exclusive control of our laws and law-making processes, we need to be sure that Parliament will play its proper constitutional role in the relevant legislation.

I have to say that the gracious Speech and the earlier White Paper, Legislating for the United Kingdom’s Withdrawal from the European Union, are not encouraging, proposing as they do that a large number of measures will need to be executed very quickly to meet the exacting timeframe of two years, both for the negotiations with the European Union and for this parliamentary Session. My suspicion is that we may find that it is the Executive—the Government—rather than Parliament who have taken back greater control. It is obvious, as several noble Lords have said in this debate, that Brexit will dominate our proceedings for the foreseeable future. We have had eight related Bills laid before us in the gracious Speech and an educated guess that some 80,000 pages of statute will need to be dealt with. All this places a huge burden on government departments as well as on Parliament, and given the time constraints as well as the parlous state of the Government’s majority in the House of Commons, it would not be surprising if officials and Ministers tried to find short cuts and to cut corners through, for example, using secondary legislation to amend primary legislation using the notorious so-called Henry VIII powers, which as noble Lords are very well aware are subject to lesser scrutiny. When he spoke yesterday, my noble friend Lord Kennedy of Southwark flagged up concerns in this area, and your Lordships’ Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, as well the Select Committee on the Constitution, have already identified potentially serious problems.

Outside Parliament, the Institute for Government recently suggested that the Government should avoid undermining legitimate scrutiny by producing draft legislation and full impact assessments before Brexit Bills are introduced. I would like to draw special attention to the recent and detailed work of the Hansard Society in this area. Here I declare an interest as a trustee of the organisation. The society intends to publish a further guide to the scrutiny of the repeal Bill before Second Reading, a guide that earlier in the debate the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said the Government should seize with open hands. Be that as it may, the Hansard Society has already stated that,

“Parliament is to be asked to repeal, convert or correct a vast body of law emanating from the European Union and to give the Government future powers—the timing, scope and application of which cannot be fully known at the time the powers are granted … Unless restricted by Parliament, the inclusion of widely scoped delegated powers to Ministers in uncertain circumstances could result in a substantial transfer of power to the Executive”.

The Hansard Society is particularly concerned about the scrutiny of statutory instruments, and we should remember that it is expected that up to 1,000 statutory instruments may need to be considered in connection with Brexit. This House is, of course, well-practised and authoritative in such procedures, but there are now widespread calls for the Commons methods to be urgently reviewed.

After the Strathclyde review in the last Session of the relative powers of the two Houses on secondary legislation and the Government’s subsequent commitment that they would not undertake any change in the law, I hope that your Lordships’ House will continue to assert its proper constitutional position. Indeed, it is interesting that some of the current proposals to improve scrutiny in the Brexit process want to establish new joint ways of working between the Houses. The Institute for Government suggests a committee to provide advice to the Commons on which measures should be subject to enhanced scrutiny procedures. The Hansard Society goes further with its proposal that a way should be found so that your Lordships’ DPRRC, which of course has no Commons equivalent, reports its findings on Brexit legislation when a Bill is first introduced and does not wait until it comes to this House.

I have no doubt that Ministers will argue that anything that expands and complicates the scrutiny process will dangerously threaten the crucial two-year timetable, but it is imperative that sufficient time and attention is given to replacing the 40 years of EU-related law that determines so much of our lives today. If Parliament is prevented from doing this either by government tactics or by our own inadequate process, we really will be handing a proverbial blank constitutional cheque to the Executive.

18:09

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem (LD)]

My Lords, I regret that I am a very poor candidate for the consensus advanced by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Wirral. I am so because in the immediate aftermath of the referendum my emotion was resignation, but as the debate has developed, I have become more convinced that the best interests of the people of the United Kingdom would be found in remaining within the European Union. The noble Lord may not find much scope for consensus if he talks to the Democratic Unionist Party because fresh from having extracted Danegeld from the Conservatives and having begun to exercise influence far beyond its numbers, it is important to remember that it favours a hard Brexit. It wants a hard Brexit with a soft border, if that does not seem to be internally contradictory. I find it difficult to see how those two ambitions may ever be reconciled.

However, I welcome the fact that proposals have now been made by the Government in relation to the rights of European Union citizens. Much more detail is clearly necessary, but I go back to the point made earlier by others: that our Prime Minister really missed a golden opportunity. By not publishing those details earlier, she inflamed the anxiety of people who are understandably concerned about their future. She might have occupied the high ground; she could have given comfort to those who seek it; and, more to the point, she could have set the tone for the whole of the negotiations which are now to be embarked upon.

As chancellor of the University of St Andrews, which interest is recorded in the register, I can tell the House that the Government have done little to convince the staff of that university—and, I suspect, of every other university in the country—that the research funding provided by the European Union will in the long term be replaced by any Government of the United Kingdom. People may ask where that money would come from if they did so. I do not think that it would come from the “money tree”—that expression now so beloved of Conservative Ministers—nor indeed from the £350 million painted on the side of the bus then directed by the blond bus conductor now elevated to one of the highest offices of state. It is not just continuance of residence which affects so many sectors of the academic community in this country but access to European funds and the collaboration with peer groups which goes along with it.

Mr Hammond, recently released from the bondage imposed on him by the two sacked chiefs of staff of the Prime Minister, said wisely that the British people did not vote to leave the European Union to become poor, yet many of them are poor already. The depreciation of the pound has raised the cost of living. Inflation is on the increase, at 2.3%, and there is now the possibility, even probability, of an increase in interest rates. Is it not ironic that the economy of the European Union is showing sustained growth, a comparison which I think few would have been willing to draw in the past when seeking to undermine the economic effectiveness of the Union?

The Prime Minister caused the unnecessary election, claiming that the country was united and that political parties were undermining the Government’s objective of negotiating good terms for our departure from the European Union. I wonder what she thinks of that analysis now because if the country was not divided before, it is most certainly divided now, and that may come to be her epitaph.

I am sure that many Members of the House, like me, are rather tired of being accused of being obstructive when we seek to exercise our best judgment, the very role for which we have come here. That is why I agree with the noble Baroness who most recently addressed the House. I am so convinced that the interests of this country rest with being in the European Union that I have no interest in or enthusiasm for the idea of facilitating the implementation of a decision which I profoundly believe to be against the interests of the people of the United Kingdom.

18:15

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, I was a bit unhappy on the day after we had our referendum. I was unhappy because when I walked into my little Cambridgeshire village and met an incredibly educated, sophisticated and well-placed member of the community, I found that he was absolutely outraged that “these people”—who were described as “scum”, “rubbish”, “low life”—had taken him and his wife and family and other people out of something which for him was the most precious thing on earth other than the United Kingdom. I then went down the pub that evening and met people who had voted to leave. Many of them were cock-a-hoop, aggressive and rather vicious. Here was a little village in Cambridgeshire which seemed culturally divided. There were the men in the white vans who came to fix our fences and our roofs and all the friends that I have in the building trade, who seemed to be universally for leaving, while those who were at the local university and who were what you might call the “cappuccino class”—I use that in the nicest sense—seemed to be against.

So here we had a class struggle, and hiding behind it all, in my opinion, was our relationship to poverty, because Brexit is about poverty. Whether we stay or we go, it is about poverty; it is about poverty of thinking. It is also about how we come together. I am reminded of the great Jonathan Swift—a swift being a Bird—who described a confederacy of dunces. I worry about highly educated and highly thoughtful people who have lived together dividing over Brexit, dividing over stay, and not finding any conformity or unity. We are in a place which is very much like 1940. We need a kind of national, coalition-type Government. We need to break through the divisions between us. I do not know whether Parliament is the best place to sort this out because I believe—and my nose is close to the ground—that in the future there will be blood on the streets because up at the level we are, we cannot give the benefit of the doubt and go to people who we know are not doing as well as us and say to them, “Let’s work together”. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, that, whether we like it or not, we have left Europe. To the noble Lord, Lord Oates, who said earlier that the poor will pay for Brexit, I say, “Okay, how can the House of Lords and the House of Commons stop the poor paying for Brexit?” It is interesting, is it not, that many millions of people who have not done well voted to leave, not those people who did well?

I have to tell the House that I voted to stay. I got it wrong. I voted to stay for fear. I have five children and three grandchildren, and I was sensibly told that if we left the whole country was going to fall to pieces within a matter of weeks. We may have a bit longer. It may well fall to pieces in 2019, but I think it will fall to pieces if we do not find a way, an amalgam—that wonderful mixture of opposites. Unless we find a political and social amalgam, we are not going anywhere.

I shall make my last point: people talk about Britain getting out of Europe; there would be no Europe if it was not for Britain. Did the people to whom we go with a begging bowl and say, “Please, give us what you can” liberate Europe? They did not. It was the Americans, the Russians and the British. I would like to be reminding them, I would love to be reminding them, “Come on, play the game. We were there for you when you capitulated; do something for us”. Thank you.

18:21

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, is not with us any more, because he referred to rules in the EU. He will know as well as I do that the EU has completed, or half-completed, a banking union. One of the critical elements of the banking union was that there would be no more bailouts: the taxpayer would be the last person who is called on to bail out banks. From here on, it will be bail-ins: all the depositors would have to pay in before the taxpayer was leant on. Two banks in Italy have now been bailed out by the Italian taxpayer and the depositors have not been required to produce anything. So almost before the ink was dry on the agreement, the rule has been broken. We know also that when the euro was set up there was a very sensible measure to stabilise the euro called the stability and growth pact. The stability and growth pact was broken first by the Germans and then by the French. So I listened to what the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, said, and I am sure there are rules, but I am also sure that in great EU tradition, if they get in the way they can be ignored.

There is a small minority of those who voted remain who do not really accept the verdict of the referendum. They think, like the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, that somehow we can stay in the EU. They desperately hope that everything in these negotiations will go wrong and that at the end of the day we will remain in the EU, everything will be all right and life will go on for ever. Well, who wants to stay in an EU with double the level of unemployment that we have in this country and youth unemployment at 24%—with one in four unemployed? The economic model of the EU does not actually work.

I am quite confident that there is a deal to be done. If we were to turn to the WTO and leave the European Union, the first thing we would do is stop paying any money into the European budget. That would leave a 12.5% hole in the EU budget. As we know, the Commission loves spending other people’s money. It would be faced with a rather unenviable choice. It would have either to cut programmes that are happening in eastern Europe and so forth, which is totally against everything it stands for, or go round all the 27 nations of the EU and say, “You must up your contributions to the EU budget”. Both of those are extremely unpalatable choices and that is why we have something to offer in these negotiations which the EU desperately wants.

The whole business of negotiating exit from the EU has not really been done before, if you exclude Greenland, so we are into an extraordinary bargaining procedure—rather equivalent to a Turkish bazaar or Arab souk, where, when it comes to the money, the EU starts by saying, “You will have to pay €100 billion”. I am sure that our Ministers have gone back to the EU and said, “There is a wonderful report from the House of Lords that says we don’t have to pay you anything”. I can tell noble Lords now that we are not going to pay nothing. We are not going to pay €100 billion either. We are going to pay something in between, and that will certainly satisfy the EU to quite a large degree, because it wants to do something to fill this hole in the budget. That is something we can offer it. In return, we want access to the single market. This should not be too difficult because, at the end of the day, they sell 50% more to us than we do to them. They have no interest in embarking on a trade war with us.

Regrettably, there is a minority of those who voted remain who are not reconciled to the vote in the referendum, when the people made quite clear that they wanted to leave. I am very glad that the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, actually admitted that. However, the country has made this decision and we would be in great danger if we tried to reverse it. At the end of the day, this country has a very great future outside the EU.

18:26

[Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)]

My Lords, the outcome of the Prime Minister’s decision to hold a general election specifically on Brexit now poses a real question about what is the overriding authority in relation to Britain’s membership of, or future relationship with, the European Union. I pick up very much on the theme that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton, has just outlined. Is that authority still last year’s referendum, with its clear but very far from overwhelming result, to leave the European Union—48% versus 52%? Or is the overriding authority now the result of the election on 8 June, where the British public failed to support the Prime Minister’s approach on Brexit, failed to give the Prime Minister what she specifically asked for, a strengthened hand in her negotiations with the EU? I think we have to consider very carefully now where the British people really want to go on the question of our future relationship with the EU.

In doing so, we have to think about three very specific and very immediate issues. The first is the European Union itself. We hear a great deal about Britain’s negotiating position. We hear a great deal about whether we should be going for what is called “soft Brexit” or so-called “hard Brexit”. What we do not hear a great deal about is the position of our EU negotiating partners. I do not believe that the British position is going to be the driver in these negotiations. The EU has been very specific on three issues. First, it said that it would not negotiate with the United Kingdom until we had triggered Article 50. However we tried to manoeuvre, the EU stuck to that, and that is exactly what happened. It also put forward its ideas about the timetable for sequencing the negotiations. It was a timetable with which the Government disagreed. Indeed, the Brexit Secretary, David Davis, went so far as to say this was going to be “the row of the summer”. On the first day of negotiations last week, the row of the summer did not even last until lunchtime. The UK side caved in and the EU held completely to the position it had stated. The third and most worrying point the EU has put to us is that whatever does come out of these negotiations, it will worsen the UK’s trading and investment relationship. I believe it will stick to that as rigidly as it has stuck to the other points I have mentioned.

The second issue, which is immediate and urgent, is Ireland. Everyone rightly says that we must find a solution. Of course we have to find a solution. But we have heard nothing concrete from the Government about what that solution might be. So far we have heard only from Sinn Fein, which of course wants a united Ireland—something that, self-evidently, the Ulster unionists will not agree to. There are some vague ideas about what might or might not be done through the use of sensitive technologies but the fact is that nothing concrete has been brought forward. So there is a real issue lying at the heart of our leaving the European Union which nobody has properly addressed. Moreover, it could be said that it has been made worse because of the Government’s relationship now with the DUP, a relationship which many people believe undermines the Good Friday agreement and one which will have to be addressed—urgently.

The third issue is, self-evidently, the economy. For some people in this country—and I take it that the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, is one of them —the price of withdrawal from the European Union is neither here nor there. It is an objective in itself. But that is not the position of most people in this country. Prices are rising. The most recent inflation figure was 2.9%. Our currency is falling. That will impact our economy but, more significantly, it will impact household budgets. People will not be able to do what they have done heretofore.

We all know that we have some very challenging times and thorny negotiations ahead of us. Some of us have negotiated with the EU and know just how tough those negotiations are going to be. But I believe it is our job in this Parliament—in this House—to remain as positive as we can and to do what we can to ameliorate the position, but I am not as starry-eyed as some of the Brexiteers appear to be. I think that we have to stay, if we possibly can, in the single market and the customs union, and I think that for the sake of our young people. It is their future that we are bargaining with here—not ours. We will not be here to live with the consequences of the decisions we are taking. It is the future of our children and our grandchildren that lies at the heart of this, and it is their prosperity and security that will determine a lot of the votes among many of us when we come to the really hard issues in the coming weeks.

18:32

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, those are very wise words from the noble Baroness. I am sure that on 9 June the Prime Minister realised the wisdom of the old adage that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I hope now she has come to the inevitable conclusion that nobody won, really, on 8 June. Perhaps she could emulate the Red Queen and say that as nobody won, everybody should have prizes. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral made what I thought was an absolutely splendid speech, in which he talked about the absolute need, with that most unsatisfactory, unnecessary election as a background, for us to try to get together across the parties and, indeed, across and between the Houses.

As I have thought about this, and about the need for everyone to have prizes, I have thought particularly of the 48% and more especially of my own granddaughters, who were, frankly, distraught on 24 June last year. Of course we are coming out. Of course we have to have consensus around the Brexit issue. But we must bear most carefully and sympathetically in mind the worries and concerns of the next generation.

My noble friend Lady Anelay, whom I warmly welcome to her new and arduous job, said that she welcomed the participation of this House because she felt that diversity strengthened our debates. I hope that she speaks for the whole Government but I have my doubts. I have just been sacked from the Home Affairs Sub-Committee of the EU Committee because I had the temerity to vote for a couple of amendments when we debated the Article 50 Bill. That is not the spirit of leadership that we require from our Government at a time like this.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Cormack]

If I am further punished for that, so be it, because what we have to do in this House is speak without fear or favour and debate the great issues of the day.

I have a suggestion, which I believe is a positive one, to put to the House. One thing that has troubled me very much during the time that I have been here is the lack of real contact between the two Houses. If ever there was a case for joint arrangements, it is over Brexit. I am not talking about a Joint Committee, although I would welcome that, but about something more exciting and more innovative. I think there is a real case for a joint Grand Committee of both Houses, which can meet alternately perhaps in the Moses Room and in the Westminster Hall Committee Room. People can come and go. People of both Houses and all parties can question Ministers and debate issues. We never do that together. I defend the integrity of this House and of the House of which I had the great honour to be a Member for 40 years, but to say never the twain shall meet is always wrong and we do have wonderful Joint Committees, including those on which I have served. But I think this is something different. The challenge of the moment is such that we have to come up with a positive and, yes, unique solution. I believe that this is a possible solution that merits real, careful consideration in the usual channels and elsewhere. Just think how useful it would be for Members of the other place to hear some of the expertise which people such as the noble Lord, Lord Kerr of Kinlochard, can bring to debates, and how useful it would be for us to hear new, young Members talking about the impact on their constituencies. I earnestly request that we give this a go.

I remember those famous remarks of Dean Acheson in the early 1960s that the United Kingdom had,

“lost an empire and not yet found a role”.

In a way, we did find a role in Europe. We are now giving that up and what we have to do, therefore, is find a new sense of purpose. By working together across the parties and between the Houses, I believe it is possible to build something that is truly exciting and which will give to the young—who concern the noble Baroness, Lady Symons, me and others so much—a new sense of hope and real aspiration.

18:38

[Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)]

My Lords, the last time I spoke in the House in a debate about Brexit and trade, I said that as a member of the EU Committee of this House, it seemed to me that every meeting raised new and unforeseen complexities. It was all much more complex and difficult than anybody anticipated before the referendum. That speech was made before the general election. Having worked in constituencies in the north, which largely voted to leave, and in the south, where a large majority of the electorate voted to remain, it is clear to me that the country is very divided—I believe dangerously so.

The PM tries to cling on to a mandate for her version of Brexit, but she lost that mandate in the general election. While more of the electorate than she was expecting voted for her exit, not everyone voted for her Brexit—and we are now in a bit of trouble. There is a sense that the Government are flailing around, trying to find solutions and unity that are just not there.

As the Chancellor said recently, no one voted to make themselves poorer. My neighbours who voted to leave—the people in my community in the north-east—did so because they had suffered from cuts to in-work benefits while their wages had stagnated. They believed that migration was a big reason for why they felt worse off—even though you can count the number of migrants in our small town on one hand.

Our region derives the highest proportion of its per capita income from manufacturing. In many senses, we are the manufacturing heart of the country and most of that manufacturing is exported to Europe. Per head of population we have the highest export ratio to Europe, so we absolutely depend on manufacturing and manufacturing exports to Europe. But we have a declining population and, overall, young people are still leaving the region, so our population is becoming more elderly. We also still have real problems in getting new business start-ups. I suspect that there is some connection. Access to skilled labour and the single market is therefore crucial to the north-east. Think about Nissan, Hitachi, Siemens or the chemical and pharmaceutical industries, which are the core drivers of our exports: all of them want to remain in the single market and the customs union.

The Government remain, to me, very unclear in their vision. They gave us no signal in the Queen’s Speech as to how they will address more effectively the skills gap, which we know will be a huge challenge in the north-east over the next 15 years. I support the proposal to remain in the single market and customs union as I believe it is the only way that we can secure the level of exports being sustained, let alone expanded and developed. For example, Hitachi has located in Newton Aycliffe to build trains. One of its reasons for locating there was that Teesport is nearby, and it wants its main market to be in Germany. There are two arms to the site, both of which it had plans to develop; those developments are on hold. I want them to go ahead but there is no way that they will go ahead unless we are in the single market and the customs union. I really want the Government to think about that.

We have to be much more honest about what will be in the best interests of the country. My party leader is right to call for a deal that prioritises jobs and the economy. I wish only that he and others in the leadership had campaigned during the referendum with the enthusiasm and effectiveness that they showed in the general election. I believe we would then be in a very different place because many of those young people who are now distraught about the outcome, as the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, said, would have understood more why they needed to be there.

We have to be much more honest and engaged not just with businesses but with the British people, so that they know what the choices are. It is not just the rhetoric but the reality, and the reality is that whatever choices we make will involve compromises. It is about time that the Government stopped trying to pretend that it will all be motherhood and apple pie, and that they were honest and engaged with us and with the public about what those choices and compromises are.

18:45

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, one of the good things about general elections for those of us who are politically active, which would be the majority of people in this House, is that you get to places that you do not get to on other occasions. Although I spent most of the general election in Cornwall, where I live—not very successfully, as those opposite me will have noticed—I had one sortie out to Oxfordshire. I went to the constituency of Oxford West and Abingdon —a seat which I am delighted to say that my now honourable friend Layla Moran won. That was not due to me, but I had a very interesting meeting in Abingdon.

The meeting was made up of people who worked at the Culham research centre in Oxfordshire, which is one of the hearts of Euratom. I shall concentrate on that area during my five minutes. It was a mixed meeting. There were a number of non-UK EU citizens there—highly qualified scientists, mainly young—but it was predominantly UK citizens who worked there. They were—not distraught perhaps, but deeply sad that something to which they were completely dedicated, typically for scientists, was being undermined by a decision that they could not understand and which seemed completely political.

Why had that decision taken place? Euratom is not a part of the European Union, so the referendum did not include it. Yet they saw a Government who had somehow been gung-ho in saying, “If we are to throw out the baby of the European Union in a hard Brexit, then we’ll get out of the Euratom bathwater as well”. The scientists saw their very important world—the world of frontier nuclear science, which we see as important to us as a nation—as something that will potentially be destroyed.

I would like to ask the Government about some key areas, because this is not just some peripheral European organisation; it is central to a number of things that we can do in our economy and in science in the future. First, if we have no nuclear safeguarding authority to replace Euratom, which does all that work for the International Atomic Energy Agency and therefore for us, we will not be able to trade a lot of nuclear fuels internationally. In fact, if the United States traded with us it would actually be a criminal offence unless Congress enabled a new relationship with our safeguarding authority. I am pleased to see from the gracious Speech that a nuclear safeguarding Bill is coming along, but I remind the Government that just writing the legislation does not actually get us there. I would be very interested to understand what conversations we have had with the International Atomic Energy Agency to pave our way to that legislation becoming effective.

We will also be very dependent on Euratom as it continues. We have a project, which I think is the biggest in the world, called Hinkley C. We also have a number of nuclear power stations that will be decommissioned during the 2020s. We are completely reliant on French technology, and to a degree on French money, to ensure that happens. Will we have a nuclear co-operation agreement with Euratom?

Euratom itself has agreements with nine other countries that enable us to trade with them. The most important of those, in terms of fissile materials and all such areas, are Kazakhstan, the United States, Australia and Japan. Again, how are we to replace those agreements if we are not part of the European Union and cannot undertake agreements until we have withdrawn from it and agreed a withdrawal agreement from Euratom?

Then there are the perhaps more boring but important issues about the ownership of fissile material that is owned by Euratom. Are we resolving that? Are we starting to talk to Euratom about how we divide those property rights and the fissile materials that will be left within the UK when we leave? We also need procedures for export and import to make those nuclear co-operation agreements work. What will happen with those?

The other area I want to concentrate on, in my last few seconds, is that of research and development. In one of the briefings I received recently, I read that the Government had made an offer on the Culham JET research programme, which finishes at the end of next year, I believe. What will happen with being able to continue that? It is absolutely key to our future in this area, yet, as I read it, the Government seem to have said, “Well, Europe and Euratom can stay there”—very big of us—“and we will continue to take a fair share of the costs of that operation”. That offer seems to me to be eminently refusable—are we going to up our game on this?

If we do not resolve these issues, it could mean that our nuclear power stations can no longer operate, that we lose key staff in a really important area of scientific research and development, and that hospitals are unable to import—as they have to—isotopes that are required in certain medical procedures. All of that is real. It is not just about a cliff edge, it is about international rules that will make it a criminal offence or impossible for jurisdictions to trade with us. On that basis, I ask the Government to give this their complete concentration, and to make sure that we avoid this very different cliff edge and that our nuclear industry can move forward with confidence rather than the hesitation that it has at the moment.

18:52

[Lord Birt (CB)]

My Lords, we are mired in crisis. Our economy, our public finances, our Brexit negotiating leverage and our Government are all weak, not strong. The causes of this run deep. The UK was ill prepared for the sharp global shock of 2008. After a period of overoptimism in our public finances and of inadequate financial regulation, our cupboard was bare. So nearly 10 years later, we are still borrowing. We have the fourth-highest deficit of 35 advanced economies and are projected not to reach surplus till 2025. Everything and everyone have been affected by our massive reversal of fortune.

Public funding is constrained, and services are stretched. The average British worker will earn less in real terms in 2021 than in 2008. Our currency has declined in value, and inflation is rising. We are now the worst-performing economy in the G7. Interest rates may soon rise and put a further burden on government finances. Meanwhile, our productivity remains stubbornly low, and we feel the pinch of decades of underinvestment in infrastructure. We have not, in recent times, governed ourselves well as a country.

Against this unhappy backdrop, the decision was taken to hold a referendum. During the referendum campaign, neither of our main parties, for quite different reasons, laid bare the full consequences of leaving the EU. Laying disaster on disaster, an election, held to strengthen the Government’s hand in the Brexit negotiations, has fatally weakened it. During the election campaign, there was still no meaningful debate about the Brexit options, nor about the parlous state of our economy or the interplay between the two; rather, as we know, populism ruled. An electorate understandably dispirited by austerity were told what they wanted to hear rather than exposed to unwelcome realities.

Moreover, neither main party showed any respect for, or understanding of, the real economy, which is the motor of our prosperity. The dazzling professionals from around the world who populate our financial and corporate sectors were offensively dubbed “citizens of nowhere”. The Opposition, on the other hand, threatened to raise corporation tax, and further to set the highest tax burden the UK has known for 30 years, on the very eve of Brexit—at just the moment when we need to lure business and talent to stay in the UK, not to frighten them away. When we most needed a mature debate about Britain’s future, we failed to have one.

The British people voted for Brexit, and it must be delivered. But they did not vote for any particular form of Brexit, and they will not thank anyone if a cliff-edge Brexit provokes a deepening and ever-extending austerity and long-term relative impoverishment. None of my noble friend Lord Bird’s drinking friends, on either side of the argument, will welcome that. Our highest priority in these negotiations must be—as so many have said in one form or another—free, frictionless trade with what is by far the world’s biggest economic bloc. To achieve that, we will have to come to our senses and compromise on any number of matters, but above all perhaps on immigration.

It is absurd to define students as immigrants. We cannot denude business of some of the world’s best talents. It is not remotely clear who will work in our care homes or pick our strawberries if we stick to the Government’s declared targets for net migration. Let us also face up to the fact that our economy and our public finances are not remotely healthy enough to withstand the shock of a cliff-edge Brexit.

The Government are in power but without a mandate. The forces of moderation and realism on all sides in both Houses of Parliament must now come together, not to frustrate Brexit but to ensure that the effective functioning of our economy is our prime consideration, and that our exit is graduated. That is surely the spirit of this eloquent debate and that is the message that I hope the Minister will take away tonight.

18:57

[Baroness Byford (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to listen to and take part in today’s debate, although I might say that I have found some of it very “doom and gloom”. We really need to accept that the electorate made their decision: we are where we are and surely we should be moving forward. I am a very simple soul. Although she is not in her place at the moment, the noble Baroness, Lady Symons of Vernham Dean, said that the electorate had reflected. Actually, the electorate did not vote for a Labour Government who would have done things differently. Yes, our majority was nowhere near where we hoped it would be, but a Conservative Government were elected, to move us forward and to take part in moving Brexit forward.

We anticipate the Bills known to be coming before us. I look forward to those concerning agriculture—which I presume includes horticulture—and fisheries, and indeed the trade Bill. Britain has always been a trading nation, and I hope that the trade Bill will establish ambitious free trade agreements with our EU neighbours, and see fair trade agreements around the world.

I declare my interests, particularly in food and farming. Here I should remind the House of our family’s arable farming interests in Suffolk. We need to reflect upon the UK’s dependency on imported foods. One should not forget that we have a negative agri-trade balance of some £22.4 billion.

Food and drink manufacturers add some £28.2 billion to our GDP and generate more than £20 billion in exports. Around 400,000 people earn their living in food and drink manufacturing, in around 6,800 firms. The farm-to-fork industry is an economic superpower, worth £110 billion to the UK and employing more than 4 million people. Sometimes I think we forget what a success story we have there. I look to these forthcoming Bills ensuring that opportunities to see fair trade are at the heart of achieving a successful outcome.

I turn to horticulture, which I presume will be in the proposed agriculture Bill. In discussions that I have had recently with farmers at the Lincolnshire and Suffolk agricultural shows, three points have been raised that I want to reflect on in the House today. The first concern is fair trade, specifically including welfare standards within the livestock industry. For example, will imported food be required to have the same standards that are set for our UK farmers?

The second issue is the whole question of workers, whether they be seasonal or highly skilled. Earlier today we had a question on seasonal workers. At the moment we have 80,000 seasonal workers coming in to help with horticulture, and there is a need to address the way that that whole scheme works. I was quite taken with the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, that maybe we need to think wider outside the EU as well, but that is for another day.

The third issue was any future arrangements that will replace, or not, the single farm payment. The Government have agreed to maintain current payments until 2022, which is welcome as that will enable environmental work, which goes on regularly on farms, to be carried out in an organised programme. However, what happens then? What happens in the interim? If one scheme finishes, when does the next one start?

I would be grateful if the Minister would clarify whether the proposed discussions on fisheries will result in a UK Bill. No doubt it would be a complex Bill, and my noble friend Lady Wilcox raised specific issues in her contribution on Monday. I understand that the UK will regain control of its exclusive economic zone and that new fishing quotas will be established, but I suggest that regional co-operation, as indeed is the case now, will probably be the best route to good outcomes.

There was a suggestion that we might have some kind of technical Bill to improve technology for young people. There is much to be done in exciting people along the apprentice route; the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham, spoke about this. Not everyone has to go to university, and technology is changing so rapidly at the moment that anything we can do to encourage young people to go down this route would be good.

I return to trade. I said at the beginning that we were a trading nation, whether that be in commodities, commerce, financial services or manufacturing. I hope we will rally round and make these Brexit discussions the success that was voted for a year ago.

19:02

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords, I have the privilege of chairing the European Union Justice Sub-Committee, which scrutinises legal matters and deals with regulations and sanctions emanating from the EU. In the period since the referendum, we have issued two reports. One is on the acquired rights of EU nationals, which will be debated next Tuesday, and I encourage Members of this House to attend and take part. The other report we have issued is on civil justice issues in the Brexit negotiations affecting individuals, families and businesses. Currently, we are beginning an inquiry into consumer rights, and we are taking evidence on the potential impact on those rights as we leave the EU. The report that will follow will look at patent law.

All those reports show that a hugely beneficial body of law exists across Europe and works to the benefit of businesses as well as ordinary citizens, but it depends on reciprocity. Bringing in new legislation here, which is supposed to bring all this home, is not going to deal with that need. What is being done to create that reciprocity, and are the negotiations taking account of the need for it? We have a very interesting system just now called the “Brussels regime”, which creates opportunities through protocols that enable enforcement. It is enforcement that is the difficult aspect of issues such as divorce and maintenance for children in cross-border marriages, or if you are trading with Poland and the company goes bust and you want your money back. Currently, we have mechanisms for getting an order in the courts here and having it enforced over there. What is going to be done about enforcement? Those are difficult matters of law that should be exercising us, and they show us the complexities of what is going to be involved in the negotiations to come.

I am an unrepentant remainer, and as far as I am concerned it is clear that this country is making a grave mistake in deciding to leave the EU. Economically, it makes no sense, but it also undermines one of the greatest projects of international collaboration in the history of the world. So much that has been carefully woven together over decades is being unravelled. Behind it is an aspect that I feel is forgotten in so much of this discussion: a project for peace and justice. In a globalised world, being part of a trading bloc makes absolute sense. We trade with each other within the bloc, but we also trade as a group with the world. As the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, many of those preferential trade agreements work to our benefit. Being in a group provides us with protection and solidarity when being buffeted in globalised markets. We have created high standards among ourselves regarding the ways in which we deal with each other, and in turn we demand high standards when we are dealing with the world. We do so through law and regulation.

I want to remind the Government and some of the people who sit on the Opposition Benches that cross-border relationships require cross-border law, and supranational bodies are needed to deal with disputes. We need international courts—you can call them what you like, but you need them—and good regulation. It is part of the incremental way in which we improve the world. The fixation on the European Court of Justice is ludicrous. You need a court if you make a deal. If you make deals with the World Trade Organization, you will end up going before what is essentially a court if things go wrong.

However, we hear from people like the noble Lord, Lord Robathan, who seem not to understand that while we may have marvellous judges and courts here—I am second to no one in saying how great our judges are—they are no good if, say, you are having a battle with Poland over a Euro-warrant. The Poles are not going to want that decided by our courts; there has to be an ultimate court that is seen to be independent of either of the jurisdictions to deal with those overarching issues. If we want to be part of the Euro-warrant and Eurojust, that system of collaboration that deals with terrorism and international crime, then we have to get our minds set on the fact that we need to have courts.

I want to mention the matter of regulation. If you look at the recent flaming inferno in the Kensington tower block, you see where lowering building regulation standards and sneering about health and safety standards gets you—scores of people dead. Our children are protected by many of the regulations that we have created over the years, with British lawyers often taking the lead because it is a collaborative project: insisting that there should be no lead in paint; that plastic toys should contain no poisons; that fertilisers and insecticides are not toxic; and that pharmaceuticals and other drugs and medicines reach high standards so that we do not have repeats of disasters like thalidomide. You will not get those kinds of relationships in trading with China for some time to come. By being included in a trading bloc but, more importantly, by being an active participant in it, providing our legal expertise and joining in with others, we raise the bar for other countries within the EU, for ourselves and across the world for the people we trade with as a bloc. For years, we have been subjected to a barrage of tripe from the tabloid press claiming that there was a tide of laws coming at us, when in fact we have been at the heart of creating some of that very good law.

Brexit was supposed to be at the heart of the election, yet for many people it was not. We are in a deeply divided country where the better-off do fine, thank you, while the rest feel totally undervalued. That includes many doctors and people working in healthcare, law and the sort of areas that I work in, social services, probation, the police and so on. Labour’s great success in this election—a Corbyn-led Labour success—was that its manifesto touched a nerve with the public, especially the young and those who are disadvantaged. It was a social justice manifesto that directly challenged the neoliberal economic policies that have damaged our communities and are destroying our public services.

The young—basically, those who want to be in Europe—came out in favour of that manifesto. I say to noble Lords on the opposite Benches that they should listen to the young. It was the old who voted for them, and who voted in Mansfield against Labour, but the young are increasing in number. The young will wash you away if you do not listen to them because they want a different world and a different society, and they want to be in Europe.

19:09

[Lord Owen (Ind SD)]

My Lords, the situation following the election is serious; it would be foolish to deny that. We are now in an international negotiation. Fortunately, we have been there before and have procedures for this. We have procedures whereby, in an international negotiation, the Government consult the Official Opposition. We have been doing that for 50 years, and it would be utter folly if we did not pursue that policy with ever greater attention now, facing the situation that we do politically. It concentrates the mind that the Official Opposition—who, incidentally, in their manifesto made it very clear that they wanted to support Brexit—may well win an election and face those negotiations, so it is not an abstract issue, and I think it was a very sensible suggestion by the Secretary of State for Brexit that his opposite number, Keir Starmer, although he is certainly used to having secrets, be made a privy counsellor and should be part of that tradition of international negotiations held in some degree of secrecy, so that the Official Opposition should know and would, in effect, have the right to call out some solutions as unacceptable. The Government can ignore that, but they would be very foolish to do so.

This negotiation will go on for longer than we thought—some always predicted this. It is not going to be a two-year negotiation. We are already into that two years and, quite understandably, Monsieur Barnier has made it clear that he has to come to some form of solution to put through all the different procedures by the autumn of 2018. Everybody accepts now—the term is “implementation period”—that, when we leave the EU, there will have to be a vehicle by which we continue the negotiations. It cannot be Article 50.

I believe, and have made clear my view to the Government privately for many months, that the existing machinery that we could most easily adopt is to remain a contracting party to the European Economic Area agreement, as a non-EU contributing member. That is a framework which they and we know—we have been in that same framework ourselves. I do not need to speak about it any further, because, fortunately, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, former president of the Supreme Court, summarised much of the factual background of the EEA agreement. We can leave the EEA on a year’s notice. It has a court procedure. I am happy to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy, that there is necessity for courts in international arrangements.

Interestingly, the European Union has already shown some flexibility when it discussed this issue with Switzerland. It said to Switzerland at one stage, “Why don’t you dock with the EFTA Court?”. It is really the court for non-EU members of the EEA. That operates, and it would be perfectly possible, if we enter, to have a judge of our own as part of that court and use that procedure. “Ah”, someone might say, “but if you then leave to go to the free trading model, what would happen to those residual agreements?”. We would then dock back into the court procedure. There may be other ways. There may be bespoke agreements which people can produce, but there is no time for such negotiation. We have to seize an existing vehicle, operate within it and try to formulate solutions.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, said, who is no longer in her place, who was an experienced negotiator when she was involved in the EU, there will be compromises. There will be some very difficult and unpleasant compromises along this route—there always were, but they are not discussed enough. The political parties have got out of the habit of acknowledging the honourable nature of compromise. That is part of the political structure that we have had in this country for decades—centuries—and we have built it up slowly. These procedures matter. Perhaps there is a better procedure, but this one has the flexibility that we will need as we approach this issue.

Then people want fixed timings. There is now discussion of why we need to be in a trade arrangement, restricting trade. What would happen if we were able to get a NAFTA mark 2 with Canada and the United States? That is not at all impossible. That would make it easier for us to leave the transitional arrangements of the EEA. It might not be the determining factor, but it would certainly change the position. Let us not tie ourselves in knots or give ourselves too many deadlines. If you want flexibility, it is there within these different international bodies, and the European Economic Area agreement is the best.

Finally, I would say that we must not use Article 127 and leave the agreement. We are there as of right as a contracting party. What happened when countries in EFTA joined the EU? We made a few minor technical arrangements and they transited from being members of the EEA to being EU members of the EEA. That can be done, but if they do not want to let us do it, we have to be prepared to go to the Vienna court—an international body, which is actually superior to the ECJ—to argue our case as to why we wish to stay in that agreement. I am absolutely sure that the common sense application of international law would be that we should be allowed to stay. I hope that we do not have to go through that and that the EU negotiators will see the value of the country and the world knowing, as soon as humanly possible, where we will be for the next four to five years—first in the Article 50 process and then in the EEA. That at least provides a structure to weld together our disagreements and agreements in the interests of Article 8. We should remember that there is not just Article 50; there is Article 8 in the treaties, which is about good neighbourliness.

19:17

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

My Lords, I am not competent to follow that most interesting and in-depth speech from the noble Lord. Indeed, my original speech is in the bin. I thought, as I wrote it, that I could not see how we would get ourselves out of the muddle we are in, so I was going to say that that made me a sympathiser with the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong: “Stop the world, I want to get off”—not that his recipe would be acceptable.

The debate so far, the analysis of what we face and the response have been so muddled and woeful that it was no surprise when the young voted against the idea that the Prime Minister’s authority needed reinforcing. I may say that that goes for my quite extended family. Authority to do what? To be a delegate to deliver a Nigel Farage outcome? To eschew dialogue and consultation and go ahead on fixed nationalistic lines? That is not negotiation as they understood it, and I can only agree. There was no attempt to describe other points of view or create good will. Lip service was paid to making things work for all on both sides of the channel, but there was no detail of how and why we would propose and negotiate a bespoke agreement, which is what we and the 27 need—but only, I fear, in the longer run. We are bound to take a long time to get there.

Today has given me some hope. Maybe there will be cross-party work done. Both the leading parties have good reason to look for consensus within and between themselves. Maybe devolved views will gain their place. Maybe we will listen carefully to the 27; they have their problems too. If so, let us watch, as the noble Lord, Lord Jopling, said, and wait and see how negotiations go—friendly and constructive negotiations, God willing. Hold our fire. Maybe we are not simply exiting such a cruel, unhelpful world but instead building a new relationship with the 27. Europe needs it.

19:21

[Lord Cashman (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to speak in this debate, and especially pleased to have listened to my good friend and neighbour the noble Lord, Lord Owen. We were on different sides during the referendum, and I well remember him and Lady Owen standing on their balcony and me standing on mine as a flotilla of ships came up the Thames. He was welcoming them in with one gesture, and I was welcoming them to go the opposite way with another gesture.

It is worth repeating that, whatever else the election was, it was not an endorsement of the Prime Minister’s approach to Brexit, and it was certainly not a mandate for more of the same. It helps no one to argue otherwise. On our relationship with the European Union, more than anything else, this Government must change direction. All options must now be on the table. The issue of the European Union goes beyond, as others have said, the old party politics. It is about the future of the country—the country we pass on to the next generation and generations yet to come. It is for that reason that the Government must start to listen. They must stop facing down opposition by relentlessly and robotically referring to the “settled will of the people” in an advisory referendum. Nor should government Ministers question the patriotism of television interviewers because they dare to try to hold Ministers accountable for EU negotiations, to which the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, referred.

Even if the will of the people had been settled, and it never is, upon what is it settled—the misinformation, lies, fabrication and blatant propaganda of the referendum campaign? As I said a year ago in this House, that referendum was not a great democratic exercise. Democracy is undertaken on the basis of informing the electorate, not misinforming, and by illumination, not by deceit. The excesses were dangerous. It was a referendum campaign that pandered to people’s fears that unleashed a darkness and a narrow, nasty nationalism that I thought had long disappeared from this country. That darkness is still with us. We are a deeply divided country.

I revisit these events because we must now have the courage to take a different course. We must find again, as other noble Lords have said, consensus and wide agreement. There is too much at risk: not only jobs, the economy, inward investment, a brain drain, but rights and freedoms too—the rights of more than 16 million people who voted differently and feel ignored and excluded; the rights of those excluded from voting in the referendum in the first place; and the rights of the younger generation. Then there are the rights of more than 3 million people from other EU countries now living, working and settled here, who, with their families, face an uncertain future. Will they finish their training and their education? Will their employment continue or will they be replaced? Will their children be allowed to stay if there are complications about length of residence in the United Kingdom? They are 3.2 million ordinary women and men, children and young people. Students, teachers, nurses, cleaners, porters, waiters, doctors, academics and scientists—our neighbours and, yes, our friends in every part and walk of our daily lives are all now plunged into uncertainty, anxiety and despair.

The same plight affects more than 1 million British citizens in similar situations and circumstances in the other EU countries. Futures are now uncertain, hopes are shattering before them and careers are upturned. What happens to family unity, let alone family reunification, especially when marriages, partnerships and families occur across national citizenships?

Let me deal specifically with the Prime Minister’s proposal for EU citizens when we leave the EU. I ask the Minister directly: what will be the status of the individuals who apply? I hope the noble Lord is making notes of the questions. During the processing of applications, will those individuals be allowed to continue in employment and education and still have access to all rights and benefits, including access to the NHS? Will there be fast-track applications? Will one application suffice for one family? If not, why not? Will the cost be waived, given that the Government are changing people’s status?

Given that there will be crossover in other EU countries, will there be a supranational body to oversee appeals and judgments? Will the Government transpose into UK law unreservedly the family reunification directive? Finally, how long will it take to process potentially 3.2 million applications and the supporting documentation? I look forward to the answers.

Even at this stage it is not too late. I say this as much to my own Front Bench in another place as I do to the Government. It is not too late to reinforce our decent values and decent principles. If Parliament will not reverse what is in my opinion the national suicide of Brexit, it must deliver all these rights and end the uncertainty for all citizens by retaining access to the single market and the customs union while reinforcing the rules of conditionality on freedom of movement and residence, as so eloquently outlined in his brilliant speech by my noble friend Lord Adonis, whose amendment I support, and indeed again brilliantly outlined by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood.

Now is the time to bury political pride, and to do what is in the country’s interests. If we do not take this course, the consequences for the UK nationally and internationally, and for its citizens, will be as deep and as profound as they will be long lasting. My great fear is that this Government are not listening and will not listen.

19:28

[Lord Taverne (LD)]

My Lords, today’s conventional wisdom among pro-Europeans is that we must go for a soft Brexit. Some say, “Stay in the single market, the customs union, or both, or have some sort of Norwegian solution”. I contest that view. I doubt whether a soft Brexit will be on offer; I believe it will not be acceptable to the Government if offered, and if it were acceptable it would not be that much better than a hard Brexit.

The Government and MPs have consistently misjudged the mood of the 27, which are not in a mood to accommodate us. They see the Brexit vote as a stupid act of self-harm, and now a distraction from the need to build a new Europe, based on the new German-French entente. Nor, I believe, would Norway welcome the inevitable disruption of the EEA.

A soft Brexit would involve not only political difficulties but technical negotiations that are far more complicated than is generally realised, almost as complex as a new free trade agreement. It is unlikely to be agreed within the time available. All versions of a soft Brexit mean, as far as I can see, accepting the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice—anathema to Mrs May—and accepting EU regulations governing trade, with no say in their formulation. As has been observed, sovereignty would be not regained but lost. We would also have to accept at least some free movement of labour. It will also do nothing for free trade and services, with London’s financial companies losing their passport rights and being unable to operate inside the European Union, and, probably, with London’s very profitable clearing-house activities moving out.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made an extremely eloquent and impressive speech and the noble Lord, Lord Birt, said something of the same kind—although he is not in his place. If it is so important to stay inside the single market and so vital that we stay inside the customs union, the question arises: why leave? I come back to Donald Tusk’s advice, when he said that in the end the choice would be between a hard Brexit and remain. Does that mean that, if remain is impossible, we are bound for a hard Brexit?

But is remain impossible? Let us consider three propositions. First, leavers did not vote for Brexit to make us poorer. Secondly, Brexit will make us poorer and is already doing so. Thirdly, the narrow majority of Brexit voters, when they realise what Brexit means, may change their minds and should have a chance to do so. The first proposition—that voters did not vote for a poorer Brexit—is accepted by Philip Hammond and strongly confirmed by polls. A very thorough YouGov inquiry into what motivated leavers carried out on the eve of the referendum found that,

“very few expect, or would tolerate, a hit to their living standards”,

and they were almost unanimous in believing that,

“leaving the EU was a cost-free option”.

Proposition 2—that Brexit makes us poorer—is supported by evidence that grows stronger by the day. Many examples have been given, and I shall not repeat them, except to say that one of the claims that our economy is strong is very much falsified by the fact that our growth is now the slowest in the G7 and what little growth we see is based on unsustainable levels of household debt. There is, of course, a very serious and growing shortage of key workers in vital public services such as the NHS, and sectors of industry such as the building and hospitality trades and food farming—and things will get worse. Further serious adverse effects of Brexit are forecast by the overwhelming majority of economists.

I come to proposition 3—that leavers should be given a chance to change their minds. That is the most controversial. MPs insist that we must all obey the referendum verdict—the wishes of the people—and the Minister in her opening remarks said that Brexit was not revocable. That is a terrible statement to make, because it is deeply antidemocratic. It is the essence of democracy that people can change their minds. It is autocracies that stop people changing their minds. Of course, if circumstances change and people’s views change, Brexit could be reversible. It is becoming clearer that when people voted last June they did not know what Brexit meant—and now it is becoming clearer that it means lower living standards. We also know that that is not what leavers voted for. Part of the YouGov poll came to the conclusion that a massive shift of opinion could not be ruled out. If events produce a change of views of Brexit voters, as well they might, those of us who are still a small minority who argue for a cross-party campaign to stop Brexit will be not ignoring the people’s will but supporting it.

19:33

[Lord Trefgarne (Con)]

My Lords, I shall not detain your Lordships very long or speak about the merits or demerits of Brexit or of any of the amendments before your Lordships this evening.

I have the honour to chair your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, which looks into the policy of every statutory instrument laid before your Lordships to see whether the rationale for the legislative change is sufficiently explained and if the explanation is convincing. We act as a sifting mechanism to identify any instruments that may be of particular interest or flawed in some way. In the last Session, we drew 51 such instruments to the special attention of your Lordships—some 7.7% of the total. Our committee is gratified to see the frequency with which the points of concern set out in our reports are raised by noble Lords in debates and Questions. We take it as a confirmation that we are performing a useful service to the House. We are grateful for departments’ and ministerial responses to our queries, which we believe inform and assist our deliberations and your Lordships’ proceedings. The committee sees instruments laid by almost every department and is therefore well placed to observe and comment on trends in how statutory instruments are presented. In the last year or so, we have been pressing for improvement in the quality of the documents that accompany statutory instruments, precisely with Brexit in mind, to ensure that the content of the legislation is well presented and easily understood. In all this, we are greatly assisted by our excellent advisers.

In relation to Brexit, we are told that up to 1,000 additional items of delegated legislation are expected once the great repeal Bill and associated Brexit Bills are passed. We have much practice in dealing with statutory instruments efficiently and stand ready to assist your Lordships as best we can in accordance with our terms of reference.

19:36

[Lord Triesman (Lab)]

My Lords, I join others who have welcomed the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to her current role. I had never taken her for a masochist, but I notice that she has brought a security blanket, and I suspect that we will probably all need one very soon.

Your Lordships will know, as it is no secret, of my opposition to leaving the EU, but of course I also know what the nation decided, by a very narrow majority of 51.9% to 48.1% in the referendum. I understand the importance of that vote and the multiple reasons for leaving given to researchers by the people who voted to leave. As many noble Lords have said, events in this country have moved on. The Prime Minister went to the country seeking a strong mandate and an effective parliamentary majority to negotiate a Brexit incorporating leaving the European single market and the customs union, all part of the same general proposal. As we know, she lost her majority, and she lost a mandate for what I can only regard as having always been a reckless plan. Indeed, she will now be propped up by the votes of only 10 people, for whom we seem to have paid £100 million to £150 million per vote, if you put it in quantifiable terms.

If noble Lords look at the votes cast for the unambiguous leave parties in the general election—and even then there is the complexity of the DUP’s position on the border in Ireland—they can see that the votes equal 14,556,247, or 45.1% of those voting. The number who voted for parties supporting stay quite explicitly, as the Lib Dems did, or the retention of the European single market or the customs union, or even the slightly slidy ways of describing the same thing, which I am afraid my party engaged in, but who none the less were quite clear about what was being said, came to 16,422,498, or 51%. Given the basis on which the Prime Minister called the election, that seems to me to be a perfectly legitimate way of looking at the result. So there is no inhibition on us, and there is an entitlement to argue this through in every respect—a point made with clarity by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, yesterday.

There is no case for retro-fitting what happened last June, not least the inevitability that we must walk away because a better prospect of settlement is merely whistling in the dark. And there is no case for reverse-engineering the reasons given for calling the election. I have heard people try to describe all sorts of reasons why the Prime Minister called it, but she called it in explicit terms. We all understood those terms, and I do not think that there can be any question about what she was seeking as she described the strong and stable team for the purpose of negotiating an absolute Brexit. Nothing was said in any of the opening speeches that appears to recognise the dangers that she has placed the country in. Maybe we will hear about that in the closing speeches.

The then Government, and today’s minority Government, not least the Chancellor of the Exchequer, have explicitly recognised the dangers and stormy waters ahead. My noble friend Lady Hayter has also recognised this in the amendment that she seeks to move: that no deal is probably the worst possible disaster. Incidentally, as somebody who has spent their life as a negotiator, I understand that you do not give away your hand to the other side, but there are occasions when you just do not say any of that kind of stuff. There is nothing that compels you to put it in those terms in the first place. It is amateur night.

The record numbers who registered to vote on the deadline this year were mainly young people, many of whom were voting for the first time and who had been excluded from the referendum as the amendment to enfranchise them had been defeated. We must face the fact that they have come back to exact revenge. And they will. Our job is both to test the Government, which of course is the function of this House, and to face the challenge of thinking strategically. It is not, and it never was, a matter of simple tactics. Anybody who tries to approach it in that way will miss the key factors and the key opportunities to get to a better position. I strongly support my noble friend Lord Adonis in his amendment, precisely because it is strategic, and it is a strategy guided by principle.

I argue, very briefly, that the leave campaign was driven by two main forces. The first was those who hanker after the past, either because they fell through the holes in the global economic net and felt unhelped and disregarded or because they felt that there was an appeal in reclaiming some of the distant sense of community that was perhaps no longer so apparent. There were others who also felt a distinctive longing for our mercantile past and the historical trajectory of our island people. No matter that the economic structures have changed beyond recognition and that the old way is beyond reinvention. The world of our empire and the way in which we treated the peoples of that empire are long gone—and thank goodness for that.

The second force needs some deciphering. It is a force that I associate with the noble Lords, Lord Lamont and Lord Forsyth, Michael Gove and Liam Fox: that we should abandon almost all regulation and get to a position where we really are like tax havens such as Singapore, without regulation or anything that might be a barrier. This is completely at odds with the first of those motivations, which is an appeal for localism. It is instead an appeal for untrammelled globalism, which is why it is reasonable to say that people who are at the bottom of the economic pile will be as hurt as they will be in the future.

I hope that over the months the Government will spare us a diet of soundbites and platitudes, and on occasion grubby Trumpian lies, and will tell people the truth. People are now fully entitled to know that truth, particularly the younger generation who have come out and become political in these circumstances and who are entitled to know what the future holds for them. They look at young people across Europe and across the world and recognise that many are of them are innovative and want to do significant things in this and other economies. They do not see them as different or alien, so let us get rid of some of the xenophobia that there has also been in this. Let us treat people with respect, and respect their intelligence. That ought to go for all of us. They know, I think, that they will have a much better future with the kind of arrangement that my noble friend Lord Adonis has recommended. I wholly support his amendment. It provides clarity for our route of travel and has a strong prospect of building trust, and I say to noble Lords on my own Front Bench that it will help them to stop hopping from one foot to another in order to try to persuade us that there is a plan when there plainly is not.

19:44

[Baroness Deech (CB)]

Ever since the election there has been unfounded speculation about what it meant in relation to Brexit. It revealed acceptance by the large majority of the British electorate that we are to leave the EU. It featured in the manifestos of the two largest parties, and the one party that avowedly pitched for the remain vote did not do well. Brexit has retained its legitimacy as the settled will of the electorate, which may have been strengthened by the perception that the other 27 nations are not acting as our friends and show no good will.

Much has been made of offhand statements that the door to revocation of Article 50 and a return to the fold remains open, but at what price? Humiliation, maybe forced acceptance of the Schengen area and the euro, the loss of what remains of our opt-outs and our rebate, and of course the loss of any influence in the future, having made our threat and failed to secure reform, and reappearing with our collective tail between our legs. There will be no true Brexit if the deal is to stay in the single market and the customs union. Lengthy transition provisions will be deceptive, because they will be a way of extending the current situation indefinitely. It is not all about money, which the remainers focus on; it is about recognition of the EU’s failure to uphold human rights, its inability to stop the countries of eastern Europe sliding back to authoritarianism, its failures in security and its abysmal foreign policy.

Undermining the negotiators who are dealing with the complicated issues on behalf of the UK public is another way of trying to reverse the decision. Similar exits have taken place before, with the ending of colonial rule over India, Australia and Canada, which was complicated and lengthy but arrived at because the aim was clear. The reunification of Germany and the dismantling of the Soviet Union were again just as momentous, and achieved with great hardship in the latter case but regarded as worth while. I suggest that opponents of Brexit now will be as relinquished by history as opponents of those movements were in the past.

I wish to be constructive and there are some suggestions that may be offered in relation to the disentanglement of UK law and EU law during and after Brexit. They relate to the repeal Bill, which may not be great in title but certainly will be in effect. It will repeal the 1972 European Communities Act, which gave European law precedence over laws passed in the British Parliament. It will also end the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, which incidentally has been much criticised in the past by British lawyers for its quality. All existing EU legislation will be copied across into domestic UK law to ensure a smooth transition on the day after Brexit. In technical language, the acquis communautaire will be incorporated into domestic law. The judiciary is anxious that it should be made plain in statute what authority is to be given to the past decisions of the European Court of Justice after Brexit in relation to matters that arose before Brexit and matters after we leave. This wish has been expressed by the Supreme Court Justice the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, and by the Lord Chief Justice the noble and learned Lord, Lord Thomas, in his Scarman lecture this week.

The sensitivities of this exercise are revealed in the plans set out in the gracious Speech to carve out certain areas of law for separate treatment. The Lord Chief Justice has suggested that the Law Commission, which has been an outstandingly successful vehicle for law reform for 50 years, should be used to bring its great legal and technical expertise to assist with legislating for Brexit in areas that are more technical than political. As an example, he singled out the choice of legal rules that lie ahead of us in deciding which legal system is to apply in cross-border conflicts, known as the Rome I and Rome II regulations. Lawyers and professional organisations have put forward various proposals and solutions, but a final decision by Parliament would be much assisted by assessment and proposals devised by the Law Commission in apolitical scrutiny.

Finally, let us consider the position of this House in UK democratic decision-making. It is an overwhelmingly pro-remain House, and this is a risky position to adopt. It is the role of the House to support democracy, to check the Government, and often to ensure that the needs and demands of the electorate are heard. In the aftermath of the tragic Grenfell Tower fire, we all agreed that the voices of the people should be heard. It is time to stop labelling leavers as misinformed and uneducated. That is just another way of drowning out the voices of the majority.

19:49

[Lord Howard of Rising (Con)]

My Lords, there has been discussion about the Salisbury convention and whether it should apply in the case of manifesto promises made by the present Government. It clearly should. The Salisbury convention was introduced to avoid this House defying the other place when it seeks to implement a clearly expressed wish of the people. The convention was introduced because it was considered wrong for our unelected House to reject legislation specifically endorsed by the electorate. That remains the case.

If one thing is absolutely clear, it is that the British public have without doubt approved of Great Britain leaving the European Union, in spite of some of the wishful thinking expressed today, first, through the referendum, where, in spite of the fear campaign, which was dishonest, the vote was clearly to leave; and, secondly, through the recent election, where 85% of the electorate voted for parties which included leaving the European Union in their manifestos. To say that the public have not made their views known and that the Salisbury convention should therefore not apply is semantics. It is also outrageous. Even if the Salisbury convention was not to apply, given the public support for leaving the European Union, it would be quite wrong for this House to impede the progress of this matter, least of all for a former Cabinet Secretary—for the first time in history, as far as I am aware—publicly to try to oppose the will of the people.

Leaving the European Union has to mean taking back the ability to make our own laws, which means removing the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. The ultimate authority over the laws of Great Britain has to be within these shores. Soft or hard Brexit, you cannot claim to have left the European Union if it remains the ultimate legal authority in Great Britain. Some claim that staying in the European Union enables one to be part of the law-making process. Being one-twenty-eighth of a decision-making body, with the inevitable compromises and deals, is not the same as making your own laws.

Just as our laws should be decided in Great Britain, so should any decision over immigration be made here. It should be up to this country to decide how many people from other countries are allowed to live here. This in no way prevents immigration but allows Britain, which will host the immigrants, to take the decision.

Great Britain must also leave the customs union which prevents this country making trade agreements with other parts of the world. May I remind your Lordships that many other countries trade successfully with the European Union without a customs union, notably the United States and China, both of which sell more to the rest of the European Union than does the United Kingdom? The Commission itself has said that 90% of future global growth will happen outside Europe’s borders. It would be folly to allow the customs union to prevent Great Britain having the greatest possible access to world markets. I do not know whether insisting on these fundamentals makes a hard or a soft Brexit; what I do know is that it is not worth sacrificing our laws, our ability to make trade agreements with the rest of the world and control of immigration into this country in pursuit of a trade agreement which already costs this country more than £60 billion every year, and will get worse if our exports to the European Union continue to decline at the present rate.

19:54

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to her new post. I know that she will roll up her sleeves and get on with it, as she always does.

As we approach today’s debate on Brexit legislation in the Queen’s Speech, it must surely be obvious by now that the very prospect of Brexit is contaminating the British economy, institutionalising uncertainty, making investors pause, discouraging the import of skills and students and sharpening prices in the shops. This is not so much a case of straws in the wind but tumbleweed beginning to blow down every high street in the land. Meanwhile, the reality of Brexit continues to provoke stress and confusion among all those thousands—indeed, hundreds of thousands—of Poles, Portuguese, French and Spanish, who have come to Britain to work, pay taxes and build families. Brexit has put them in limbo.

I for one was glad to hear the PM putting her opening position finally on the table in Brussels last week, and I hope that it will bring some reassurance—a measure of reassurance, at least—to EU citizens here, and reciprocally to UK citizens abroad, but—it is a very big “but”—settled status for life for individuals still raises myriad questions for people over extended family entitlement, political rights and the nature of the court that will oversee their legal rights as well as the all-important cut-off date and how much this will all cost EU citizens, as my noble friend Lord Cashman asked.

While Monday’s Statement sought to clarify the PM’s offer, it raised just as many further questions and will inevitably do so as it falls short of freedom of movement. Meanwhile, according to Le Monde this week, there has been a 254% increase in British people currently resident in France applying for French citizenship. Everyone in this House has a friend exploring whether, as Brexit looms, he or she can find a way to claim Irish citizenship—I speak as a dual national—Italian nationality or Danish nationality. Doubtless some people will wonder whether that fortnight spent on the Costa Brava as a teenager in the 1970s might just be enough to persuade the Spanish authorities in this regard.

Economically and socially, we have already fallen under the thrall of Article 50. Although it is a good thing that we have moved from a prime ministerial Brexit to a parliamentary Brexit, which at least offers some hope, we must not be naive about the tough road ahead as we try to preserve the richness of, for instance, our continental academic networks and our scientific collaborations, which are now under threat, and as we try to allow companies, for instance in Birmingham, to benefit from continuing to trade with their counterparts in Bordeaux and Berlin without one job being lost and without having to fill in an extra form, without one fresh tax to pay and without one moment of delay at a newly erected customs post somewhere along the way. All this is now under threat if we continue down the road of no access to the single market and no membership of the customs union. In this I very much support the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

We must not be naive about the tough road ahead in trying to deliver enhanced security and defence co-operation in an extremely troubled world. That delivery is now under threat. Of course, the Government will try to secure these things, but the Heseltine maxim continues to hang around this whole process—namely, we are simply not in charge of these negotiations. The EU is very much in the driving seat and will continue to be so, as my noble friend Lady Symons said. There is just no chance of emerging from these negotiations, despite all our best efforts, with the UK in a better trading position than the one we currently, but transiently, occupy. In truth, there is no such thing as a smooth and satisfactory withdrawal from the EU. Does anyone really think that Mark Carney is being wantonly alarmist when he tells us to expect from now on “weaker real income growth”? Is anyone juxtaposing the Brexit process with the fact that the UK economy is struggling to maintain a growth rate of 1.5%? The blunt truth is that the UK is not in good shape to take the Brexit hit, and hit it will be.

As it stands, we are due to cut ourselves off from the European Union at midnight on 29 March 2019, creating our own generation of midnight’s children, pointlessly partitioned out of their continental destiny. One can only hope that better wisdoms will prevail before that midnight hour.

20:01

[Viscount Waverley (CB)]

My Lords, my remarks this evening will be general in nature, not solution-driven. I look forward to contributing to each of the upcoming Brexit Bills.

I hope that the Government are in listening mode. I sense a degree of consensus building in the air this afternoon. This is in the national interest and that of the Government. Time will tell whether the architects of the referendum campaign were cavalier with the future of this country. Time will tell whether four decades of real engagement with the European Union was vitally in our country’s interest, and on balance whether a future as a central player in a resurgent Union would have suited our purposes. Political expediency has driven this referendum process and brought us to where we are today. The electorate have now determined an altered play following the election, with those architects who advocated to leave possibly being consigned to the political wilderness if the Brexit negotiations go wrong. Let us hope that we do not arrive at that outcome.

As a 30-year resident on the continent, I have to date been particularly mindful of the referendum result, recognising what appeared to be the inevitable. The inconclusive election, however, has removed those constraints in my mind. And, not for the first time, this House of unelected Peers must defend the best interests of democracy, decency and common sense—all things that large swathes of people in this country are praying will prevail. I am concerned that some who advocate a global vision are in fact narrow in their international visionary outlook. When those same people look to the past as evidence of the United Kingdom’s ability to see this through, they do not take sufficiently into account that we have moved on as a nation, just as I am concerned that the Commonwealth—which many deem to be our saving grace, particularly in trading issues—also has moved on, with multivector strategies. Understanding and being at the cutting edge of tomorrow’s supply-chain world is key to where our future lies and where we should target.

I will not be arguing on internal market or customs union issues, or the question of fisheries and so on this evening, but will observe extremely closely henceforth how things progress, recognising that the result of two years’ negotiation will need to be looked at as a whole, from the perspective of the national interest. The art of successful negotiation that will stand the test of time is to show that the end result is a balanced, positive outcome for both sides. Now is the time to focus on an approach to our continental partners that addresses their needs as well as those of the United Kingdom, and to build political consensus, knowing that the test of true leadership is the need on occasion to tell people what they do not want to hear.

Our media have entrenched positions, as do the continental press. They make for disturbing and disparaging reading. We are from all accounts facing an identity crisis; we have lost the reputation of being pragmatic and rational; the best we can hope for is the least possible economic disadvantage; and the British citizenry are depicted as victims. Monsieur Barnier was reported in an article last Saturday as saying that he needs the UK to set out its plans more clearly, as he cannot negotiate with himself. The director-general of the CBI, Carolyn Fairbairn, yesterday called for,

“action, clarity, leadership and a plan”.

In addition, it is alarming to witness the apparent disarray in Cabinet. We must not play poker with our great country.

We must address an underlying tragedy we face as a nation, caused not solely by Brexit. Our country feels more divided and under greater stress than for many a year. We have to find ways to overcome this division and bring people together. We must move on from the negativity of the party-political dogfight. I therefore join with others in encouraging the Government to consider appointing an independent, cross-party commission to advise Parliament and the electorate as to whether what has been negotiated is working, and has worked. There are plenty of wise people who would take on that responsibility with a sense of dignity and purpose. Managed correctly, it could act as a healing process to the turmoil we face internally as a nation over the referendum process. If so, it should be set up quickly and run in parallel with the negotiations, reporting as soon as possible and regularly.

Nobody can predict the outcome of exiting the European Union. I live in hope and expectation, however, that political masters can turn this around. Señor Carlos, my regular taxi driver from São Brás, Portugal, rightly states, “The European Union needs the United Kingdom as much as the United Kingdom needs the European Union”. That is a good starting point for negotiations to begin.

20:07

[Baroness Finn (Con)]

My Lords, Brexit means Brexit. Unfortunately, Brexit has come to mean all things to all people. This is as true for our UK politicians and their electors as for our European partners. But now it is time to move beyond it. There are, after all, many things we do know about Brexit—and indeed it is our democratic duty to see it through. We know that in the referendum itself, the vote was close, which suggests an extreme version of either position—a so-called hard Brexit, where we slash all our links with Europe, or a second referendum to reverse the result—would probably not enjoy popular support. We also know that all Governments have a duty to protect the security of their citizens, including their economic security. People did not vote to get poorer.

So, yes, we need to leave the EU, but we have a duty to do so in a way that maximises our prosperity and minimises disruption. This begins with a pragmatic, not ideological approach to Brexit, and a tone that is not protectionist but which reflects our widely held liberal values and our commitment to openness, free trade and responsible capitalism. It means that, however exercised some may be about immigration, we must put jobs and the economy first, even as we put the status of EU citizens already here in the UK beyond any doubt. We have a duty to explain better the benefits that economic migrants bring to the whole of the UK, instead of conceding the point—or worse, exploiting it for political gain. It means that we must achieve maximum possible consensus and listen to business and the City when they speak out on Brexit, and that we must maximise the opportunities that Brexit will ultimately bring, in free trade agreements struck with familiar partners such as the US and the EU, but with the fastest-growing emerging markets as well. The think tank Open Europe recently published a report, Global Britain, highlighting that the UK under-trades significantly by billions of pounds a year with many key partners. It should be a national priority to close this gap.

In practice, this amounts not to a triangulation between soft and hard, open or closed, but to a choice between prosperity and stagnation—and we must choose the former. To do this, we need to focus on transition. A transition period will allow us to mitigate the uncertainty of the negotiating period by guaranteeing the avoidance of a cliff edge, where businesses will not be clear under what legal and regulatory parameters they will be operating. It will also allow us to build the capability and infrastructure required to manage our own customs and trade arrangements. As several noble Lords have pointed out today, and as my noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford recently advocated in a letter to the Times, fortunately the right transition vehicle already exists—namely, the EEA.

The EEA would avoid full customs union, where we should also seek some transitional arrangements, and would therefore allow the UK to pursue trade agreements. It allows some national intervention in immigration controls. The ECJ has no locus in it, the EFTA court has no direct effect in the UK, and it gives back control of agriculture and fisheries to Parliament.

Critics will point out that from within the EEA we will continue to comply with EU regulations without being able to influence them, and indeed we will continue to contribute to the EU budget. However, the burden of proof is surely on those critics to explain how periods of uncertainty that will damage our economy, as well as our reputation, would be less costly than temporary ongoing budget contributions.

Investment curtailed or cancelled and productive economic migrants leaving this country will do permanent damage to the UK and will even harm our ability to reap the eventual benefits of Brexit. Instead, a time-limited period in the EEA, while capability is built up and certainty maintained, will set us up far better ultimately to leave the customs union and the single market—as we will and as we should—in order to gain the full benefits of Brexit by forging our own free trade deals and escaping the shackles of EU trade deals, with their protectionism and special-country interests.

This approach is, I believe, the way to navigate between the democratic wishes of the British people, the duty to provide economic security and the agenda of our EU colleagues. The Government have a duty to negotiate through this complexity and to deliver a unifying vision—and make a reality—of a prosperous, open Britain, eventually outside the European Union.

20:11

[Lord Davies of Stamford (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall probably say only one thing this evening that gives any pleasure to anybody on the other side of the House but I say it very sincerely. I warmly congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay—who is just walking out of the Chamber—on her appointment. At present, the Government must be in very dire need of someone of her abilities, judgment and natural diplomacy.

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance asked me, “How long are you remainers going to bang on about the costs of Brexit?”. I responded to her, “As long as the costs of Brexit continue to bear on the British people”. If we leave the European Union, they certainly will for many years and probably decades—almost certainly long after the limit of my own existence here.

I think that the British people are at the very beginning of the process of recognising the damage that has already been done subsequent to last year’s referendum. There has been a 15% devaluation, and people are beginning to realise that it really does mean a 15% reduction in the real value of everybody’s sterling assets or revenues. Perhaps wealthy people have internationally diversified portfolios and will not be hit quite so much, but those with more modest fortunes—most British families—will all be hit by at least 15%. That is a very serious matter.

We are now facing rising inflation and we know that this year real wages will fall. We know that the Bank of England will face increasing problems in confronting the great difficulty of knowing whether to increase interest rates. If they continue with the present accommodating monetary policy, that will simply embed inflation, and if they increase interest rates, that will further hit the growth of the economy. We have also had the results for the first quarter of this year, which show that the economic growth rate in this country is now at the absolute bottom of the EU 28 countries, together with Italy. So the prospects are pretty appalling.

One has to ask why the British people voted for such a disaster. We now know the answer, because Mr Dominic Cummings, who organised the Brexit campaign, told the Times a couple of weeks ago—he said it in a rather self-congratulatory way—that he was convinced that it was because of the big lie of saying that there would be £350 million a week more for the NHS if we left the EU. So now we have it, and terrible damage has been done to our country—quite the worst damage of any kind of crisis that I can think of in my lifetime—and it is all the result of a big lie. Essentially, the British people have been swindled by a bunch of professional liars. There is no hyperbole in that statement; it is exactly how these people, in a self-congratulatory way, have announced their great accomplishment. It is a pretty grim situation and we all have to reflect on it quite carefully.

The Government tend to say, “Well, we are where we are”. I think that if I hear that cliché again I shall have a seizure. “We need to move on”, is another one. They also say, “Let’s talk about the opportunities”. Well, let us talk about the opportunities—that is exactly what I want to talk about. I keep hearing about the opportunities that are being opened up to us with Brexit, but what are they? We all know the opportunities that are being destroyed by Brexit, such as the opportunity to go and work abroad. That is a very important opportunity, which as a younger man I enjoyed myself. Another is the opportunity to study in another country and take advantage of the Erasmus educational exchange programme, from which hundreds of thousands—maybe millions—of young people in this country have benefited. It is a wonderful system. There are also the opportunities for scientific research, and to lead in this country programmes of scientific research funded by the European Union. We know that at the prospect of those closing down, whole teams of academics are now moving abroad and being recruited by continental universities. There are no opportunities there—only an obstruction of opportunities.

What about the economy? You do not create opportunities by putting a dagger in your economy. You destroy opportunities by reducing the growth rate in the economy and reducing national wealth. You destroy entrepreneurial opportunities, job opportunities, opportunities for innovation and opportunities for enhancing the quality of human life. There are no opportunities there at all.

In my view, no opportunities for trade are being opened up by our leaving the European Union. The whole point of the European Union—or at least one of the major points of the single market—is that people have advantages in a larger domestic market with economies of scale and longer production runs. They get more business outside that single market, and that has worked out very well. France, for example—a country with a similar population—has a considerably higher level of exports than we have. If we do not think we are doing very well, we should ask ourselves what is wrong with our country and why productivity, for example, is so low. That will not be helped by leaving the European Union. On the contrary, anybody with any knowledge of economics would say that the two things you want to do if you want to improve productivity are to increase competition and increase investment. By leaving the European Union, we will reduce competition and we are already, with the prospect of leaving the EU, reducing the level of investment. Therefore, there are no opportunities there at all.

One thing one hears the Brexiters say is, “We’re going to sign all these free trade agreements around the world with non-EU countries”. Earlier we heard a splendid speech from my noble friend to my right, in which he said that, if we leave the European Union, we start off by losing access not merely to the EU market on the favourable terms that we now have but to 45 other countries that have FTAs with the EU. Renegotiating with them would take years and years—a minimum of five and perhaps 10.

If we start talking to other countries, what is the basis of the deal that we might do with them? If we go to China and say, “We’d like to have an FTA with you”, the first thing the Chinese will say is, “Well, we’d like you to get rid of the EU steel quotas, please”. That is fine but what are the Government going to say to the workers at Port Talbot to whom they have made promises? If we go to India, Mr Modi will say, “The first thing on my agenda is that I want more immigration into the UK”. That will be pretty rum because apparently we have to leave the single market as we have too much immigration and want to bring it down to tens of thousands a year, so we cannot fulfil that particular requirement. If we go to Australia or New Zealand, we shall be told, “Well, the first thing we want to do is sell you more meat”. We will have enormous vessels arriving with frozen meat from those countries every week, which will put out of business large sections of the British livestock industry. Is that what we are going to do? Is that what the Government consider to be an opportunity? If we go to the United States, the same thing will happen, except that the meat will come full of hormones and antibiotics, with threats to public health.

There are no opportunities that I have heard of. I asked the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, when he was the relevant Minister, what the opportunities were but he never gave an answer. I ask the Government the same question tonight, so perhaps we will hear the answer later. What are the opportunities? I do not believe that there are any. I believe that we are adding incompetence to self-delusion on this matter, and the prospects for the country are very serious.

20:19

[Baroness Fall (Con)]

My Lords, we gather once again in this Chamber after a difficult few months. There has been murder on our streets and tragic death in the heart of our London community. An election that was called to unite a country has instead revealed a divided one. Our gracious Queen is right to say there is a sombre national mood.

A year ago we voted on whether we should remain as members of the European Union and I strongly believed that we should. I did so because I believe our nation’s interests are best served as part of an open, tolerant, outward-looking, strong and patriotic Britain within the European Union—a Britain that cares above all for people’s jobs and livelihoods. But my side lost. The British people voted for out with a small though decisive majority, with a large turnout of people across all walks of life, ages and communities. I for one respect that decision, which is why I walked through the Lobby in support of Brexit earlier in the year. I believe it is our duty as a nation to unite to secure the best outcome for our country and build a strong future together.

But the decision to leave the European Union was an answer to a yes/no question, not a decision about how to leave or about what our future should look like. In the aftermath, I had hoped, as many in this Chamber did, that we would have a national conversation about what sort of country we wanted to build—a conversation that put people’s jobs and livelihoods at the top of the agenda, but also weighed up the difficult issues around immigration in our country and the sovereignty of our institutions—in the knowledge that there are many complex issues to grapple with and paradoxes at the heart of what we want for our country.

Let us take immigration. It can be true both that immigration is a force for good in our nation and essential for our economy, and that some communities feel overwhelmed by the lack of control over the seemingly large numbers involved. How to square this circle? Look too at the decision to move away from the jurisdiction of the ECJ. We all know that with any new trade deal there will have to be an adjudicator, and if not the ECJ it will have to be something else. We also know that with just 20 months left to secure a deal we are unlikely to agree arrangements across all sectors, so there will need to be some sort of transition arrangement. What might this look like?

These are difficult issues which should be weighed up and discussed, but unfortunately there has been little debate. Instead we are simply told, “Brexit means Brexit”, “Hard Brexit is the only option” and that no deal is better than a bad deal. Anyone who put forward another suggestion was in some way a traitor to the people—the sort of lack of respect for balanced debate that I find troubling in a country that is supposed to be a beacon of liberal tolerance and the mother of democracy.

I am deeply troubled too by the sense that rushing head first into the so-called hard Brexit is ideologically driven with little thought for the damage it might have on people’s lives. This strikes me as a “means justify ends” argument of the type that I studied at school when we learned about the French and Russian revolutions, thinking smugly that the British always had more sense than to subject their citizens to such misery in the name of a so-called greater good.

Now the British people have spoken again. What are they telling us? This too is a matter of interpretation and I am not going to pretend I have all the answers, but in the 2010 general election the country voted in a similar fashion, giving no party an overall majority. The message we took away from this was that the nation wanted politicians to put their party disagreements to one side and work together in the national interest. Five years on we had turned round the economy and put 2.5 million people back into work. Last month an election was called for Brexit and it gave an uncertain result.

I urge this Government to listen to the people and to move forward towards Brexit in a more considered and consensual way, looking at other options, including a longer transition period resting maybe in a Norway-style agreement, or face a very real danger of dividing our country for decades to come while our economy goes into freefall. I urge the Government to reflect on the need to build consensus between parties, nations and communities—not drive at full speed off the cliff like Thelma and Louise with the nation in the back of the car, but move towards our future cautiously and purposefully as one nation.

17:49

[Lord Desai (Lab)]

My Lords, the result of the election was very clear: my party won but was clever enough to leave the mess to the other side to sort out—the best of all possible worlds. But whatever my own preferences, we are where we are. Not only that, but the train has left the station and the negotiations have started. So it is not possible now to wish, as some people do, that this will never happen. It is going to happen. The question is how best the Government can achieve their objectives. That is how an economist has to think. We know the objective, so what can be done?

One of the most important things will be the budget discussion. Noble Lords will have seen the report from the European Union Sub-Committee on finance of your Lordships’ House, of which I have the honour to be a member. We have set out a number of alternatives. The figure of €100 billion is not cast in concrete. There is scope for negotiating and to show the European Union that there is a minimal amount to our obligation that cannot be calculated by our gross contribution of 12%, by the contribution net of our rebate, or by what we receive in return from the European Union after some other deduction. It could be as little as 4%. So there is a lot of scope for negotiating, and the first thing the Government should say is, “We know we don’t have to pay this much, we only need to pay a small amount, such as €20 billion. But, because we want goodwill and smooth negotiations over the next few stages, we are willing to meet half way and give you €40 billion”—something like that. That is very important, because, until we clear the budget, nothing further will be discussed. It is imperative on the part of the Government to thoroughly understand the negotiations about the budget and go in with a strong hand.

Secondly, however we interpret the results of the referendum, and whatever our preferences, it is quite clear that immigration remains a no-go area. As an immigrant, I wish it was not like that. I wish it was the other way round—I know all the arguments in favour of immigration. The nation was not afraid of immigration until after the financial crisis. Under the new Labour Government, we were the most generous country in the European Union, admitting people from an enlarged Europe. We were much more generous than Germany or France. But the atmosphere has changed and now people do not like it—and we have to do what people want us to do and not interpret that as we would like to.

Given that immigration is off the table, the other main aspect of the Brexit debate—mainly among the leaders of the Conservative Party—is the idea that leaving the European Union would release us to make lots of free trade agreements. That may be the case, but it will not be quick or easy. I wish there was a bit more realism on that so people could understand that when Brexit is done and we are free of our obligations of being in the customs union and have moved into the WTO area—supposedly in the next 18 months—it will take, on average, 10 years for any free trade agreement to be negotiated. I did not make that up: it is a fact. The free trade agreement between Canada and the European Union has taken longer than that.

So we have to be prepared for a period of uncertainty. We will not know the nature of the post-Brexit British economy for 10 years. The Government will have to prepare themselves for taking the people into their confidence and saying, “We know where we are going and we are not there yet, but we know what the costs will be and in the meantime, this is the map of where we are going”. That has not been done so far. Brexit may be Brexit, but a variety of things can happen over the next 10 years and it is imperative on the Government to come clean about what they think will happen after Brexit and before we are into the heaven of free trade agreements with the whole world.

20:30

[Lord Dykes (CB)]

My Lords, on 8 January this year in the Sunday Telegraph, there was an article by the Prime Minister, Theresa May. The first paragraph was very interesting. It said that the vote in the referendum was not really dealing with Europe, but with a disgruntled, fed-up electorate. They were fed up with their economic conditions and social policy weaknesses and they were being left behind with no wage increases and all the other things of society. That was not just affecting people of any particular age group, but was throughout the country and throughout the system—throughout all those voting in that referendum. Once again, that shows the reality that a referendum is not only a dangerous and foolish instrument—and always has been—but it is even more dangerous when it is advisory, giving only an opinion but people regard it as binding.

That is a monumental mistake, and we now see the calamity emerging in this country. There is a disaster facing us with this foolishness, mainly in the Conservative Party. I was a Conservative MP—a most left-wing one in those days—when the Conservative Party was civilised and moderate. It has now lost its way. It was a former great party of state that was pragmatic and intelligent. Now it is mired in this absurd ideology of hating Europe and hating the European Union for some strange chemical reason which is difficult. I have offered money to pay for psychiatric care for the most extreme anti-Europeans in the Conservative Party. They all turned me down, I am glad to say, so it has saved my pocket.

It is such a tragedy for this country that we have seen this mess created by a foolish previous Prime Minister, Cameron, playing Eton and Carlton Club games with this very serious matter of our membership of the EU. He was fooling around, and now we see that Theresa May is repeating it and saying “Brexit means Brexit”. What a fatal mistake to say that, notwithstanding that the referendum was an opinion only and not compulsory.

On previous treaty occasions such as Maastricht, Lisbon and so on, in some countries in Europe referendums were compulsory: there was a written constitution and they had to have them. They all voted no because the Governments were unpopular locally, but they were all turned into yes votes by the same Governments and once again endorsed membership of the European Union. We do not have to do that with this referendum, which was advisory only, as Kenneth Clarke said immediately after the result of 23 June. He has slightly changed his mind now, but I hope that we will work on him later on to bring him back to the good cause of Europe. This nonsense cannot now continue. That mandate for Theresa May ended with the latest general election on 8 June. Now the mandate is equivocal and doubtful and for her to continue on the same path is ludicrous nonsense. It is a calamity for this country, which is unimaginable.

Suez was the most reckless episode of the post-war period, but what is happening now to Britain with this nonsense about Europe is much worse. Are we saying that we are different from all the other 27 countries? Are we the only ones who want real sovereignty? What is sovereignty? That kind of concept of sovereignty, for old-fashioned Tories such as the noble Lord, Lord Hamilton of Epsom, and other colleagues—whom I admire greatly—last existed in 1905. Even after that, the British Army was under the command of a French commander-in-chief—how risky and dangerous. Why were we giving sovereignty away? Why is it that, in NATO, we can be ordered to war by the American general in charge because a small NATO country is being attacked and that is not a loss of sovereignty? Why is that all right and not the imagined, pretend sovereignty of not being on your own but being a member of the European Union? The collective sovereignty of the European Union is massive in comparison, and the individual sovereignty of every single member state goes up as a result of that possession of collective sovereignty. It does not just apply to small countries but big ones as well.

Why do the Germans and French not have doubts about this? They are proud countries. They are proud of their traditions and histories—apart from one particular episode for Germans between 1933 and 1945, which was a tragedy for them. These countries know that sovereignty such as that no longer exists anywhere in the world. People are now working together in the global village for the good of everybody.

I was cheered by the speeches that happened to be exclusively—just a coincidence, of course—from the Labour Benches in this debate. We have had 18 people saying, because of the excellent amendments of the former Cabinet Secretary and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that our membership remains indispensable and that these negotiations are absurd and must stop as soon as possible. I agree and I am cheered that the noble Lords, Lord Cashman and Lord Triesman, made some inspiring speeches as well, saying what is due to us if we destroy this nonsense and come back to the public through our parliamentary system. When we had NATO, we had did not have a referendum. There was no referendum when we had the Second World War. When we joined the UN, there was no referendum. None of those things needed referendums, so why do we have the poison of referendumitis in the system other than in the stomachs of the Conservative Party?

That must be driven out. We should go back to the public now because the Labour vote was also the vote of younger voters who are pro-Europe, which is something that the Labour Party has to sort out. Jeremy Corbyn will have to be made into an enthusiastic European in due course by his Labour colleagues, which will happen, I am sure. It means that, once again, this country will have a chance to go back to sanity and move away from this ridiculous disaster. It is a disaster of such magnitude that I can hardly believe it is happening. The House of Lords must give a huge lead on that in order to encourage our elected colleagues in the Commons.

20:36

[Lord Horam (Con)]

My Lords, as they review their tactics in the negotiations with the European Union after what, it must be said, has been a rather inauspicious start, the Government could do worse than thumb through The Art of the Deal, written or perhaps ghost written by President Trump. A central point he makes is this: never take anything off the table unless you absolutely have to. Unfortunately, in her Lancaster House speech the Prime Minister took off the table the single market and the customs union. I think he would regard that as a rather serious opening error. Fortunately, all is not lost because the Prime Minister also said that she wanted a “deep and special relationship” as well as a frictionless non-tariff arrangement with the European Union.

When the trade negotiations start in earnest this autumn, I suggest to the Government that they should lead off with this point. How do we keep what is obviously in the interests of both sides? How can we retain the essence of what has been examined so laboriously and achieved over many years by both the European Union and by ourselves? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said earlier in the debate, if we want a positive result, we have to make a positive suggestion. Obviously at some stage we will have to make the point that we have concerns about immigration and the position of the European Court of Justice, but that can come in after we have established a positive framework for carrying on to our mutual advantage. I sincerely believe that such a constructive approach will be more likely to evoke a more serious response than harping on about what we will not do. That will simply put people’s backs up as well as put them in a negative and defensive mood.

The second point I take from the Trump manual of how to do deals is always to have a plan B. Fortunately, there is a plan B. As my noble friend Lady Finn said earlier, it is widely thought on all sides that it will be nigh on impossible to complete a full deal before March 2019, so we will need an interim deal which keeps things moving and minimises disruption. The recommendation of the European Union Committee of the House, on which I am delighted to serve, made in its report published in December last year on the trade options for Brexit, is that we should stay inside the customs union. Remaining in the union would give certainty to business, it would help with the time-limited supply chains that are now common in the car manufacturing and aerospace industries, and it would deal with the Irish question. It appears to have the support of the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Labour Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, as well as, expressed in the course of this debate, that of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, whose amendment I think is extremely sensible. Let us also say that global Britain can thrive within the existing framework. There is no need to make new trade deals because we can thrive as it is; look at Germany, which is doing rather well.

My final point taken from the Trump manual of how to do deals is to make a realistic assessment of your strengths and weaknesses by comparison with your negotiating partner. It is clear that in this case we have the weaker hand, but the European Union has one weakness—it needs money. A Commission paper published today points out that Brexit will leave a very big hole in the budget. We are, unfortunately, in debt to the tune of £1.8 trillion at the moment, but as a country we can borrow long, over a period of 20 or 30 years, at low interest rates. We have just forked out £1 billion to the Northern Ireland Government, so in those circumstances another £40 billion to £50 billion to the European Union would, frankly, be a steal for a good trade deal. It would cause apoplexy at the Daily Mail, but that would only add to our fun, would it not?

Obviously, I hope profoundly that the Government can get a deal, even if it is only an interim agreement. I am sure that that is where the centre of gravity of opinion is both in Parliament and among the people. They accept Brexit, but they want as seamless a Brexit as can possibly be achieved. There are those who want a hard Brexit or even no deal at all, but does anyone seriously imagine that, after seven years of belt-tightening, the British people are in a mood for the disruption and chaos that that would cause? Any Government which went down that path would quickly find themselves deeply unpopular. It is certainly not a route that a Government with no majority in Parliament can seriously take.

I wish my colleagues all the best in their negotiations, and particularly now that she is back in her place in the House, my noble friend Lady Anelay, who is reprising her position as a Minister of State. We all know in what high regard she is held, and we wish her well. But the Government must up their game and show far more skill and flexibility if they are to bring home the deal that Britain so badly needs.

20:42

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords, the debate today has revealed no credible plan on the part of the Government but the outline of an alternative plan, although I hope it is not hiding behind too many weasel words about an interim or transitional agreement. In February, I moved the first amendment to the withdrawal Bill to provide that we would remain in the European Economic Area. I have only a couple of points to add to the most lucid analysis of the EEA and the case for it which was made earlier by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. They concern how the two-pillar system works.

Two weeks ago, I spent a few days in Norway. In Oslo, I met a senior person from the Norwegian foreign office, the Norwegian equivalent of our director of Chatham House, the chief of staff of the Norwegian Labour Party and the head of the European department in the equivalent of the TUC. The first thing they said, at separate meetings, but in unison, was that the UK needed to focus on the institutional framework to which it wishes to belong. As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, of this there is as yet no sign.

Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, surmised, each of the Norwegians said that if the UK wished to remain in the EEA by rejoining EFTA as the only alternative to staying in the single market, we would find that the Government of Norway would certainly not stand in our way. That was the very clear message.

Does the Minister agree that the referendum that we had a year ago did not say anything about remaining in the EEA? The matter is not subsumed, as the Norwegian example shows, in just saying that it is the same as staying in the EU; that is just not true.

In contrast with what I have just said about the EEA and so far as I can see, the impression in Oslo, in other parts of Europe and in Brussels is that there would be little appetite on the EU’s side to recreate in our case the Swiss relationship. I shall not go into more detail, but that is a difference. If they were us, they would see the EFTA-EEA as an institution which has the merit of actually being there—that was also pointed out to the committee chaired by my noble friend Lord Whitty. It is actually there and it actually works. That is in total contrast to the fog that we have heard today.

On the EEA Joint Committee, there is scope for us to be a little more ambitious in what we might visualise. It is a quite different concept from the rather odd words used last Thursday by the noble Earl, Lord Howe, when speaking on the gracious Speech. He used the phrase,

“as the UK steps back from Europe”.—[Official Report, 22/6/17; col. 29.]

It may have been just a descriptive throw away line, but, at the minimum, we will be in a Europe of concentric circles. Near the centre of the circle is the euro. I would hazard a couple of pence on the idea that, by the time the pound reaches parity with the euro, we might even want to join that.

The withdrawal Bill has led us to the point where I will vote for the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Adonis, but with the proviso that there is a missing dimension. I am not referring to nostalgia for the British Empire; I am referring to the fact that for many of the 52%, whether they live in Wolverhampton, Widnes or Wakefield, their experience at work and in society has led to some disaffection and lack of morale. They need high value-added contracts of employment.

In 1988 we had a forward movement, a conversion of the Labour Party, which we at the TUC had something to do with, by Jacques Delors addressing the congress in Bournemouth. I repeat that because we need another step forward. I hope that we can get behind the idea that at the European level we can have a framework agreement, under the social chapter, on the gig economy, and that this can mean that we can improve the quality of the contracts of employment for those people who, at the present time, have the worst perception of their role at work.

20:50

[Lord Watson of Richmond (LD)]

My Lords, one of the realities of this debate and of our predicament is that none of us is where we thought we were going to be. That is true of all the parties represented in this House, but it is also true of the country. I remind noble Lords that for months if not years before the referendum took place we were told, certainly by much of the media and many people in public life, that the European project was bankrupt, that it was failing, that the euro was a disastrous enterprise and that, by implication therefore, the very best thing that we could do as a country was to get out of it as soon as we could. That was certainly a motor behind the result of the referendum itself.

Where are we? Well, where we are is the election of Macron in France, the almost certain re-election of Merkel in Germany and, therefore, the extreme probability that the Franco-German axis—unfortunate word, but there we are, it is used—will be fully re-established within the European Union. The European Union, as an economic area, and the euro itself are both accumulating value and doing very well. So, far from dealing with a cripple, we are actually dealing with a rejuvenated centre of European integration. That is not what we expected, but it is what we are now confronted with—and it is a major challenge. In these circumstances, I agree with the appeal made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, wonderfully expressed, for humility. I think we would be right not only to approach one another with humility but to approach the European position with a certain degree of realistic humility.

There are three things we have to be very careful about. First, no side in this argument has a monopoly on patriotism and no side should accuse another of being motivated by a lack of it—because that is not the truth. Nor should the charge of patriotism deficit, as it is sometimes called, be used in attempts to bully or coerce the other side of the argument. It has been brought up in the press and other comments and I was horrified by Andrea Leadsom’s attempt to silence her “Newsnight” interviewer by saying: “It would be helpful if broadcasters were willing to be a bit patriotic, because the country took a decision and the Government is determined to deliver on that decision”. That was a threat.

Secondly, we must be very careful and clear, on both sides, on what we claim that decision to have been. It was a decision which, as we know, divided the nation, both horizontally and vertically, and still does—London from much of England, Scotland from England and so on. We all know the divisions and those divisions are not getting any better. We are now confronted with dealing with the reality, as has been said in this debate, that the referendum was not a decision for a hard Brexit or, indeed, for a soft one. The question was not asked nor answered by the referendum. Nor was it, of course, by the general election. It has been written of that result that, while it may not have changed the physics of Brexit, by God it changed the chemistry. I believe that to be profoundly right.

In fact, what we are dealing with is, again, not the situation that anybody anticipated. Your Lordships will remember that the mantra that the Prime Minister used as she entered the general election was “strong and stable”—and then somebody wrote in one of the newspapers, “Well, of course, the last time that mantra was really used publicly was by the White Star Line in 1912”. So to seek to obscure the meaning of the general election for Brexit, it is certainly misleading to claim, as has been done, that 85% of Britons somehow backed Brexit during the general election because both Labour and the Tories had it in their manifesto. People did not think they were voting about Brexit. They were told the election was going to be about Brexit—but, as we all know, it was not.

On the Tory side, it is a relief to me—and, I suspect, to many in this Chamber—that the Chancellor has had the realism to note that the electorate did not vote to become poorer or less secure or to risk the economy crashing. In his recent speech in Berlin to the CDU, he rejected the Foreign Secretary’s claim that Brexit will let us have our cake and eat it. How right he was. Maybe he was not being patriotic expressing that view to the CDU in Berlin—but nevertheless he did.

Finally, in achieving the outcome that we want, we have to prioritise access to the single market and the customs union. Self-exclusion from both makes a nonsense of any real commitment to free trade. The EU is Britain’s biggest free trade area. We should listen more carefully than we appear to be doing to the views expressed by business. The conference of the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders—the SMMT—which took place last week has already been mentioned in this debate. It said that the fact is that over 50% of all the cars we make in this country not only are partly made with parts that come from the single market but they go to the single market, and that it is simply impossible for our motor industry to survive what might be called the worst of all outcomes: no outcome at all. The cliff is not a place to cross.

So let us be careful and clear, and let us be honest about the meaning of the referendum and, indeed, the harder-to-read verdict of the general election, which undoubtedly changed the chemistry of the Brexit debate. Let us prioritise the economic well-being of the British people, because the one thing on which they have expressed a clear view is that they do not wish to be made poorer.

20:57

[Lord Spicer (Con)]

My Lords, it is a measure of the diversity of the membership of the European Union that the several countries that make up the Union work out their net benefits in their own way. For instance, the Germans, on the whole, have major economic disbenefits from losing their Deutschmark and the Bundesbank and other institutions, which they compensate for in their own minds by having the political benefits of integration—while the British, on the whole, have said that there are economic benefits of having a wider market, for which they are prepared to pay a political price in terms of loss of sovereignty.

In the beginning it all worked out quite well for the British. The Common Market had few disbenefits for them and a number of benefits in terms of a wider market. But as time has gone by, new forces have emerged in the world which have affected this position. The rise of competitive areas of the world—the South American countries, China and India—and, indeed, the strengthening of American protectionism have all forced the European Union to do what I personally think has always been endemic in it, which is to turn itself into a controlled trade bloc: a protectionist trade bloc, basically, protecting its own members. The controls that it has introduced have gone a long way, including setting up a monetary union with many controls.

For Britain, this has proved a difficulty because a monetary union is a serious matter. It involves two things for Britain. The first is the fact that if you do not control your own currency, you do not control your own economy. Henry VIII was quite right when he said the realm of England was an empire—by that he meant money. Sacrificing control over your own currency is a major step away from just trading within an area. It is a particularly serious point for Britain because we have a constitution which involves no one Parliament sacrificing powers to another; every Parliament is sovereign in its own time, and you cannot have a monetary union, which is forever, if the principle of no Parliament giving way to another is to be maintained.

When it came to the Maastricht treaty, some of us rebelled and stopped it coming about that we would enter the single currency—so we did not. I can say now that we failed in one respect: we tried to get the Prime Minister of the day to agree that we would not enter the single currency in his time as Prime Minister. He would not make that commitment, but the single currency was stopped so far as our country was concerned.

Then along came something even more serious, which was the rise and rise of the European Court. I have heard a lot of speeches tonight saying that that did not matter at all, but it matters in two senses. First, it matters that we have alien law in this country. If we subscribe to the European Court, we do not have all the things that we are used to such as juries, habeas corpus and the presumption of innocence: those things go. But much more serious, and much more germane to this argument, is the fact that the European Court has a political agenda. It is to nurture, protect and develop the acquis communautaire, which has as its sole objective the development of a federal state of Europe that is irretrievable—it cannot go backwards. So when it came to a referendum, the British people decided that they did not want a foreign system of law. They did not want judges laying down what the rules should be or what the law should be— because the European Court has the capacity to turn its judgment into law. They did not want that and took the view that we must get out—and they were right.

21:02

[Lord Monks (Lab)]

My Lords, as a natural optimist and a former trade union general secretary—and I assure you that the two are compatible—I see no economic upsides at all to Brexit. Quite the contrary: I live in fear of the consequences for jobs, worker rights and prosperity, particularly if and when we quit the single market and the customs union.

We learned yesterday that apparently that will happen by 2019, within the two years. David Davis confirmed that yesterday. When that piece of information penetrates into the minds of company directors in the boardrooms of this country and many other countries, watch for the contingency planning to accelerate. We already know that the lucrative London-based Eurobond market is under grave threat, and many others are weighing up their positions. I have been cheered by some of the remarks all around the House about the attractions of what is set out in the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I hope that people are listening to that argument. Regardless of whether it is achieved through the Norway option, it seems a way of safeguarding at least the essentials of our position, if not everything.

As far back as the 1980s, during the days of the Thatcher Government, I was involved in enticing inward investment to the UK to fill some of the many gaps caused by the collapse of all those British household names at that time. The inward investment initiative was very successful with the arrival of companies such as Nissan and Toyota and many others that wanted their plants to be in the European Union marketplace. They have been of great benefit to our country. We would not have a major manufacturing presence without many of those arrivals from abroad. Unfortunately, they were not homegrown; we have imported them and they have done many good things for us.

However, those companies do not have to be here. If we flop outside the single market and the customs union, and if there are new tariff and non-tariff barriers, will they stay? We do not really know, do we? It is a hell of gamble to take with such an important part of the British economy. Can we really negotiate a comprehensive free trade deal, or even bespoke transitional arrangements, before 2019 is up? I fear it is mission impossible. Anyway, from the point of view of many of us concerned with the position of working people, the question is whether, in any agreements that are made, there will be the same provisions as there are in the single market for social and environmental standards—standards which are Europe-wide, by the way, and stop one country undercutting the others on these particular points.

The Brexit answer to all this is that our future tends to lie outside Europe, in the emerging economies. Perhaps we can roam as free-traders through the rest of the world. But, in case your Lordships have not noticed, it is not 1850 anymore, and there is no British Empire. There is a need to deal with President “America First” Trump and with China and India, which as others have pointed out have their own agendas and some raw grievances about British imperialism in the past. There are not so many other attractive markets to which you can look to replace this huge, rich, single market of which we are currently a member.

Of course we need to do more trade outside the EU, and follow the German example—they do it, the French do it, and their exports are a lot bigger than ours. The problem—of why we do not do rather better—as others have said, does not lie with the European Union but with us. But why are we even thinking of putting in peril our existing trade with the EU, this huge area on our doorstep, and instead setting course for somewhere—sometimes it sounds like anywhere—over the rainbow? I am therefore fully in support of my noble friend Lord Adonis in his amendment. The single market and the customs union should at least be our default position—certainly not flopping out on to WTO conditions.

This would of course involve acceptance of the principle of free movement of labour. I accept that concern about migration was a major factor—probably the major factor—behind the leave vote, certainly among Labour voters. This was very well recognised recently by President Macron in his Guardian interview just last Saturday. I believe that the threat from migration was exaggerated, but there were undoubted problems in particular localities. These could have been addressed earlier if advice given by trade unions had been listened to more carefully. We campaigned for migrants to get the rate for the job, not just the minimum wage. We campaigned for jobs to be advertised at home as well as abroad, for training programmes to steer British workers into available jobs and for local authorities in areas of high migration to continue to receive extra help—that was cancelled by the coalition Government. Other EU countries, by the way, have already adopted these kinds of measures. We could have done the same had we chosen to do so, and we still can—if we choose to do so.

We should therefore hang on to our membership of the single market and the customs union. We can join EFTA. That would not be comfortable and could feel a bit humiliating, but it is a way of doing a job that we need to do. It is not ideal, but we are in the business of making the best of a bad job and avoiding the further vandalism to our economy which I believe Brexit is inflicting. How many plants have to close before the penny drops? How many jobs have to emigrate before the Government realise the folly of their course? Support the Adonis amendment.

21:08

[Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness to her new position as Minister and pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, whose openness and courtesy I greatly welcomed while he was in the job.

I believed that our interest lay in remaining in the European Union and regret the decision to leave, but it was a democratic decision that must be respected. I do not believe, however, that the result of the referendum a year ago said anything about how we should leave the European Union. That is partly, of course, decided for us by Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty. It will partly also be decided for us by our 27 soon—alas—to-be former European partners, because that is the nature of negotiations.

However, how we leave will depend also on what we ourselves seek in the negotiations, and the only criterion for determining what we seek in the negotiations—here I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong—is what will be in the interests of the British people; of business; of the thousands who work in the north-east and elsewhere in companies owned by Europeans and indeed by others; of the City; or of those in our security, police and other services who work night and day to protect us. I cannot believe for one moment that it is in any way in their interests that we walk away from the negotiations and leave without an agreement. I can see that advocating that may have some rhetorical value, but—I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me if I say this—it does not seem to show great confidence in our ministerial negotiators or our official-level negotiators to conclude before the negotiations start that they are not going to be able to reach an agreement that is in our interests.

In any case, I suspect that the day after we walked away we would have to walk back. We will still need to trade with the EU; we will still need to co-operate on foreign, security and defence policy; and we shall still need the closest possible co-operation with other European countries on our security. I shall focus on that last point for a moment. One of the most telling conclusions of the inquiries held by the EU Home Affairs Sub-Committee, of which I am a member, has been the virtually unanimous view of the security experts, the police and academics that our interests lie in the closest frictionless co-operation that we can achieve with Europol, Eurojust, the European arrest warrant and the other institutions and bodies that are so essential to our own security. That is easy to say but as Julian King, the British Commissioner with responsibility for security, has said recently, it is not straightforward to achieve. Still, it must surely be in our interests.

The outcome that I fear most from Brexit—here I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Symons—is the risk to security along the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. That risk was given far too little attention before, during and immediately after the referendum campaign. I do not know what effect the deal with the DUP will have but it can surely only be a complication. It is none the less encouraging that our Government, the Irish Government, the European Parliament and Michel Barnier, who well understands the importance and sensitivity of the issue, are giving it a high priority. I hope the Minister can give an absolute assurance that whether or not we leave the single market and the customs union—and it will be far more difficult if we leave the customs union—the objective of the Government in the negotiations will be the maintenance of a trouble-free border between Northern Ireland and the Republic.

21:13

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Anelay on her challenging new appointment, and I thank her for introducing today’s debate in a sincere and open manner.

Many people have commented that the repeal Bill has lost its greatness. The Minister told me that “great” could never be part of the formal title of a Bill or Act of Parliament, so why do we have Magna Carta? Many noble Lords claim that the result of the general election shows that people do not support the Prime Minister’s kind of Brexit. But as your Lordships know, 84.2% of those who voted in the election supported parties in a Brexit that involves at least withdrawing from membership of the single market.

Since the general election, the Labour Party has tried to differentiate its position on Brexit, arguing that it wants a Brexit that maintains free access to the single market, but that is the same as what the Government want and what is clearly in the interests of both sides in our negotiations with the EU. Research by Civitas indicates that in the event of no free trade agreement, no deal with the EU, UK exports to the EU 27 could be expected to suffer tariff costs in the region of £5.2 billion, but exports from the EU 27 to the UK would bear tariff costs in the region of £12.9 billion. Of course, in terms of proportionate effect on GDP, the hit to the UK economy appears greater, but the fact that the absolute cost to the EU would be two-and-a-half times larger means that there is a huge incentive, especially for Germany, to ensure that the EU 27 continue to enjoy tariff-free access to the UK market. I can certainly envisage deals that are even worse than no deal, and I agree with my right honourable friend the Chancellor, who said on “The Andrew Marr Show” that while no deal would be very bad, a deal that sought to punish the UK for withdrawal would be worse than no deal.

I turn to the City and the financial services industry. I find it surprising that other than a few, predominantly British, City leaders and economists, nobody seems to be extolling the merits of escaping from the increasingly cumbersome and throttling yoke that we bear as a result of subservience to the European supervisory authorities. Not so long ago, the City was strongly resisting a significant amount of new European regulation, such as parts of the UCITS regime, the whole of the alternative investment fund management directive, the ban on short selling, parts of MiFID II, and other regulation.

The panoply of European regulation certainly provides enhanced protection for investors, but professional investors do not need all of it, and the increased costs that result have already diverted a considerable amount of business away from the City. Financial markets are global, not European. The UK is by far the most global in reach of all European countries. It is right that our escape from subservience to the ESAs will allow our regulators, the FCA and the PRA, to resume their position at the top table of regulators, and this will enhance rather than diminish their influence in shaping optimum rules for the conduct of financial business on a global basis.

As Jeremy Browne said in his article in the Daily Telegraph, the City of London is the only world-class financial centre, located in Europe’s only global hub city, London. But the City is not just Europe’s asset, it is the world’s asset. It is hosted by the UK in the same way we host the Wimbledon tennis tournament. It is manifestly not in the interests of the EU to try to damage it. Fragmentation of the City would have an adverse effect on the financial stability and financing of the European economy. Our negotiators need to persuade their interlocutors not to put narrow political objectives in the way of reaching an agreement that continues to provide access for European financial firms to UK financial markets, and vice versa.

Finally, I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said concerning Euratom. I regret that leaving the EU necessitates our also leaving Euratom, and I believe that it is very important to negotiate some kind of associate membership or transitional arrangement so that our nuclear trade is not affected. I look forward to hearing what other noble Lords have to say.

21:19

[Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan (Lab)]

My Lords, the gracious Speech is notable as much for what is not included as for what has been offered, but the Government’s failure to retain a working majority and the humiliating pork-barrel deal with the DUP are probably issues for another day. As the amendment of my noble friend Lady Hayter says, we need to prioritise jobs and the economy generally. The opening speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, reminded me of Ernest Bevin’s dismissal of a Foreign Office brief as containing “Clitch after clitch after clitch”. The recital of a wish list of Bills, with little indication of content apart from their titles, is no way to reassure this House or the country as to what will be taking place.

For us to have a secure economic future, we need an indication of how the endangerment of collaborative projects with our European partners can be avoided. As the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, just remarked, the nuclear collaboration that lies at the heart of the Euratom treaty requires more than a fleeting reference to the fact that it will appear in a Bill at some stage. This treaty covers a plethora of areas of co-operation that are currently in danger because of the lack of clarity or reassurance being given. We need to have a clear indication at this time, so that projects that require priming of the pump and topping up of the finances can go forward. Not only that, we know that the European co-operation that lies at the heart of Euratom is also likely to provide us with tremendous opportunities in the areas of decommissioning and fuelling of nuclear plants, particularly in central and eastern European member states of the EU. Of course, there are also things such as the nuclear element in healthcare.

In the last few weeks, we have seen the terrorism that stalks Europe at this time and the need for the continuing closest possible co-operation among European security and police forces. This will be jeopardised if we have to make a breach with fellow members of Europol and so on—a breach that, at the end of the day, will be down to the Euro bigots’ opposition to anything to do with the European Court of Justice. I heard the noble Lord, Lord Spicer, referring earlier to “alien” laws. Alien laws deliver quite a lot of good results for us. The European arrest warrant and such things require a far greater degree of involvement and co-operation with our European partners, which may now be jeopardised. In the events of the last few weeks, the security forces were able speedily to deal with what was happening in the UK and, in those instances where there was no European involvement or networks of terror, the public could be reassured with some degree of authority that these networks did not exist. We know for certain that the policing, security services and the intelligence that they throw up is dependent on co-operation, and for the United Kingdom that is dependent on our involvement. At the moment, as I said, the bigoted opposition to any involvement with the European Court of Justice prejudices future co-operation in this area.

If the Government think they can survive for the next few months, and perhaps for the whole of the negotiating period, simply by paying Danegeld to the DUP, they are mistaken. It is quite clear that the programme being offered in the Queen’s Speech is a tawdry, bankrupt set of half-baked proposals—the best they hope they can get through a divided Parliament. What we require is another Government offering hope and progress where now there is only despair and depression.

21:24

[Lord Tugendhat (Con)]

My Lords, as my noble friend the Minister made clear at the outset of this debate, and as many others have made clear in the course of it, the Brexit negotiations are immensely complicated. That is a far cry from what some of the most prominent leavers suggested, with their talk of cake, money for the NHS and independence day a year ago. I believe that those people who made it appear so simple a year ago now have a special responsibility to rally to the Government and explain and defend the compromises and trade-offs that will be necessary to secure a deal, which have already become apparent in the discussions over the rights of EU citizens. As we all know, nobody was more carried away by the exuberance of his own verbosity than our Foreign Secretary, and it is noticeable that we have heard nothing from him in defence of the Government as they seek to bring about an agreement that will demand compromises and trade-offs of a sort that will sometimes be quite painful. It is time that he took a part in defending what is going to be required.

I hope, too, that there can be as much cross-party co-operation as possible between all those who believe that the British people did not vote to become poorer. There has been a wide measure of agreement across the Chamber in all parties about the desirability of co-operating, where possible. That is what is in the best interests of the British economy and society, and British jobs, within the context of securing a close and enduring relationship with our European friends, which should be our chief consideration. In this context, I welcome Sir Keir Starmer’s appointment to the Privy Council, which is a useful step. I also believe that the suggestion of the right reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury of an all-party committee should be considered, whether in the form that he proposed it or in some other form.

I turn to the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Normally, I find myself in agreement with him on European matters and, indeed, on a great many other matters, so it grieves me to find myself on the opposite side of the argument on this occasion. Like him, I certainly believe that we want to secure the most frictionless trading relationship possible with the EU as part of a wider and closer relationship, but I do not believe that the best way in which to achieve that is by making continued membership of the single market and the customs union an object of policy. To do so gives rise to all kinds of issues of principle for the European Union, and I do not think that that is what the European Union itself wants. My noble friend the Minister dealt with that point very capably in her speech at the opening of this debate. It also runs the risk that we will be accused of cherry-picking, as we were at the outset of the discussions; that accusation of cherry-picking has gone away a good deal since the Lancaster House speech and since it became apparent that we were not going down the road that the noble Lord suggested. I think, too, that if we make membership of the single market and customs union an object of policy, we also run the risk that we will end up with too many of the disadvantages of leaving the European Union and too few of the potential gains.

The best way to proceed, as my noble friend the Minister proposed, is to pursue an EU-UK agreement. To the extent that we can incorporate into that as much as possible of the single market and the customs union, so much the better, but that is a different way of approaching the matter. We want to achieve as much as possible of what is in the single market and customs union, but I think that we need to do it within a different framework and with a different branding, so as to avoid some of the difficulties that will arise for our colleagues on the other side of the Channel. Of course, all that will take time, so I am sure that it is right that we should stay in the single market and customs union as far as possible during a transitional period—but it should be a transitional period. For the long term, we should, if we can, reach a more imaginative and bespoke agreement, incorporating not just trade but co-operation on foreign and defence policy, security, research and other areas. That is the way to proceed.

21:30

[Lord Soley (Lab)]

My Lords, I voted remain in the referendum but, nevertheless, immediately after that referendum I took the view that we were out and unlikely to go back any time in the near future. We therefore need to be realistic about both the political and economic consequences of that, not just for the United Kingdom but for the European Union, which will, in my judgment, change because of what has happened with the British-EU relationship.

I first want to say to the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, for whom I have great respect, that shortly before and then during the election I had talks with her predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, joined by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, about the possibility of setting up a joint British-EU parliamentary group of a very powerful nature, not unlike the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly—which, if noble Lords recall, got a grant from the Treasury of about £1.5 million to start it. We need something like that, and preferably before the end of the negotiations; we need it sooner rather than later. I ask the Minister to have a word with her predecessor, the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, to see if she can take it forward.

If we are going to talk about a special relationship, it is also time to look at why the British took a different view to many continental Europeans. It has always been my view that the British felt uncomfortable in Europe. In many ways, we have been the drag anchor on greater co-operation within the continent of Europe, and there are reasons for that. We are in many ways very close to Europe; we need Europe and Europe needs us. Historically, that has been true—but, sometimes, we forget things in our history that are different and important. One of the most important in my judgment is that the continent of Europe has been drenched in blood, not just in the two world wars of the 20th century but over several hundred years before that. To have a similar experience on the land mass of the United Kingdom, you have to go back to 1640 and the civil war.

In other words, what happened in continental Europe was a recognition in 1945 that, to put an end to that, they needed a political process that would lead to some degree of union. That is where the phrase “ever closer union” in the Rome treaty came from. Once you have ever closer union, you get the idea of a common market; with a common market, sooner or later you will have a common currency; with a common currency you will need a common bank; with a common bank you will need, ultimately, a chancellor of the exchequer, and a prime minister or a president—you will be moving towards something that is for some, maybe all, of the European Union states, a more federal structure. Several people have touched on that. I think it is a matter of time—and it is in British interests to see this happen, even if we are not part of it.

We therefore need a very close relationship, because our interests are closely aligned with those of the continent of Europe—again, not just economically but politically. One thing that troubles me about this debate, not just today but generally, is that we focus massively on the economics—I can understand why—but the politics of this are quite enormous. Europe will now do what Britain prevented it from doing and move towards closer defence and foreign policy co-operation and the establishment of a public prosecutor—all the things that create the basis for an emerging state. As I have said before, it is my view that although continental Europeans have a growing anxiety of the same type as in Britain about how close Brussels is to the people of Europe, nevertheless there is a recognition that it is becoming a superpower. For Britain, it was always going to be a supermarket. We did not see the relevance of a superpower for some of the reasons I have suggested to the House.

I also think that if we are not careful, we will end up alienating our European colleagues even more. We used to be the most popular country in Europe by far after the Second World War, not just because of the war itself but because of what we did to reinstate the European political system, including, I might add, the courts—the court of criminal justice and others. We became very popular. We then lost that as we became the drag anchor on the European Union project. If we are to recognise what has happened in terms of the feelings of the British people and the drive within Europe to have ever-closer union, we need a very close working political relationship with the European Union to make sure that we stay in close agreement and co-operation, particularly as regards the economy but also in terms of defence and foreign policy.

Those issues are crucial. If we do not work very closely with Europe, frankly, the danger is of a greater splintering, because the United States will move away from European protection over the years to come, not least because of the rising powers elsewhere. We have to be aware of that. We need a political analysis of this as well as an economic analysis and it should all be focused on the idea of a very close, very productive relationship with our colleagues in Europe, because they need us and we need them. That is why I deplore all the slightly insulting and alienating comments about Europe made at the time of the referendum. Europe is important to Britain and Britain is important to Europe, so let us make this work because what has happened has happened and is not going to be reversed any time soon.

21:36

[Baroness O’Loan (CB)]

My Lords, I am very sorry that we are leaving the European Union. That means that we are leaving the single market and the customs union as we know them. The freedoms and benefits that they bring us and the attendant responsibilities and liabilities will no longer apply.

I sometimes think that, despite all the talk of hard Brexit and soft Brexit, there is still very little understanding of what those terms mean. However, I do not believe that in leaving we will be able to secure exactly the same benefits that the UK currently has as a member of the single market and the customs union, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has suggested. The treaties are not written like that. Indeed, were we to do so, we would have to continue to allow migration into our country, the associated benefits and the subjection to the rule of the European Court of Justice. I think it is very clear that the European Union will not entertain such an idea, so we are losing the advantages of the single market itself, to which we currently export, I believe, some £220 billion worth of trade, and all the free trade agreements which the EU has negotiated over the years.

So where does that leave us? The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, earlier described the EFTA option with great clarity. We could join Liechtenstein, Switzerland, Norway and Iceland in this option but we would pay a price for it. I believe that Switzerland has more than 100 bilateral agreements with the EU, which is trying to create a single framework agreement, including subjection to the European Court of Justice. I believe that Norway pays £140 a head for its access to the single market alone. It is outside the customs union but has to accept free movement and must comply with EU legislation. So, whatever we decide to do will have significant costs and disadvantages.

I want to talk about the complex and challenging issue of the border between the EU and the UK. It will have several manifestations as UK citizens move from the UK into the EU, but the most important for us in Northern Ireland is the border between the north and south of Ireland. It goes some 300 miles across the island of Ireland and has about 200 crossing points, an awful lot of which were blocked off during the Troubles, but which have now been opened completely. It is not an easy border to manage. Now we can move freely, and that freedom is profoundly important, as the figures for trade and movement across the border demonstrate. In 2016, it was reported that 37%—£3.6 billion—of Northern Ireland’s goods and services exports went to Ireland. It has become an increasingly important market for Northern Ireland. Outside the single market and the customs union, we risk facing tariffs which would make our products perhaps less competitive than those of other EU manufacturing countries or other countries.

The risk is not simply an economic one. The ability of people to move freely across the border has been a significant factor in growing that trust which has been essential to the establishment of our embryonic post-Troubles society. It has enabled a greater understanding of culture, politics—although I am not altogether sure that that is possible—sport and tourism opportunities. It has allowed the people of Ireland, north and south, to come to know each other better, and it has facilitated the peace, just as the huge sums of European peace funding and other funds have enabled the development of Northern Ireland as a whole.

Poverty, marginalisation and unfair structures were the causes of the Troubles. It is very noticeable now that in areas such as Ardoyne and East Belfast, where there continues to be significant deprivation, there also continues to be significant paramilitary activity, with people being beaten, shot and exiled and with businesses still subject to extortion. Recently, the deputy chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland told us that on average, 20 police officers are still driven from their homes each year by paramilitaries, both republican and loyalist. We cannot allow a situation to develop in which the fragile economy and peace of Northern Ireland are damaged by Brexit.

So what will happen when that 300 miles of border becomes the route through which people and goods, moving freely in Europe and into Ireland, seek to enter the UK? A single journey, say, from Armagh to Monaghan, takes you across the border several times. You only know you have crossed the border because the signal on your phone changes from O2 IE to O2 UK. There seems to be agreement—other noble Lords have referred to this—between the EU, Ireland and the UK that we must avoid a new hard border. My questions for the Government are: how do we regulate a border without a physical border and can they tell us what the options are for this? Across the world, the borders I have seen have all tended to have some physical shape, and it is hard to imagine that occasional checking of a percentage of vehicles crossing the border will allow member states of the EU and the UK to be satisfied that they are collecting all the duties which are payable, and that will be important. It is equally hard to imagine that our respective security structures would not seek to regulate the free movement of peoples across the border in some way to protect us against organised crime and terrorism. We would have the common travel area, and we must maintain it, but it is not enough.

We will lose, as my noble friend Lord Jay said, the European arrest warrant and all the benefits of our current EU security structures. The fight against terrorism is not won in Northern Ireland, the global fight against terrorism is becoming more difficult, and we will have to negotiate with 27 individual states to replicate these arrangements unless the fact of our very significant contribution on this front can facilitate the negotiation of an EU-UK agreement which parallels and works in complete harmony with EU structures. Any lacunae between the UK and the EU in this context will be exploited by terrorism, in whatever form it manifests itself at the particular time.

I conclude by wishing those who are engaged in these negotiations on our behalf every success and much patience. So much rests on that for the future security and prosperity of the 28 countries of the EU—as we presently are—and for the other countries with which we trade and do business.

21:43

[Lord Dobbs (Con)]

My Lords, every time I hear the term “soft Brexit” I think of blancmange. Blancmange Brexit. You know, you hit it with a spoon, you watch it wobble, it changes its shape. In fact, it can be any shape you want, really. To some, it means staying in the single market. The only trouble with that, of course, is that it is not Brexit at all, as the noble and much-respected Lord, Lord Adonis, will instantly recognise.

Have we forgotten those remainers during the referendum at their cauldron, throwing in their toads’ legs and snake eyes, giving it—dare I say it?—a liberal stirring and insisting that Brexit was incompatible with the single market? “It’s one or the other”, they said. “You can’t do both”.

Despite all that, Britain chose Brexit. Why? Perhaps because the EU is losing the moral authority it once had. It claims the moral high ground, but its moral high ground stands next to a cliff edge—the one on which Greece stood a few years ago, only to be pushed in the back. That is the EU’s reality, and it is simply untruthful to pretend that poor Greece will ever be able to repay its debts. That is ideology wrapped up in fantasy.

However, we on the Brexit side have also stumbled over our moral message. How have we allowed the debate on immigration to grow so ridiculously bereft of balance, polarised between the ideologues on the one hand and the imbeciles? We can do better than that. There is an overwhelming moral case for controlling our immigration policy, but we have to find a better language to express it—and, for goodness’ sake, no magic cap or meaningless targets.

When we talk of reciprocity for EU citizens, although I very much welcomed yesterday’s announcement I did not welcome the implication that they might somehow be chips in a game of poker. Whatever happens, there is not a snowflake’s chance in hell that Britain will send back 3 million honest citizens. They are our friends and our partners, and they are welcome.

Perhaps we cannot always use the language of a love-in, but do we always have to reach for hard words? It is said that no deal is better than a bad deal, and I believe that that is probably right, but we do not need to beat the point to death. We are dealing with friends. We want more than a deal; we want an agreement, not a war of words.

It was Nick Clegg who used the most patronising language. He described Brexit as generational theft, as if the young never change their minds. But in a way he was right: we have stolen from the young—the post-millennials, those whose first memory was probably 2001 and the twin towers. Then in 2003 came the invasion of Iraq, Afghanistan, the great financial crash in 2007, and so much more. To hell with strong and stable. The only world that generation has known is one dominated by the war on terror. Surely that alone is enough for us to question the path we have been travelling all these years and to ask whether there is not a better way.

Brexit does not mean turning our back on anyone. It means a Britain alongside, rather than inside, the EU, still joined in so many vital and convivial ways, more flexible and more true to its unique values, and more open to the world—a Britain more responsible for its own affairs and to its own people, young and old, and, yes, able to be even better neighbours in a new partnership with Europe.

There is a great moral case, and not only for finishing such speeches inside the five-minute limit; there is a far greater moral case for Brexit and we must carry on making it.

21:48

[Lord Berkeley (Lab)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Dobbs, said that we must be alongside but not inside the EU, but the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, whom I welcome to her new position, stated absolutely clearly that there will be no single market for the UK and no customs union. I should like to explore a few of the consequences of that from the transport point of view.

Let us look at the frontiers—at Dover and the Channel Tunnel, as well as Holyhead and so on. About 15,000 trucks a day go through Dover and the Channel Tunnel together, and about 400,000 a year on the Holyhead route. In the future, with this new arrangement, we will have to look at tariffs on goods, the customs arrangements, immigration and, of course, the security that happens at the moment. Some things may be able to be done electronically, but at the moment that does not work very well for immigration. HM Revenue and Customs has stated that it is not confident it can deliver any new electronic system on time. As my noble friend Lord Adonis said, the traffic jams on the M20 and the M2 will go somewhere north of London. Where is all this going to go?

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Switzerland talking to people about logistics. Everybody knows that the Swiss model is half in, half out, and that they have transit arrangements for rail and road freight through Switzerland, but if you want to import goods into Switzerland you have to go through the customs and tariff procedure, which involves very long queues at the frontiers. That is what we will have. No matter how we solve this, the fact remains that the costs of transport are going to go up pretty dramatically. The other question is: where are we going to get the truck drivers from? Around 80% of the drivers that come across the channel are non-UK, EU citizens.

There is a similar question on the railways. Will manufacturing companies in this country be able to sell their equipment on the continent, and vice versa? Will they operate to the same standards, as they do at the moment after us struggling for about 20 years? It is going to be quite a challenge.

Having listened to much of the debate, I have heard a lot of messages about Brexit, job losses, lack of credibility and the economies of many sectors—we have heard about them all. Can the Minister say which sectors, if any, support a Brexit in which we do not have a single market, to which about 45% of our exports currently go, or the ability to recruit, welcome and keep the many people we need, as we have heard tonight, to keep these industries going? Which sectors will grow after Mrs May’s hard Brexit and her obsession with immigration?

I conclude by supporting what my noble friend Lord Soley said about the need for peace and the politics of Europe. I lived in Romania for several years in the 1970s when there was a communist regime. I saw the real pain of people who did not have liberty. The one thing we have brought and that we have encouraged is the free movement of people within the EU to travel, to work, to have relationships or whatever. It has contributed to the peace and understanding that we have, and I hope we can continue it. Surely we ought to be doing this and not separating ourselves out by even more barriers. I support a cross-party agreement to ensure that we retain some or all of these benefits, and I certainly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Adonis.

21:53

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I do not agree with votes on amendments in the middle of a debate. To me, that is not good practice and rather discourteous to those who will speak in the debate tomorrow. I hope it will not become frequent practice.

I declare an interest as a part-time resident of Italy for the last 37 years. I must tell the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, that they may be laughing at the United Kingdom in the grand congress he told us about at the start, in a rather de haut en bas speech, but in the streets, squares and fields of the rural Italy I know ordinary people are green with envy and full of admiration that Britain is breaking free from the vice in which the euro is throttling the Italian small business economy and the prospects of the young. Perhaps it is a problem in me that I speak to the ordinary people over there.

Last year, 17.4 million British people voted to leave the European Union—the highest number ever voting for anything in our history, on a turnout of 72.2%, against just 68.7% in the general election. Yet today, every day, you hear those who opposed that referendum decision seeking to dilute the awful clarity of that single word of command from the British people: “leave”. Labour’s Front-Bench Motion tonight takes not one but 82 words to leave us with not a clue—I agree with the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, on that—about where that party stands on leave or stay in the single market and the customs union. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is more direct—I avoid the word “honest”. He says that we should stay in them and put a case for it. So, too, have many in this debate.

Staying a member of the single market is very different, as my noble friend Lord Lamont said earlier, from access. It is tantamount to staying in the EU. It denies control of our borders. As the shadow Chancellor said on 11 June,

“people will interpret membership of the single market as not respecting the referendum”.

For once, I agree with Mr McDonnell. Labour’s recent manifesto declared:

“Labour accepts the referendum result”.


Listening to many of the speeches from those Benches today, you could have fooled me. I hope that those speeches were out of line and when the noble Baroness winds up she will tell us that they were and that Labour was not trying to fool the people in the recent election.

Of course, our Government should reach across party lines to the party opposite and all those who genuinely wish to honour their promise to the British people to see Brexit through. But I am a little puzzled by this sudden idea of a commission—a sort of corporatist body involving precisely who, accountable to whom? Who would pick the team? Can I be a selector? Would Mr Farage be in it? Why should a decision of the British people and a charge to a Government with the confidence of the other place be taken away into private rooms? Is not Parliament there for this? Many noble Lords seem to want to take us back, in effect, into the EU by stealth. It is as though the British people cut a Gordian knot in a single stroke and some in the Westminster bubble want to tie that knot all over again.

Only one major party campaigned to remain in the last election—the Liberal Democrats. Reversing the referendum result was so far from a winning issue that they lost vote share and won only 7.37% of the vote. In my own constituency, Richmond Park, one of the most pro-remain in the country in 2016, they lost the seat to a man they vilified, crudely and falsely, as a so-called hard Brexiteer. Yet, with less than 7.4% of the vote, they sit on 17.8% of the political House. For those noble Lords who remember military history, while once a thin red line stood to defend the British cause in battle, now—and I refer to an overblown party, not to any individual—a fat yellow line sits there, as the noble Lord, Lord Campbell, told us, to block the wishes of the British people. That is surely unfinished business in House of Lords reform.

The referendum said leave. Parliament triggered Article 50 in response. Over 85% of the vote this month went to parties promising to leave. Now the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, comes out, with motives that I understand and respect, and says, “I’ve got a great idea, Prime Minister. Let’s put the whole thing off”. We all know that if that particular kettle were taken off the stove, many parliamentary Pollies would never put it back again. Let us get on with it, have done with obfuscating and obstructive amendments, negotiate in amity and in good faith with our friends, strike a good deal—which at heart every one of good sense should want—and then leave the EU as the British people have required.

21:59

[Baroness Drake (Lab)]

My Lords, there are various reasons why voters in June denied the Government the mandate and the landslide they expected, but the world of work will have fuelled their sense of unfairness and loss of well-being. Wages have been weak for much of the period since 2008 and cannot be explained simply by low productivity or slack in the labour market. The Bank of England’s chief economist identified structural factors that have contributed to weakening wages: technology, globalisation, the changing nature of work and the shifting relationship between employers and employees. Increasing self-employment, zero-hours contracts, flexible and part-time working have further weakened employees’ bargaining power and fed heightened insecurity across the low-income and middle-income labour market. He referred to a modern period of divide and conquer, a growing world of “divisible” jobs and idiosyncratic wages raising important economic and social issues about the modern workplace—trends that are unlikely to reverse.

All of this makes the defence of employment rights and the avoidance of regulatory dumping so important. David Davis wrote in ConservativeHome:

“All the empirical studies show that it is not employment regulation that stultifies economic growth”—


a concession at odds with the red tape review, which specifically targeted employment law and equalities for scrutiny, resulting in, for example, the qualifying period for protection from unfair dismissal rising to two years and hefty fees for workers accessing employment tribunals. In the same article he commented:

“There is also a political, or perhaps sentimental point. The great British industrial working classes voted overwhelmingly for Brexit. I am not at all attracted by the idea of rewarding them by cutting their rights”.


That is not a statement of conviction on delivering a fairer society; it is a statement of political pragmatism. The working class voted for Brexit, so do not rattle their cage—at the moment. But employment rights are part of a fair and inclusive society, not a reward for the working class to be given or removed on the mood swing of a political class.

The Prime Minister promised that,

“existing workers’ legal rights will continue to be guaranteed in law—and they will be guaranteed as long as I am Prime Minister”.

But for how long can she police her own promise? The Chancellor is right: people did not vote to become poorer or less secure. Employment rights and living standards should be central in negotiations on the UK’s future relationship with the EU. Withdrawal would mean that rights currently guaranteed by law would no longer be so guaranteed. Some employment rights are enshrined in UK primary legislation while many are located in secondary legislation. The implications for the great repeal Bill of those many rights located in secondary legislation are very uncertain. If in the Bill employment rights contained in secondary legislation do not move into primary legislation, they would be exposed to simple revocation by secondary legislation.

The Government give three reasons for using secondary legislation in the great repeal Bill: to implement the Article 50 withdrawal agreement; to make adjustments to policy, correcting the acquis so that it works properly from day one; and to provide for a level of detail inappropriate for a Bill. The Delegated Powers Committee has expressed concern that each of these reasons may well result in secondary legislation being used to implement significant and controversial policy matters involving fundamental policy choices. As to secondary legislation providing for a level of detail inappropriate for a Bill, the committee observed:

“This is uncontroversial as a general principle but, in the context of withdrawal from the EU, is more controversial. The main reason why, since 1973, secondary legislation has been used to give effect to most EU law is not because the law is unsuitable for being dealt with in a bill. It is much more to do with the fact that Parliament would have been overwhelmed with the sheer volume of primary legislation … had it been the principal vehicle of transposition”.


As it is now 10 o’clock I will rest on the argument that my noble friend Lord Adonis eloquently reasoned. Put simply, leaving the EU is frighteningly bonkers. In the absence of EU treaty commitments to protect workers and to limit the further driving down of wages, common employment standards must be part of future trade deals. They must be given the same status as technical specifications, consumer protections, and safety and environmental standards. Without integrating them formally into future trade deals, the Government’s promise in the gracious Speech to seek to enhance rights and protections in the workplace will be simply untrue.

22:05

[Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve (CB)]

My Lords, I want to turn to another set of knotty issues that will arise in the process of Brexit in the area of privacy and data protection.

For 20 years and more, we have tried in the EU to deal with issues of privacy by taking a data protection approach: that is, to protect privacy by putting obligations on the data controllers of larger institutions in order to regulate the use of data by which persons can be identified. This approach has been taken in many other jurisdictions, although it is not the only approach to privacy protection and probably not the most intuitive.

At present, the UK relies on the EU directive of 1995, as implemented in the Data Protection Act 1998, but the landscape changed recently when the General Data Protection Regulation was agreed by the EU in April last year. The new regulation comes into force in May 2018: that is, before Brexit negotiations can be completed, even on the most optimistic scenarios.

The Government have stated that the UK’s decision will not affect the commencement of the general regulation, but that is not the end of the matter. They have also stated that they intend to bring forward new legislation on data protection that will, among other things, secure that rather beautiful right to be forgotten, at least for youthful indiscretions.

It is of great importance for business, for public bodies and indeed for citizens to know whether the implementation of the general regulation next May is to be followed by yet another change in the legislative framework. Data governance is complex and has to be built into institutional practice in quite detailed ways. It cannot be changed overnight; it is very easy to get things wrong.

There are reasons to think that data protection works less well as a system for protecting privacy than it may have done when the original directive was devised and implemented. As I see it, technological developments have transformed the ways in which and the scale on which data can be organised and interrogated. Twenty years ago, it was perhaps reasonable to assume that the main threat to privacy was the inadvertent or deliberate disclosure of controlled data—the sorts of cases in which some employee inadvertently sends data to the wrong person, or somebody deliberately sends data that were held as private or confidential to a newspaper—or of course to a rival firm or perhaps to a hostile Government. But that was then, and now is different.

Breaches of privacy typically arise now not by disclosure but by inference. This is not new. When we first read detective stories, one thing we enjoy is the way in which the detective infers whodunit by linking different clues and drawing inferences. Today, in the era of big data, inference is hugely powerful. It is possible to infer information about individuals using varied data sources, including datasets that are outwith the control of any data controller—for example, that are in the public domain—and datasets that contain no identifying information. Data protection, however, tries to work entirely by setting requirements on data controllers. But this approach may fail if the data used to breach others’ privacy are not controlled by any data controller.

The general regulation is an improvement on the old directive. It allows inferences to identification by drawing on additional information by,

“means reasonably likely to be used”,

to be the criteria. It may signal some added realism, but I am unsure whether it sets a feasible standard for daily institutional life. It prohibits the further use of personal data unless for compatible purposes. Again, is that feasible in daily institutional life?

I suggest that a difficulty is that the regulation was devised, once again, with an eye only to data that are controlled, but in the real world people draw on information from sources that are not regulated by any data controller. For example, they may draw on data on social media, or from sources that contain no personal data and yet may reach conclusions that violate privacy. Although there are many groups working on these issues, I do not see a solution ready to hand.

If there is to be legislation—and I take it that there is, since the Government have committed themselves to it—can we be sure that they will take a realistic view about the means that can now be used to protect and to breach privacy, means that need to be manageable for the institutions, and to take a wide view of the diversity of ways in which privacy may be breached? Can the Minister undertake that new legislation in this complex area will be subject to exacting scrutiny? Would she be willing to ensure pre-legislative scrutiny of something that is both vital and very complex?

22:10

[Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)]

My Lords, I refer you to my register of interests, which includes a pension from the European Parliament, although to balance up any unintended bias tonight I must indicate that I also receive a pension from the UK Parliament. I was originally going to concentrate my remarks on a limited analysis of a post-Brexit relationship in the ever-moving and developing field of regulation and legislation for future intelligence and criminal data sharing. I have been concerned for at least the last 10 years in that subject, but as the hour is late my views on that will have to await revelation on another day in another debate. Instead, I want to follow on from the noble Lord, Lord Soley, with whom I will be pleased to work to maintain positive relations with our European partners in the future. I wish to emphasise the urgent need tonight for more understanding in the Brexit process, understanding not only the principled views of all sides in the Brexit discussion here in the UK and in both our Houses, but understanding the views and positions of our European friends.

I have made many friends in Europe and I know how much they want us to remain closely linked, not only geographically but bonded by common ideals. My noble friend Lord Hunt of Wirral, cited the remarks of the late Rab Butler, who talked about politics being “the art of the possible”. How true, but little is possible without a full appreciation and understanding of those with whom we must deal. This understanding must not only be of the views and positions of individuals or parties but of the institutions in Europe. I am amazed at the lack of knowledge in some quarters of the powers and influence of the European Parliament that I recently left, since the Lisbon treaty of 2009, and even of the European Commission, where a number of noble Lords and Baronesses have served over the years.

We will, of necessity, have to work together in future, with common causes and in resisting common threats, so we really need no unnecessary belligerence, no threats and no ultimatums. The Prime Minister herself has made it clear that in the Brexit negotiations we are looking for a positive relationship in the years ahead, but some of the rhetoric, referred to earlier by my noble friend Lord Lamont, does little to assist. Respecting the feelings of our neighbours and recognising their general desire to maintain close connections with us is vital, as is the need for us to understand and sympathise with their wish to continue and develop the community relationship between themselves when we leave. We have worked closely, often with the UK leading the way with our partners in Europe, for many years and we can point to many areas of co-operation and friendship. There is no doubt that we are going to be missed, but whatever the outcome of the present situation we owe it to ourselves and future generations to maintain that friendship and a constructive approach to European as well as wider world affairs.

22:14

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to her new role. I have always seen her as a voice of pragmatism and realism—by God, that is what we need in the present situation.

It is four and a half years since David Cameron made his fateful Bloomberg speech which promised a referendum. His political motive was to preserve the unity of the Conservative Party and he also claimed that this would resolve the European issue for all time. Now, does anyone think that the Conservative Party is united as a result of the referendum? More importantly, does anyone think that we are any nearer national unity on this question? In fact, whereas in 2013, according to the opinion polls, only 10% of the public regarded Europe as one of the most important issues that they cared about, today remainers and leavers are at each other’s throats. It has not resolved anything.

What has the general election resolved? The Prime Minister chose to frame her pitch as being about Brexit. That is what she said on the doorstep of No. 10 Downing Street. She asked the British people for a strong, increased majority to deliver her version of Brexit. She attacked the Labour Party, the House of Lords and our European partners as obstructive forces in her way. What did the British people do? The Conservatives lost seats. They are now a minority Government and it was only in Scotland, where the Scottish Conservatives take a pro-European position, that they gained seats. Surely after this it is time for a thorough rethink of where we are.

The Government need to face up to the total unreality of their present negotiating position. David Davis claims he is going to achieve “exactly the same benefits” as we have in the single market, and it is all very simple because we already conform to EU rules. This is a completely unnegotiable proposition. It claims that we can have all the benefits of single market membership without fulfilling any of its obligations in terms of money, rules or jurisdiction. There is a massive trade-off between sovereignty and market access. The question of whether or not we accept ECJ jurisdiction is of fundamental importance because that is what the Europeans are worrying about with regard to the rights of EU citizens here, and it is also at the heart of the economic relationship because if our European friends think that we can go in for regulatory competition without any judicial check, they will not allow us free access to their markets. I am sceptical about the proposition of the noble Lord, Lord Tugendhat, that we can negotiate a satisfactory bespoke arrangement. At best, it will be a trade agreement in which perhaps we avoid tariffs but even to avoid tariffs I think we will have to accept membership of the customs union and some form of arbitration mechanism. Of course, it would leave out services, which is the United Kingdom’s main competitive advantage.

I think that the only way forward for us is to go for continued membership of the single market, not just as a transition but as a permanent arrangement. The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, said that this would be wanting to be half-in, half-out. I do not take that view. I regard it as a precondition for a continued close relationship—the deep and permanent partnership that we seek with our European friends. I know that it is politically difficult, because it involves acceptance of free movement, but I would argue that we can still go for a reformed free movement if we have the right political leadership. We need to convince voters at home of this—that jobs matter more than immigration. We need to convince our partners that while we accept the fundamentals of free movement, important reforms are necessary; and we need ourselves to make domestic political changes in areas such as training and employment protection to deal with abuses of free movement.

That is why tonight I shall support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I know that my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench have some reservations about this. Let it be said that I will always be their strongest supporter in this House. We have a wonderful Front Bench here. But the argument is made that we in the Labour Party should not be talking about Europe but talking about austerity. Let me tell your Lordships that if we come out of the single market on a hard basis, austerity will be a far bigger problem for Britain than anything else.

Secondly—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Liddle]

I am just concluding.

Secondly, I am not prepared to listen to people who regard Europe as a capitalist club. I am not prepared to listen to a leadership that did not put its heart and soul into campaigning for our continued membership of the European Union. I do not regard it as having any moral legitimacy on this subject, and I urge my colleagues to vote for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis.

22:21

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, follow that—I agreed with every word said by the noble Lord, Lord Liddle.

[Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)]

Thank you.

[Baroness Ludford]

Especially, of course, about the Labour Front Bench—you are truly wonderful.

Getting back to my script, I, like others, welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Anelay, to the ministerial brief for Brexit. We have obviously had a productive experience with her before as Foreign Office Minister. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, who was briefly here earlier but unfortunately did not speak. He valiantly tried in his period of office to represent government policy, but found it a pretty impossible task. We always knew when the noble Lord was most uncomfortable with his brief because he got irritable with my Benches, especially somehow with me. I am sure that the noble Baroness will do no such thing.

The Government lost a full year on litigation to resist parliamentary accountability and then on an unnecessary election. Indeed, the Government undermined their own case, when they had a mandate from the referendum last year, by seeking a renewed mandate. Brexit is therefore in total flux and a total mess. There is no plan. Still now, nobody knows what Brexit will look like. Instead of competent, supple and intelligent government, which was needed to cope with the situation where the country was almost evenly split, we have unfortunately had arrogance, brash triumphalism, hubris and pigheadedness with brittleness instead of strength and disarray instead of stability. This was followed by an inevitable clash with reality and led to, for example, the capitulation on the sequencing of negotiations. Instead of a win-win approach, we had a lose-lose one. How can there be a sound conduct of negotiations against this background? As the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, said, you do not start with red lines and insults.

The Minister has promised openness and transparency in the negotiations. We will see what that means in practice, but so far there has been nothing to match the publication of position papers by the European Council and Commission. Just as the Prime Minister’s forlorn call to the country to rally in unity behind extreme Brexit was not followed by the British people, it has not been followed by her own Government. The headline in the Times today was:

“May’s top team splits over Brexit”,


with the Brexit Secretary calling the Chancellor inconsistent. It is indeed the Cabinet of chaos. Those divisions have been fully aired on the Benches behind her this evening, where a full range of opinions have been expressed. I hope that some will vote for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. It is shameful that while the Cabinet airs its disunity, a Back-Bencher, the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has told us that he has been punished by the loss of a committee post, where he was most valued, because of a vote that he cast.

Can the Minister confirm that the “no deal” threat is now dead? It was repeated in the Conservative manifesto alongside—astonishingly, although without acknowledgement of the irony—a promise to secure a “smooth and orderly” Brexit. That was, as the noble Lord, Lord Jay, said, an admission of no confidence in the Government’s own negotiating powers. Only the reference to a “smooth and orderly” Brexit was repeated today in the noble Baroness’s opening remarks, so is the cliff edge off the scene? Is the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York’s “gentler slope” now policy? How gentle is it?

I remind the noble Baroness and the House that the Treasury said last year that the country would be £45 billion a year poorer if we fell off a cliff edge into WTO terms. As the Chancellor rightly observed, and as has been repeatedly invoked tonight, no one voted last year to make themselves poorer—although they already are, as my noble friend Lord Campbell of Pittwenweem remarked. How any Government could contemplate such a destructive Brexit, let alone with relish, an astonishing abrogation of responsibility, beggars belief. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, economic self-mutilation is not a wise policy.

My noble friend Lord Oates was so right in calling for a sensible and pragmatic approach. We need a reset. As the noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong of Hill Top, pointed out from the Labour Benches, nothing has been done to prepare the British public for the inevitable choices and compromises: no spelling out of the implications and no being honest with the voters that we and they cannot have our cake and eat it. There is a need for some grown-up government, which acknowledges that frankly.

I have no time for this Aunt Sally about how the EU is trying to punish us. It is not. There is huge regard for this country in Brussels, but of course you cannot enjoy all the benefits of the club if you leave it. The Government’s ideological red lines—refusing to stay in the single market and regulatory agencies because of a fetish about European judges—amount to shooting ourselves in the foot. This folly is at its starkest in putting dogma before our real interests in crime and security co-operation. My noble friend Lord Teverson mentioned Euratom. My understanding is that it is because of some very marginal jurisdiction that the ECJ has over some aspects—something about the free movement of nuclear scientists—that the Government are pulling out of Euratom. While these arrangements are vital to our safe transfer of nuclear material and treatment for cancer patients, I cannot believe the British public would think that is a sensible outcome.

Enough has been said for me not to repeat it about the Government’s proposals on EU citizens being too little and too late. We will come back to that, not least in a debate next week. On the repeal Bill—thank goodness for the dropping of the pretentious “great”—I am grateful that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Trefgarne, who spoke earlier, expressed concern in its report at the end of April, which these Benches fully share, about secondary legislation being used to implement significant and controversial policy matters, not just some technical corrections. We will need to scrutinise these powers with great care and exercise our proper constitutional position, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said.

I believe many people voted for Brexit because they were asked to vote for a status quo in voting for remain as though they were content with everything that was happening in their lives. That was not the case—quite the opposite, in fact—and they were given the chance to vote for drastic change that promised the earth. That promise is not going to be realised, and the great tragedy of Brexit is the waste of time, capacity and money when we should be pursuing domestic problems.

The Labour amendment tonight promises the exact same benefits of the single market without membership. This goes beyond the party’s manifesto claim of retaining the benefits. I can only agree with the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, that this is a slidy position. I fear it is open to the same type of parody as “strong and stable”. That is the real cherry-picking—pretending you would have the benefits of the single market without membership of it. These Benches welcome the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and will support it if he wishes to ask us to vote on it. We have a great deal of sympathy with some of the sentiments in the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Armstrong, but it does not perhaps express quite the next step that we need to take.

The fact is, as my noble friend Lord Campbell said, that remaining should be an option that the British people have in having the final say once they can see what Brexit actually means in practice. These Benches quite understand why the granddaughters of the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, were distraught. Let us negotiate a sensible Brexit but then, as a second step, let us allow the voters to decide whether it is sensible enough.

22:32

[Baroness Smith of Basildon]

My Lords, we have had an excellent debate today. As the 64th speaker, I feel grateful to all noble Lords who tried to keep to the advisory time limit.

I welcome the Minister to her new position. We all know from comments she has made before that if she were in charge of Brexit we would not be starting from here. I wonder what sin the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen of Elie, has committed that he has to wind up today’s debate. We will miss the noble Lord, Lord Bridges, at the Dispatch Box. He tried hard at all times to address the questions put to him—although, at times, given that the Government themselves have no answers, it was clearly difficult for him.

We have debated for more than seven hours, and it is confirmation of the complexity of the hugely important issues that face us that we have really only touched the surface of them. If anyone was in any doubt about the impact that Brexit will have on British political life and the key issues that affect our citizens, they need look no further than this Government’s programme as outlined in the Queen’s Speech.

What are the great challenges for society today? If you ask young people, housing will be at the top of the list, but the Queen’s Speech promises only:

“Proposals will be brought forward to ban unfair tenant fees, promote fairness and transparency in the housing market, and help ensure more homes are built”—


hardly a bold, creative programme to deal with one of the great crises of our generation. If we skip that generation, many older people might suggest that the issue of social care as they get older worries them most. Despite that being a key issue in the election, though, the most that the Government could promise was:

“My Ministers will work to improve social care and will bring forward proposals for consultation”.


These are the kinds of issues that go right to the heart of the kind of society that we want to live in, where everyone has a decent home and no one fears for their own care as they get older and need help. Just imagine what could be achieved by our brightest and best if they could focus on them.

Yet, alongside vagueness on these issues, the Government programme talked of providing certainty to individuals and business with a Bill to repeal the European Communities Act, an avalanche of further legislation just to ensure that the existing EU protections from which we currently benefit are brought into UK law, and a whole raft of legislation on trade, customs, immigration, international sanctions, nuclear safeguards, agriculture and fisheries.

Part of the Government’s problem is that the referendum result meant different things to different people and that, at the time, the Government were unable to provide any clarity about what the result meant or what would happen next, as no preparation had been done on what Brexit would look like or the detail of what it meant in practice. So, with the new Prime Minister, the Government had to play catch-up to seek to define how they saw Brexit. The answer, initially, was, “Brexit means Brexit”.

The Prime Minister’s Lancaster House speech and the White Paper were early-stage thinking from a Government seeking their way. I think the noble Lord, Lord Horam, said that it was a fundamental error. But we have to move on from there, because that speech and the White Paper did not inspire. It was the Prime Minister’s version of Brexit, on which she sought and failed to gain a mandate from the British people in the general election.

Given that she got her Article 50 Bill through unamended, I will never understand why the Prime Minister then squandered her parliamentary majority through an unnecessary election. She presented that election as a judgment on her leadership and sought a mandate for the Brexit that she had outlined. Her pitch appeared to be basically that she had been questioned and challenged—including by your Lordships’ House—but that she should be allowed to get on with it in whatever way she wanted. It is not unlike Andrea Leadsom criticising the press for being unpatriotic when asking her questions.

Nothing could be more patriotic or more democratic than on this, the most complex and challenging issue of my generation, to question, scrutinise, challenge and offer alternatives. The process of Brexit cannot be led by those who have no doubt. It is only through doubt, careful thought and consideration, analysis and, yes, challenge, that we can achieve the best outcomes. From listening to tonight’s debate, there is wise advice for the Prime Minister and the Government in a number of areas.

First, the Government should be clear that they now accept that, rather than no deal being better than a bad deal, no deal is the worst possible deal. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown, disputed that, but I must say to him that any acceptance that we could crash out of the EU on WTO terms obviously creates uncertainty for the economy. It also means, for example, no deal on EU nationals, no deal on data sharing regarding serious and organised crime and terrorism and no deal on the Irish border. It would mean no deal on mutual recognition of environmental regulation or, indeed, any regulatory alignment on standards and enforcement. It would mean no deal on employment rights in trade deals. It would mean no deal on safety regulation of the nuclear industry, as we would have also left Euratom, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord O’Neill of Clackmannan. It would mean no deal on the European Criminal Records Information System. The then Home Secretary said in April 2016 how important that was because the Government had checked the details of more than 100,000 foreign nationals against that database. No deal is not just the worst deal: it is irresponsible, dangerous and a failure of catastrophic proportions.

The second piece of advice to the Government tonight is about tone. There has to be a more constructive approach. For the Prime Minister to claim to be a “bloody difficult woman” might play well with some at home, but is curious and unproductive as a negotiating strategy. A constructive tone would achieve so much more. Anyone who has negotiated knows that the tone of the talks, and the relationship and the trust that are built up, are essential for effective discussion and agreement.

A key start on changing that tone would be a unilateral offer on EU nationals. This House offered a way forward for the Prime Minister before she started the Article 50 negotiations. She was warned by my noble friend Lady Symons and others that until everything is agreed, nothing is agreed—so it would be helpful to have that issue resolved at an early stage. As my noble friend Lady Kennedy said, our EU Select Committee report on acquired rights recommended that the Government should,

“give a unilateral guarantee now that it will safeguard the EU citizenship rights of all EU nationals in the UK”,

post Brexit. The report further stated:

“The overwhelming weight of the evidence we received points to this as morally the right thing to do. It would also have the advantage of striking a much-needed positive note for the start of the negotiations”.


It is the right thing to do for common humanity, but it is also the best thing to do for the economy. The Government’s proposals fall short—too little, too late—and there are practical reasons why they seem to me to be unworkable.

The other issue that has been raised in a considerable number of contributions tonight—indeed, it is the subject of my noble friend Lord Adonis’s amendment—is the single market and the customs union. In many ways, this issue comes down to the question of why 52% of the population voted to leave the EU. In reality, the Prime Minister’s “hard Brexit”—which I think should more properly be referred to as “extreme Brexit”—means that the benefits of the customs union and the single market are not even being put on the table for discussion, and that is totally wrong. Our approach on this should be not ideological but pragmatic. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said that it should not be a hard or a soft Brexit, and I think that we should look at something different. The choice seems to be between an ideologically extreme Brexit or a pragmatic Brexit that is in the interests of the economy and the people of this country. I am not particularly interested in structures or the mechanisms of how we get there, but we have to ensure that when we negotiate an agreement, the starting point is the single market and customs union that have served this country, our economy and the workers in our economy so well for the past 40 years.

We understand that the Government have to negotiate an agreement that recognises the referendum result, but they must also ensure that the priorities are jobs and an economy that works for the British people. Other noble Lords have said the same thing but I think that we mean different things when we say it. Our starting point is the benefits that we have obtained from the single market and the customs union. We have to be clear about the benefits to and interests of the UK, and also convince the EU 27 that it is not only in the UK’s interests but in the EU’s interests too. It is not our decision alone, and we should start from that point.

In answer to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, I did not invent the objective of “exact same benefits”—that is a quote from David Davis, the Secretary of State. He said that we should seek the “exact same benefits” and I am very happy to hold him to it.

A further issue is how to ensure that our new regulatory infrastructure is and continues to be aligned with that of the EU if we are to ensure ongoing trade in goods and services. That is not an abstract concept or burdensome; it is as important as the benefits of the single market and the customs union if we are to continue to trade with the EU. Let us take the European Medicines Agency and the pharmaceutical industry as an example. EMA certification provides companies with market access to around 500 million people across the EU. That market accounts for 25% of sales worldwide. On its own, the UK accounts for just 3%, but it is significant for our economy. I wonder whether the Government understand the professional concerns that are being raised about this. The market is so small in the UK as a whole that companies may decide not to come to the UK, not to invest in the UK and not undertake their research and development operations in the UK. In 2013 this sector provided a trade surplus of £2.8 billion to the UK economy. Squander that and we do a great disservice to parts of our economy and to medicine.

On Wednesday the noble Baroness the Leader of the House did not—perhaps she could not—answer any of my questions about the progress on plans to deal with our leaving the EMA. Those questions were straightforward and they do not apply just to the EMA; they also apply to all the other agencies of which we are a part, including the European Aviation Safety Agency, the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, the European Environment Agency and the European Maritime Safety Agency. We have spoken about Euratom. There is also the European Police Office and the European Securities and Markets Authority. When we leave these in leaving the European Union we will need to have something in their place, and not something that is regulatory just at that point in time. If we are going to continue to trade we will need to have ongoing compliance and an ongoing process by which we match what is happening in the EU—otherwise we lose the markets that want to trade with us. We need to know what the Government are doing now to address those issues.

When she was speaking, the Minister implied that we need to ensure that all these matters are resolved within the two-year period. It is right that we should ask what is being done today and what has happened. My noble friend Lady Kennedy and others raised the issue of the ECJ. Whatever you call it, there will need to be a disputes mechanism that is recognised in international law. For those in the party opposite simply to say that we are going to leave the ECJ and not say what will replace it—because they have an obsession with leaving the ECJ, which has served us so well in trade and other areas—is to do a disservice to this country.

The party opposite and the Government have not liked talking about transitional arrangements, so I am happy to call it an implementation stage, if that makes it any easier. I thought that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, had a very pragmatic approach in her speech to why transitional arrangements will be essential.

I quote my noble friend Lord Mandelson in his excellent article in the Financial Times last week, where he wrote of the “pragmatism and compromise” that the Government need to bring to these debates, taking a “wider view” of the UK, even outside the EU, as an EU partner. That ties in with what my noble friend Lord Cashman said about consensus and the wider agreement that the Government need to seek. You can contrast that approach with this ideological, extreme Brexit. We have to ensure that the Government step back from this and take a pragmatic approach, not just go heads forward, with red lines that may damage our economy and do a disservice to the people of this country.

My noble friend Lady Hayter has already said that we want to ensure that as the process continues we give the best advice that we can to the Government and the House of Commons. We will use all the expertise that this House has to offer to be supportive in getting that pragmatic, practical Brexit that works in the best interests of this country. A vote on our amendment tonight would allow us to reinforce the point that we made in today’s debate, but it would not at this hour reflect the views of the House—but there will be other opportunities to do so, and we will seek those opportunities. Those two key votes on our amendments to the Article 50 Bill, on the issue of providing unilateral guarantees to EU nationals and on the parliamentary process, showed by their massive majorities not just the view of your Lordships’ House but also the strength of opinion in your Lordships’ House. Although the PM cajoled and persuaded sympathetic MPs not to support those amendments, I very much doubt that she would have the same success today.

The Minister spoke about the negotiations and said that she would come to this House to update it; I know that she says that with good intentions, but that is not good enough. There has to be a move not just to update your Lordships’ House but to engage with it, listen to what is said, take note and at times act on what it has to say. For the avoidance of doubt, I want to be clear how we as the Official Opposition will approach legislation, Brexit and others, in this Parliament. Since the general election resulted in a minority Government, most of the debate relating to your Lordships’ House is around the historic Salisbury/Addison convention and whether it still applies. As I set out in my initial response to the Queen’s Speech last week and in media commentary since, the focus of that debate is misplaced; the ultimate purpose of that convention was to guarantee the primacy of the elected House of Commons, which rightly continues to hold. As history tells us, no minority Government can ever take the support of the House of Commons for granted.

On Brexit, and other legislation brought to your Lordships’ House, we on these Benches will continue to fulfil our constitutional duties, examining and debating issues and when necessary seeking amendments for further consideration in the other place. I welcome the comments of my noble friend Lady Jay, with her experience on this issue, with particular reference to statutory instruments. The noble Lord, Lord Strathclyde, tried to make his report an issue between the House of Lords and the House of Commons, but it was not; it was an issue between the House of Lords and the Executive, who send statutory instruments to your Lordships’ House. I have had discussions with the Leader of this House and have given evidence to the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution; we need a new committee that will look solely at Brexit statutory instruments. I also call on the Government to commit to publishing all such SIs early on, so that they can be considered and consulted on prior to being introduced in your Lordships’ House.

With a minority Government, there are two areas in particular where the Government need to be aware of the constitutional position and how it would be viewed by Members of both Houses. Clearly, it would be very unwise for the Government to inappropriately use Henry VIII powers in the proposed great repeal Bill as a way of rushing through primary legislation without proper parliamentary scrutiny. With significant clauses not even debated by the House of Commons, your Lordships’ House can provide a useful service to the other place by seeking amendments that would allow the Commons to take part in scrutiny that they would not otherwise be able to.

A number of questions have been raised in tonight’s debate. I hope that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Keen, will be able to answer those but, if not, can he circulate his answers to all Members of your Lordships’ House who have been asking questions tonight? These questions will be returned to and will come up again and again but, so far, the answers from the Government have been far from satisfactory.

22:50

[The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour, even at this hour, to be asked to speak in support of Her Majesty’s gracious Speech. I thank noble Lords for the many valuable contributions made in the debate this evening. Her Majesty the Queen underlined the core principles of the Government’s programme of legislation on, and their approach to, exiting the European Union in the gracious Speech:

“my Government’s priority is to secure the best possible deal as the country leaves the European Union. My Ministers are committed to working with Parliament, the devolved Administrations, business and others to build the widest possible consensus on the country’s future outside the European Union”.

My noble friend Lady Anelay spoke in the opening of this debate on the context and substance of this legislation as the centrepiece of the Government’s extensive legislative programme to support our exit from the EU. These issues have been discussed with clarity, eloquence and in detail not only today but on previous occasions. I will not seek to repeat all the points that have been raised, but I will summarise certain issues. First, the Government have made clear that we must respect the will of the British people expressed in the referendum last year: we will be leaving the European Union.

I have great admiration for the noble Lord, Lord Campbell of Pittenweem, particularly for his candour. He said in terms that a terrible mistake had been made and that we should simply not leave.

[Lord Campbell of Pittenweem]

I think that when the Minister consults Hansard, he will find that that is not what I said. I said that I remain convinced of the idea that the best interests of the United Kingdom are served by membership of the European Union. I did not characterise my position in the terms that he has suggested.

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am content to consult Hansard on the point and I am not, at this hour, going to enter into a debate on what was noted and what was not noted in the noble Lord’s comments, but he made it perfectly clear that, notwithstanding the results of the referendum, he felt that the interests of the British people lay in remaining in the European Union.

As I say, the Government’s position is perfectly clear: we intend to respect the outcome of the referendum and, indeed, exit negotiations began in Brussels last week. We are of course working to secure a smooth exit from the EU, and one that protects the rights of EU citizens in the United Kingdom and British citizens in other EU countries, recognising our unique relationship with the other countries in the EU. We want to build a new, deep and special partnership between the United Kingdom and the European Union that takes in both economic and security co-operation. It should be underpinned by ambitious agreements on free trade and customs covering goods and services and seeking the greatest possible tariff-free and barrier-free trade. Of course, those negotiations will be complex and at times challenging, but the Government are confident that with hard work and good will on all sides we can reach an outcome that works for the European Union and all parts of this union—the United Kingdom.

We have listened to the EU and its leaders and we understand and respect the position that the four freedoms of the single market are indivisible and that there can be no cherry picking. Those four freedoms include the free movement of people. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred to these four fundamental and indivisible freedoms as a false doctrine, but they are nothing of the sort. It is a statement of fact that the EU wishes to maintain, and will maintain, the indivisibility of those four freedoms in respect of capital, services, goods and people, and we have to respect that going forward.

The question before us now is how the Government’s plans, including the legislative programme outlined in Her Majesty’s gracious Speech, support the negotiations, ensure a smooth exit from the EU and prepare for the UK’s future outside the EU. The legislative agenda to prepare the UK for its new place in the world outside the European Union is extensive, but it is also necessary. The centrepiece of this legislative programme is the repeal Bill, which has three main effects. First, it ends the authority of EU law in the United Kingdom, transferring power back from Brussels to the United Kingdom. Secondly, it converts the body of EU law into domestic law to maximise certainty for individuals, businesses and consumers by converting EU law into domestic law. It will give Ministers, both here and in the devolved Administrations, the power to amend EU law as appropriate so that we have a functioning statute book on day one after exit. Thirdly, as well as maximising certainty and ensuring a smooth exit from the EU, the Bill will also support a future trade deal with the EU by ensuring that we start from a regulatory level playing field. The purpose of the legislation is clear and significant for the whole country: it is to ensure we have can have a smooth and orderly exit from the European Union.

I will not attempt to address each of the 64 contributions that have been made this evening. That would strain not only my recollection but noble Lords’ patience. However, with the leave of the House, I shall address a number of the contributions and bring together some of the common points that were raised. I begin with the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, who spoke of the United Kingdom’s place in the world after Brexit, as if there was going to be a fundamental loss of both hard and soft power. With respect, we do not accept that proposition at all. I remind the noble Baroness that, among other things, the United Kingdom remains one of the few countries in NATO that meets its commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence, it meets the United Nations standards with regard to overseas aid at 0.7% of GDP, and our standing in the world is measured by these rather than simply by membership of the Union itself.

The noble Baroness spoke of mutuality. That arises in a number of contexts. It is important to appreciate that what we are addressing here is a matter of mutual interest. Just as we have an interest in the enforcement for example of family law decisions within the European Union, so it has a mutual interest in the enforcement of its orders within the United Kingdom. Just as we have an interest in trading with the European Union, so it has a £300 billion interest in trading with the United Kingdom, whether within or without the single market, so mutuality lies at the heart of the negotiation that will be undertaken.

The noble Baroness spoke of the issue of mutual recognition in the context of things such as the European Medicines Agency. But, of course, we address the matter of mutual recognition with regard to such things as medicines and chemicals at an international level. So, for example, we have no difficulty with regard to our dealings with the US federal agencies; there is always an element of good will and recognition arising there.

The noble Baroness also touched on the matter of immigration. We will not be closed to immigration—we will be able to control it. That lies at the heart of the decision that the British people made in the referendum.

The noble Baroness also raised, as did other noble Lords, the question of the devolved Administrations and the matter of devolved competence. Of course, the Government will respect, as they always have, the Sewel convention. In addition, we will engage with all the devolved Administrations in the matter of the negotiation and the outcome of the negotiations with the European Union. Furthermore, so far as Ireland is concerned, we are of course alive to the issue of the hard border, which was alluded to by the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and we are of course determined and have raised already in the negotiation the question of how we can deal with the need for a soft and essentially open border between the north and the south of that island.

On a related issue, my noble friend Lady Hooper raised the question of the overseas territories and of Gibraltar. Again, we have made it perfectly clear that we will represent the interests of the overseas territories and of Gibraltar in the forthcoming negotiations. Indeed, we will never enter into arrangements under which the people of Gibraltar would pass under the sovereignty of another state against their wishes, nor enter into any process of sovereignty negotiations with which Gibraltar itself is not content. We have been absolutely clear: our exit negotiations cover Gibraltar as we leave the EU, and our focus is to get the best possible deal for the United Kingdom, for the overseas territories and for Gibraltar.

I turn to some observations of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, and of some of his colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches. He suggested that the United Kingdom Government are somehow asserting that they hold all the cards in this negotiation. That is not the position that we adopt. Indeed, if we held all the cards, there would not be a negotiation; it would be a matter of dictating terms. There has to be an open and mutually beneficial negotiation to achieve the outcome we all seek. He also suggested that we were somehow simply turning our face away from the European Union and towards countries such as New Zealand, India, China and others. Of course, we seek to embrace the opportunities that will arise with regard to trade in these other parts of the world, but we are not closing off trade with the European Union in any sense whatever. We are not turning our back on our partners in Europe; we will continue to engage with them to our mutual interest and mutual benefit.

The noble Lord went on, in a number of ways, to criticise the approach that the Government are taking, as if somehow we were moving towards an absolute Brexit that took no account of the views of the people of this country. I remind him of the point made by his noble friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Newnham, who suggested that when the Government respond to the matter of the EU negotiations, they should respond with humility to the people. I respectfully suggest that the Liberal Democrats might also respond with some humility to the view of the people, both as reflected in the referendum and in the recent election, where they went to the people with a particular view of Brexit that clearly was not palatable. So a degree of humility all round might be beneficial to the entire process.

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I turn, with a degree of humility, to the EEA and the observations of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood. I agree with his observations regarding the position of the Labour Opposition Bench and about their amendment being somewhat opportunistic in its form. I also concur with his observation that there must be circumstances in which no deal is simply not the worst outcome. Indeed, that was echoed by other noble Lords.

However, I come on more particularly to the question of EEA membership, which the noble and learned Lord addressed. He began by saying that there were a number of points that he would like to make in support of EEA membership. He observed, among other things, that free movement would be less absolute as it does not involve EU citizens. I shall not take issue with what he meant or did not mean by the term “less absolute”, but I observe that, although Norwegians are not EU citizens, those immigrants going from the EU into Norway are EU citizens, and their rights and obligations have to be determined accordingly.

The noble and learned Lord also suggested that, if we were to enter the EEA, our contribution to the EU budget would be smaller. With respect, that is a moot point given the loss of the rebate that would occur in those circumstances. He went on to suggest—this mirrors an approach taken by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—that within the EEA there would be a retention of sovereignty because EU legislation has no direct effect in an EEA country that is a member of EFTA. However, with great respect, these EEA countries are effectively bound to implement EU legislation if they wish to retain their rights in the single market pursuant to membership of the EEA; it is simply an indirect route to the same outcome.

The noble and learned Lord also suggested—others have mentioned this—that we would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, as though this was some major red line in the present context. Of course, although there is an EFTA Court, it has as a matter of fact invariably rubber-stamped all decisions of the ECJ in so far as they are relevant to the EEA and EFTA, and therefore it is really a distinction without a difference. The EFTA Court is little more than a fig leaf. Indeed, for us to leave the EU and join the EEA by way of EFTA would do little more than someone leaving the bridge of a ship and going down to the engine room to shovel coal into the boilers, and we would be paying for the coal as well. We would lose any sense of direction or control but we would continue to contribute to the matter overall.

Just pausing for a moment on the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I reiterate that, although he refers to the four freedoms within the requirements of the single market as a false doctrine, they are nothing of the sort. One has to understand the position of the EU. As far as it is concerned, the four freedoms are not a doctrine, false or otherwise; they are a fact of life, and so far as the EU is concerned they will remain a fact of life. Therefore, to enter the single market and the customs union as proposed is simply to remain by other means within the EU itself, with all that goes with it. That was not the decision of the British people as a consequence of the referendum.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Order!

[Lord Keen of Elie]

I am sorry, my Lords, but given the hour I am not going to give way.

The noble Lord, Lord Mandelson, also touched upon the question of maintaining membership of the single market and the customs union. He suggested that, even if we were to seek some agreement with the EU with regard to access to the single market, we would, as a matter of fact, have to be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. I take issue with that.

The European Union has entered into more than 40 trade agreements with non-EU countries. Those countries are not thereby made subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. However, what you have in these trade agreements is a dispute resolution mechanism, just as you have in the agreement with Canada, so the two do not go hand in hand. They do not go together.

I come to the observations of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, who raised the important issue of children, children’s rights and how family law rights will be maintained after exit. Of course, there is provision at present in the Brussels 1a regulation for mutual recognition of family law decisions in the European Union, but that is a matter of mutual interest. There is no reason why that mutual agreement should not pertain after exit from the European Union, albeit not as a provision from within the European Union itself. I add that these regulations tend to have their origins, their foundation, in the Hague convention, which predates the European Union itself. We are confident that there will be a mutual interest in maintaining that sort of recognition.

Also, on the welfare of children, all the rights and obligations with regard to children will transfer into United Kingdom law. They are recognised as such. We will continue to engage with child and youth advocacy groups in the coming months as part of our strategy to ensure that a wide range of stakeholder perspectives are factored into our negotiations for exit. I add that my noble friend Lady Anelay has asked me to extend an offer from her to meet the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, to discuss these issues further, as she suggested might be the case.

Even as I come to the end of my time, if I can nevertheless strain your Lordships’ patience a little further—

[Noble Lords]

Oh!

[Lord Keen of Elie]

Or perhaps a lot further, I have one further point on mutuality raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of the Shaws. She spoke about the importance of mutual recognition in the context of commercial judgments and so on. Again, one has to emphasise the word “mutual”. There is a mutual interest between the United Kingdom and the European Union in maintaining the ability to recognise choice of law and jurisdiction, and the ability to recognise the enforcement of judgments. The same applies in the context of wider security issues such as Europol, Eurojust and the European arrest warrant. It will be perfectly possible to negotiate a suitable outcome to these issues.

Finally, I will mention the question of Euratom, which was raised. I quite understand the concerns that arise with regard to it. However, I would make this point. It is not the case that Euratom is not part of the EU. The Euratom treaty is defined as one of the EU treaties. The first step that we will take on nuclear matters is domestic legislation that puts in place a clear structure for dealing with nuclear issues, including nuclear fission. Thereafter, we will of course take the appropriate step to have bilateral agreements with other countries, such as the United States, in order that we can maintain our position in the nuclear industry and the safety of our nuclear operations.

I have but touched upon many of the 64 contributions made today, and I can do little more at this stage of the evening. However, let me reiterate: it is not a case of Brexit meaning Brexit; it is the case that the people have spoken. They spoke in the referendum and it was determined that we should leave the EU. We are going to leave the European Union.

Amendment to the Motion

Tabled by

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

As an amendment to the above motion, at end to insert “but, recognising that no deal is the worst possible deal, call upon Her Majesty’s Government to seek to negotiate a Brexit that prioritises jobs and the economy; delivers the exact same benefits as the United Kingdom currently has as a member of the single market and customs union; ensures that there is no weakening of co-operation in security and policing; and maintains the existing rights of European Union nationals living in the United Kingdom and United Kingdom nationals living in the European Union.”

Amendment to the Motion not moved.

Amendment to the Motion

Moved by

[Lord Adonis]

As an amendment to the motion that a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, at end to insert “but regret that it contains no proposal for Her Majesty’s Government to seek to negotiate continued membership of the European Single Market and Customs Union.”

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, it is 11.14 pm, and I do not think that your Lordships wish to hear any more speeches this evening, so I will move to a vote. I beg to move.

23:15

Division 1

Ayes: 104

---

Liberal Democrat: 58
Labour: 25
Crossbench: 17
Conservative: 2
Independent: 1
Plaid Cymru: 1

Noes: 172

---

Conservative: 159
Crossbench: 6
Democratic Unionist Party: 3
Independent: 2
Ulster Unionist Party: 1

23:26

Amendment to the Motion

Tabled by

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

As an amendment to the motion that a Humble Address be presented to Her Majesty, at end to insert “but call upon Her Majesty’s Government to suspend, for the time being, the negotiations for leaving the European Union; and, to that end, to withdraw, for the time being, the notification of intention to leave the European Union in accordance with Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, conveyed in the Prime Minister’s letter of 29 March.”

[Lord Armstrong of Ilminster]

My Lords, much of what I have heard in the debate today has confirmed the fears I expressed when introducing the amendment. I do not think that we are ready to continue these negotiations, but at this late hour I do not propose to test the opinion of the House.

Amendment to the Motion not moved.

Debate adjourned until Thursday 29 June.

House adjourned at 11.27 pm.