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Oral Answers to Questions
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
NHS England, NHS Improvement and Health Education England are working with trusts on a range of recruitment, retention and return-to-practice programmes to ensure that the required workforce are in place to deliver safe and effective services.
Martyn Day
The nursing vacancy rate in England is more than double that in Scotland, with one in 10 positions unfilled. The Royal College of Nursing has welcomed the Scottish Government’s Health And Care (Staffing) (Scotland) Bill, which will enshrine safe staffing levels in law. Will the Minister now follow the Scottish Government’s example and bring such a provision into law for NHS England?
Stephen Barclay
I fear that the hon. Gentleman wrote his question before yesterday’s announcement. I thought that he might have started by welcoming the additional £2 billion of investment that Scotland’s NHS will be receiving. We are making historic investment in recruitment, which is why we are opening five new medical schools in England, training 1,500 new medical doctors, taking initiatives such as on apprenticeships and opening new pathways into clinical roles.
Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
While I welcome yesterday’s announcement and the workforce strategy that is coming out in the autumn, will the Minister comment on the Home Office’s new proposals to allow greater flexibility for professional clinicians coming to work in the UK, and on what impact that might have on filling vacancies?
Stephen Barclay
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention both to the Home Office’s welcome announcement on tier 2 visas and to the work on the workforce strategy, in which he played a key role. It will ensure that we have the right workforce for the NHS for the next 10 years.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
But the Royal College of Nursing and the Nursing and Midwifery Council are both now so worried about Brexit’s impact on the staffing crisis that they have called for a people’s vote on a deal. Given their on-the-ground experience and the demolition of the myth of a Brexit dividend for the NHS, is it not becoming ever more clear that the dogmatic hard Brexit being pursued by the Government is already doing untold damage to our NHS?
Stephen Barclay
The right hon. Gentleman, as a former Minister of State, will not want to choose selectively from the data on European economic area recruitment into the NHS. He will know full well that there are 3,200 more NHS staff from the EU since the referendum, which shows that people are still coming. If he has an issue with the Brexit dividend, perhaps, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pointed out yesterday, he will raise that with his party leader, who sees that there is a Brexit dividend.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Kettering General is a wonderful hospital with amazing staff, but one of its big financial problems is caused by its over-reliance on agency staff. What can be done to reduce the reliance of so many hospitals, including Kettering, on agency staff to populate their wards?
Stephen Barclay
My hon. Friend rightly points to the key issue of how we bring down the £2.5 billion of agency spend. That goes to the heart of the Prime Minister’s announcement yesterday. Up-front investment in our workforce will allow us to reduce that agency cost.
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
Mr Speaker
Order. The question should relate to the workforce, which is the matter we are dealing with now, but never mind. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is interested in hearing about the workforce situation.
Stephen Barclay
The two do go together because the mental health workforce is a key component of the NHS workforce. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will welcome the extra £1 billion by 2020 that the Prime Minister announced yesterday, as well as the Government’s prioritisation of mental health, which for too long has been seen as a Cinderella service within the NHS.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
In 2015, the Secretary of State suggested that junior doctor rotas contributed to avoidable hospital deaths, but research shows that the most important factor is the number of patients under the care of each registered nurse. A 7% increase in mortality for every patient means that 36,000 nursing vacancies in England pose a real threat to patient safety. So with no announcement, and a 33% drop in applications since the removal of the nursing bursary, will the Government follow the Scottish Government’s policy and reintroduce the bursary?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Lady will be well aware that there are 14,000 more nurses in the NHS than five years ago, but she is right to point to the wider issue of long-term workforce planning. That is why she will be aware that Audit Scotland criticised NHS Scotland for its lack of long-term workforce planning.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Lady’s second question will be a lot shorter, I am sure.
Dr Whitford
As the Minister heard, the Scottish Government have just passed a law on staffing. With an ageing population, social care is critical to the function of the NHS, but the charity Independent Age says that we will be short of 700,000 care workers by 2037. With no extra funding for social care announced yesterday, how will the Secretary of State make caring a real profession? Would not it be good to start with a decent wage?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Lady’s supplementary question really reinforces the answer that I gave a moment ago: the essence of why we need a long-term plan is so that we anticipate these issues. We are addressing that through the Green Paper on social care, and that is part of the investment that the Prime Minister announced yesterday.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
Yesterday the Prime Minister said that
“current workloads are not sustainable”—
is that any wonder after eight years of Tory cuts and austerity? The Minister knows that the number of health visitors in the workforce is falling, and that health visitors are vital to improving child health and wellbeing outcomes. No new public health money was announced yesterday; new money will come in 2020. Can the Minister guarantee that health visitor numbers will not continue to fall and that the public health budget will be ring-fenced?
Stephen Barclay
I am grateful that the shadow Secretary of State has drawn attention to public health because the Government have been making significant progress in that area. We have the lowest ever number of teenagers smoking and the lowest ever teenage pregnancy rate. Binge drinking is down and we are addressing child obesity with the sugar tax, which is among a number of measures that the Government have been bringing forward. We are making progress on public health and the hon. Gentleman is right to draw that to the attention of the House.
Jonathan Ashworth
This Government are breaking the Tory manifesto promise and raising taxes, yet they cannot even answer basic questions about health visitor numbers. The NHS workforce deliver the constitutional performance targets, including the 18-week referral-to-treatment target, and targets for accident and emergency and cancer treatment. Will the Minister reassure patients and the taxpayers whose taxes are going up that he will rule out dropping those essential targets?
Stephen Barclay
Once again—as we heard yesterday—there is no welcome for the announcement of additional funding for the NHS. Opposition Front Benchers are playing politics and talking down our NHS. The Prime Minister has set out a long-term vision to improve standards and raise mental health, which Labour Back Benchers highlighted. The hon. Gentleman should come to the House and welcome that investment in our NHS.
Liam Byrne (Birmingham, Hodge Hill) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
We take a comprehensive approach to reducing health inequalities, underpinned by legal duties. This includes addressing the wider causes of ill health, promoting healthier lifestyles, and tackling differences in health access and outcomes. A formula is used to allocate funding to clinical commissioning groups, and health inequalities form part of this.
Liam Byrne
Birmingham has some of the worst health outcomes in the country. It is not a surprise, as A&E waits of over four hours are up by more than 127% in recent years, and waits of more than 18 weeks for treatment are up by 65%. Yet, according to freedom of information request responses I have received, our trusts in Birmingham have to make savings of £155 million this year. What are the Government going to do to save the health system in Birmingham, which is currently in a state of collapse?
Jackie Doyle-Price
It is disappointing to hear the right hon. Gentleman making such negative points about his local NHS when 86% of GPs in his area are rated good or outstanding. Everything about yesterday’s announcement will tell Members that we are not complacent about the health challenges facing us, and we will make the necessary resources available. It ill behoves Opposition Members to keep continually talking down our NHS.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that the best way in which to reduce health inequalities across the country is to continue to build a strong economy that offers good jobs and prospects to all the people of our country?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I could not have put that better myself—[Laughter.] Opposition Members can laugh, but the Government firmly believe that work is good for people’s health. We are committed to getting 1 million more people with disabilities into work so that we actually treat them as assets, and we are encouraging them to be more independent and to take control of their own lives. The only way to achieve that is by having a strong economy.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
When the coalition Government came into office in 2010, life expectancy began to stall for the first time in over a century. This, coupled with eight years of funding cuts, means that there are grossly disproportionate health inequalities across the country. For example, according to Northern Health Science Alliance, people in the north are 20% more likely to die early than people in the south. Is not it a failure of the Government’s funding deal for the NHS that it comes with no public health money to tackle these astonishing regional health inequalities?
Jackie Doyle-Price
No, it is not. Labour Members like to draw attention to north-south divides and so on, but the issues about health inequalities are much more complex than how money is spent and where. Within my constituency, for example, there are differences of 10 years in life expectancy depending on the particular locality. We need a much more multi-layered approach to tackling inequality, and that is what this Government will have.
Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Last week the Home Secretary removed doctors and nurses from the tier 2 visa cap.
Layla Moran
In Oxfordshire, the situation with social care workers is at least as bad a problem. Of course we all very much welcome the removal of doctors and nurses from the cap, but what about social care workers? Why are we focusing on only half the problem?
Mr Hunt
Perhaps I can help the hon. Lady by pointing out that tier 2 visa cap is specifically for higher-paid workers. We do need to think about social care workers, but a lot of them are lower paid. That is why we are putting together a 10-year workforce plan for the health and social care sectors, both of which are very important. We will make sure that that goes hand in glove with the NHS plan that we announced yesterday.
Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The real effect of the cap is that there are not enough staff in the health service, as is shown by “NHS SOS”, a campaign run a few weeks ago in Stoke by The Sentinel that highlighted the lack of doctors and nurses. Realistically, what will the Secretary of State do to remedy that situation in Stoke-on-Trent? Will he meet people from The Sentinel so that they can present the evidence?
Mr Hunt
Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what we have been doing in the past five years: we have 14,300 more nurses, 10,100 more doctors, and over 40,000 more clinicians across different specialties. He will be very relieved to know that, on top of that, we are promising 50% more than his party did at the last election.
Kate Hollern (Blackburn) (Lab)
The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
Commissioning high-quality health and social care services is a local responsibility. The Care Quality Commission monitors, inspects and regulates services that people with a learning disability may use. Where quality and safety standards are not met, it will take action.
Kate Hollern
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services warned this week that social care services are on the verge of collapse. Despite the announcement of £20 billon yesterday, there was no mention of social care. Cuts of more than £7 billion have left hundreds of thousands of elderly and disabled people without adequate support. What specific measures are the Government taking to ensure that the elderly and disabled are receiving proper care?
Caroline Dinenage
Adult social care was mentioned yesterday, specifically in the news that we plan to bring together the way in which health and social care interoperate. We need more collaborative work between health and social care to reduce the amount of pressure that one puts upon the other. We have set out very clearly that we will produce a Green Paper later this year to address how we will tackle the challenges that we face in adult social care, and we will look at how we fund that.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
Providers of day care services for people with learning disabilities are not currently subject to an inspection regime. Will the Minister consider bringing such services within the scope of the Care Quality Commission to reassure families about quality and safeguarding issues?
Caroline Dinenage
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to the fundamental importance of being reassured that all services that are provided are safe and reliable. Since the CQC has been looking at services up and down the country, it has brought to them a level of transparency and, indeed, quality. We keep under review the services that it regulates, and this is certainly something that we can discuss with it.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
Will the Government end uncertainty for people with learning difficulties who need social care by funding the historical liabilities associated with the sleep-ins crisis?
Caroline Dinenage
We are aware of concerns in the sector with regard to sleep-ins and we are looking very carefully at the options. We have been developing the evidence base very carefully. We have been engaging with the European Commission, the sector and other Government Departments.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust recently won a bid under the Beyond Places of Safety scheme to put in place IT support for users of learning disability services. Is that not a very useful way of taking forward such projects?
Caroline Dinenage
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. It is vital that when we look at how to move forward with both our health and social care services, we are able to capture all the latest technology to ensure that we improve the experience for all our service users.
Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)
Much of the health and social care for people with learning disabilities in Plymouth is provided by Livewell Southwest, a social enterprise. The new pay increases for NHS staff will not be mapped over to social enterprise staff, so when they merge back into the NHS, we risk a two-tier workforce. Will the Minister consider extending the pay increases to support those who work with people with learning difficulties in the social enterprise sector so that we ensure that everyone doing the same job is paid the same amount?
Caroline Dinenage
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. It would be terrible to see a health and social care sector in which people doing the same work are valued differently, so I will look carefully at the point he raises.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
Alan Mak (Havant) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
The life sciences sector is critical to the UK economy, which is why we support it with a £1 billion annual grant through the National Institute for Health Research.
Luke Graham
What steps is my right hon. Friend taking to further life sciences in Scotland? Will he meet me to see what the UK Government can do to support the forthcoming International Environment Centre in Clackmannanshire in my constituency?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do that. The life sciences industry is critical to Scotland, and Scotland’s role is critical to the UK. We all remember Dolly the sheep being pioneered in Edinburgh University, and last week’s announcement of a new centre in Renfrewshire is another good example of the great things happening in Scotland.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
Getting new drugs approved more quickly would not just be a big boost for the life sciences and medical research sectors, but would help my constituents and others across the country with cystic fibrosis who desperately need access to Orkambi. They have been waiting for years; it is not good enough. Why can the Secretary of State not sort this out, get a grip, get his officials and Vertex in a room, and force them to come to an agreement? People have waited too long for this.
Mr Hunt
That is exactly what we have been doing, but we need Vertex to be reasonable regarding the price that it offers the NHS. We need to pay fair prices. We have heard that it will be coming back with a new offer next week—we hope it is a reasonable one—but we urge Vertex to waive commercial confidentiality so that we can all see, in the interests of transparency, the kind of prices it is trying to charge the NHS.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Secretary of State consider West Yorkshire in particular? We have the universities, the science, the technology and the life sciences; all we need is a new teaching hospital in Huddersfield.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), we know that the UK is a world leader in research into rare conditions, but that does not always translate into timely access to those treatments. The Secretary of State will know that there are many CFTR—cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator—treatments in the pipeline that could benefit people who are living with cystic fibrosis. Will he meet me to see how we can ensure that those are available in a timely manner for the people who desperately need them?
Mr Hunt
Of course I am happy to meet my hon. Friend. I recognise that this is one of the things that we are not good at at the moment. We have fantastic research, with amazing new drugs developed in this country, but our uptake can be painfully slow, and that is of course something that we want to put right.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
ME affects approximately a quarter of a million people across the UK, and while there has been substantial psychological research into the condition, there has been very little biomedical research. What funding will the Secretary of State make available specifically for biomedical research into the treatment and diagnosis of ME?
Mr Hunt
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that issue. She is introducing a debate on it in Westminster Hall on Thursday. I have met a number of families who have suffered very badly as a result of ME, and we would all like better research, so I hope that her campaign is successful.
Craig Tracey (North Warwickshire) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
There is a strong body of evidence on the health benefits of participating in sport— possibly not watching it, if last night is anything to go by. Last year, a review by Sport England brought together evidence to show the association between sport and physical and mental wellbeing.
Craig Tracey
As the Minister may be aware, I co-chair the all-party parliamentary group for golf—a sport sometimes labelled, rather unfairly, a good walk spoiled. Does he agree that there are many positive health benefits associated with participation in golf, especially for people with long-term conditions?
Steve Brine
I certainly would, as someone who used to work in the golf industry before coming to the House. I was at Wentworth last month for the PGA, and a good example of what my hon. Friend refers to is a social enterprise that I met called Golf in Society led by an inspirational chap called Anthony Blackburn. He founded a project at Lincoln Golf Centre that works with people with dementia and Parkinson’s disease to show that golf is one of the best leisure activities out there, and gives people with those long-term conditions a sense that their life is not over and that they can still play golf, and play it rather well—probably better than me.
Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
In 2016, Stoke-on-Trent was the European city of sport, but it faces some of the highest health inequalities in the country. The Stoke newspaper The Sentinel highlighted the power of exercise in its recent NHS SOS campaign. Will the Minister meet the editor Martin Tideswell and my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) to receive details of that incredibly important local campaign?
Steve Brine
I am aware of that campaign. Something that we want to see in schools across the country, including in Stoke, is the Golden Mile. I see good examples in schools in my constituency and across the country when I travel. We are interested to learn more about what Stoke has done on this subject.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
NHS England has a legal duty to commission services to meet local need, which includes people who are homeless, and we are very clear that a patient should not be turned away from a GP if they cannot produce any supporting documentation. If they state that they reside within the boundaries for the practice, the GP is expected to accept the registration. The same applies for dentistry, and training is in place to remind people of their obligations.
Stella Creasy
Mags Drummond is a Walthamstow woman on a mission, to try to help our many rough sleepers get decent quality healthcare, but she, like me, has hit a brick wall with our local dentists and doctors. It is little wonder that one study shows that 15% of homeless people have pulled out their own teeth because they cannot get access to services. Will the Minister meet Mags and me to look at what we can do to change that and make sure that her promises are not toothless?
Jackie Doyle-Price
Very good—I commend the hon. Lady for her wit, and I agree with her. Notwithstanding our expectations of GPs and dentists in this regard, it is quite clear that homeless people do not always have access to the treatment they should have. The hon. Lady will be aware of the work that we are doing to support rough sleepers, and I would be delighted to meet her and Mags Drummond to see what insight they can provide on how we can improve services in this area.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. It is of the utmost importance that we are ready for the one-minute silence, so I shall take a brief inquiry from Mr Nic Dakin, and a brief reply.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
There are homeless people in the Scunthorpe area who present with mental health problems. What are the Government doing to ensure that proper mental health support is there for people who present as homeless?
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Gentleman is quite right. Mental health is both a symptom and a cause of homelessness, and we will tackle that as part of our work on rough sleepers.
Mr Speaker
Does anyone else want to come in on this? Apparently not. I do not wish to proceed to the next question because of the unpredictability of the time that it will take. Colleagues will want to prepare themselves for the one-minute silence that we are about to observe. I think I can say with some confidence that everyone who is in the House today will wish to observe that one-minute silence. Perhaps they will think it appropriate to stand. That one-minute silence is going to start very soon. The next question is grouped, so it would be highly inconvenient to take it. Any moment now we shall observe the silence. [Interruption.] There is much merit in repetition in certain circumstances.
Order. We shall now observe silence for one minute to remember those who died or were affected by the attack outside Finsbury Park mosque, I remind colleagues, a year ago today.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I know that the thoughts of the whole House are with the families affected by the terrible atrocity a year ago.
Personal health budgets have a transformative effect on people with very complex health needs, and we plan for 50,000 to 100,000 more people to benefit from them by 2021.
Sir Henry Bellingham
I thank the Secretary of State for that reply. Does he agree that a key part of integrating health and social care is giving individuals more say and flexibility in how they use their entitlements? Will he consider extending his pilots to my constituency of North West Norfolk?
Mr Hunt
Absolutely, and not just to North West Norfolk, but to the whole country. We are currently consulting on giving a right to personal health budgets to people with the most complex health needs. That would be about 350,000 people and would include anyone with a continuing NHS need combined with a mental health need, a learning disability, autism or PTSD. Obviously, it would be hugely significant if we were able to proceed with that.
Andrew Lewer
Will the Minister ensure that the long-term NHS plan puts a major emphasis on empowering patients through the wider availability of personal budgets? May I also join my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) and make a pitch for my local area of Northampton for one of the next wave of pilots?
Mr Hunt
Absolutely, and technology will have a big role, because this year we intend all NHS patients to be able to access their health records through an app. That will be extremely empowering, but my hon. Friend is right that giving people with long-term conditions control over their health and care destiny is a potentially huge leap forward.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
While I agree with the philosophy and approach behind health and personal care budgets, will the Secretary of State acknowledge that the 21% fall in social care funding between 2010 and 2015-16 has caused a catastrophe in this area? Will he acknowledge that if this approach is to work in future, the funding has to be there?
Mr Hunt
I congratulate the last Labour Government on introducing direct payments, which were the first step in this process. The hon. Lady talks about cuts in social care, which I acknowledge, but, with respect to her, she never talks about the reason, which was that in 2008 we had the worst financial crisis in our peacetime history, and we had to take measures. It is as a result of creating 3.2 million jobs since then that funding for social care is now going up.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Bearing in mind that the number of bed days lost increased in the second quarter of 2017-18, with most of the patients subject to delays being elderly people, will the Minister outline a dedicated strategy for getting people out of hospital and back home with appropriate care as a matter of urgency, for the good of the patient as well as the public purse?
Mr Hunt
This is a huge challenge in all parts of the United Kingdom. In England, about 22% of bed days are occupied by people who have been in hospital for more than three weeks, and probably less than 20% of those people should be in hospital. We are taking urgent steps to rectify that, because it is very, very bad for the patients involved.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
The mental health workforce plan published last summer underpins our expansion of mental health services, as set out in the “Five Year Forward View for Mental Health”. We aim to create 21,000 new posts in mental health by 2021.
Mr Jones
I thank the Minister for her response. Mental health is one of the many complex drivers of rough sleeping, and can add to the complexity of getting rough sleepers off the street and into accommodation. Will my hon. Friend say how the new mental health employees in the NHS can help us to get rough sleepers off the streets and into accommodation?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I hope the expansion of mental health services will stop people becoming rough sleepers in the first place by bringing forward support earlier in the process. In January, we announced a £1 billion investment in mental health, part of which will be focused on crisis care and helping people who are experiencing crisis to stay out of hospital. The workforce plan backs that commitment by planning 5,200 posts to support those in crisis. We will be working with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on a forthcoming strategy to make sure we honour our commitments.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
It is not just the size of the mental health workforce that is critical, but the pressures faced within those workforces. We have just learned that there was the highest number of out-of-area placements in January since records were first kept. Mental health doctors and nurses often spend hours hunting for out-of-area beds, taking them away from other patients. When is the Government’s pledge to reduce and eventually ban out-of-area placements actually going to start to become a reality?
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady is right to raise this issue. We are determined to end out-of-area placements, but clearly that will require behavioural change on the part of commissioners, as well as making sure that the investment takes place. I know she will continue to hold me to account on this issue, because it is clear that out-of-area placements can cause harm and we must tackle them.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
According to data from 48 of 56 NHS mental health trusts, 3,652 patients suffered an injury in 2016-17 through being restrained—the highest number ever. There are concerns that increased use of insufficiently trained agency and bank staff since 2013 is contributing to this increase. Employing 21,000 new staff by 2021 just is not good enough. What is the Minister doing now to ensure that wards are safely staffed and patients are not injured?
Jackie Doyle-Price
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. She will be aware that I have been working with her colleague the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) on his Bill to limit the use of restraint, because we on the Government Benches also very firmly believe in that. An essential part of his measure will be to improve training for staff in mental health units. That will be a tool in making sure that restraint is minimised.
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
In the Budget we announced £3.9 billion of additional capital funding, and 77 projects have conditional approval.
Sir Roger Gale
Could my right hon. Friend indicate what implications that welcome statement might have for the much needed rebuilding and refurbishment of the A&E unit at the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital in Margate?
Kevin Foster
Earlier this year, Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust was allocated £13.3 million of capital funding for improved urgent care and a new emergency department at Torbay Hospital. Will my right hon. Friend confirm what progress is being made to get those major construction projects under way?
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
Warrington desperately needs a new hospital to replace its old, out-of-date buildings, so in allocating future capital funding will the Secretary of State bear in mind the levels of health deprivation that exist in the area, and will he ensure that any new hospital is accessible to those in my constituency, which has areas that are among the most health deprived in the borough?
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
The Secretary of State knows that he has presided over a crisis in capital funding, with a £5.5 billion estimated maintenance backlog, £1 billion of which is classified as urgent. Yesterday’s statement hopefully goes some way to addressing that, although it was far from clear whether capital funding was included in that announcement. Can the Secretary of State confirm today whether any cash generated by the sale of NHS property under the Naylor review is in addition to the money announced yesterday?
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
My officials have regular discussions with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, of course, but we are clear that there is no fixed capacity in NICE’s HST programme. The number of drugs that it evaluates each year is driven by the pipeline of drugs expected to come to market, and we will refer any suitable drugs to it for evaluation.
Mary Glindon
There is a risk that new treatments for life-limiting conditions, such as Duchenne muscular dystrophy and spinal muscular atrophy, might not be approved by NICE, so will the Minister meet me and Muscular Dystrophy UK to discuss ways to facilitate access to treatments, as highlighted by the charity’s FastTrack campaign?
Steve Brine
NICE has recommended the drug Translarna for use in the treatment of Duchenne muscular dystrophy; it is now routinely available on the NHS. It is a disease that I grew up with—the friends that I grew up with did not, and I did, and this is a timely reminder of how terrible this disease can be. I would be really pleased, therefore, to meet the hon. Lady and the charity that she mentioned.
Derek Thomas (St Ives) (Con)
Is the Minister aware of the recent NICE draft review regarding treatment of abdominal aortic aneurysms? Some 1,500 to 2,000 lives are saved yearly by NHS AAA screening. If the draft recommendations are adopted, a patient is likely to have an aneurysm erupt before treatment and 80% of patients are then likely to die. Will the Minister look carefully at this issue to avoid this unintended consequence?
Steve Brine
I am not the all-seeing eye, so all I can say is yes, I will look very carefully at the issue that my hon. Friend raises.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
Community first responders play a valuable role in helping ambulance services. Support includes ongoing training, necessary medical equipment and occupational health support.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
In just five years, the Neilston and Uplawmoor first responders have responded to over 1,300 calls, saving many lives, and earlier this month they received the Queen’s award for voluntary service. Will the Minister join me in congratulating all the volunteers and paying tribute to community first responder units right across the United Kingdom?
Stephen Barclay
I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in congratulating Stuart McLellan, Ross Nelson and the volunteers that play such a key role. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) also performs this service in his constituency. I have spoken to him about it and I know that it plays a very valuable role.
Mr Speaker
Ah yes, in the frame, we now have a dame—I call Dame Cheryl Gillan.
Dame Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)
The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
NICE is currently in the early stages of updating the clinical guidelines on the diagnosis and management of epilepsies in adults, and plan to go out to consultation on a draft scope in October this year.
Dame Cheryl Gillan
The UK’s autism research charity Autistica advises that up to 40% of people with epilepsies are, in fact, autistic, and that epileptic seizures are the leading cause of early death for autistic people with a learning disability. NICE guidance has never mentioned autism when referring to epilepsy, and autistic people have distinctive types of epilepsies that require different clinical approaches. Will the Minister please ensure that NICE includes autism in the guidelines on epilepsy?
Caroline Dinenage
At this stage, it is too early in the update process for NICE to say exactly what its guidance will cover. However, my right hon. Friend is chair of the all-party group on autism and vice-chair of the all-party group on epilepsy, and she was the driving force behind the Autism Act 2009. I think that NICE would do very well to heed her advice.
Mr Speaker
And that advice will be proffered on a very large number of occasions in this Chamber until the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Dame Cheryl Gillan) gets what she seeks—I think I can say that with not just confidence, but certainty.
Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
The workforce strategy we are bringing forward will include investment and an expansion in the number of medical schools— five new medical schools—alongside those 1,500 new doctor places.
Heidi Allen
I had wanted to ask the Secretary of State to get behind exempting nurses and doctors from the tier 2 visa process, but I do not need to do that; I just have to thank him for his support in doing that. Instead, for his next challenge, will he commit to looking again at the pensions cap, which I fear might be one reason some senior NHS professionals and doctors are retiring sooner than they might otherwise do?
Stephen Barclay
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support on tier 2 visas. She will be aware that clinicians who reach the £1 million lifetime allowance limit can expect a pension of about £44,000, payable at age 60, increasing with inflation, plus a tax-free lump sum of about £132,000. Although these are ultimately issues for the Treasury, it is important that we ensure that tax allowances, two thirds of which go to higher-rate taxpayers, are fair to other taxpayers.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
The Government are committed to ensuring that innovative healthcare products reach patients faster than ever before. We have established the Accelerated Access Collaborative to identify transformative innovations and help their route to market, and today we have appointed Lord Darzi as the new chair of the AAC to lead this work.
Nigel Mills
I welcome the fact that the Prime Minister in her speech yesterday announced much more funding for personalised medicines and new technologies that will transform care. On that basis, will the Minister update the House on when the groundbreaking CAR-T— chimeric antigen receptor T-cell—therapy might be made available to NHS patients suffering from cancer?
Steve Brine
Yes, indeed. As the cancer Minister, I consider CAR-T to be one of the most innovative and exciting treatments ever offered on the NHS. NICE is considering the first of the therapies this year and preparations are well under way. We are working closely with NHS England to make these transformative medicines available to cancer patients.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Patients with PKU—phenylketonuria—are awaiting progress on the approval of a drug called Kuvan. In the meantime, their illness is controlled by diet. Will the Secretary of State and other Members join me in Committee Room 21 after this meeting to hear about the “Diet for a day” challenge, which many Members across the House are taking up next Thursday?
Steve Brine
Having just dialled into the Secretary of State’s diary, I know that he is going right after these questions.
Mr Speaker
That is very impressive, up-to-the-minute information from the hon. Gentleman.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Does the Minister have proposals for the reform of the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency? I hope so.
Steve Brine
We keep all our arm’s length bodies, including the MHRA, under review to provide best value for taxpayers, and we are working closely with Lord O’Shaughnessy, who is the Minister responsible for this area.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. Probably the most important recommendation in the new O’Neill review into antimicrobial resistance was the requirement for diagnostics prior to the prescription of antibiotics by 2020. Will the Minister update the House on progress towards that goal, and will he agree to meet me and colleagues, including Lord O’Neill, to discuss the establishment of an antibiotic diagnostics fund?
Steve Brine
Yes, the Government’s response to Lord O’Neill’s review in 2016 set out new ambitions building on existing progress, including ensuring that tests on epidemiological data are used to support clinical decision making and delivering high-quality diagnostics in the NHS in support of our other ambitions. My hon. Friend is right to raise this issue, and I am happy to meet him.
Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)
Johnny Mercer (Plymouth, Moor View) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
We are delivering the most ambitious childhood obesity plan in the world, and we are already seeing results. We always said that our 2016 plan was the start of the conversation, not the final word. [Interruption.] Yes, it does say that here, but I have also said it everywhere else many, many times.
Justin Tomlinson
With one in three primary school children leaving either obese or overweight and more than 77% of children not doing the minimum requirement for physical activity, surely the Government’s priority should be getting children active by opening up school facilities after hours and in the holidays, not faffing around with political gestures on television advertising that children have long since stopped watching.
Steve Brine
I do not think that it is a binary choice. We recognise that child obesity is caused by many different factors, and that no one policy will work on its own. Yes, this is about tackling advertising, and yes, it is about tackling children’s activity and working with schools; and, as I said recently, we will present new proposals very shortly.
Johnny Mercer
As the Minister will know, perhaps the two biggest challenges that we currently face in relation to young people’s health are mental health and child obesity. Will he update the House on the progress of chapter 1 of his childhood obesity plan in reducing the amount of sugar in both food and drink?
Steve Brine
Since we published the plan, progress has been made on sugar reduction. The amount of sugar in soft drinks has been reduced by 11% in response to the industry levy, and Public Health England has published a detailed assessment of progress against delivery of the 5% reduction for the first year. Progress is good, but it is not good enough, which is why we have said that we will produce chapter 2 shortly.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Minister says that progress is not good enough, so why does he not introduce a levy on high-sugar food as well as the one on sugary drinks? Manufacturers would then reformulate the food that they produce.
Steve Brine
Because we believe that there should be a mixture of carrot and stick. We believe that the soft drinks industry levy has been successful, but we are also working with the industry on reformulation across the board. I recently visited Suntory, which makes Lucozade and Ribena. If we work with industry, we see transformative results for companies and for the people who buy their products.
Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)
A few years ago, I initiated a debate on this issue in Westminster Hall. Since then, no progress has been made on childhood obesity. Would the Minister care to outline what he thinks will happen in the lifetime of this Parliament in terms of achieving the objectives that he has set out?
Steve Brine
We assess the plan all the time, and we make progress reports on it, as we did last month with the sugar report. However, when I addressed the Health Committee recently, I could not have made it clearer that we think there has been progress.
This is a world-leading plan. When we talk to other people around the world, they are very keen to hear about what we are doing and very interested, and we are interested in learning from them. If we do not take action, one of our biggest public health challenges will get worse and worse, and that will have implications for the health service and for all our constituents.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
When something goes tragically wrong in healthcare, the best apology to grieving families is to guarantee that no one will experience the same heartache again. Last week I accepted the recommendations of the Williams review of gross negligence manslaughter, and we announced a new national clinical improvement programme to provide NHS consultants with confidential data on their clinical outcomes. From next April independent medical examiners will examine every hospital death, and the learning from deaths programme will be extended to primary care.
Rosie Cooper
Will the Secretary of State encourage NHS England to respond to my freedom of information request of 13 March this year regarding Greater Manchester Shared Services and the likely failure of the NHS to correctly enforce guidance on recruiting agency staff in the reappointment of Deborah Hancox after her criminal conviction and two-year prison sentence for defrauding the NHS? How can we employ these people?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Lady has highlighted what is potentially an extremely serious issue. Obviously the FOI is a matter for NHS England, but let me reassure her that the Minister for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay)—the hospitals Minister—met the chief executive of the NHS Counter Fraud Authority this morning.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Mr Hunt
I thought that the report made powerful reading, and I know that my hon. Friend was associated with it. Yesterday the Prime Minister was straightforward about the fact that, if we are to preserve our NHS and make it one of the best systems in the world, the burden of taxation will need to increase, and she was willing to listen to the views of colleagues about the most appropriate way in which that should be done.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services has reported a £7 billion reduction in adult social care funding since 2010, and Age UK has reported there are now “care deserts” in some parts of the country. There are 1.2 million older people living with unmet care needs, and one in five care services has the poorest quality ratings from the Care Quality Commission.
As well as a long-term funding solution for social care, we need the extra £1 billion this year and £8 billion in the current Parliament that Labour pledged before last year’s general election. However, all that the Government offer is a delayed Green Paper. When will the Secretary of State deal with the current crisis in social care?
Mr Hunt
No, that is not correct. Yesterday we made very clear our support for the social care system and our recognition that reform of the NHS must go hand in glove with the social care system, and we said there would be a new financial settlement for the social care system. It is also time that the Labour party took some responsibility for the financial crisis that made all these cuts necessary.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
Survival rates are high, but I am ambitious for more. That is why the Prime Minister recently announced £75 million to support new research into the early diagnosis and treatment of prostate cancer. We will recruit 40,000 patients into more than 60 studies over the next five years, and further to this even more exciting is the rapid pathway that I was discussing yesterday with Cally Palmer, our national cancer director, which we are trialling across three hospital sites in west London as part of its local cancer alliance.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
Mr Hunt
May I gently remind the hon. Lady that it was this Conservative Government who introduced the national living wage, and we did that on the basis of transforming the economy, championing policies that were by and large opposed every step of the way by the Scottish National party?
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
The Minister of State visited my hospital trust last month. Is he in a position to support its requests, and will he say whether he is satisfied with the progress it is making to remove itself from special measures?
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
I very much enjoyed visiting the trust with my hon. Friend. As he will be aware from our discussion during that visit a process for capital bids is under way. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out, the date for that is mid-July and I look forward to seeing the bid from my hon. Friend’s trust.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
I recently met the hon. Gentleman’s party colleague, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), to discuss this matter with the facility. We are very clear: we expect all clinical commissioning groups to honour the NICE guidelines. I am very cross that CCGs tend to view IVF services as low-hanging fruit with which to make cuts. That is totally unacceptable and I will be taking steps to remind them of that.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
My hon. Friend has visited Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow and has acknowledged that it is not fit for purpose. Will he use the excellent £20 billion of extra NHS funding to ensure we get the Harlow hospital health campus we need?
Stephen Barclay
My right hon. Friend is right to champion this, as he did through the recent Adjournment debate, when he set out the case in more detail. We recognise, as we did at the last Health questions and in the Adjournment debate, that there are significant issues with the local hospital, and that is why it is working very actively on its bid for capital funding.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Jackie Doyle-Price
I reject that accusation; we are far from burying it. The Prime Minister is looking at responding to the interim report. I will repeat what I said to the hon. Lady when she last asked this question. We are quite clear that the child migrant policy was wrong. We have apologised for that policy, and we have established a £7 million family restoration fund. The response from the Government to that report will be laid in due course.
Kirstene Hair (Angus) (Con)
Can the Minister provide an update on the work being undertaken by the policy research unit on obesity to consider the relationship between the many streams of marketing and obesity, and can he tell us whether the unit is looking specifically at childhood obesity?
Steve Brine
The National Institute for Health Research—the policy research unit—is specifically looking at the impact of the marketing of products with a high sugar, fat or salt content on children’s food and drink preferences and consumption. The unit has already published a report on children’s exposure to television advertising, and it will be publishing further findings from other projects later this year.
Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)
Michelle Donelan (Chippenham) (Con)
I am delighted that our NHS will be getting an extra £20 billion. This has long been at the top of my agenda, and the agenda of my constituents. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, to ensure that that money is always spent on the NHS, we need to consider a hypothecated tax as part of the funding plan?
Mr Hunt
As I say, there are compelling arguments in favour of hypothecated taxes, but there are also strong reasons why we have to be cautious—namely, the fact that tax revenues go up and down, year on year, while the NHS needs stable funding. Important arguments and discussions need to happen between now and the Budget, when the Chancellor will make that decision.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Stroke is the fourth largest single cause of death in Britain. What action are the Government taking to prevent stroke and to raise awareness? And will the Minister meet me to discuss my GP surgery at Sutherland Lodge?
Steve Brine
Two for the price of one. Up to 70% of strokes are preventable if hypertension, atrial fibrillation, diabetes, cholesterol and other lifestyle factors are detected and managed earlier. The current national stroke strategy came to an end last year, so we are working closely with NHS England and the Stroke Association on a new national plan, which I hope to publish this summer.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
The fundamental issue here is that we need a social care system that works hand in hand with our health services—the two are umbilically linked. The key plank of the new NHS 10-year plan must be the full integration of health and care services. It does not make sense to publish the Green Paper before the NHS plan has even been drafted. We will bring forward a Green Paper, but in the meantime, spending on adult social care has gone up by 8% this year.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
Like many others, I welcome the announcement yesterday of the £20 billion investment in the NHS. Will my right hon. Friend join me in seeking assurances that the £2 billion extra for the Scottish Government shall be allocated to spending on the NHS in Scotland?
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
What comparison has the Minister made of the cost of preventing children and young people’s mental health issues by tackling adverse childhood experience in the first few years of life, rather than letting them develop into much costlier issues for school-age children?
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady will be aware that there is much work going on in this area. We are clear that we need to tackle these issues in schools, which is in the Green Paper, but more support also needs to be given in the early years. We are looking at how we can do that.
Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
Northern Devon Healthcare Trust recently announced that it is to share the chairman and chief executive of the Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. Will the Minister meet me to ensure that the new arrangements will help to secure services in North Devon?
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Last November, the Health Secretary committed to ending out-of-area mental health placements by 2020, but the number of people placed more than 100 km from their home rose by 65% over the past year. The earlier response from the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), was no answer, so what are the Government actually going to do to turn the situation around?
Sir Roger Gale (North Thanet) (Con)
Mr Speaker, you will recall recently granting me a Westminster Hall debate on the HPV vaccine for boys. Will the Department update me on progress?
Steve Brine
I remember that debate. The matter was on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation’s June agenda, and I am awaiting its advice with bated breath. As I said in the debate, I will turn that advice around as soon as I get it and get a decision. I know a lot of people are waiting on that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. I am sorry, but we have run out of time. However, the person whom I think has been standing the longest is Rachael Maskell.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. NHS Property Services intends to sell the Bootham Park Hospital site, but reinvesting in that site would make such a difference to the health needs of our city. Will the Minister ensure that that happens?
Stephen Barclay
I have met the hon. Lady, and she made her case in a characteristically powerful fashion. The matter is being looked at actively.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
As I understand that the point of order flows from Health questions, I will take it if it is brief.
Jonathan Ashworth
Very brief, Mr Speaker. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that he would place the details of the funding settlement in the Library, but the paper has not yet been deposited. Mr Speaker, given the implications for higher tax and spending, will you use your good offices to ensure that that paper is deposited as soon as possible?
Mr Speaker
I dare say that it will be, but the Secretary of State has heard the hon. Gentleman and is nodding enthusiastically from his sedentary position, and I take the nod as an indication of good intent.
Mr Speaker
Forthwith. Splendid. The hon. Gentleman looks satisfied—at least for now.
We have an urgent question in a moment from Alison Thewliss. I advise the House that it is on an extremely important matter that warrants urgent treatment on the Floor of the House, but it does not warrant treatment at length. I do not intend to run it for any longer than 20 minutes, because there is other business to protect.
Glasgow School of Art
(6 years, 5 months ago)
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Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland to respond to the fire at the Glasgow School of Art.
The Secretary of State for Scotland (David Mundell)
As the House will be aware, a fire broke out at Glasgow School of Art’s renowned Mackintosh building on the night of 15 June. The building is one of Glasgow’s iconic landmarks and is regarded as Mackintosh’s greatest work. It is rightly of global architectural significance and a unique and irreplaceable building in the eyes of many people worldwide. The art school itself is a work of art—a jewel in a city that sparkles with architectural splendour. It is worth noting that the building next door, the O2 ABC music venue, has also been affected, and it is even older and has a colourful and varied history. The art school was never a museum piece, but a living, breathing, working art school—a powerhouse of creativity and a much-loved part of the fabric of Glasgow. We can be grateful, however, that the tragedy was not worsened by loss of life, and my heartfelt thanks go out to the emergency services, particularly the fire service, who attended the scene under such adverse conditions and in the heart of the vibrant city’s nightlife.
Many people, such as myself, are still in disbelief that this could happen again after the devastating fire of 2014, particularly given the painstaking and careful efforts that have taken place to restore the building over the past years. I visited the building on 1 June as the guest at the opening of the 2018 degree show and saw the restored library and the famous “hen run”. I was struck by the love and passion of those involved in restoring the building. I am personally devastated by the fire, a fact which I communicated directly when speaking to the school’s director, Professor Tom Inns, over the weekend. My heart goes out to the school, its students and supporters, who did so much to raise funds for the restoration after 2014.
At this point, we do not know the cause of the fire, but I note that the fire service has assured us that a comprehensive and professional probe will be carried out in due course. The UK Government previously gave £10 million to rebuild the school after the last fire, and we stand ready to help again. There was never a question about the need to rebuild and restore the building when tragedy struck four years ago. The situation is far worse after the weekend’s fire, but I hope we can start with that aim in mind.
Obviously, there are real questions about what will happen next. We stand ready to work with the school, the city council and the Scottish Government. I am visiting the site and meeting the head of the school on Friday, and I will update Members when I am in a position to do so.
Alison Thewliss
I thank the Secretary of State for his comprehensive response and for the support he has given.
The loss of the Glasgow School of Art, particularly in the 150th anniversary year of Mackintosh’s birth, is a very sore loss indeed for the city. As the Secretary of State mentioned, the building is internationally significant and is held very preciously in our hearts in Glasgow. All who have visited and studied there, and even those who have not been inside, feel that the building belongs to the city of Glasgow and to each individual.
It is a catastrophe to lose the building, and my heart goes out to the staff at the GSA, to Professor Tom Inns and his staff, to those who worked on the restoration and particularly to the craftspeople who put so much love, care and attention into bringing back skills that have gone out of fashion to bring the school back to its former glory.
The Secretary of State is right to mention the vibrant O2 ABC venue, which was very much part of the cultural scene in the city of Glasgow. That will also be a very sore loss to Glasgow.
Like the Secretary of State, I pay tribute to the Scottish fire and rescue service, which pumped water uphill from the Clyde to try to douse the huge flames of the inferno on Friday night; the police, who kept everybody safe; and the Salvation Army, which was on hand to provide rolls, sausages and Irn-Bru to the Weegie fire crews. They did a tremendous job in reacting to the fire, too.
Does the Secretary of State agree that speculation at this time about the future of the building and the cause of the fire is unhelpful and that we should allow the experts in the fire and rescue service to do their investigations and to carry out their very detailed work, which may take some time to reach a conclusion? It is important that we get the answers and that we learn the lessons of this fire.
Will the Secretary of State support looking at all options to ensure that traders and residents of the Sauchiehall Street and Garnethill area are supported through this and are given the financial support they need? Will he look at the further detail of whether sprinklers can be made mandatory in historic buildings?
Finally, I am glad to hear that the Secretary of State is offering support for the renovations, and I look forward to hearing more on that in the coming weeks. Can he confirm that he will give more support for donations coming from other sources and that he will use the Government’s efforts to bring in more money?
David Mundell
The House can hear the hon. Lady’s passion for the Glasgow School of Art, which is reflected across the city of Glasgow, across Scotland and across the world. She is right that speculation is unhelpful at this time, which is why I do not support calls at this stage for a public inquiry. The investigations that would normally follow a fire and the detailed investigations that are under way should be allowed to follow their course. Of course, some of those investigations will be into the structure of the building and will determine what can happen next.
As I have said, I want to work with the school, the city council and the Scottish Government once views are formulated on how a restoration can be taken forward. We stand ready to help, as we did in 2014. I will discuss the traders, businesses and residents around the Glasgow School of Art with the Scottish Government and the council.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
My daughter-in-law is a postgraduate of the Glasgow School of Art, which is a much loved institution. Will the Secretary of State undertake to come back to the Dispatch Box when things are much clearer, so that we can get a clear understanding of what the UK Government’s undertaking will be?
David Mundell
Yes, I am happy to do that. As the original questioner indicated, it is clear that it may take some time for there to be clarity about what will happen next, and I am certainly willing to come back to the Dispatch Box.
Mr Paul Sweeney (Glasgow North East) (Lab/Co-op)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) for securing this urgent question. I fully support her efforts, and I am sure all Glasgow Members will stand in total solidarity to ensure we get the best outcome possible for our city.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow School of Art, that magnificent edifice that dominates the skyline of Garnethill, is the epitome of what it means to be a Glaswegian. It embodies the very essence of the city’s character and soul, and is a true example of human genius. The grief I experienced after the first fire in 2014 was profound; it felt like part of our city had died that day. Now to witness an even more severe conflagration consume this precious art nouveau masterpiece has left me both angry and incredulous that it could have happened again. What on earth has gone wrong here?
More generally, this fire represents a wake-up call for Glasgow and the entire country. We need to have a much more robust approach to protecting our amazing Victorian architectural legacy in Britain in the future or we will continue to see these tragic losses mount up as buildings of these ages continue to suffer degradation. Government at all levels—city, Scottish and British—needs to step up to meet this challenge with radical and imaginative measures.
The good thing about the Glasgow School of Art is that the past four years have seen a meticulous process of understanding the building take place. The work of the architects and craftspeople has been extraordinary. We therefore have a critical mass of knowledge and understanding of this iconic building and its construction that makes it easier than ever before to restore Mackintosh’s original vision. They are geared up and more than ready to take on that challenge, and I will be making the strongest possible case that they should be allowed that chance.
In the face of reckless calls to tear the building down, what plans do the Government have to support the safeguarding and renewal of such an iconic and important cultural asset for the world? What conversations has the Secretary of State had with the Scottish Government on the need to safeguard the building and ensure it is appropriately restored? Given that Glasgow needs a more preventive, comprehensive strategy for preserving its ageing stock of Victorian architecture, much of which is vulnerable to fire, what plans do the Government have to support a review of the way that heritage buildings are managed and safeguarded, with fire prevention policy as a priority? What discussions has the Secretary of State had with the Scottish Government on the need to set up an investigation into the safety measures taken by the contractors for the restoration works? All I would say in conclusion is that the people of Glasgow deserve roses as well as bread, and the Mack will rise again.
David Mundell
The hon. Gentleman raises important points, and I know that he has a strong personal connection with the School of Art. Like those people who have been part of it, he feels this tragedy, but, as the hon. Member for Glasgow Central said, people who have never crossed the threshold of the School of Art feel it, too. I feel particularly for those craftsmen who restored the “hen run” and the library, bringing back these crafts, and how they must be feeling this week, when their work has been decimated. I take on board the points he makes about safety issues in buildings. The Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), who is responsible for heritage in the UK and is in his place, will also have heard what he said and we will respond specifically to that.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
As a representative of many of the students and staff of the school, and as a former frequent visitor to the ABC, this fire was a real blow to me. When the Secretary of State meets representatives of the school on Friday will he talk about ways in which the community and alumni can most appropriately help with any fundraising efforts for future restorations?
David Mundell
I most certainly will do that. The effort to raise funds after the 2014 fire was tremendous. One way in which the Government can help is through Government funding, which can be a catalyst for other funding coming in. That was very much the case in 2014, and it is very much in my mind at this time.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
This was a cruel and gut-wrenching blow to the people of Glasgow, coming just as the refurbishment from last time was nearing completion. Last night in this House we demonstrated our ability to disagree with each other and have a vigorous debate, but I am pleased that this morning we are seeing all shades of political opinion in Scotland come together in solidarity with the people of Glasgow as they deal with this great tragedy. I want to ask a couple of specific questions. Yesterday, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government said that it was a matter for the owners of buildings to determine whether or not to install sprinklers. What action does the Secretary of State for Scotland think the Government should take to ensure that sprinklers are installed in such public buildings? He mentioned the need for a thorough investigation. Does he agree that erroneous press speculation on the cause of the fire before that investigation is complete is unhelpful and undesirable?
David Mundell
I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s last point: press speculation on the cause of the fire is very unhelpful. We need to let those people who are carrying out the professional investigation get on with it. I also agree that it is important that all levels of government—the city council, the Scottish Government and the UK Government—work together, and whatever our other differences, I absolutely commit to do that. The issue of sprinklers has been debated extensively in the House in recent times. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that a sprinkler system was in the process of being installed in the building, but sadly that process had not been completed.
Douglas Ross (Moray) (Con)
Glasgow School of Art has a base in Moray; I spoke to people at the Altyre campus this morning, and they asked me to express their sympathies and thoughts for everyone involved in Glasgow. What can our constituents throughout Scotland do to support the efforts to restore Glasgow School of Art?
David Mundell
When I visited the School of Art on 1 June, I met some of my hon. Friend’s constituents from Moray who had raised very considerable sums of money for the first restoration. Although those fundraisers will be as devastated as the rest of us, I am sure that, given the vigour and passion that I witnessed, they will stand ready in Moray and throughout Scotland to start the process again.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
As we know, highland chieftains are very good at getting rich clan members and estates to help to pay for repairs to the roofs of their castles and mansion houses. There are some extremely well endowed art-supporting funds out there, in the US and the rest of the world; what efforts will be made to see whether they would help to pay for the restoration?
David Mundell
I am sure that every effort will be made, because the School of Art has a world-class fundraising operation. It has alumni around the world and, indeed, campuses around the world—for example, I had the pleasure to visit the campus in Singapore. We stand ready to help and support the School of Art in any of those efforts, but one thing that the experience over the past four years has demonstrated is its skill and ability in respect of fundraising.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
What caused the fire four years ago? Does the Secretary of State share my general concern that, given modern safety standards, far too many fires are breaking out in large buildings in this country—for example, the London hotel fire last week—that are either undergoing or have recently undergone renovation?
David Mundell
The issue of renovations has been the subject of some comment in recent days, and it merits some attention.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
Prior to my being elected to this House, I had the great honour not only of being the bailie for Garnethill, in which the GSA is found, but of having done most of my postgraduate study in the bowels of the Mack building. In resurrecting the GSA, with its critical role as a place of artistic education, what work will the Secretary of State do in conjunction with my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss), the Member of the Scottish Parliament for Glasgow Kelvin and the Lord Provost of Glasgow, who also now represents Garnethill?
David Mundell
One thing that was clear when I visited the School of Art on 1 June was the wish to get students back into that building to see it as a functioning building for students, and there were detailed plans about which students and courses would be taught there. I am absolutely sure that if a restoration can go ahead, the School of Art will very much want the building to return to being a living, breathing art-school building. I will certainly do everything that I can to support that.
Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s comments and the cross-party nature in which this tragedy is being approached. Does he agree that the craftspeople, artists and performers who often perform at the O2 ABC need to be supported with specific funding, along with local shop owners? In the short term, before the big fundraising efforts take place, what can he do to ensure that they are specifically supported?
David Mundell
I am happy to look into the detail of that specific point, because it is relevant. I understand that several events that were due to take place have been rearranged and will go ahead at other venues in Glasgow. I am happy to take forward any specifics that flow from the hon. Lady’s question.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
The sense of devastation is felt so keenly in Glasgow because Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s work has touched our lives in many different ways—for example, I have been to the weddings of my sister and some of my best friends at the House for an Art Lover. The Charles Rennie Mackintosh Society is based in another of his masterpieces, the Queen’s Cross church, which is just around the corner from my constituency office. Will the Secretary of State make sure that the society is included in any communications or information flows that the Government initiate?
David Mundell
Yes, I am happy to do that. As a previous contributor said, it is a great irony that Mackintosh’s 150th anniversary was only on 7 June, when we saw, through the worldwide celebrations, how relevant he remains around the globe.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
Mackintosh once lived in a house just three doors down from where I currently live, but the Secretary of State will know that that is not the only place we can learn about Mackintosh: an exhibition is on right now at Kelvingrove Art Gallery, and it is open until the middle of August so that people can learn about his work. Will the Secretary of State encourage everybody to go and see it?
David Mundell
I most thoroughly encourage everyone to go along to that Mackintosh exhibition in Kelvingrove and, indeed, to visit any of Mackintosh’s other properties, if they have not done so, or attend the Willow Tea Rooms in Sauchiehall Street.
Chris Stephens (Glasgow South West) (SNP)
I agree with and associate myself with the remarks that everyone has made about the heartbreaking scenes on Friday night. Does the Secretary of State agree that the creative arts and creative industries can find young people work in a way that conventional industry cannot? Will he take that into account when he considers what Government funding will be available?
David Mundell
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We do not always agree, but I do believe that the creative industries are a much undervalued part of our economy. They have played a huge part in Glasgow’s regeneration and are an enormous part of Edinburgh’s success as a global festival city, and they merit more attention.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Last year, some Members from Glasgow were given a tour of the painstaking restoration of the Mackintosh building by the School of Art’s director, Professor Tom Inns, who told us how the team who had been involved in the restoration of Windsor castle had offered their advice. Will the Secretary of State join me in thanking the international teams that are appearing to offer their advice, both practical and financial? Like the people of Glasgow, we are not kept down for long, and nor will be the Mack.
David Mundell
The hon. Lady ends her question with a very good sentiment, and I echo it fully. The School of Art has been able to draw on worldwide expertise and to develop and see through skills that were not previously exercised, and it stands in a good position to know what would be needed in a future restoration, although the scale of this restoration would obviously be much greater than the previous one.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
I am someone who delivered to Glasgow for 25 years as a postal worker, and the Mackintosh building was one my favourite buildings to deliver to. Will the Secretary of State not only deliver on the promise that he has just given to re-fund the building, but bear in mind the students and workers in the building?
David Mundell
One of the issues that I will discuss with Professor Inns and others is students, workers and the current capacity, because although the Mackintosh building was in effect destroyed, the School of Art’s principal building was also badly damaged in terms of its operability. We want to discuss those issues and how they can be most helped in that regard.
Cannabis-based Medicines
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Sajid Javid)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the medical use of cannabis.
Over the weekend, I issued an emergency licence to allow Billy Caldwell’s medical team to access cannabis-based medicine to treat life-threatening seizures caused by a severe form of epilepsy. This was an emergency procedure, which was led by a senior clinician with the support of the medical director at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.
I am pleased to say that Billy has now been discharged from hospital. It is now for his senior clinicians to develop a long-term care plan. I am sure that the whole House would like to join me in expressing our sympathy for what Billy and his family have been going through and the very difficult time that they have faced.
The course of action in this case was unprecedented. There is strong scientific evidence that cannabis can harm people’s mental and physical health and damage communities. There are currently no legally recognised medicinal or therapeutic benefits. To date, under successive Governments, Home Office policy has been to permit the production, supply and possession of raw cannabis solely for the purposes of research with a Home Office licence. The cannabis-based medicine Sativex can, however, be prescribed in the UK because there is a proven case for its safety and efficacy. However, cases such as Billy’s, Alfie Dingley’s and others like them, have shown that we now need to look more closely at the use of cannabis-based medicines in the healthcare sector in the UK.
It has become clear to me since becoming Home Secretary that the position we find ourselves in is not satisfactory. It is not satisfactory for the parents, it is not satisfactory for the doctors, and it is not satisfactory for me. I have now come to the conclusion that it is time to review the scheduling of cannabis. Before I go into the detail of the review, let me be absolutely clear that this step is in no way the first step in the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use. This Government have absolutely no plans to legalise cannabis, and the penalties for unauthorised supply and possession will remain unchanged. We will not set a dangerous precedent or weaken our ability to keep dangerous drugs off the streets.
The approach that we will be asking the review to consider will be no different than that used previously for controlled drugs where there is evidence of medicinal benefits. The Government review will take place in two parts. Part 1 of the commission will consider the evidence available for the medicinal and therapeutic benefits of cannabis-based medicines. Professor Sally Davies, who also serves as the Chief Medical Officer, will take that part forward. It will then inform exactly which forms of cannabis or cannabis-based medicines should be taken forward to part 2.
Part 2 will be led by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The ACMD will not reassess the evidence issued by Professor Sally Davies, but will provide an assessment, based on the balance of harms and public health needs, of what, if anything should be rescheduled. If the review identifies that there are significant medical benefits, we will reschedule. We have seen in recent months that there is a pressing need to allow those who might benefit from cannabis-based products to access them. It will, of course, take time for Sally Davies and the ACMD to complete their work and for the Government to consider their recommendations.
In the short term, my hon. Friend the policing Minister announced yesterday that the Government would be establishing an expert panel of clinicians to advise Ministers on any applications to prescribe cannabis-based medicines. This is intended to ensure that advice to Ministers on licensing in these cases is clinically led, based firmly on medical evidence and as swift as possible. The chief medical officers across the UK have already been actively working together on the panel, and the expert panel will start considering applications within a week.
Earlier today, my hon. Friend the policing Minister also spoke to Alfie Dingley’s mum, Hannah Deacon, and informed her that we would issue a licence for Alfie later today. All of the work I have outlined today is about making sure that we keep in step with the latest scientific evidence, and that patients and their families have access to the most appropriate course of medical treatment. I pay tribute to the Policing Minister for all his excellent and sustained work on this important issue.
As a father, I know there is nothing worse than seeing your child suffer. You would do anything to take away their pain. That is why I have the utmost sympathy for Billy Caldwell, Alfie Dingley and many others like them, and for their parents who have been under unimaginable stress and strain. I know that they are following a gut parental instinct to do whatever is in their power to alleviate the suffering of their child. Today I would like to say to this House that I will do everything in my power to make sure that we have a system that works so that these children and these parents get access to the best medical treatment. I commend this statement to the House.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for prior sight of his statement. I am well aware of the damage that cannabis consumption can cause, whether it is the health of very young consumers or ganja psychosis. The newer forms of cannabis, notably skunk, are very much stronger than the cannabis available a generation ago. However, I am also aware, as the Home Secretary will be, that a former chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor Nutt, has said that cannabis is less harmful than alcohol. I note that Baron Hague of Richmond is calling for complete decriminalisation.
The Opposition welcome the Home Secretary’s statement that he will look more closely at the use of cannabis-based medication in healthcare in the UK. We agree that this is the right time—if not long overdue—to review the scheduling of cannabis, and we are glad to hear that the policing Minister has spoken to Alfie Dingley’s mother. After the meeting in 10 Downing Street, she was very concerned about the length of time that it was taking to issue a suitable licence.
The Home Secretary has released some of the supply of medication that Billy Caldwell’s mother brought into the country, but does he intend to release the complete supply? Is he aware of the concern at the delays in the current process? Although we welcome the review, something must be done to manage the current process more effectively, including the use of an advisory panel. It is simply not acceptable that parents and families have to suffer, as they have been, as a result of the interminable delays in agreeing licences.
Cannabis and the drug issue generally are big issues of concern for the community. It is important that we base whatever we do on scientific fact and evidence, and we do not just bow to what might be popular sentiment. There are harms connected with cannabis consumption, but it is time to move forward and establish once and for all the potential of cannabis-based medicine to alleviate pain and suffering.
Sajid Javid
I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments and her support for my statement. I think she agrees with me that it is absolutely the right time for the Government to look at this issue. She will be aware that under successive Governments, policy in this area has not changed for a long time, but given what we have all seen and heard all too clearly on our television screens, on the radio, and given the many meetings that my hon. Friend the policing Minister has had with the families affected, it is the right time to look at this issue and act as quickly as possible.
There are two parts to our action. I wish to reassure the House—all hon. Members will appreciate that rules of this type cannot be changed overnight. The changes have to be based on evidence. If they are not and are not properly made, some people out there may have different views and may try to challenge the rules legally. They have to be sufficiently robust. That is why we have put in place this process and why we wanted to act as quickly as possible. Professor Sally Davies’ office has said that she can complete her work within a week. We are moving as fast as we possibly can, and I hope that the ACMD can then act within weeks.
At the same time, we do not want any other families to suffer, so we want to ensure that we have a process in place to act much more swiftly. That is why we have established the expert panel. The chief medical officers from all the devolved nations, including Northern Ireland, are involved in that, so we are co-ordinating and will work well together. The expert panel will be able to act very swiftly and Ministers will be able to take action very quickly based on medical advice, which is what we all want to see.
The right hon. Lady asked me about Alfie Dingley. As I mentioned, we will be issuing the licence today. Alfie’s mother has already been informed and is of course very happy with the decision. I am sorry that she has had to wait so long and go through all the distress that she has faced. I am grateful to the policing Minister for all the work that he has done, and to Alfie’s mother’s Member of Parliament—the Attorney General, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kenilworth and Southam (Jeremy Wright)—for all the work that he has done.
The right hon. Lady asked me about Billy Caldwell’s situation. We are working very closely with the family. Now that the licence has been issued, we will ensure that the right amount of medicine is available for the right time. The situation depends somewhat on whether Billy Caldwell’s mother decides to go back to Northern Ireland, because licensing is an entirely devolved matter. We are working closely with the Northern Ireland authorities to ensure that, if she does decide to go, the move is seamless and does not affect Billy Caldwell in any way.
The right hon. Lady is interested in how quickly we acted. The first time we received a request from a clinician in the case of Billy Caldwell was at around 11.15 am on Friday just gone; by noon I had issued a licence and the drug was in possession of the family. I do not believe that we could have acted any quicker from the point at which we received a request from the clinician.
Once again, let me say that I really appreciate the right hon. Lady’s comments. By working together, we can bring to an end the suffering of all these families and help in every way that we can.
Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his statement and the rapid way in which he has gripped this issue. As co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for drug policy reform, let me say that this is a very welcome step forward. There is a substantial amount of medical evidence out there, including a 2016 paper on this issue—commissioned by my predecessor co-chairs of the APPG—by Professor Mike Barnes, who has been associated with the Alfie Dingley case. Will my right hon. Friend make it clear that Professor Sally Davies has been given two tasks, including one on the expert panel to advise on immediate applications for licences? Will he confirm that people will not be asked to pay the swingeing fees that were being asked of the Dingley family in respect of their licences? Finally, what is the expected timescale for the second task that my right hon. Friend has asked the chief medical officer to undertake?
Sajid Javid
I welcome my hon. Friend’s comments, the work that he has done in this area over a number of years and the interest that he takes in the issue. I can confirm that Professor Sally Davies is helping—first with the expert panel so that we can bring help before the review is complete, and then of course with the review itself. He also mentioned the important issue of fees, which I am looking at to see how we can help.
Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)
I thank the Home Secretary for his statement. May I just gently say to him that it would be nice if the third party could have a little bit more advance notice than the statement literally being put in my hand as he gets to his feet? That said, I am pleased about the statement.
The Home Secretary is making significant progress in this area. I am particularly pleased for the individual families concerned, and to read about the review, but of course there are thousands of people across the United Kingdom who want to access these medicines for the treatment of conditions for which there is evidence that they can alleviate the symptoms and pain. These individuals and their families are worried about the bureaucracy and the hurdles that have to be crossed to access the medicines. Can the Secretary of State give me some assurance that his review will focus on removing bureaucracy and hurdles? Does he agree that this matter should eventually be seen as a public health matter that should be taken out of the Home Office and put into the hands of health departments across the UK?
In the meantime, I am pleased to hear that the chief medical officers of the devolved countries are involved, but will the Secretary of State confirm what other liaison there is—with the Scottish Government, for example—in relation to both health and policing, which has been mentioned, as these are devolved matters?
Sajid Javid
I thank the hon. and learned Lady for her comments. She is right to highlight that thousands of people may be suffering. No one knows the exact number, but it is estimated that at least 10,000 children in the UK have a drug-resistant form of epilepsy. That really puts into focus what a big difference these measures can make. I can also give her an assurance about bureaucracy and hurdles. Frankly, there has been a lot of bureaucracy and many hurdles in the way until now. The decision that we made on Friday was unprecedented, as are the measures that we are putting in place. The expert panel will make a huge difference. Its whole purpose is to make the process as smooth and quick as possible, based on medical advice at all points. I do not want to prejudge the review, but I am sure that the hon. and learned Lady can sense the direction.
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cannabis: harmful effects on developing brains, I thank my right hon. Friend for his assurances that any future medicinal use of cannabis will not be conflated with any weakening of the Government’s position on recreational use. Is he aware of the increasingly clear evidence of permanent psychosis and depression among young people who are users of what we see on our streets more regularly—skunk cannabis?
Sajid Javid
I am very much aware of that. It is perfectly correct for my hon. Friend to highlight this point. As I made clear in my statement and I am happy to make absolutely clear again, there are no plans at all to decriminalise cannabis. It is a controlled class B drug under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and that will not change.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
All of us must want children—and also adults—to get the medical treatment that they need without additional hurdles that have nothing to do with medicine. I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that he will look at the scheduling of cannabis, because it is incredibly hard to explain the scheduling classification of cannabis compared to opiates, and the additional burdens that that scheduling poses for the health service if such products are needed for treatment. May I ask him again to look more widely at the barriers and obstacles in his review? Will he look at whether these kinds of scheduling or licensing decisions should be passed to the Department of Health and Social Care, and whether much more drugs policy should, in fact, be led by that Department?
Sajid Javid
The right hon. Lady makes a number of good points. She is right to highlight that there are currently drugs that are under schedule 2, meaning that the medical benefits are accepted, but which can be a lot more harmful than other drugs if they are used in the wrong way. She asked about the role of the Department of Health and Social Care in these kinds of decisions. This requires a cross-Government approach, with the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care working closely together, as we have seen. We have an issue in that these drugs are categorised as illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act, but we need to recognise, where appropriate, that some of them have medicinal benefits, as has already been recognised with, for example, cocaine and morphine. It is therefore appropriate that the two Departments work together.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I absolutely understand the Government’s review of this policy, and I welcome it for those who suffer and need this drug to make them better, but may I just say that, from my own life experience, I am delighted that the Government are not going to decriminalise the use of drugs. All too often, people start on cannabis and end on something far worse, and I have personally seen the devastation to families and the loss of children because of drugs.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
I welcome the move that the Home Secretary has made, on behalf of my constituents. It is really important to me that the grandfather of Charlie Jones and the parents of Jace Newton-Sealey know how to go about applying for a licence. Will the Home Secretary and his Department make the process clear, so that people know how to access a licence?
Sajid Javid
Yes, I think that there is a need to make the process clearer. I have been quite open that I do not think that the current process is a friendly one at all. The decision made in the case of Billy Caldwell was unprecedented; no Government in the past had recognised the medicinal benefits of cannabis by making such a decision and issuing a licence. We need to make the process—even the interim process, through the expert panel—much smoother and more straightforward. Once the panel is set up, which will happen by next week, we will set out exactly how the process will work for the hon. Lady’s constituents and others.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Clinical leadership may have its place, but for years the crying need has been for political leadership, so may I thank my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State and the Policing Minister for providing it?
Norman Lamb (North Norfolk) (LD)
I genuinely welcome this announcement, which does mark a significant shift, but is there not a dreadful hypocrisy in Government policy on drugs more generally? Probably most of the Cabinet drinks alcohol, the most dangerous drug of all. Probably half the Cabinet has used cannabis—maybe even the Home Secretary—unless it is a very odd group of people, but perhaps that is the case. Should not the Home Secretary follow the advice of the former Conservative leader, Lord Hague, who makes the case for a regulated, legalised market, which would be the best way to protect from harm people who, at the moment, buy from criminals who have no interest in their welfare at all?
Sajid Javid
This is about making sure that the best possible medical treatment is available for everyone in the UK, but especially our children. It is about medical treatment, not the recreational use of drugs, which can cause severe damage to people. I am afraid that I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman on that point, and nor, on this occasion, do I agree with Lord Hague.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for very much humanising this issue. As chairman of the all-party group on multiple sclerosis, I welcome his announcement about the medical aspect of cannabis. May I offer the services of the MS Society in any inquiry and call for evidence that he might have? May I also associate myself with his remarks about drugs? I am frankly staggered that my right hon. and noble Friend Lord Hague—or indeed anybody else—could advocate such a thing. We will all have seen at first hand in our constituencies the devastation that cannabis causes. This is not recreational use—it steals lives and futures, and we must be robust in ensuring that it stops.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right on that point. He will know that Sativex, which has a cannabis base, is already licensed for those with MS, but today’s announcement is about how we can improve on the medical use of cannabis even further.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I, too, genuinely welcome the licence for Alfie today, but what a scandal it is that it has taken three months since Hannah Deacon met the Prime Minister and was promised swift and compassionate action, and what an outrage it is that, frankly, it is only the press attention that has finally shamed the Government into action. With regard to the expert panel, what assurance can the Home Secretary give that there will be enough Home Office staff to deal with the thousands of applications that might well now come?
Sajid Javid
Let me say gently to the hon. Lady that in the case of Alfie Dingley, of course we are all pleased that we have been able to issue the licence today. She should know that before the application—the approach by his clinicians—no Government had even entertained the idea, given that cannabis is classed as a schedule 1 drug, of looking at this from a medical point of view. This Government have done that. I hope that she can join us in not just welcoming that, but working together on how we can end the suffering of so many other people, particularly children, who could benefit from these kinds of medicines.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I commend the Home Secretary for his statement. I support the legalisation of cannabis for medical use. May I urge him to encourage the clinical review team to get on with it? There is already a mass of internationally accredited research available that they can draw on, so we do not need to reinvent the wheel. The research is there—it just needs to be studied and then a decision can be made quickly.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend makes a good point. One of the issues has been that our rules in this area have not kept up with medical research and evidence. At least 13 European countries, as well as Canada and over 30 US states, have recognised the medicinal benefits of cannabis. The World Health Organisation has also done work on this and pointed to evidence. We will be using and drawing on all that evidence. That is why I am pleased that Professor Sally Davies has said that she can complete her work in days.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
The Home Secretary says that he wants a system that works. I am bit concerned about the role of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs in the light of what has happened in recent days. Is it still fit for purpose?
Sajid Javid
Yes, it is. It has an important role to play, which is to advise Ministers on the scheduling of drugs. If we are to change a scheduling, it is important to listen to its point of view.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
I welcome the fact that the Home Secretary set out at the start of his statement that
“cannabis can harm people’s mental and physical health and damage communities.”
I also welcome the fact that any change will be science-led. Will he also look at international examples? He mentioned Canada, where a law was introduced very recently. Will he see what works—and, importantly, what does not work—with that law, in particular, because the evidence is mixed?
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We will certainly be looking at international evidence. A lot has changed in the UK since the current rules were put in place, and we will take all that into account.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome what the Home Secretary has said today. I have long supported decriminalisation of the use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, not least having heard some really heartbreaking stories from my own constituents, particularly those with degenerative conditions, some of whom, sadly, passed away unable to get the pain relief and support that they needed. Given the speed at which this review will be undertaken, will the Home Secretary, the Policing Minister and the Attorney General be giving any guidance in the interim to police forces or the Crown Prosecution Service on the public interest in pursuing the impounding of material, or prosecuting individuals who are using it for medicinal purposes?
Sajid Javid
The current rules are clear. We have discussed today and debated in Parliament how we would like to see a change in the process, but until those rules change, they would have to be applied. The hon. Gentleman raises a perfectly good point about working with law enforcement agencies and making sure that they are taking emerging policy into account.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I have long advocated the use of medical cannabis and therefore very much welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement of a review. May I have assurances that that review will be very much patient-centred and led by evidence of how the use of medical cannabis can help those with chronic conditions?
Sajid Javid
I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that reassurance. The review must have the patient at its very heart and must be driven by medical evidence.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I welcome the statement, and particularly the news on Alfie Dingley. Of course, there is already evidence of the medical benefits of cannabis, because otherwise Sativex would not be available on licence. That is why it is so absurd that cannabis is still a schedule 1 controlled drug. I am therefore hopeful and confident that the review will lead to a recommendation to reschedule. Will the Secretary of State confirm that rescheduling could be carried out quite quickly and easily by means of a statutory instrument, meaning that we can get on with it?
Sajid Javid
First, Sativex was looked at for a particular condition. It is right that drugs are looked at the context of the condition that they are intended to help with. The hon. Gentleman makes a good wider point about whether, once the review is complete, we can get on with it, with any changes made quickly. That is exactly what I intend to do.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
As chairman of the all-party group on 22q11.2 deletion syndrome, I know many parents of children who have a rare genetic condition that often goes undiagnosed and, when diagnosed, is not always appropriately treated. From that experience, I am sure that Billy’s family welcome today’s statement. I welcome the fact that elements of the statement show that the Government look to the evidence and respond to the public interest, as well as that of the patient at the forefront.
Sajid Javid
My hon. Friend is right. The process should absolutely be clinically led. We should listen to evidence from clinicians while drawing on international evidence, too. That is exactly what should feed into the outcome of the review.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
I think we all welcome the progress that is being made, but there are questions about people who need help now. My constituents Laura Murray and John Ahern have a one-year-old daughter, Bláthnaid, who has been diagnosed with Aicardi syndrome. She suffers very severe seizures throughout the day and her parents believe that these medicines could help. I will write to the Home Secretary with more details about that situation, but may I ask him how much discretion he still has, and how much he is willing to exercise?
Sajid Javid
As the rules stand, until the review is complete and changes are made, any use of cannabis for medicinal purposes will require a Home Office licence or, in the case of Northern Ireland, a licence from the Health Department there. I hope that what I have set out today has given reassurance that I recognise the need for action now, not tomorrow or in a few weeks or months. We need action now, and that is the purpose of the expert panel—to make this a much smooth, quick and clinically-led process.
Mr Kevan Jones (North Durham) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement. I note that he is not going to reclassify cannabis, but will he look at how we deal with individuals in possession of a small amount of cannabis? To that end, will he look at Checkpoint, an alternative justice initiative by Durham police that aims to help individuals and to try to break the link between drugs and crime?
Sajid Javid
The right hon. Gentleman is right: this is not about the reclassification of cannabis. He makes an important point about the need for law enforcement to work with others, including the many good groups out there, to try to get people off drugs once they have a problem. It is important to do more work on that.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement. Those treating my constituent, Caroline, are firmly of the view that she is alive today and living a good quality of life because her brain tumour has been slowed by the regular use of cannabis oil, but she is having to import that at a cost of hundreds of pounds every month. When can she expect her doctors to be able to prescribe that treatment? Is there anything she should be doing in the meantime to benefit from what the Secretary of State has announced today?
Sajid Javid
I do not know all the details of that case, but it might be good to look at the work of the expert panel that I have talked about. As I say, we will set out more details on that. Any changes to the rules will be made after the review and, as the House has heard, we are trying to do that as quickly as possible.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
The mainstream media have highlighted this week the heartbreaking cases of Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell. The Secretary of State has said that an estimated 10,000 children in the UK who suffer seizures could benefit from these medicines, as could many more people suffering from degenerative conditions. It has always been the case that he could grant a specific licence, but given his comments about the time that it will take the ACMD to reach a conclusion and to look at international evidence from Canada and the 13 EU countries, what is his estimate of how long it will be before we get a more streamlined system?
Sajid Javid
First, I reassure the hon. Gentleman that we will take the international evidence into account. I know that Dame Sally Davies will look at that too, as will the ACMD. I want that work to be done as soon as possible, but right now I want to streamline the process, which means that the work of the expert panel will be very important.
Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. It will be particularly welcomed by my constituents the Gray family, as Murray Gray suffers from a similar condition to Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell. I also welcome the speed with which the Home Secretary will act, but I urge him not to be thrown off track or to allow anything to affect the rescheduling of cannabis, such as reactionary fear about its availability for recreational use.
Sajid Javid
I thank the hon. Lady for her comments, and I reassure her that I will not be thrown off track.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the Home Secretary very much for his statement and the urgency he has given this. I also thank the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service for all his hard work, which should not be ignored. My constituents Darren and Danielle Gibson took their eight-year-old daughter Sophia to Holland so that she could receive these drugs. It was very important that they did so, as that had a clear medical benefit for their child. The Minister will know—
Mr Speaker
Order. I express the cautious hope—it would probably be unrealistic of me to say this with enormous confidence—that the hon. Gentleman, whom we all love dearly, is approaching his peroration, at the end of which there will be an unmistakeable question mark.
Jim Shannon
There certainly will be, Mr Speaker.
When I met the permanent secretary of the Health Department in Northern Ireland, he said that he would have some difficulty giving the go-ahead in Northern Ireland. He needs direction from the Home Secretary. What discussions has the Home Secretary had with the permanent secretary to facilitate this urgently for my constituent Sophia Gibson?
Sajid Javid
The hon. Gentleman will know that the decision to issue a possession licence is completely devolved in Northern Ireland, so it is outside the Home Office’s area. That said, we want to work closely with Northern Ireland. The permanent secretary in my Department has been working with the permanent secretary in the Health Department in Northern Ireland. We want to help in every way possible, especially in the case of Sophia Gibson, and that is exactly what we are doing.
Ronnie Cowan (Inverclyde) (SNP)
I have to say that I am a little perplexed by this. The Home Secretary is saying that there are currently no legally recognised medicinal or therapeutic benefits of cannabis. I am wondering what we are giving to Billy Caldwell that has led to such a turnaround in his situation and what we are proposing to give to Alfie Dingley, if it has no therapeutic benefits.
Sajid Javid
Under the current rules, those are not recognised. To be a bit clearer, all drugs that may or may not have a medicinal benefit are scheduled, and drugs in schedule 1, which is where cannabis is at the moment, are not recognised to have medicinal benefits under the law. That said, we of course want to look at the evidence, and to be led by evidence and clinicians, which was exactly why I made today’s announcement and why I took action last week.
Points of Order
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Where is everybody? I hope, in the light of the extraordinary accusations of the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), they are not behind the bike sheds having a spliff.
Mr Speaker
That is a most unworthy thought. The right hon. Gentleman articulates it with his usual brio and panache, but I think he errs on the side of pessimism in his assessment of the character of his colleagues.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Yesterday I attempted to raise a point of order, which I do not think was a point of order, so I will try again today. I wonder how I can get on the record how thrilled I am, along with colleagues across the House, that it will no longer be necessary to go to Holland to get the drugs for Alfie Dingley. I was inundated with requests to come with me, but we will now not have to be put behind bars to get Alfie the drugs he needs.
Mr Speaker
That is a very heartwarming point of order by the right hon. Gentleman. I must admit that I had wrongly anticipated him. I did not know that he was going to make the very serious point that he just made, which is appreciated and respected. I thought he was going to use the occasion to make an entirely bogus but amusing point of order about Harry Kane’s two goals last night, which we all celebrate. I do not celebrate it when Harry Kane scores for Tottenham, although I know the right hon. Gentleman does, but I do celebrate it when Harry Kane scores for England.
Sir Mike Penning
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker. I would like to put on the record how difficult that announcement was for you, as an ardent Arsenal supporter. I am sure that we all, including those from other countries in the United Kingdom, support England when they are playing other countries outside the United Kingdom, and especially when Harry Kane scores two goals.
Mr Speaker
We conclude our points of order today, people will have noticed, in a spirit of amity.
Bill Presented
House of Lords (Abolition and Replacement)
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Mr Frank Field presented a Bill to abolish the House of Lords and make provision for its replacement by a Senate.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on 26 October, and to be printed (Bill 230).
Mr Speaker
For the benefit of others, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) said, “26 October 2018, unless the Speaker can get him a better time.” That is a very novel interpretation of the procedure.
Frank Field
It is about the abolition of the House of Lords. They are overruling us.
Mr Speaker
I think the right hon. Gentleman may be investing me with powers that it be would joyous to have, but which I do not possess. The House seems to be in a good mood at the moment.
Representation of the People (Gibraltar)
Tuesday 19th June 2018
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Representation of the People (Gibraltar) Bill 2017-19 View all Representation of the People (Gibraltar) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Craig Mackinlay (South Thanet) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to provide for the representation of Gibraltar by a Member of the House of Commons; and for connected purposes.
All 14 of the UK’s overseas territories are different; all are special. All share our monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, as their Head of State; most are internally self-governing. The overseas territory that now sits in a unique constitutional position post-Brexit is Gibraltar. It is the only territory within the European Union and will be leaving the EU with the UK on 29 March 2019. Its relationship with the European Union is quite different from any other part of the Union, in that it is a member of the single market, but not its customs union or Schengen, despite having a land border with the EU. Gibraltar is not to be confused with the Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man, which have very different constitutional arrangements and are not in the EU, now or in the future.
Few were surprised that Gibraltar voted remain in the EU referendum. This reflected its residents’ concerns that the EU had played, at times, a role in balancing the often fractious demands of its giant neighbour. The good life and strong economy—a beacon in an area of high regional unemployment—I can but guess also played a part in its local vote for no change.
For over 300 years, Gibraltar and its people have played their part in support of Britain’s history as a global leader in commerce and an international player of influence. It occupies a unique geographical position as the gatekeeper to the Mediterranean and has one of the Royal Navy’s most important international bases. Whenever Gibraltar has been presented with a choice over its future, notably in the shared sovereignty referendum of 2002, Gibraltarians have rejected any change by vast margins. Gibraltar has been and continues to be an unwavering supporter of the UK. Its outstanding support during times of conflict has been continuous, and we have a close relationship built on trust and reciprocal loyalty. Similarly, the people of Gibraltar have strong support in this House. I salute the good work of my hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), as chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on the overseas territories, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Gibraltar.
Since the decision to leave the EU, the people of Gibraltar and its Government have shown nothing but pragmatism and respect for the decision of the referendum. Nobody could fail to be impressed and reassured by the evidence given by the Chief Minister to the Select Committee on Exiting the European Union in January last year. The UK’s Brexit vote must make us think anew and re-assert once more that the Rock is British and will remain so. Brexit provides us with an opportunity to build further on our relationship and further protect the Rock’s rights and interests. That is best guaranteed by a closer electoral bond, which would also send a clear message to Madrid about the perpetuity of that bond.
Unlike other overseas territories, Gibraltar does not have the option of formal independence, which, however unlikely, would be available to others should they so wish it. The 1713 treaty of Utrecht ceded Gibraltar to Great Britain in perpetuity. The treaty had a sting, in that Gibraltar can only be British or Spanish. Its own unilateral independence is not an option. Whereas most overseas territories have their own currencies or shared currencies—the Eastern Caribbean dollar, under the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union—or use the euro in some cases or the US or New Zealand dollar, only the Falkland Islands, Gibraltar and St Helena, with Tristan da Cunha and Ascension Island, share sterling as their domestic currency.
Gibraltar’s truly unique feature, however, is that it already has electoral links with the UK, via its attachment to the South West region for representation in the European Parliament. That will disappear upon Brexit. The way to protect that attachment is for this Parliament to allow the people of Gibraltar direct representation in this House. There was a cogent argument given then that Gibraltar should be connected to the UK through electoral representation, and there is a clear argument now. Gibraltar’s population is a little light numerically to qualify as a constituency. It has a population of 33,000, with an electoral roll of 23,000. However, this is in the same ball park as—I may need help pronouncing this—Na h-Eileanan an Iar in the Outer Hebrides, a constituency with 21,260 voters.
Of course, we will always respect the devolution of powers that are in place, and having a Gibraltar MP in this House should not be an impediment to Gibraltar’s future constitutional development. Gibraltar’s constitution of 2006 is a tribute to the fact that it has a vibrant and responsible democratic system of government. That is why my Bill would not change the devo-max settlement of its 2006 constitution. If taken further, it would not impose a Westminster MP on Gibraltar. The decision whether to take up the offer of an MP in Westminster for Gibraltar must be made by the residents of Gibraltar alone and decided by their own internal procedures. The mechanics of how that might work would need to be discussed with Gibraltar’s leaders, but I reiterate that it would be for the people of Gibraltar to decide whether to have such representation here in our Parliament, which would become their own.
There is a local campaign group in Gibraltar, called the Representation in Westminster Group, that has been arguing for a number of years that a democratically elected MP in Westminster can only strengthen the Rock’s link with Britain and act as a permanent counter to any Spanish claims. The campaign says that it has already collected almost 9,000 signatures in support of UK Parliament representation, which it will deliver here once 10,000 signatures have been amassed. That is an impressive number—close to half the eligible voters.
As we leave the EU and forge a new global Britain, and given the Rock’s unique constitutional position with its membership of the sterling zone and rich historical links to Britain, there has never been a more appropriate time to cement our relationship with Gibraltar by offering it this constitutional bond. It would signal a perpetual and lasting link of shared interests. Gibraltar may be small, but its success is a matter of pride for the British people. Gibraltar’s constitution gives its citizens full powers of self-governance, other than over foreign affairs, defence, internal security and interest rate monetary policy. Gibraltar has always been and will continue to be a good and true member of the great British family. I very much hope that with this Bill we can reward the Gibraltarian people for their steadfast and loyal support for Britain.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Craig Mackinlay, Sir Graham Brady, Maria Caulfield, Sir David Crausby, Tim Farron, Daniel Kawczynski, Priti Patel, Andrew Rosindell, Sammy Wilson and Nigel Dodds present the Bill.
Craig Mackinlay accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 26 October, and to be printed (Bill 231).
Opposition Day
Confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
16:05 - The House having divided: - Ayes: 285 / Noes: 305 - Question accordingly negatived.
Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has no confidence in the Secretary of State for Transport, the Rt Hon Member for Epsom and Ewell; notes the failed implementation of the May rail timetables which has left thousands of commuters without services and has drastically affected their everyday lives; believes Northern and Govia Thameslink Railway should have their franchises terminated; and regrets that the Secretary of State for Transport has failed to strategically manage and oversee the UK railway and take responsibility for his role in the crisis on England’s railways, whilst officials at other organisations have resigned and forgone bonuses.
Before I come to the topic of today’s debate, I would like to express my condolences to the families and friends of those who so sadly died as a result of being struck by a train at Loughborough Junction in south London yesterday. I also pay tribute to all the railway staff who attended in response, in particular the British Transport police. Despite the challenges we face, we can never forget the outstanding public service that tens of thousands of men and women provide every day. We owe it to them to do our very best for the industry.
I regret having to table the motion, but given the totally unacceptable state of the railway I felt that I had a duty to passengers. The latest chaos follows meltdown on the east coast, resulting in a £2 billion bail-out and huge cuts to promised electrification in Wales, the north of England and the midlands. This is not shaping up to be a distinguished legacy. In his resignation letter to staff, Charles Horton, the outgoing chief executive of Govia Thameslink Railway, said:
“In my view, this was an industry-wide failure of the timetabling process. But with leadership comes responsibility and so I feel it is only right that I step down”.
Why is it that the chief executive of a train company who is responsible only for the travel disruption on one part of the railway is able to recognise the responsibility that comes with his leadership role and resign, yet the person who is truly responsible, the Transport Secretary, remains in post?
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, ever since the collapse of the west coast main line franchising competition under a predecessor of the Secretary of State, the entire franchising system has become increasingly ridiculous and unworkable, and that the way in which we run our railways needs to be changed entirely?
Andy McDonald
I could not agree more. We are seeing instance after instance. It is evidence, if any more were needed, that the system has completely and utterly failed and needs to be completely revised. Why are train companies allowed to retain their franchise despite repeated failures? Northern and GTR should be stripped of their contracts. Labour said very clearly that franchise failure should mean forfeit. It is clear that the Department for Transport has failed to ensure that train companies fulfil the terms of their contracts.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is not only GTR that should lose its franchise? The Secretary of State should have his office removed as well because this is a façade of a franchise. We know that Ministers are behind it, and it is Ministers who should be held accountable for the fact that passengers in places such as Preston Park in Brighton are losing their jobs, cannot spend time with their kids in hospital and are having their lives wrecked.
Andy McDonald
I agree entirely. The Government seem to want to have control and intervene, but they do not want to take responsibility. GTR should have been stripped of its contract years ago for running the worst rail service in modern times. The company has repeatedly been found in breach of its contract as well as overseeing toxic industrial relations and poor customer service. Had the Government heeded Labour’s call to strip the company of its franchise, the recent disruption could have been avoided.
Huw Merriman
I thank the hon. Gentleman—he is always kind and courteous with his time. A month ago, I believe that he said at the Dispatch Box that the rail professionals should be allowed to get on and run the industry, but in this instance he is being critical of the Secretary of State for not intervening and stopping that very eventuality occurring. I would like some clarification.
Andy McDonald
I will come on to that. As an excellent member of the Select Committee on Transport, the hon. Gentleman knows that the DFT sits on those bodies—it has a presence—yet it did nothing when it was given those alarms or warnings that he knows all about.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
It is not many months since we had a problem with Southern, as has been mentioned by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). From time to time there are problems on the west coast main line, yet the Secretary of State sits there like Pontius Pilate and abdicates responsibility.
Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a good speech. Yesterday, members of the Transport Committee sat for many hours interrogating leaders of the industry, both train operating companies and Network Rail, trying to find out who runs the railways. After all those hours, answer came there none. Does my hon. Friend agree that there are two scenarios? First, the Secretary of State is in charge, in which case he should take responsibility; or even worse, he is not, in which case he should be sacked?
Andy McDonald
My hon. Friend makes the point very well. We are talking about a dysfunctional railway that is completely and utterly fractured, and that has to be resolved.
Several hon. Members rose—
Andy McDonald
I will make progress, as I have taken several interventions and I know that many speakers wish to contribute. It is not acceptable to allow companies to continue to run and profit from rail services following failures on this scale. Services should return to public ownership to be run as part of an integrated railway under public ownership.
I turn to the distressing situation that confronts us more broadly on the railway as a result of the calamitous introduction of new timetables across more than half the UK rail network. The changes were intended to be improvements to introduce much-needed rail capacity following public expenditure on new rail infrastructure, but instead of improvements passengers on Northern and GTR have experienced a nightmare of disruption, and there seems to be little prospect of their trials and tribulations ending quickly. Last week, the Manchester Evening News carried a number of personal testimonies about the impact of the chaos. Leigh Burke, 55, is a team leader at Royal Bolton Hospital. He commutes from Didsbury to Bolton and said:
“I’m late to work all the time, it’s affecting my job. It’s an utter shambles.”
Louise Kirby, who commutes daily from Bromley Cross to Victoria, added:
“It’s horrific. I keep having panic attacks because it’s been so crowded. I saw a man pass out.”
Tom Moss, 24, a PR manager who lives in Glossop and works in Altrincham, pays £104 a month for his pass and said:
“I just want the trains to be on time. I just feel angry. I can’t take much more of it.”
There are thousands more personal stories that I could describe: personal difficulties and struggles that have a significant social and economic impact. Businesses and individuals who rely on rail transport suffer consequences from this disruption that carry very real costs.
This is not just a one-off. Disruption of this scale and severity, particularly when passengers experience it endlessly over an extended period, destroys faith and trust in the railway and drives people away from rail into their cars. Last week, figures showed that rail passenger usage has fallen yet again—this time, the fall was the biggest in 25 years. Not only does that mean more congestion, worse air pollution and an increased contribution to climate change, but it threatens the very sustainability of the railway.
Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as well as appalling oversight by the Government, one of the main challenges facing the rail network is ageing and unreliable infrastructure? That is a particular problem for the east coast main line, which has not had any real investment since electrification in 1991, 27 years ago, despite its being one of the major national rail routes.
Andy McDonald
Indeed. The east coast main line is in need of investment, and my hon. Friend makes her point incredibly well.
Tim Farron
That is very decent of the hon. Gentleman, and I am grateful to him. He is making an important speech. Does he agree that there is something of the red herring about conversations suggesting the new timetable is the source of the current calamity? Does he also agree that strategic decisions by the Government have led to the problem, which predates timetabling, not least the decision to postpone or, in the case of the Lakes line, cancel electrification, and to award to Northern certain franchises that it should never have been given, including the Lakes and Furness lines in my constituency?
Andy McDonald
I agree with those comments, and I will come on to that in a little while.
Franchise agreements assume ever-growing fare revenues, so the downturn in rail use increases the likelihood of more failed franchises and further taxpayer bail-outs. Fares have soared at three times the rate of wages since 2010, pricing passengers off the railway, while disruption encourages more people to revert to driving. That is exactly the wrong modal shift that we need our transport policy to achieve if it is to fulfil our environmental obligations and remove traffic and fumes from our towns and cities. Polling conducted by Which? found that three in five respondents affected by the timetable changes said that those changes had a negative impact on both their work and family life, with four in 10 saying that they had a negative impact on their health.
Considering the scale of the disruption, I am sure the whole House will agree that passengers must be adequately compensated. Yet at present 72% of those affected by the disruption said they had not been informed, either on the train or at the platform, about any compensation they may be entitled to receive. The Transport Secretary should have ensured passengers were made properly aware of the compensation they are owed. In addition, considering the scale of the disruption, a compensation package that goes above and beyond what is currently available must be delivered. The Transport Secretary has indicated some such package is being considered, but he has not provided detail. I ask him to do so today to ensure that the amount of compensation is commensurate with the scale of disruption and, importantly, that it is funded by the train companies, not taxpayers and passengers. They should pay voluntarily. If they refuse, he should make them.
It is important to step back and review the key steps in how we have come to this sorry state of affairs. This year’s timetable changes, introduced on 20 May, are the most extensive and ambitious undertaken in decades. More than 50% of the network schedules have been revamped. Four million trains have been retimed: about six times as many changes as is usual for a timetable change. It was clear before Christmas that there were going to be difficulties in implementing the new timetable. In February, the rail industry body, the Rail Delivery Group, confirmed it would not be able to complete timetables 12 weeks ahead of travel from 20 May for about six months. That should have set off alarm bells.
Since 20 May, 43% of Northern’s trains have been delayed or cancelled each day. From 4 June, the train operator cancelled 165 trains a day, including all services to the Lake district. In the first week of the new timetable, GTR delayed or cancelled a quarter of its trains and announced the schedule for the next day at 10 pm each night.
Today’s industrial action on Northern is a reminder of the utter despair felt by the rail industry’s workforce. Both Northern and GTR have waged war on their staff for three years and four years respectively. They have done so at the explicit behest of the Secretary of State for Transport and his senior officials.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
How does the hon. Gentleman explain that the Labour Mayor of London has been unable to run strike-free transport in London, although he promised to do so? Did he also anger staff in this way?
Andy McDonald
We can have that discussion, but today I am dealing with these services and I am going to concentrate on them.
Senior officials directly interfered. Let us not forget that the managing director of passenger services at the Department for Transport, Peter Wilkinson, said two years ago:
“we’re going to be having punch-ups and we will see industrial action”
and that he wanted to run people “out of my industry.”
The introduction of the May 2018 timetable required change on an unprecedented scale. The process of managing change requires co-operation, dialogue, engagement and good will. The Government and the management of Northern and GTR have destroyed their relationships with their employees. Millions of passengers in the UK are paying the price for the belligerence and the antagonistic approach of the Secretary of State.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I know the Secretary of State and I know his Ministers. I bet a pound to a dollar that the Secretary of State and his Ministers pulled in the people responsible for the railway companies and got assurances from them that this would work well. I really feel it is quite unfair, because I am absolutely convinced that the Secretary of State, who I know well, would have checked this out. He has been let down very badly by the railway companies.
Andy McDonald
The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, but in support of my argument. He is demonstrating that that did not work. That was not a very good way of going about business, relying on people giving assurances rather than saying, “Show me. Where’s your evidence?” You do that before you go ahead with it. You do not rely on people telling you nonsense.
Ever since the timetable chaos arose, we have witnessed carefully crafted statements that try to ensure as little responsibility as possible can be attributed to the Department for Transport and the Secretary of State in charge of it. Let us consider the situation. This is a Government who refuse to recognise the accumulated evidence that their privatised structure of the railway is failing. Therefore, they refuse to accept a sensible and practical railway structure that can function properly.
David Morris (Morecambe and Lunesdale) (Con)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for being so generous with his time. He is a big supporter of privatisation—[Interruption.] He is a big supporter of nationalisation, but that would cost each and every household in this country £6,500. Does he not agree that the nationalised side of the railway caused this problem in the first place? How does he account for that?
Andy McDonald
I do not know where the hon. Gentleman gets that figure from. If the Government take franchises back when they run out it costs diddly squat to take them back—zero—so he is talking utter nonsense.
No one other than the Government hold responsibility for their dogmatic stance. This dogma causes them to stand by and defend the rail structure that is manifestly not fit for purpose. It then falls to the Department for Transport to get involved to try to run the railway properly. It cannot do this. Today’s railway cannot run itself effectively because it was decapitated by privatisation and chopped into bits to facilitate private profit taking. Because there is no guiding mind overseeing the railway, the Department has to wade into the railway much more deeply than it should. Having taken this approach, the Government assume a greater deal of responsibility, but they have not shown themselves capable of discharging that responsibility.
The Department for Transport’s oversight has failed in three major ways. First, it appears that, when there was a decision on whether to press ahead with the timetable changes affecting Northern, the Department stood against allowing a deferral. Why did the Department not believe the professional advice it was given? Secondly, the Transport Committee heard from Network Rail yesterday that Thameslink phasing was first raised by the GTR readiness board in June 2017. Mr Halsall, the route managing director for the south-east, said the Department stood by and did not make a decision until November 2017—an astonishing five-month delay. What did the Secretary of State know and when did he know it?
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
I can confirm that the decision to proceed with a slimmed down timetable was taken by me in July 2017.
Andy McDonald
Well, I am saying to the Secretary of State quite clearly that a competent Secretary of State would have known this right at the outset and taken the appropriate steps. He did not. He allowed the situation to unwind.
Thirdly, the Thameslink industry readiness board—readiness board, there’s a laugh—formally requested that the GTR timetable changes should be scaled back, yet the Department dithered for two months. GTR boss Mr Horton said the board did not have an executive role, so he could not explain who was responsible for the meltdown—no one accountable and no one responsible.
I do not want to personalise the issue and I do not expect the Secretary of State to know every detail of what happens in his Department—[Interruption.] No, it is just everything he does and everything he stands for; it’s nothing personal. However, the three points I have described are all important failures of the Department for Transport at a high level. Stephen Glaister from the Office for Rail and Road is not an appropriate person to conduct a review into the timetable failings. The ORR itself has failed in its regulation of Network Rail, so it cannot be expected to conduct an independent investigation. This is yet another bad judgment by the Secretary of State for Transport. A new rail timetable is due to be implemented in December 2018. What funds, resources and support will the Secretary of State provide to ensure Network Rail’s planning capability can deliver the changes due in six months?
Today’s Financial Times reports the managing director of Trenitalia complaining about Network Rail and, in particular, the lack of integration between Network Rail and the train operating companies since privatisation. Did the Italians not do their homework on the reality of the UK’s railway? Recent events demonstrate more than ever that our railway is not integrated. I am afraid that the breach of faith and trust is so great that the Secretary of State’s credibility will never recover. There comes a point when the publicly accountable politician in charge of the railway should step up and shoulder the blame. It seems to me, and I suspect to many rail users, that we have more than reached that point.
The Secretary of State for Transport (Chris Grayling)
Before I respond to the points raised by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), can I just say a couple of things? First, I saw the comments that he made yesterday, and I thought he was very brave on the whole issue of medicinal cannabis—I pay tribute to him for that. The other thing is that I echo his words about the tragic events at Loughborough Junction yesterday. Our hearts go out to the families of those concerned and, indeed, to all those who dealt with what was clearly a horrible incident on the ground. We owe a huge amount to the British Transport police in particular and to staff across the railway who deal with horrendous situations like this from time to time. I am very grateful to them for what they did.
For years, the Opposition have demanded that the railways be renationalised and run by the Government, and they have claimed that they would be run much better if they were. Now it appears that they think the railways are already run by the Government, and that if something goes wrong, it is down to us. Frankly, I am going to let their confusion speak for itself and concentrate today on what really matters: getting things back into shape for passengers.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State give way?
Chris Grayling
I will give way once or twice during my speech, but as you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, we need to make progress so that people get a chance to contribute. I am going to make some progress before I give way.
As I previously told the House, over the past weeks, passengers on parts of the GTR and Northern franchises have faced totally unsatisfactory levels of service, and I apologise to passengers that have experienced and are experiencing disruption. Since the timetable has been introduced, my Department and the industry have been working round the clock to restore the reliability of the service across the network. Hour by hour, my officials are in contact with GTR, Northern and Network Rail to work to improve the service to passengers.
As I told the House, I have commissioned an independent inquiry. This will be led by the independent rail regulator, Stephen Glaister, to examine why we are in this situation and to avoid it ever happening again. I have met the owners of the franchises and demanded that they improve their operational response, including, in the case of GTR, increasing its managerial capacity. Clearly, nobody wants us to be in the position we find ourselves in today, but let me be absolutely clear: everyone in my Department is as focused as we possibly can be on improving reliability for passengers.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Grayling
I will give way to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron).
Tim Farron
The Secretary of State will be aware that for two weeks in my constituency, there were no services at all along the Lake district—the service into Britain’s second biggest visitor destination. It took a heritage charter train to provide any service over the past few days, and I very much thank all those who were involved in making that happen. Does he agree that this is perhaps a sign that Northern, which is such a colossal franchise across the whole of the north of England, needs to be looked at in a more micro way? For example, we need to look at Cumbria and decide whether the Furness line, the coastal line and the Lakes line could instead be a separate franchise run by a provider that actually wants to run trains on a train line.
Chris Grayling
At the end of all this, I rule nothing out as regards the future structure of franchises. I obviously want to see the Lakes line recover to a normal service as quickly as possible. It has been a disappointment, actually, that the working practices between the employer and ASLEF have meant that it has not been possible to run a conventional service. That may seem extraordinary, but the employer agreements require that if one driver is taken off for training, all the drivers have to be. That is a strange situation. The Labour party talks about wanting to help passengers; it could put a bit of pressure on their union friends to relax some of those agreements now, so that we get the services back into shape as quickly as possible.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Grayling
I give way to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald).
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will know of the misery—because I have told him—on my line, with five stations where people’s lives have been blighted over recent weeks, but does he agree that privatisation does have one merit, which is that we can get rid of the operator if there is a huge crisis, and if this is not sorted out very soon, will he take the necessary steps to attack the franchise?
Chris Grayling
I am absolutely clear that that is the case. Indeed, as I will say in a moment, I have started the process of review to make sure that all options are open.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Grayling
I will take two more interventions; then I will make some progress.
Peter Kyle
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. The network is incredibly complicated, with a whole range of different providers, both publicly and privately owned. Does he understand that passengers look to the Government in their role of overseeing all the different providers? We do not have an independent board, with a chair and non-executives who scrutinise, challenge and support the network; we look to him as Secretary of State and to the Department. He is entirely reactive and not entirely proactive, which is what passengers need. Does he not accept some responsibility for what has happened—for the lack of oversight, the lack of scrutiny and the lack of challenge while this was happening, rather than just reacting afterwards?
Chris Grayling
I say very simply that the Labour party argues that the railway should be run by the rail experts. When the rail experts advise, as they did in early May, that they are ready for the timetable change—the train companies and Network Rail—it behoves Ministers to take the advice of those rail professionals. Labour is now saying that we should overrule the very people that it said, a few weeks ago, should be running the railways.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Grayling
I will give way one more time, to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon).
Sir Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
I am really grateful to my right hon. Friend. On the review, whatever the ownership, these are essential public services—in getting our constituents to work and getting their children to school—so will he consider taking stronger powers for himself in times of disruption that would allow him to direct the rail operators to work more closely together or to put in additional stops to help those who simply cannot get to work in the morning?
Chris Grayling
Absolutely; I agree with my right hon. Friend. This is something that we will have to look at very seriously indeed. There are many lessons to learn from all this, but most immediately, we need to get services back into place for passengers. I have been watching the issues at Eynsford and Shoreham in his constituency. It feels as though they are getting a better service than they were but there is still some way to go, and we need to make sure that that is covered.
Chris Grayling
I will make some progress before I give way again.
I would like to update the House on how the industry is working to improve the reliability of services. On 4 June, Northern introduced a temporary timetable, including a targeted reduction in trains by around 6% to achieve a more deliverable service. Even with this reduction in service, there are still more trains running across the whole Northern network than before the timetable change in May. That does not mean that there are not individual areas that still have very significant problems, and I am very conscious that many passengers are still experiencing significant disruption, but there are signs that the service is stabilising. Over the first two weeks of the reduced timetable, 80% of trains arrived on time and 4% were cancelled or arrived significantly late, which is a significant improvement. This is not nearly good enough, but it is an improvement on what was happening before the introduction of that timetable. Northern is planning to run the timetable until the end of July, when it will review and, we hope, significantly increase the number of trains running, while ensuring continued stability. Stability is the most important thing for passengers so that they know what is expected, when trains are going to come and that they are going to come.
Officials from the Rail North Partnership—it is worth reminding Labour Members that this franchise is managed as a partnership between my Department and the leaders of local authorities in the north. Decisions about it are taken by the partnership board of Transport for the North, and it has been considering how to respond—[Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State says it does not exist. This is the most devolved franchise in England. Responsibilities for managing and overseeing the franchise are shared through the board of Transport for the North—[Interruption.] Labour Members do not like it, but that is the truth.
GTR is also working to increase the predictability and reliability of journeys on its network. It is working actively to reduce the number of on-the-day cancellations and is now updating its timetables a week ahead. There is clearly still a lot more to do. In too many places, there is very significant disruption, but we have to move things in the right direction. Alternative travel arrangements are in place—for example, for passengers on the Brighton main line, who can have their Thameslink tickets accepted on Gatwick Express. Next month, GTR will introduce a full temporary timetable across its network as the next step to improve reliability and performance for passengers. This will allow GTR to slowly build up services to the new full timetable.
Several hon. Members rose—
Chris Grayling
I will take two more interventions, and then I will make progress to the end of my remarks so that I do not take up too much speaking time.
Debbie Abrahams
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. He will remember that we met on 4 June, when I relayed some of the real issues that my constituents in Oldham and Saddleworth were facing. He said that we should be seeing improvements to the emergency timetable. I said that I would hold him to it, and he also said that he would look at contingency arrangements if there were not improvements. I went back to Greenfield station last Friday and spoke to constituents who use those trains. They said that they had seen only marginal differences, so will the Secretary of State now commit to bringing these franchises—Northern and TransPennine Express—in-house, and will he ensure that there is compensation for TPE passengers as well?
Chris Grayling
I will talk about compensation in a moment. I have been watching the performance carefully, and there have been some signs of stabilisation, as I say, but there is still a long way to go. [Interruption.] As I just set out, we have seen some stabilisation. I have been looking at the services day by day, and there is still a way to go, but the decline we saw after the timetable change has at least been arrested, and as the hon. Lady herself admits, there have been some improvements, although not nearly enough. I accept that, and I will take away her comments and look carefully at her line again, but there has been at least a stabilisation.
Mrs Miller
My right hon. Friend and I share a railway line, the Wessex route, which is under the stewardship of South Western Railway. It will be introducing a new timetable later this year. How will he ensure that the learnings from his independent inquiry are used to inform the implementation of the new timetable to avoid a replication of these sorts of problems in the future?
Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend makes an important point—indeed, the shadow Secretary of State said the same. We will not go through with a timetable change in December that is not deliverable. A lot of working is being done right now to see what can and cannot be done. These problems cannot and will not be allowed to happen again. We also have new leadership at Network Rail. Andrew Haines, its new chief executive, stewarded the last major timetable change on the south-western network a decade ago, which went very smoothly. Andrew will be personally responsible for ensuring that any timetable change is deliverable.
I turn now to what happens next. We have seen some stabilisation on the Northern franchise, but I have yet to see any sign that GTR is getting to grips with the issue, so I have commissioned a formal review of the franchise to establish whether it has met and continues to meet its contractual obligations in the planning and delivery of the May timetable, including by ensuring sufficient capability and competence inside the group, and—importantly—to ensure that the owning groups invest sufficiently to minimise further disruption.
My main objective is to ensure there is a plan that I can have confidence in going forward. The review will inform my decisions about how to best use my enforcement powers and the next steps I can take with the owners of the franchise if they are found to be in breach of their obligations. Northern is a matter of ongoing discussion at the Transport for the North board. It has made progress, but not enough, and that is being closely monitored indeed.
The one thing on which I agree with the shadow Secretary of State is the need to put passengers first, and there are two areas where we have to work on that. I encourage all sections of the industry, including the trade unions, to put passengers first. Railway workers across the country are dedicated to providing a high level of service for their passengers and have been on the frontline facing the anger of passengers affected by the timetable disruption, and I am sorry they have had to experience that. I encourage trade union leaders to support their efforts and those of this industry to sort things out for passengers. It is a matter of great disappointment to me that the RMT has again today gone on strike on Northern at a time when the whole industry needs to work together to get the timetable back into shape.
The union makes spurious claims about safety, but trains have operated like this in the UK for more than 30 years. The London underground uses this system, as do trains around the network, and no one at Northern is losing their job or any pay. These changes will modernise the railway in the north and deliver better services for passengers and were signed up to by all the members of the partnership managing that franchise in the north. It is worth adding that on the Southern network, ASLEF, the train drivers union, reached a perfectly sensible agreement that should point the way forward. It is particularly disappointing, therefore, to see the Opposition acting effectively as a mouthpiece for a trade union that regards a Labour party led by the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) as too right wing to affiliate to. I urge him and his colleagues to urge his union supporters to back down from this dispute, stop calling strikes at a time of disruption on Northern and work together to sort out these problems.
I am clear that passengers on these lines have been severely affected by these issues and need to receive additional compensation. My Department is working closely with the TfN board, Network Rail, train operators and stakeholders to introduce the right compensation scheme as soon as possible. It will be funded by the industry. The Rail Minister has already recommended to the board that passengers who buy weekly, monthly or annual tickets on affected Northern and TPE routes will be eligible to claim up to four weeks’ compensation. As part of the scheme, the industry will provide financial support to TfN to deal with other costs that have arisen from the disruption, including on the Lakes line. There will also be a marketing campaign to encourage people to travel by train in the affected areas. I expect the TfN board to confirm the final details of the compensation scheme come its next meeting on 28 June and payments to begin in early July. I will confirm the full details of the compensation package for Thameslink and Great Northern customers on the affected routes at the same time. This will follow approximately the same approach as that on the Southern network. Because of the numbers of people involved, it will take a little longer to begin compensation payments, but I have told GTR that these need to begin before the end of July. Finally, we are considering options to further support the northern economy, and we expect Northern to fund a marketing campaign encouraging travel to affected areas by train when it resumes full operations, particularly on the Lakes line.
Political point scoring does not help passengers. We have seen that today. We need to work to deliver the best outcome for passengers and to improve services urgently. That is what I am focused on, what my Department is focused on and what the Government are focused on.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Before I call the spokesperson for the Scottish National party, I need to tell colleagues that this is a well-subscribed debate, and we have another well-subscribed debate this afternoon, so after the SNP spokesperson, I will be imposing a six-minute time limit.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
Obviously, I echo the sentiments expressed by the two Front-Bench spokespersons about the accident yesterday and the workers who helped to keep people safe.
Another week, and here we are having another transport debate or statement. I am a little unsure of the Labour party’s tactics in trying to shift the Transport Secretary from his position, because it seems to me that the longer he stays in post, the more incompetent he shows the UK Government to be—and they, unlike the franchises, have real competition. He finished by saying there was a lot of political point scoring and that we should all work together, but it would be best if he took on board some of the criticisms. Any criticisms made—or even valid observations—are dismissed out of hand as political point scoring, when they are not, especially given that the franchise system is on its knees.
We have seen time and again that the Secretary of State is blinkered and ideological. He is a hardcore Brexiteer with the mantra, “Everything will be just fine. We just need to get on with it”, as illustrated by his proclamation that there will be no border checks post-Brexit and that lorries, just like on the US-Canada border, will not need to be stopped and checked. I have pointed out several times that that is wrong, but I have never had an admission of wrongdoing from the Secretary of State, and that is part of the problem.
The Secretary of State’s ideological zeal is at its most visible when it comes to the railways—private sector equals good, nationalisation or public ownership equals bad and inefficient—yet, under the current set-up, state-owned railway companies from all over the world run franchises in the UK. The UK franchise system, based on the premise that public ownership is bad, is subsidising railways across the world. Chiltern Railways, CrossCountry, Northern, and Wales and Borders are run by Arriva, which is owned by Deutsche Bahn. Essex Thameside is run by Trenitalia UK, which is owned by the Italian state railway. Greater Anglia and ScotRail are run by Abellio, which is owned by NedRailways, and Abellio is also involved with the West Midlands franchise, along with the East Japan Railway Company. Southeastern, Thameslink, Southern and Great Northern are run by Govia, which includes Keolis, which is owned by the French state rail operator, SNCF. Keolis is also involved in TransPennine Express and will be part of the re-let Welsh franchise later this year.
Italian, French, German, Dutch, Hong Kong and Japanese state rail companies are running franchises in the UK. When I weigh this up, I start to wonder whether the UK franchising system should be classed as foreign aid—because that is what it seems like. Money is flowing out of the UK to these other countries. It illustrates perfectly the pig-headed attitude of the Secretary of State and Tory Back Benchers.
Iain Stewart (Milton Keynes South) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that many British firms operate railways in other countries? For example, National Express has just won a contract to run some railways in Germany.
Alan Brown
That misses the point. The German state railway company can bid for its own work in Germany. The whole point is that the UK Government refuse point blank to allow UK companies to bid for the franchises.
As I have said time and again, when it comes to the merits of privatisation and franchising, the Transport Secretary wrongly connects cause and effect. He has always played up the increase in investment in the railways since privatisation, along with the subsequent increase in passenger numbers, as if all that had happened magically just because of the sell-off and break-up of British Rail.
We know that British Rail had been struggling and had poor rolling stock, and that much of it was outdated, but that was because of the constraints imposed on British Rail by the UK Government, who did not allow any borrowing or investment. Once the Major Government had sold it off, the franchising allowed private borrowing to be levered in—borrowing that could be recovered only through fares or a Government subsidy. The fact that the current Secretary still does not acknowledge that shows a lack of understanding or an ideological blind spot. The fact is that the original sell-off was the private finance initiative on tracks, and that remains the case to this day.
Another myth, which we have already heard today, is that somehow the taxpayer pays no money to the franchises. According to the recent library briefing on rail franchises, all but two received Government subsidies in 2016-17, amounting to £2,330 million in that year alone.
A further indication of the failure of the franchise system to which the Secretary of State still adheres is the fact that by 2020, 12 of 16 franchise allocations will be direct awards. Where are the innovation and competition when three quarters of the franchises are direct awards to the companies themselves?
The Secretary of State’s blinkered attitude also permeates the failed East Coast franchise. He more or less shrugs his shoulders and says “Stuff happens: some franchises fail.” The reality is that private investors and companies either make money or they walk away. It has been argued there has not been a £2 billion bail-out of Virgin Trains East Coast, but the fact is that VTEC has walked away with a £2 billion IOU to the Government in its back pocket. It has not had to pay the money back, so if the Government do not want to call that a bail-out, it must be called a write-off. The Government have not tried to chase up the money, and it has not reached the stage of being a bad debt. The Government have simply let VTEC off straight away. I only wish that the Department for Work and Pensions and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs would do the same when things go wrong for my constituents. Those bodies are relentless, so why should VTEC walk away owing £2 billion?
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
I agree with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. Does he agree with me that franchisees that walk away from a franchise should be banned from bidding for a significant period?
Alan Brown
Yes, I do. The Secretary of State says that there was a parent company guarantee of £165 million for VTEC, which is a lot of money, but if the parent company is picking up other money in franchises, including the direct award of the west coast main line, it is not actually losing that money. It should be penalised properly, and I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it should not be able to bid for other franchises. Its ability to bid for the east coast main line partnership has still not been ruled out.
The Secretary of State also justifies the predicament of the parent company by saying that it “got its sums wrong.” I remind him again that it is his Department that got its sums wrong when it carried out its due diligence and assessment. The Government are lucky that one of the other franchise bidders is not seeking redress from them, because they clearly got it wrong, and got the whole process wrong.
Huw Merriman
Will the hon. Gentleman bear in mind that private rail operators in Britain are paying money into the Exchequer, whereas in France, 20% of the running costs come from the Government? When it comes to sums, which other areas of public spending would he have cut in order to pay for the things that he is talking about?
Alan Brown
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman listened to the point that I made about the subsidy that is paid to the rail franchise companies. It is a circular process, which makes it more complicated and more expensive, because of the number of cost consultants involved, taking money from one direction and paying money in another direction, and then blaming Network Rail. All that money can then circulate, and there are still net subsidies for those companies, although they pay track rental fees.
As I have said before, Richard Branson came out fighting. He blamed Network Rail for the overruns, but we have heard that Network Rail was not really at fault. The Secretary of State should be more robust in attacking VTEC. Letting it walk away owing that money undermines his position.
In previous incarnations, the east coast main line service has proved that public ownership can work. When it was last in public ownership, it paid the track rental fees and made a nominal profit, which went straight to the taxpayer. That model can work, and it should be used again in future. The Secretary of State ought to consider that.
Also on this Transport Secretary’s watch has been the Southern rail shambles. He did not do enough to step in. When I highlighted some of Southern’s failings on another occasion, he intervened and said that he was not the Transport Secretary who had been responsible for the allocation of the franchise. That completely missed the point: he was simply saying, “It’s not my fault, guv.”
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that the situation on Southern and GTR was so long-running that the Secretary of State should step in now, and that there should be not a review but an immediate revocation of the franchise, as happened with Connect Southeastern under Labour?
Alan Brown
I agree that the failed franchise should be addressed and immediate action taken. The Secretary of State has been too slow, and the ongoing review will take too long and kick everything into the long grass.
When Abellio took over the ScotRail franchise, there were teething problems, which made national news. Opposition politicians in Scotland were not slow in calling for the head of Humza Yusaf, the Transport Minister. However, he stepped in and agreed a detailed action plan with the Abellio-ScotRail franchise, which really turned things around. It was direct intervention that made the difference.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
More than 50% of the delays in Scotland are down to Network Rail, which the Secretary of State stubbornly refuses to devolve to Scotland. Does my hon. Friend agree that if he did that, it could make a big difference to rail travel in Scotland immediately?
Alan Brown
It could make a big difference to rail travel in Scotland, and it could also make a Treasury saving. The fact that the Secretary of State continues to refuse to do that defies logic.
We have also seen the railcard fiasco. The railcard has been put on hold because, apparently, no one wants to pay for it. Who would have thought the industry would not want to pay for a gimmick that the Government introduced in the Budget, when they said, “The industry will pay for it”? That is just another failure on the part of this Government.
GTR’s chief executive, Charles Horton, has resigned, Mark Carne and Network Rail’s chief financial officer are forgoing their bonuses, and we have seen plenty of other Government resignations. It is time for the Transport Secretary to consider his position, rather than awaiting the outcome of a review.
Commenting on delays in the Waverley station refurbishment, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, said:
“This cannot continue for much longer, and it’s not good enough for ministers to just shrug their shoulders and say they’re doing their best.”
Given the delays were the fault of Network Rail, will the Secretary of State do what the Scottish Tory leader thinks is correct, and what we think he should do?
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
We have been invited by the Opposition to debate a general motion of no confidence in my right hon. Friend the Transport Secretary. I have full confidence in my right hon. Friend. He inherited a difficult task from the last Labour Government and the coalition Government. I think that he fully understands the magnitude of that task and that he is coming up with a number of creative proposals to try to improve the position.
John Redwood
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that, for 13 years, Labour did not invest in our roads and railways to give us the capacity that we need. I fully accept that during its five years in government, the coalition was unable to invest on the necessary scale because of the financial disaster that it inherited from the outgoing Labour Government. We have had almost 20 years of totally inadequate investment in road and rail capacity. We now have a growing economy. Many more people have jobs and need to get to work, many more children need to get to school, and many more people want to go to the shops or need to go to hospital, so we are simply running out of road and rail capacity. My right hon. Friend is trying to use every method he can legally lay his hands on to address that chronic lack of capacity.
In my constituency, another 12,000 new homes are being built quite rapidly, and the pressures on our infrastructure are enormous. I witnessed some of the difficulties due to rail delays on Thursday and Friday when I was trying to use services in and out of Reading and there were disruptions. My right hon. Friend has asked the extremely well-paid leaders of the railway industry to get a grip on their services and ensure they deliver on the infrastructure available. But he has gone further than that: he has said to the railways that they will need much more capacity in the years ahead to deal with fast-growing places such as Wokingham, and he has therefore said that digital technology will make a big difference. I fully support his strong initiative. The very lengthy and expensive process of creating entirely new railway lines is not a feasible solution across the country, so the way to get more capacity out of our existing railways is to use digital signalling, meaning that instead of being able to run only 20 trains an hour on perfectly good track, we can run 25 or more trains an hour, giving a big boost to capacity for a relatively modest investment.
My right hon. Friend is also right to recognise that he will need private sector as well as public sector investment. I noted that the Scottish National party spokesperson, who clearly did not know the figures, was unable to respond to an intervention about how, in his party’s fully nationalised world, it would replace the large sums of capital and the considerable sums of revenue that the private sector tips into the railways as the partnership model develops.
The Labour party is with the SNP on this. It always denies that any fault rests with the nationalised section of the railway, yet in the latest set of problems, particularly in Northern rail, big errors were made by the heavily subsidised nationalised part of the industry. I am very glad that my right hon. Friend says there will be new leadership there, because new leadership is desperately needed to supervise the expenditure of the very substantial sums that this Parliament has voted for that industry and to make sure they are well spent.
Another reason why I have confidence in my right hon. Friend is because he recognises that we need road as well as rail capacity, because the overwhelming majority of all our constituents’ journeys are still undertaken by car or van or bus, and they require road capacity. The most welcome thing he has done so far is to say we need not just to expand the strategic national highways network, which of course we do, but a strategic local network so that we can beef up the A roads. That would mean that we could have more through traffic, meaning that vehicles would be taken away from residential areas and town centres, where we do not want conflict between traffic, pedestrians and cyclists. It would also free some of the blocks on the existing highways and provide better journeys.
I hope that as my right hon. Friend goes about selecting that strategic local route network with councils, he will look favourably on the bids from West Berkshire and Wokingham in my area. We have put a lot of thought into them and wish to make progress, but we will need substantial investment to create better access routes to the main cities and centres of employment, because the existing network is already well over capacity in terms of congestion.
I hope my right hon. Friend will also consider the interface between the rail and road networks. One of the big issues in my area is that we cannot get over the railway line. We rely on level crossings, but their gates are down for a lot of the time at busy periods for the railways, meaning that we get massive onward congestion in the road system. We therefore need money for bridges.
I also hope that work on the strategic local road network will involve looking at junctions. A modest way in which we could get much more capacity out of the current road network would be to improve junctions. It is often a good idea to have roundabouts rather than traffic lights, and another good idea is the better phasing of traffic lights. Traffic lights can be fitted with sensors so that if there is no traffic on an approach road, that road does not get a green phase. Roads should get a green phase only when somebody needs that.
There are many things that can be done. I have every confidence that my right hon. Friend wants to do them, so will he please get on with that, and will Parliament allow him to do so?
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
I wholeheartedly support the motion because somebody has to take responsibility for what is happening to my constituents who use the trains on a daily basis. This Government have history in terms of how they have treated my constituents. They interfered with the Thameslink project when they first got their hands on the Department for Transport, taking the Blackfriars Thameslink trains away from south-east London. They not only took the trains away, but wasted £50 million of public money in order to do so. As a consequence, they shortened the trains going through the centre of London to allow them to go on to the Wimbledon line. I am sure that had nothing to do with the fact that the then trains Minister represented Wimbledon—I make no accusation in that regard whatsoever—but that reduced the capacity of the Thameslink trains going through central London. I will be contacting the National Audit Office to ask whether we are getting value for money out of the Thameslink train service, certainly in south-east London, as a consequence of such decisions on that scheme.
Since 2009, my constituents have been suffering a great deal of disruption as a consequence of the excellent refurbishment of London Bridge. I pay tribute to everyone involved in that refurbishment, but my constituents have had to accept that their services have been cut to certain destinations in central London. There have been no trains to Cannon Street for a number of years, and no trains to Charing Cross as the work switched over on to another set of lines. My constituents were told all the time that, at the end of the process, the network would go back to the original train timetable, meaning that they would have Charing Cross, Cannon Street and Victoria as a choice of destinations.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Does he agree that that is why many commuters, particularly in London and the south, have been so angry? They have had years and years of disruption due to not only repair works, but the disaster of the franchise, and now the railway collapses under their feet. The Government have a responsibility to take action.
Clive Efford
Absolutely; someone has to take responsibility. When my constituents were told they had to suffer this disruption, they accepted that, because a major refurbishment was taking place, but they were told that things would improve when the services were restored. They are now told that they will have fewer central London destinations to choose from because, apparently, it is very difficult to cross trains over on the western side of Lewisham station. We are told that because that creates too much congestion, we have to have a service cut. That is despite the fact that we have just spent £9 billion on this project, with £1 billion of that for the refurbishment of London Bridge. My constituents are incredibly angry.
However, as the project is coming to an end and the services are starting to be reintroduced—except those that are going to be cut, of course, under the new franchise, which is a direct decision of the Secretary of State—the infrastructure around the new project is starting to crumble. On 5 April, there was a broken rail and people were stuck on a train for five hours. The merest incident of severe weather leaves people stranded on trains for hours—on freezing cold trains with no electricity.
The franchise is run right at the cusp, meaning that whenever something goes wrong, it turns into a major incident involving a major delay. There are not enough drivers, there is not enough maintenance, and the infrastructure is crumbling around the new project at London Bridge. However, the Secretary of State allows Govia, which currently runs the franchise, to rebid. He now says that the person at the top of Govia has resigned—Charles Horton has gone—but that the company is apparently good enough to continue running the service. That is unacceptable and someone must accept responsibility.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Since the start of this crisis everybody has tried to pin the blame on someone else. The Secretary of State blamed Northern for not being prepared, and Northern blamed the Department for Transport. Yesterday, in evidence to the Transport Committee, David Brown admitted that Northern was not aware of the extent of the imminent crisis until two days before the timetable went live. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Secretary of State must finally take responsibility for this crisis, ensure that passengers get the compensation they deserve, and allow somebody who can handle the demands of his job to take over?
Clive Efford
I agree with my hon. Friend that the Secretary of State has to take responsibility. That is why I fully support the motion.
The Secretary of State really exposed himself by putting his particularly dogmatic approach to the franchise system ahead of the interests of passengers in a letter that he wrote on 24 April 2013 to the present Foreign Secretary when he was Mayor of London. His letter actually predicted the fact that the Tories were toast and that Labour was going to win the mayoral election. He stated that he did not want to see the London overground services in “the clutches” of a Labour mayor. That had nothing to do with what was in the interests of my constituents or anyone else who used the trains. It was pure political dogma. He was saying, “I don’t like the Labour party, so no matter how much it could improve the service for people who use the trains, we’re not going to let Labour take over the rail service.” So much for an open bidding process to run the best possible service!
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a pattern of behaviour here? Before the 2015 election, when the right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) was Lord Chancellor, Labour wrote to say that there should be no more privatisation contracts in the probation service. The right hon. Gentleman ignored that, because he did not want to accept that Labour was right about the disaster that the probation service now is.
Clive Efford
That is absolutely right. This is the first time that the right hon. Gentleman has got caught when everything has come home to roost while he is still in position. Usually he moves on and someone else has to sort out his problems—for example, by allowing prisoners to have books.
My constituents deserve a better service. Their services are being cut and they will have a reduced choice under the new franchise. They do not want Govia to be allowed to continue running the franchise, yet it has still been allowed to bid. They want longer trains, and I have lobbied many times in here to get extra carriages for the franchise but they have disappeared into the system. We still have eight-car trains turning up at peak times and there is not enough space for people to have a comfortable journey into town.
South-east London has been appallingly served by this Secretary of State. There has been a constant litany of letting us down, and the buck has to stop somewhere. He has never stood up to the franchise operators—the train operators—to ensure that we get value for money and the services we are entitled to in south-east London. For him, everything is fine as long as it is privatised. He has never made any attempt to take on the private enterprise that is profiteering at the expense of the people who rely on the trains. In south-east London we do not have direct access to the London underground, so anyone who wants to commute into London has to use the bus or the rail service. The rail service, as it has been run by this Government, has been appalling and it is getting worse. The buck stops with the Secretary of State, so I fully support the motion.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I am delighted to be able to speak in the debate this afternoon and to place on record my support for the Secretary of State, who I believe is doing a very good job in delivering what this country needs in incredibly challenging circumstances. That is particularly true from the point of view of the far south-west, where we are seeing record levels of investment in our transport infrastructure. After 13 years in which Cornwall basically got nothing whatsoever from the Labour Government, we are seeing hundreds of millions of pounds being invested in our transport system.
On our roads, we have at last seen the dualling of the A30 across Bodmin moor. I am sure that hon. Members will be delighted to experience that when they come to Cornwall on their holidays, but we have been waiting 20 years for it to be delivered. It has now been delivered under this Government, after Labour did nothing to help us. We are now putting our focus on the next bit of the A30, which will involve dualling the stretch between Chiverton and Carland Cross. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton) is working closely with the Secretary of State to ensure that we deliver that as soon as possible.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
May I suggest an additional area of progress that is needed for disabled wheelchair users? The hon. Gentleman might know that many operators require them to give 24 hours’ notice if they want to travel on a train. That is unacceptable. Does he agree that the Secretary of State should work with the train operators to ensure a more can-do attitude, to assist those people who might need to catch a train at the last minute?
Steve Double
I am not aware of the issue that the hon. Lady raises. It has never been raised with me by constituents—[Interruption.] I am happy to take it on board and look at it, but that is a new one; it has never been raised by any of my constituents.
In my constituency, the Secretary of State has committed to fund a new link road from St Austell to the A30. That is something that the people of St Austell have been waiting nearly 30 years to see delivered. Under Labour, we had no progress whatsoever on that, but it is now happening under this Secretary of State. We are also seeing progress on the A303, which is being dualled through Wiltshire. That is absolutely vital to the tourism industry in the south-west, and we are seeing real progress on it.
On our railways, we are about to see brand-new rolling stock being rolled out on the Great Western Railway into Cornwall to replace the 40-year-old trains that we currently have to put up with. The new state-of-the-art rolling stock will have far more seats for passengers and a much better driver experience. We have also seen the upgrading of our signalling on the railways through Cornwall. That will increase capacity and the frequency of the trains. Again, that is the result of more investment that this Government are delivering for transport into Cornwall.
We are also seeing progress on resilience in south Devon. I am sure that all Members will remember the damage that was caused by the weather at Dawlish and Teignmouth in 2014. That situation arose because of the lack of investment over many years, but this Government are investing and building resilience into the rail network throughout Devon. That is something that we desperately need. On aviation, this Government are supporting regional aviation and they have supported my local airport at Newquay with a link to London. They are also backing our bid for further connections into Heathrow in the near future.
So, from a local point of view in Cornwall, this Secretary of State is doing a very good job. He is delivering for the people of Cornwall like no one has ever done before. We need to understand that the current challenges that have provoked this debate have come about as a result of a combination of many complex issues, and to play political games and use this as an opportunity for political opportunism is not what we need right now. We need to resolve the issues, and changing the Secretary of State at this point is not going to help. We need someone in position who can bring us the answers that we need in order to address those issues, so I am happy to say that I will not be supporting the motion today and that the Secretary of State has my full confidence.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
One thing that the Secretary of State has managed to do is to unite those on both sides of the Pennines—which is actually quite remarkable—in our view that it is time for him to go. Lancashire and Yorkshire do not normally get on that well, but we are united in this regard. Ministers will know that in recent weeks the great newspapers of the north have been united on their front pages in calling for the Secretary of State to go. ITV has also joined in recently. The Yorkshire Post and my own newspaper in Hull, the Hull Daily Mail, have made it very clear that we cannot carry on like this and that enough is enough.
We have heard a lot in recent weeks about the timetabling fiasco, particularly in relation to Northern, but as a Member of Parliament for the north, I want to look more broadly at what this Government have said about their commitment to the northern powerhouse and to the connectivity between the eastern and western parts of the north to bring together the great cities of the north. We know that, despite all the words we hear every time a Minister gets up to talk about this, the reality on the ground is very different. We know that the investment going into the north pales in comparison with what is going into London, which gets five times as much. We know that Transport for the North, which Ministers always talk about, is only a consultative body. It does not have statutory powers. It cannot do what Transport for London is able to do to bring in investment.
In recent years, we have also had the fiasco of the electrification of the lines across the Pennines. Hull was actually missed off the first plan that was put forward, and we had to put together our own plan, using private sector funds, in order to be part of the electrification scheme. That proposal went into the Department for Transport and then, several years later under the current Secretary of State, it was refused.
There is confusion about future electrification across the Pennines. We thought the line was going to be electrified, but the Secretary of State seems to have just discovered bimodal trains, which have been around for quite a long time. In addition, when the House was considering commercial space travel recently, I noted that it seems there will be commercial space flights before the line to Hull gets electrified.
Timetabling has been discussed a lot today, and one of the big issues is that for some strange reason Hull was given slower trains across the Pennines when the new timetable was agreed. The whole idea was that the changes would speed things up and connect cities, but Hull finds itself with trains that take 15 to 20 minutes longer to get across to Manchester. When the new rolling stock comes in as part of the TPE franchise, Hull will get not new trains but refurbished trains. However, Scarborough—I am not casting aspersions on the fact that a previous Rail Minister represents Scarborough—now has new and faster trains across the Pennines. How come the great cities of the north are being treated like that? I remind the Rail Minister of the three things that we would have expected the Secretary of State to support in Hull: a half-hourly express service across the Pennines as part of the northern powerhouse; a direct train to Liverpool; and a direct train to Manchester airport. I found out last week that Llandudno has a direct train to Manchester airport—good on Llandudno —so why does Hull not have one?
We have heard the dogma as to why franchising is continuing, but I want to discuss open-access trains. We had to fight hard to get Hull Trains, an open-access operator, to provide a direct service to London, but it is in meltdown, and I have heard nothing from the Department for Transport or the Secretary of State about that. Our rolling stock constantly breaks down, we do not have enough spare capacity, and drivers are trained only on the class 185s, which are unfit for the route down to London. FirstGroup, the parent company, does not seem to be doing anything about the fact that Hull Trains’ reputation, which was good in the city, is taking a nosedive, with people feeling that it is no longer a reliable service, but there has been nothing from the Department on that.
Looking at the franchise that the Department and the Secretary of State are involved with, TransPennine runs the station in Hull and has spent £1.4 million on it, but we are still among the top 10 worst stations in country. It has managed to build some small, smelly toilets to replace the old ones and some new retail units, which have remained empty for weeks. Every morning, I walk through Canary Wharf to get to Westminster, and I see Canary Wharf station, which cost £500 million and has a roof garden. Of course, private money has gone into that project, but we cannot even get a toilet attendant at Hull station. I want to highlight to the Secretary of State and the Minister the stark difference between the north and the south. This is like a “Carry On” film; it is a farce. The Secretary of State must take responsibility. The buck stops with him and he should go.
Bim Afolami (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
One thing that is often lost in debates like this is the practical impact of such issues on passengers. I urge the Minister, the Secretary of State and all Members to remember that, yes, this is about getting investment, improving stations and timetables and increasing capacity, but fundamentally the whole point of the system is to make life better for our constituents, particularly those who rely on trains to get to work. Many Members have talked about the difficulties of recent weeks, and the House does not need to hear any more from me about my disappointment in relation to my constituency or those of other right hon. and hon. Members.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
My hon. Friend, my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) and I have been working hard with Ministers and with Govia—we are in touch daily—because tens of thousands of our constituents have been massively affected every single day. We are trying to fix things so that our constituents can get to work. Although there are issues with the timetable in our area, things will be dramatically better when it works. The number of seats will be doubled, there will be 50% more trains from my constituency, and a whole variety of new destinations will be provided. When the new timetable is in place, there will be positives, but there are issues now, and they are what we are working daily to resolve.
Bim Afolami
I thank my hon. Friend. One point worth making—one that backs up his intervention—is that a real frustration as a Member of Parliament is knowing the intended improvements over the medium term, but constituents quite rightly not believing that the improvements will happen when the implementation does not work as hoped. It is therefore incumbent on GTR and Network Rail to do their best to get a grip not just on the medium and long terms, but on the emergency timetable.
I want to draw the attention of the House and the Minister to a private Member’s Bill that I will shortly introduce relating to enhanced compensation for passengers. I recognise that the Secretary of State has set out a compensation scheme specifically for the disturbances over past weeks, but the compensation in the Bill will be governed by the Government’s new rail ombudsman on an ongoing basis, providing automatic compensation for all passengers throughout the country. In addition, it will provide enhanced, more generous compensation for passengers throughout the country. Critically, it will ensure not just that passengers get a percentage of a single ticket for a train that is cancelled or delayed, but that we move towards a system with service levels and a contract between the operator and the passenger. Then, if that service level is not maintained, the passenger will receive compensation. I would like the Minister and the Secretary of State to consider that direction.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for flagging up his Bill and welcome what he describes. Will he confirm whether the compensation for the current timetable problems should be based on the new timetable that was expected to be introduced, not the reduced timetable, and therefore be much larger? Does he agree that there is a strong case for making train companies and Network Rail liable for consequential losses associated with train delays, not just the ticket cost?
Bim Afolami
On the right hon. Gentleman’s first point, that would depend on when the Bill could make progress and whether it would take effect in time. It is difficult to understand how the proposed compensation regime would interact with the special compensation regime relating to the implementation of the new timetable. However, on the right hon. Gentleman’s broader point about consequential loss, he will appreciate that that is hard to prove. I remember from my days as a corporate lawyer that consequential loss in contracts is one of the toughest things to prove. I am not saying that he is incorrect, but it would merit further consultation and I am happy to sit down and discuss the matter with him. If we can come to an agreement, hopefully the Liberal Democrats will support my private Member’s Bill.
A point that is often made to me is that many commuters do not have a good enough choice. On some lines, the operator is the only game in town, and where that happens, it is incumbent on the operator to do a significantly better job at getting on top of problems when they arise. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon) made the point that the Secretary of State may need additional powers at times of crisis to direct what needs to happen at certain stations, and the House should consider that. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has said to me, both privately and in this House, that he is committed to improving the situation at Hitchin and Harpenden stations once we have got past the current difficulties—[Interruption.] I can see the Rail Minister nodding in approval, which is always good. My constituents—I was nervous about this before I came to speak this afternoon—are not particularly interested in rhetoric; they are interested in making sure these changes are introduced in the right way to provide real practical improvements to them and their lives. That is what I, as the local Member of Parliament and with the Government, will hopefully be providing.
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak in this important debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald) for moving the motion.
Although the Secretary of State is no longer in his place, I thank him for meeting me last week to talk in detail about the reasons for the timetabling meltdown in Batley and Spen. I am grateful for his reassurance that, over time, things will settle down.
Last Friday morning, I spent time outside Batley railway station to speak to commuters about their experience of commuting and to hear how things are, we hope, getting better. Sadly, that was not the feedback I got. I was startled by how chaotic and unreliable the service between Leeds, Huddersfield and Manchester still is.
I heard from Mandy that her regular journey from Batley to Leeds, during the timetable chaos and beyond, is “the worst commuting experience I have ever had.” She went on to say that “to say there is only standing room is an understatement. Passengers are crammed into a limited number of carriages like sardines.”
I spoke to Dean, who uses trains every day. He said that travelling by train often adds two hours to his day due to delays, with “extra hours away from home on top of a long working day.” He went on to say that “the situation is threatening the livelihoods of many.” Dean wanted me to ask directly whether, if he were to lose his job due to mismanagement of the railways, the Minister and the Government would pay his mortgage and support his family.
I also met Rachael, who was forced to spend her journey standing in the toilet with six other commuters, as there was no space anywhere else. She told me that, as late as this week, her regular service left people on the platform, without opening its doors, as it was too full by the time it arrived in Batley. Seventy people were left waiting over 70 minutes for the next train.
Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that, as our constituents are paying some of the highest prices in Europe for train tickets, the minimum they should expect is for trains to run on time and to be modern and comfortable and for them not to be packed in like sardines? If the train companies are unable to do that, they should have their franchises taken off them and be brought back under public ownership.
Tracy Brabin
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, and I could not agree more. Given the cost of tickets, people should not have to stand on a daily basis. Beyond Batley to Leeds, the timetable is erratic and in chaos, and it still has not settled down.
I spoke to Alison, who told me how concerned she is about health and safety. Crowds of passengers are jostling and pushing to get on already overcrowded and delayed trains.
This is just a snapshot of what is happening twice a day, every day, at most stations across the north. My constituents still see no positive change in their commute, even after reassurances from the Secretary of State. What is the Minister doing to ensure that my constituents can travel to work and back without having to factor in delays and frustrations, which are adding to their stress?
People deserve a decent, reliable rail network, and, in all honesty, they deserve better leadership from the Secretary of State. If he cannot sort it, maybe it is time for him to hand over the responsibility to someone who can.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am terribly sorry for stepping out of the Chamber earlier than I should have done. It should be me who steps down. I am grateful for being able to say a few words this afternoon, not least because I am a member of the Transport Committee.
I wanted to speak on this subject because I think there has been too much chopping and changing in the entire industry over the years. I recognise what the Opposition motion aims to deliver, but I ask them whether any more changes in leadership would actually deliver the stability that is required. I am not trying to make an argument that might play well; I absolutely mean it.
I have worked with the chief executive of GTR, Charles Horton, over a number of years, and I have tried to work between him and the leader of the RMT, Mick Cash, with whom I have a good working relationship, to try to find a way through the Southern industrial dispute. Charles Horton has now stepped down, which I know many people will celebrate, but, frankly, this is a man with years and years of rail experience who truly cares about putting things right. I am sorry because, frankly, I would rather see people stay in post to turn things around. If there are areas of responsibility, fine, allocate them, but then put that person under the spotlight to deliver the change that makes things better. I absolutely believe the same goes for the Government.
When the Government change position, it sometimes feels as though we have government by six-month fixed-term contracts; there is not enough stability and tenure in post. I support the Secretary of State. He has come to the Transport Committee and has been incredibly open and direct about, for example, where he sees the franchise system is not working and about the need for change.
Now that the Secretary of State has the opportunity to put new franchise agreements in place, it seems right that he should inject some of his ideas for change into those agreements. It is not as though he has constantly said that everything works well. He has admitted there are particular challenges.
Sir Greg Knight (East Yorkshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that one way forward might be to follow the suggestion of my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) to increase the availability of compensation to passengers who have been badly treated?
Huw Merriman
I certainly do, not least because my Automatic Travel Compensation Bill is awaiting Second Reading. The Bill is all about automatic and automated compensation, on which I have met the Rail Minister. It is fair to say that I have not quite persuaded him of the Bill’s merits, but it would place a duty on train companies that currently receive money from Network Rail where there have been delays. Only a third of passengers claim for such delays, so I contend that extra money is left with the train operators. My Bill would require the train operators to invest that money in technology so that my right hon. Friend and I could both tap in and tap out, which would tell us whether we had been delayed by more than 15 or 30 minutes, and if we had been, we would automatically be credited with the compensation we were due. That would be a good step forward, because passengers find it too complex and difficult to claim. Therefore, they do not claim, and as a result, they feel raw about the service. The Government could do more for passengers by making it easier to claim compensation, and perhaps passengers would then give us more support on some of the other changes we are trying to put through. That is a rather lengthy response, but I agree with my right hon. Friend. I hope that my Bill’s Second Reading will yield some success. If my hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami) has a similar proposal, perhaps we could merge the two.
On the rail timetabling issue, my constituency has had an additional service—a fourth service each hour—in an incredibly congested network. I take my hat off to GTR and my rail user group, which came up with an ingenious solution to deliver the extra service without any new rolling stock. The timetable just changed when trains go back and forth between Ashford and Brighton, which has worked incredibly well.
I understand that we, as MPs, are less likely to hear about things that have worked well. Quite rightly, we hear about the challenges where things have not worked. I use the trains every day to come into work, and today I had the opportunity to talk to one of the conductors on my line, a guy called Giles. I was supposed to be reading through the Transport Committee’s draft report on rail infrastructure, but I put it down to have a chat with the conductor. We chatted for the entire journey about some of the issues he has, and his points were well raised. He is aware that, as technology advances, the workforce will need to embrace it, too. His concern on the role of the guard, conductor or on-board supervisor, as these people tend to be called, is that there will be fewer of them. That is a valid concern, because most passengers on trains want to see a second member of staff on board.
My point is that, where the system is inflexible, if the second member of staff is unable to join the train for any reason, that train cannot roll. I was a Southern season ticket holder for 10 years and we had one train every hour, so when that train could not go because the conductor was not able to board, there was a two-hour delay, which was no good for anybody. It certainly was no good for tackling congestion or for those who had mobility issues in the station. So I like the flexibility that has now been introduced in Southern whereby in all but exceptional circumstances there must be a second member of staff on board. Where such circumstances do apply—and this cannot be where Southern has not recruited enough conductors—the train can still roll, so passengers can get home. Of course that type of situation has existed on Southeastern for years and it also exists on 30% of the rail network, where the driver operates the doors.
There is another point to make about incidents that have taken place, including one in Liverpool. Where the driver and the conductor are performing different roles, tragedies can occur. A young lady died on the tracks and the coroner’s inquest made the point that if the control mechanism is taken by one person, we are less likely to see that eventuality occur. I often hear safety used as the reason why this is an issue. I was asked by the rail unions to see whether a safety report could be created. We got the rail regulator to deliver that, but it was then ignored, so I feel that all sides need to work a little more together.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
It will not be a surprise to the Secretary of State or the Minister to see me standing up to speak in this important debate, as my office has been in daily contact with theirs over the past few weeks. I can tell them that things are no better in Bedford. Until 20 May, passengers in Bedford had two choices: they could travel on Thameslink trains, which were slow but made more stops, or they could travel in and out of London on a fast East Midlands Trains service. The Department stopped those fast trains last month. We were told in December that there was no choice but to do that. We were promised that it was only for two years and that we would have two fast Thameslink trains an hour and thousands more seats instead, but that was not true. What we have seen since 20 May has been absolute chaos. People are paying to stay in hotels all week, and some are driving into the city. People have run out of childcare options and their bosses have lost patience. These people are tired, angry and desperate. They have been crammed like sardines into the few trains that do run, and family life has been completely disrupted.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend’s constituents’ experience absolutely reflects those of my constituents. The two train stations in my constituency are the last two before the main Leeds city station. By the time the two-carriage trains come, they are full and my constituents cannot get on them. When they do, we have seen cases where people have fainted or been unable to breathe. Does he agree that we need to do something now, as the lack of investment and action is dreadful?
Mohammad Yasin
I agree with what my hon. Friend says, because I am a commuter and I see the trouble at Bedford station every day. Almost every hour, a train is either delayed or cancelled. This Government need to take control and do something about this urgently.
Two weeks ago, in this Chamber, I asked the Secretary of State to reinstate EMT peak rail services. His response was that that would be the logical solution to the problem, yet two weeks later those trains are still speeding through Bedford half empty and not stopping. On Friday, he finally wrote to me to tell me that he cannot make this happen after all, as, apparently, it will make some trains 13 minutes later further up the track. Tell that to my constituents who have to wait an hour or more for a train and do not see their children before they go to bed. Tell them that a 13-minute delay on a journey to Sheffield is a good enough reason for these services not to be reinstated. EMT says that these services are already overcrowded. In his letter on Friday, the managing director of EMT said that
“there are few, if any seats available”.
Yet EMT’s own guide to seat availability says that all but one of the peak-time trains travelling between Wellingborough and St Pancras have seating available. Most are running at 75% capacity or less; we can all see the empty seats, but we just cannot get on those trains.
I have no idea why there is such an absence of will to sort this problem, but this is a mess, and it is clear now that there was never any intention of bringing inter-city fast trains back after two years either, because if they cannot make it happen now, when Thameslink is not operating a full service, they are not going to be able to make it happen when it eventually is. All we have heard are excuses. The truth is the industry needs to work together to resolve this quickly. The Secretary of State should have a grip on this weeks ago—months ago, in fact. I warned him and the Minister many times that this timetable will not work for Bedford, but they completely ignored that and carried on regardless. He and his Department have spent a good proportion of the past few weeks putting together the invitation to tender for the new east midlands franchise. Is this farce not proof enough for him that rail franchising does not work? My constituents need solutions and they need them urgently. They need solutions before things get even worse. If the Secretary of State cannot fix this, he should resign and give the job to someone who can.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to support the motion standing in the names of my Front-Bench colleagues. I also wish to thank members of the Transport Committee for their informed contributions to the debate, and I am delighted that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) is a supporter of keeping the guards on the trains—well done on that. [Interruption.] Perhaps it is qualified support.
As a member of the Transport Committee and a regular rail user, I have been following the recent regression of the rail service, particularly in my region, with great concern. The catastrophic May timetable changes seem to have been completely avoidable. The Secretary of State ignored warnings and failed to delay or phase in the changes.
Yesterday, my Transport Committee colleagues and I spent three hours asking questions of and taking evidence from representatives from Northern, GTR and Network Rail. I was quite interested to hear the Secretary of State say in response to a comment made by the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), that he made the decision to proceed with the changes in July 2017, because my understanding from what the witnesses said yesterday is that concerns were expressed at a meeting involving stakeholders and Network Rail in January, some six months before the ultimate decision was made. There was ample opportunity for the Secretary of State and his advisers in the Department to intervene and identify some mitigating actions, which could have included either delaying the implementation or phasing it in.
Andy McDonald
Given that GTR is a concession and is paid a management fee, could my hon. Friend cast some light on whether the revenue due to the DFT was a factor in the delay in the implementation of the decision?
Grahame Morris
My hon. Friend raises a good question. I asked the GTR witnesses yesterday whether revenue was a material factor, and their response was that all the revenue is collected directly. They intimated that there were no revenue implications, although I am rather sceptical that ultimately revenue may well have been a factor in the decision about whether to phase or to delay the implementation of the new timetable. Perhaps the Committee can pursue further whether that was the case.
We have heard from Opposition and Government Members about the impact of the terrible delays. In my area, at the worst times up to 43% of Northern trains have been cancelled or delayed each day. From 4 June, Northern cancelled 165 trains a day, including all services to the Lake district, as we have heard. Since 20 May, 11% of Northern trains have been delayed or cancelled each day.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend accept that although this issue is concentrated in the north, the east and London, it is a national problem? Great Western has been going through its own dramatic problems, with a huge number of cancellations, driver shortages and all the other problems that have been mentioned. It is a national problem.
Grahame Morris
I am grateful for that thoughtful intervention, and my hon. Friend makes a good point. However, although there are national issues with the training of drivers and ensuring that they have the appropriate skillset, industry stakeholders pointed out to the Department and, presumably, the Secretary of State that it would normally take 40 weeks to prepare, identify training needs and ensure that drivers were in place, but in this case only 16 weeks were allocated and, if my memory of yesterday’s evidence serves me right, it was not until around two days before implementation, when they were drawing up the driver rosters, that they discovered that they had the wrong skill mix and that the drivers were in the wrong places to operate the new timetable. So although my hon. Friend makes a good point, Ministers and the Secretary of State must ultimately bear responsibility for the decisions that were made.
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
It is quite simple in the industry: although experienced, train drivers need training on new routes and on the use of different rolling stock. Without that training, they cannot go into service.
Grahame Morris
Absolutely; that is a key point. I am kind of long in the tooth now, but I remember the dreadful train accident at Ladbroke Grove, where 31 people were killed and 500 injured; a dear friend of mine was killed in the Southall train disaster, in which seven were killed and more than 140 were injured; and I remember another accident at Clapham Junction. What with the complexity of the new signalling systems at places like London Bridge, with large numbers of tracks, it is safety-critical that the drivers are fully aware of which signals actually apply to them. It is a mistake for the Secretary of State to imply that ASLEF, representing the train drivers, should somehow make a concession on the training to which its members are subjected. When I get on a train, I want to be absolutely certain that it is completely safe and that the drivers are familiar with the track and the signalling system. I also want to know that there is a guard on the train, so that if anything happens—if anyone is attacked or taken ill—or there is a disabled or blind person or a woman with children travelling, the guard will be able to assist. That is reasonable in such circumstances.
I agree with the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle about the GTR chief executive, Charles Horton, who seemed like a thoroughly decent man. He said that he was deeply sorry for the timetable disruptions. It is a bit unfair that he seems to be carrying the can, when I suspect the blame should be apportioned further up the food chain. The witnesses yesterday were well schooled in collective responsibility, but ultimately the buck must stop with the Secretary of State. It is not good enough just to keep saying sorry.
Grahame Morris
I am sorry; I am running very short of time.
It is another failure on the Secretary of State’s watch. We have fundamental problems with integration, lack of planning and decision making. The franchising model is broken. It is time for a new approach and a new driver at the head of the Department for Transport.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
The motion on the Order Paper is
“That this House has no confidence in the Secretary of State”
and we have already heard from the fourth and final Government Back Bencher who has come along to speak in support of the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has not stayed in the Chamber to listen to the speeches today, but if I were giving advice to him or to Conservative Back Benchers, I would suggest that they go out and buy a plaque that says, “The buck stops here” and attach it to his desk, because that is what the debate is all about. It is about the public wanting to elect politicians to run a decent railway system. I congratulate my hon. Friend the shadow Secretary of State on standing up and confidently saying that he wants to be a Secretary of State who runs the railways and is held accountable.
The meltdown caused by the introduction of the new rail timetable in May is just the latest in a chain of crises on our railways. We have an over-complex and fractured rail system. It has too many operators and a complex web of contractors and sub-contractors. This patchwork of competing interests militates against effective planning and delivery of the railway, making Britain’s rail system one of the most expensive and now worst run in Europe. Since 2010, fares have risen three times faster than wages, and in January we had the highest fare increases for five years. That is not to mention the more than £5 billion of public money used to subsidise the private rail network every year.
It seems to me that incompetent rail companies have become too big to fail in the eyes of this Government. The rewards are privatised, but the risks are dumped on passengers and taxpayers, who always end up footing the bill. The public are tired of paying the price for a broken privatised and franchised model. Is that any surprise? What are they getting in return? Higher fares for a worse service; botched timetables and thousands of cancellations; and a policy of de-staffing the railways in the interests of profit, regardless of the consequences for staff and the travelling public.
One of the first campaigns I backed following my election in June last year, was the RMT’s campaign to keep the guard on the train, after Merseyrail announced that it was planning to axe all 207 guards from the service when the new fleet arrives in 2020. My constituents welcome the introduction of new and modern trains—long overdue and for which the unions campaigned—but they also value the safety and security of a guard on the train.
Private rail companies are making huge profits from the travelling public, and it is completely wrong that we are presented with false choices between embracing new technology and protecting secure jobs and public safety. It is nonsense. The campaign has enjoyed the overwhelming support of the public, despite strikes, and I am glad that Merseyrail has recognised that strength of feeling and that talks at ACAS are now taking place. Both the Scottish and Welsh Governments have agreed that there will be no extension of driver-only operation on services that they are responsible for, and I hope that Merseyrail will follow suit so that passengers in my constituency are afforded the same safety standards as are enjoyed elsewhere.
However, the RMT fears that since the Secretary of State was appointed he has been blocking any similar deals in an effort to “take on” the union. These fears were again confirmed when the Public Accounts Committee recently produced a report on franchising that concluded that the blame for the protracted Southern driver-only operation dispute lay squarely at the door of the Government for not engaging properly with the trade unions.
The franchising system fails to allow for industrial relations at all. Train operating companies have little interest beyond the terms of their franchise agreements, and changes are routinely forced through without any serious consultation. The introduction of the May 2018 timetable required changes on a huge scale. Change requires the co-operation, engagement and good will of the workforce, which has been undermined constantly by the rail companies and by the Government’s handling of the DOO dispute.
The rail industry lacks a clear chain of command and clear lines of accountability, so it is easy to blame others. Ultimately, though, the buck stops with the Transport Secretary. Not only has he failed on a managerial level; he has defended, at every turn, the systemic failure of rail privatisation. My advice to him is simple. First, take responsibility. Secondly, listen to the public, who by a vast majority support a return to public ownership and public control of our railways.
Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
When Parliament returned on 4 June after the recess, I challenged the Secretary of State, telling him that he was in great trouble over this situation, not least because it would run on for months and months. There has been little to cause me to reassess those comments in the past three or four weeks. For me and my constituents in Luton who travel by train regularly, it is clear that this chaos is not going anywhere quickly, but we are yet to establish who is responsible for the chaos not only when the changes were implemented, but as it is sorted out. I am afraid that the attitude of the Secretary of State has led us to today’s position, whereby we will shortly vote on whether we have confidence in him.
We are now close to the sixth week of chaos on GTR, with the admission that it is going to drag on for months. The Secretary of State said today that GTR will develop a temporary timetable in time for the summer holidays, but that is not good enough. It is a complete abdication of responsibility. GTR’s chief executive has resigned. Network Rail’s chief executive officer and chief financial officer have turned down their bonuses. But there has been no acceptance of responsibility from the one person we ask to sort things out when they go wrong.
Let me be clear about my view on the franchise and who is responsible. I am open-minded on rail. I believe that a transformation project as vast as the Thameslink programme, with £7 billion of taxpayer-invested money, should always have been operated and developed under the direct ownership and accountability of Government Ministers. That is why I said that it should not have been issued on a franchise or management contract back in 2014. It is equally clear that, given its record of failure, GTR cannot be in charge of the major changes that are coming in December 2018. GTR should not be responsible for this franchise when we get to December.
It is clear that franchising is broken. The series of statements, speeches and debates in the past year clearly demonstrate that there is very little good news about the franchising system on our railway, and that is because of one simple reason: there is no clear accountability. Let us be clear: the current system and the decisions that had already been taken to award this franchise could have worked with creative, intelligent leadership from the Secretary of State. That was absent. He lacks the intellectual curiosity to participate and, as I will explain, he had every opportunity to win us round.
I want to talk about two things: structures and the decisions that have been made. Let us look at the institutions that the Secretary of State has chucked under the bus during this crisis; he cited Network Rail, GTR as the operator and the industry readiness board. Network Rail is an arm’s-length public body with one member—the Secretary of State. He is the shareholder and he appoints the chief executive. He cannot walk away from the crossover between his Department and Network Rail.
Secondly, the GTR arrangements are not a classic franchise. GTR gives all the ticket revenue to the DFT—about £12 billion over the seven planned years of the franchise. In return, it gets back £9 billion to run the railway. The DFT takes all the revenue risk. When the railway fails to perform, it is a black hole for taxpayers. Crucially, the DFT sets the specification for the timetable, which I will say a few more words about.
Lastly, there is the rail industry readiness board, chaired by Chris Gibb, who was appointed by the Secretary of State. The representatives on the board include Network Rail’s south-east route, Network Rail’s LNER route, Network Rail’s Anglia route, Network Rail’s Thameslink project team, the Network Rail system, and, crucially, the DFT. In the Secretary of State’s account, we are asked to believe that all these organisations assured him that everything would be fine, that there was no contradictory advice from the people within those organisations, and that three weeks before, the green light had been given to go. I find that very difficult to square with the reality.
I turn to the decisions that have been made and the opportunities to avoid this crisis. First, the initial timetable was set in the franchise ITT—invitation to tender—in 2014. We have no idea whether an operator can achieve 24 trains per hour through the Thameslink core, because the DFT assessed the four bidders and discovered that no one could design such a timetable. Even so, it gave this timetable planning task to GTR. Secondly, on rolling stock, the DFT ignored the warnings on financing trains, leading to a two-year delay in securing financing, instead of standing behind the decision. That resulted in late delivery, late trains, and a lack of training for drivers.
Thirdly, on the reliance on rest-day working, the Secretary of State is directly responsible for pouring fuel on the flames of the disputes when we could have moved to more modern working arrangements on the railway. Lastly, on the late timetable approach, the decision to downgrade the aspirations in July 2017 was made directly by him. There is no evidence that he did anything but stay asleep at the wheel when it came to seeing this through.
It is clear that the Secretary of State’s defence does not wash. Either someone is accountable for the railways or they are not. We need more than a ghost in the graveyard of the DFT.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State can be in no doubt from the contributions across the House today that the rail chaos is having a devastating impact on people’s lives and jobs and on the economy.
The meltdown in the timetable and the revised timetable is causing serious pain to commuters. We have heard from hon. Members north, south, east and west. The whole nation, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) said, is facing the pain. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) talked about how promised improvements were yet to be delivered, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Eltham (Clive Efford), who highlighted that the £9 billion spent has led to more chaos. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) reminded us that the northern press has united in its call for the Secretary of State to resign.
My hon. Friends the Members for Easington (Grahame Morris), for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) and for Luton South (Mr Shuker) have all highlighted forensically how the buck stops with the Secretary of State. My hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) shared heartrending stories of her constituents sardined into trains and having their safety put at risk due to overcrowding.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
The Western Mail has said that the Severn tunnel will now be shut for three weeks as the rail electrification kit rusts before it has even been used. Does my hon. Friend agree that if true, this is shocking, and that there need to be further checks to ensure that this important infrastructure project will be fit for purpose?
Rachael Maskell
My hon. Friend makes the point so well—more chaos on our railways.
In the past 24 hours, hundreds of passengers have shared their experiences with me, including a relationship breaking down, trains so packed that people are standing for hours while paying more for their tickets, cancellations of trains for hours on end, and people leaving home at 5.30 in the morning to face a four or five-hour commute. One person had no choice but to walk home for four hours in the rain in the middle of their exams. There is lots of stress about getting to work on time and getting home to pick up the children, and lots of stress for those sitting exams and simply not knowing if they will get there on time.
A mother had to sing “Happy Birthday” to her child from Waterloo station because she would not make it home for their birthday.
We all know that the problem is much deeper rooted. Were Robert Adley alive today, he would have seen himself truly vindicated for his call to halt the Railways Act 1993, for he foresaw how fragmentation would eventually create complete chaos across the railways, as my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Andy McDonald), the shadow Transport Secretary, set out. Mr Adley dubbed that Bill the then Tory Government’s “poll tax on wheels”. The fate of the poll tax is a stark reminder of what happens when Governments continue to blame everyone but themselves and fail to listen to the public. The public now overwhelmingly call for the renationalisation of the railways, which Labour will deliver.
The failure of one part of the Secretary of State’s Department to talk to the other, with franchises promising one thing despite Network Rail not having the capacity to deliver on his promises, demonstrates that the buck stops with no one but the Secretary of State. No Government can sleepwalk their way through a crisis, and this weak and floundering Government most certainly cannot. To ignore the public, to ignore the industry and now to ignore Members of this House shows utter contempt, for which the public will not be forgiving—not least when people have lost their jobs, been unable to sit vital exams, or missed precious moments of family life. Passengers are exhausted from working very long days due to their uncertain commutes. Passengers are unable to plan. Passengers are unable to have any form of life as their short journeys have been replaced by waits at stations that are 10 times the length of their journeys.
It is clear that commuters are not just frustrated with this totally avoidable Government failure, but with their own MPs for not securing change at the top. Today, we all have the opportunity to make the necessary change. If it is not addressed today, it most certainly will be at the ballot box, and MPs who were silent today when they had the chance to act on behalf of their constituents will find that those constituents will vote accordingly come the next general election.
The problem is that all this rail chaos, which was well known in advance by the Secretary of State, was allowed to happen on his watch because he put his ideology of private interests ahead of public service, because he failed to co-ordinate franchises across the divides in his Department, because he did not intervene and stop the timetable changes when he had the chance to do so, and because he evidently has put himself and his career above passengers and theirs. He was warned time and again but failed to act.
This afternoon’s vote is simply about confidence. Voting against the motion or even sitting on your hands would not only highlight how hon. Members are complicit in the chaos that has ensued over the last few weeks, but show support for how the Secretary of State conducted his Department, his actions in the months preceding the introduction of the new timetable, and the way in which he has let the public down consistently over the last 30 days. Constituents who were late to work again this morning will want to know how their MP voted today—did they place their confidence in the Secretary of State, despite all that has happened, or were they willing to stand up for their constituents and vote for this motion? When constituents miss their family meal and time with their children tonight, will they look up to their MP for taking action through the first step of removing the heart of the problem—the Secretary of State—or will they remember that their MP, when given the opportunity to do something, sidestepped the issue?
Perhaps the Prime Minister will show her full support for the Secretary of State this afternoon by neither voting for the motion nor taking any action to replace the person at the heart of the crisis, thus tying her own leadership to this national public disaster, or perhaps she will start to distance herself from all that has happened and find someone who can respond to this crisis. Surely she cannot continue to back a Secretary of State who has not only failed rail passengers but will continue to preside over the chaos that, as we have heard, he will unable to resolve for weeks if not months. Anyone who understands the need to make a fresh start after a public disaster knows that they need to deal with those responsible, which in this case means pulling Northern and GTR back into public ownership with immediate effect. The public will not forget how the avoidable rail chaos was woefully responded to.
There is one more issue that I want to raise: public safety. Even as we speak, public safety is being put at risk. We heard the Secretary of State take a swipe at the unions—he always does—but they represent the very people who work relentlessly across the network and, in particular, have kept passengers safe over the past few weeks. They have taken action today because they fear for public safety as guards are removed from trains. They are right to do so. If anything makes the case for guards on trains, it is the experiences of the last month. The guards are the very people who help the public in times of need. Labour will never put ideology above safety, let alone public service.
There is another public service issue on which the Secretary of State is failing. In this chaos, I have heard reports of stations crammed with passengers and trains crammed with people. Those people are fortunate to get on board—disabled people have been left stranded at stations because they cannot push their way on to trains. This is a seriously unsafe situation. The country must remember above all that national disasters have occurred when people have been squeezed into spaces that are too tight to hold them. When they are not just standing for hours on their commute but physically restrained on trains, it is easy to imagine how someone could fall on the tracks or fall ill on a train, especially in this heat. If nothing more, all hon. and right hon. Members should vote with Labour to put down a clear marker that they urge the Government to address this very serious issue. The choice today is to stand up for passengers, or to stand up for the Secretary of State and his failure on the railways. I trust that I will see hon. Members from both sides of the House in the Aye Lobby shortly.
The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)
The disruption faced by passengers over the past three weeks on parts of the GTR and Northern franchises is unacceptable. That was reflected in the powerful contributions we heard from my right hon. Friends the Members for Wokingham (John Redwood) and for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), and my hon. Friends the Members for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), for Hitchin and Harpenden (Bim Afolami), and for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman). It was also reflected by Opposition Members, including the hon. Members for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin), for Luton South (Mr Shuker) and for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin), who spoke powerfully about the difficult travelling conditions that their constituents have faced in recent weeks.
I want to reassure colleagues on both sides of the House that the Department’s overriding priority is to restore the reliability of service across the network. The Secretary of State has left the rail industry under no illusion that it must urgently improve its operational response including, if necessary, by changing top management, as is now happening at GTR. He has commissioned an independent inquiry by Stephen Glaister of the Office of Rail and Road, the independent regulator, to examine why we are in this situation and to reduce the chances of it ever happening again.
Turning to the performance on Northern, passengers continue to experience disruption on some parts of the network. There is a long way to go until performance is where it needs to be, but we are beginning to turn the corner. The introduction of a temporary timetable by Northern on 4 June will help to rebuild passengers’ trust. The first signs are promising, as industry figures show that over the first two weeks of the reduced timetable, 80% of trains arrived on time, and 4% of trains were cancelled or arrived significantly late. In the previous fortnight, 66% of trains arrived on time and an average of 12% of trains were cancelled or were significantly late. That improvement must continue over the coming weeks.
Ian Mearns
That all sounds very nice—a real improvement. However, according to the BBC this morning—this is certainly the evidence that we have all heard from our constituents—11,000 trains on the Northern rail network have been either cancelled or delayed for more than 30 minutes. That is tens of thousands of constituents who have been really badly put out, often left without a route to work, school, college or training.
Joseph Johnson
The cancellation of services is now progressively more and more planned by Northern as it seeks to stabilise the timetable and to ensure that the travelling public—the constituents of hon. Members on both sides of the House—can plan their journeys with greater assurance. This improvement, and the stabilisation and increased reliability, must continue over coming weeks. Northern plans to run the timetable until the end of July, when it will review progress and take stock. At that point, it will hope significantly to increase the number of timetabled services while ensuring continued improvements in stability.
The crux of the performance issues, as hon. Members have recognised, is the availability of drivers with the correct training. I am happy to say that, as a result of Northern’s hard work with ASLEF on rest day working, they were able to announce last week that they had reached an agreement for the immediate introduction of a new rest day working agreement. This will allow for more training and a better service for passengers sooner.
Let me turn to GTR’s performance. GTR is also working to increase the predictability and reliability of journeys on its network. It is working actively to reduce on-the-day cancellations, and is now updating its timetables on a Friday evening for the following week, enabling passengers to plan ahead more effectively. Alternative travel arrangements are in place. For example, passengers on the Brighton main line can have their Thameslink tickets accepted on Gatwick Express, and next month GTR will introduce a full temporary timetable across its network as the next step to improve reliability and performance for passengers.
It is worth noting that some parts of the GTR network, including all of Southern, are now experiencing more train services and better performance than ever before. However, I do not consider the service to be anywhere near approaching one that I or passengers would find acceptable and, as the Secretary of State said, we are examining why GTR is taking longer than Northern to improve services. The review that has been commissioned will look at whether GTR has met and is continuing to meet its contractual obligations in the planning and delivery of the May timetable.
Joseph Johnson
That question will be addressed in the review, which is looking carefully at GTR’s performance and whether it has breached any of its contractual franchise commitments. That is not something that we can pre-empt. We are looking at it carefully in the review and, as the Secretary of State said in his opening remarks, nothing is off the table.
Clive Efford
The Minister says that, but why is Govia being allowed to re-bid for franchises or to bid for others?
Joseph Johnson
As the hon. Gentleman will understand, it is important that the Department acts consistently and treats train operating companies consistently across the industry. The Department is carefully reviewing whether GTR has breached any of its franchise commitments, and we will do that thoroughly, following all correct due processes, as everybody has a right to expect us to.
Let me turn to compensation. We are clear that passengers on the lines that have been severely affected by these issues will receive additional compensation. The Department is working closely with Network Rail, train operators and stakeholders to introduce a special compensation scheme as soon as possible. We have already recommended to the board of Transport for the North that passengers who buy weekly, monthly or annual tickets on affected Northern and TPE routes should be eligible to claim up to four weeks’ compensation. As part of the scheme, the industry will be providing financial support to Transport for the North to deal with other costs that have arisen from the disruption.
I expect the board of TFN to confirm the final details of the scheme by its next meeting on 28 June and for payments to begin for Northern in early July. The Secretary of State has also announced a compensation package for passengers who travel on affected Thameslink and Great Northern routes. As he said, it will follow the special compensation scheme for Northern and TPE. Finally, we are looking at options to further support the northern economy and expect Northern to fund a marketing campaign encouraging travel to affected areas by train, including the Lakes.
I hope that this has reassured right hon. and hon. Members of the seriousness with which the Government are taking the disruption facing passengers. We are taking action to resolve the problems as quickly as possible, to compensate passengers appropriately, and to learn the lessons that will prevent this happening again in the future.
Question put.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
I am about to close the doors, as I normally do after eight minutes, but I understand that there is a problem with the lifts in Norman Shaw. I am acutely aware that some colleagues are coming by wheelchair and other, more difficult means. I am therefore purposely delaying the closing of the doors, not for those who are already here, who I trust will vote as swiftly as possible, but for colleagues who are struggling, especially in wheelchairs. It is hard to believe that a lift was full and a colleague in a wheelchair could not get into it.
I am looking hopefully to see if we have succeeded—we have almost succeeded, but not quite. I could describe the wheelchair—[Interruption.] Thank you, Mr Wishart. It is a long time since I sparred with you. I could do with a point of order right now, which of course I cannot take in the middle of a Division. You do not normally get a filibuster from the Chair on the matter of closing the doors, but I am now satisfied that all colleagues who had difficulty in getting here because of a lift problem have had a chance to vote. It is hard to believe that other colleagues did not vacate the lift and allow the lady in the wheelchair to go in first, but that is up to them. Lock the doors!
Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill: Committee Stage
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
18:59 - The House divided: - Ayes: 284 / Noes: 299 - Question accordingly negatived.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That, notwithstanding the provisions of Standing Order No. 48 and the practice of the House relating to the authorisation of charges upon the public revenue, the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill Committee has leave to consider the Clauses of the Bill and any new Clauses that may be proposed to it; but the Bill may not be reported from the Committee before this House has passed a Money Resolution, for which the Queen’s Recommendation has been signified, in relation to the Bill.
Here we are again, debating the same issue: by all accounts, according to custom and practice and convention in Standing Orders, the position is, quite simply, that a money resolution follows a private Member’s Bill, but my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) has still not been given a money resolution for his Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill 2017-19. However, the motion makes a slightly different proposal, so I hope that the House can agree to it. It proposes that we can debate the Bill before the Report stage, at which point it will be given its money resolution.
Let me deal first with the Bill itself, and then with some of the objections that have been expressed by the Leader of the House and others. I hope that by the end of my speech, I shall have persuaded Members that the motion should be passed. The Bill fixes the size of Parliament at 650 MPs, it fixes the allocation in Northern Ireland at 18, and it keeps the areas as allocated in 2011. It allows for a 7.5% variation in the electorate. A report must be submitted before 1 October 2020 and every 10 years. It uses the register of electors from 2017, or the most up to date. How can anyone who believes in democracy not support that?
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
Perhaps I can give the hon. Lady a very good reason. She may be familiar with the e-mail that Members received on 14 June from the Boundary Commission for England, in which it confirms that it will report to the Leader of the House on or before 5 September, so that the Leader will have an opportunity to lay the orders in the House during that month. It plans to report in just four full sitting weeks’ time. I say to the hon. Lady: what is the hurry?
Valerie Vaz
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his speech. I will address that point later in my own speech.
The Bill had the support of the House, so it proceeded to its next stage; but then it was thwarted—not once, not twice, not thrice, but six times. The first issue raised was that of costs. The Leader of the House said that it would cost £12 million, but, as I have said before, the instructions to the Boundary Commission were flawed. It was instructed to make the electorate numbers fit the figure of 600, without being given any explanation or evidence for the use of that figure. To save costs, the Bill proposes that the commission should report every 10 years, but the Government want to scrub that and require it to report every five years.
I want to know why the Government consider 600 to be an appropriate figure on the basis of an old electoral register.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
Obviously Ministers are drawn from Parliament. Does my hon. Friend agree that if the number of MPs is reduced but the number of Ministers is not, a considerable amount of power will shift from Parliament to Government? If the Government’s proposal were even-handed, the number of Ministers would be reduced so that power would not be transferred from Parliament to the Government.
Valerie Vaz
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point. I will be drawing on it. Let me add, however, that as early as tomorrow we will see the effect of an overbearing Executive, and will see why it is so important for Members to be able to hold the Government to account.
If the Bill were allowed a Committee stage as a result of the motion, the debate on my hon. Friend’s Bill could explore the reasons for it. The Government could table new clauses and vote against clauses in the Bill, as many Conservative Members have suggested. Amendments could be tabled, too. This motion would allow that to take place so that hon. Members on both sides would be aware of why the Government object.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle) must be psychic as I am now going to touch on the point he made. I have asked this previously, but will the Leader of the House confirm in relation to the payroll vote whether there will be a reduction in the number of Ministers and what costs will be saved by a reduction in the payroll vote? There is more work to be done as we leave the European Union and post-Brexit both for Parliament and for the Executive, but this means that the Executive will dominate Parliament, and if costs were an issue, ministerial numbers would also be reduced. However, the Government are incurring more costs in Parliament. What are the costs of the peers? In the last seven years, 260 have been appointed.
My second point—[Interruption.] I do not know if that was an intervention. The Leader of the House refers to things being done on a case-by-case basis. What is that, and since when do the Government decide which Bills ought to be progressed? She seems to have come up with a new case-by-case basis Standing Order. I have checked the latest edition of the Blue Book—May 2018—and there is no entry for “case-by-case basis.” This means that the Government are twisting convention by saying they will decide which Bills are worthy of a money resolution. All Bills should be treated fairly, which is the basis of the convention.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
Why is there this sudden interest in money resolutions from the Labour party? I cannot find a single instance of the Labour party in government looking to change the rules surrounding money resolutions, so is it simply for political expedience that this motion has been introduced today?
Valerie Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is an assiduous lawyer so he will know we are talking about the present. We are talking about money resolutions and about other Bills that are also stacked up, and it is a convention of the House, here and now, that the Government should provide money resolutions.
How can the Government justify picking and choosing which Bill gets a money resolution? This is not an elected dictatorship. It appears that the Government are acting in the same way here, by thwarting the will of the House, as in the abusive process that we saw last Friday on the upskirting Bill. I hope I can help: it is a bit like England finishing its qualifying round having won its league and FIFA saying, “I’m sorry, but we won’t allow you to go through; we’re going to deal with this on a case-by-case basis.” That would be an outrage: if England are at the top of the league, England should go through.
This is a serious issue because it goes to the very heart of our democracy. Some 2.1 million people have been left off the register and have not been included in the Boundary Commission’s dealings. This is an especially serious issue as the boundary changes appear to favour one party. We must remember that the current Government are a minority Government governing only with a confidence and supply agreement.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
The Government have wilfully plucked a figure out of the air, have manipulated the electoral register and taken 2.5 million people off it. The constituencies have no basis, so the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan)—[Interruption.] If the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), Conservative Members wants to make a contribution, she can do so when I am not on my feet.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Order. The hon. Gentleman cannot interrupt himself when making an intervention while referring to a sedentary comment from the Conservative Benches, but I will allow him to finish his perfectly reasonable intervention.
Mr Mahmood
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I have gained further knowledge.
My hon. Friend’s Bill tries to address this issue. Does my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) agree that this is not about gerrymandering or taking powers away from this House, but about restoring those powers?
Valerie Vaz
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and he is right. This is about democracy, about using the old register and about fettering the Boundary Commission.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady not agree that the Boundary Commission is an independent body that is completely separate from any political considerations? It is not run by politicians. It is carrying out a thorough review, on the instructions of this House, in order to do the right thing for our constituents and for taxpayers. How can she suggest that there is any political consideration involved in the body’s work?
Valerie Vaz
No one is talking about political interference. We are talking about the initial instructions that were given to the Boundary Commission, which were based on flawed instructions.
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
While we are still on the issue of the size of constituencies, does my hon. Friend recognise that there are a number of constituencies—mostly, though not entirely, inner-city ones—in which the population is far greater than the registered population? I declare an interest here, because my own constituency has a population twice the size of the registered population. This is only going to get worse with the arbitrary reduction to 600 Members, further reducing the connection between Members of Parliament and those they serve.
Valerie Vaz
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We deal with cases that go beyond those on the electoral register. For example, we deal with whole families, including children, following the cutbacks in advice services. We still have to deal with those cases.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend also agree that there are variations in the propensity of certain groups in the population to appear on the electoral register? For example, there is an 80% propensity for older women from the home counties to be on the register, compared with only a 20% likelihood for young black men in inner cities to be on it.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
Further to those last two points, would my hon. Friend acknowledge that the amount of constituency work required from a Member often bears no relation to the number of people on the electoral register? I dare say that about a third of the people who come to my surgeries for advice and support are not registered to vote.
Valerie Vaz
I absolutely agree. All hon. Members know that we deal with such issues and cases, and that we cannot turn people away, because we are often the last resort.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I believe that the hon. Lady is complaining that reducing the number of Members of Parliament will create an unacceptable workload, but when I look at the statistics, I see that British MPs each represent about 90,000 people, whereas Spanish MPs represent about 133,000, German MPs represent 116,000 and French and Dutch MPs represent 114,000. Why should we not be able to do at least as good a job as the MPs in other leading European democracies?
Valerie Vaz
I am not saying that this is just about an increase in workload. I am saying that the Boundary Commission’s ability to look at everything should be unfettered.
My third point is that this is not another argument about not receiving an email. In the last debate on this matter, the Leader of the House said that an email had not been received and that this was just a matter for the Westminster bubble. This is not just about responsive democracy. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton is proactive, and he saw a sense of unfairness. As with any Bill, we try to do something when we see something that is unfair or when we want to close a loophole. That was exactly the reason for my hon. Friend’s Bill. Yes, some constituencies should be equalised —some rural constituencies might not have the same numbers as inner-city ones—but that must involve a proper analysis, and the Boundary Commission’s ability to use the numbers in local areas in a way that fits must be unfettered.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
I am listening with interest to what the hon. Lady is saying. Will she clarify something for me? Under the current instructions to the Boundary Commission and the principal legislation, a new review is carried out every five years and the number of seats allocated to each constituent part of the United Kingdom is adjusted according to the number of people on the register. Is it the purpose of her hon. Friend’s Bill to fix in perpetuity—or until such time as the legislation may be amended—the number of seats for Northern Ireland at 18?
Valerie Vaz
Under the Bill, the number would be fixed at 18. The seats would be allocated on the basis of the 2011 instructions, but nothing would be in perpetuity. No Parliament can bind another Parliament, so that could all change. The instructions could change.
Fourthly, what about the procedures of the House? I am sure you will agree that they are important, Madam Deputy Speaker. The Procedure Committee recommended in its 2013-14 report on private Members’ Bills
“that the Government be required to make a written Ministerial statement on the reasons for the delay if a money or ways and means resolution, where required, has not been put to the House within three weeks of a bill being given a second reading.”
The Government response stated:
“It is the responsibility of the Member in charge of the bill to make a request to Government to table any money or ways and means motions that may be required. It is the practice of the Government to accede to such requests… The Committee has not produced any clear evidence to suggest that current arrangements are not working or that a new rule is needed.”
However, the Government have not acceded to the request for a money resolution, and the current arrangements are clearly now not working. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has been thwarted six times. Will the Leader of the House join me in writing to the Procedure Committee to inform it that the Government are not following the procedure laid down by the Committee and rules of the House?
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
I was elected on a manifesto that called for a reduction in the number of MPs to 600. How can I look my constituents in the eye and spend the equivalent of 600 nurses’ salaries on something for which they did not vote?
Valerie Vaz
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I will write to him and place in the Library the list of things that the Government have reneged on since their manifesto.
More importantly, this matter is pressing because hon. Members will have received an email from the Boundary Commission, which says that it wants to report before the conference recess, so this is not about the Westminster bubble. Hon. Members were elected to be the guardians of democracy. Now more than ever, we need to stand as beacons of fairness, upholding democratic values and doing what is right. I hope that hon. Members will support the motion.
The Leader of the House of Commons (Andrea Leadsom)
I welcome the chance to respond, yet again, on the subject of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill. The House will be aware that I have already responded to both an urgent question and an emergency debate about the Government’s approach to the private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), in addition to responding to questions at business questions. Nevertheless, I am more than happy to outline, once again, our approach to private Members’ Bills, and to the hon. Gentleman’s Bill in particular, before turning to the specific terms of the motion.
The boundary commissions began the 2018 parliamentary boundary review in 2016 and are due to report the final recommendations to the Government later this year—within just a few sitting weeks. This Government have made a commitment to continue with that boundary review, which was voted for by this House, and it would be inappropriate to proceed with the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill at this time by providing it with a money resolution. The Government have committed to keeping this private Member’s Bill under review, but it is right that we allow the boundary commissions to report their recommendations before carefully considering how to proceed.
As I said in the emergency debate on 21 May, progressing with this particular PMB would place a potential financial burden of £8 million on taxpayers. Given that Parliament —this House—has already committed to the 2018 boundary review, it would not be responsible for the Government to support such extra cost to the taxpayer at this point.
Mr Khalid Mahmood
To follow the Leader of the House’s reasoning about what this Bill will cost the public purse, what other Bills is she considering dropping to save money?
Andrea Leadsom
I will repeat it if the hon. Gentleman did not hear it, but I just carefully explained that the Government bring forward money resolutions for private Members’ Bill on a case-by-case basis. It is precisely because this House voted for the 2018 boundary review that we must wait until that work is finished before deciding how to progress with this private Member’s Bill.
With one review under way, plus an incomplete review from a previous Parliament, the review proposed by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton would be the third review of boundaries and would push the total cost of reviewing boundaries towards £18 million. The Opposition may not have a problem with unnecessarily spending £18 million of taxpayers’ money, but the Government certainly do. That is our position, and we look forward to seeing the boundary commissions’ recommendations in the coming months.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
The Leader of the House seems to be saying that one of the reasons why the Government will not table a money resolution is the amount of money the Bill would cost. I do not know whether she is inadvertently misleading the House, but the reality is that tabling a money resolution does not mean the law will pass. What then happens is that the Bill can be considered in Committee, on Report and by their lordships. The issue here is that the Government are running scared because they know a majority of Members of this House support the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), so they are trying to kill it in Committee. This is not about money; it is about parliamentary procedure being subverted.
Andrea Leadsom
I will come on to procedure, but the hon. Gentleman simply is not right. The Government are not killing this private Member’s Bill; we are saying that, until the boundary commissions have completed their work, which will be in a matter of a few weeks—the House voted for the review to take place—the Government will not take further action on a money resolution.
For the clarification of all hon. Members, this is not without precedent. During the 2014-15 Session, the coalition Government did not table money resolutions on two private Members’ Bills. At the time, the then Leader of the House said:
“it is unusual but not unprecedented for the Government not to move a money resolution. There have been previous instances of that under Governments of different parties.”—[Official Report, 30 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 417.]
Mr Harper
On procedure, there is a wider point than just the money. The boundary commissions, as part of their review, have carried out a very democratic process. They have listened to thousands of responses, not just from Members of this House and political parties but from thousands of members of the public. Would it not be an abuse just to throw all that away and start all over again?
Andrea Leadsom
My right hon. Friend is exactly right. That is the whole point. The Government are saying we will not table a money resolution until we have had a chance to consider the review, which is currently under way and due to report soon. However, this debate is not about the merits of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill, and it is not even about the merits of the Government tabling a money resolution on the Bill. This debate is about whether a Committee may have leave to disregard the rules and conventions of this House. This motion seeks to undermine a fundamental principle that is a cornerstone of our constitutional settlement.
The financial initiative of the Crown is a long-standing constitutional principle that allows the Government of the day to initiate financial resolutions. Chapter 32 of “Erskine May” explains:
“It was a central factor in the historical development of parliamentary influence and power that the Sovereign was obliged to obtain the consent of Parliament…to the levying of taxes to meet the expenditure of the State. But the role of Parliament in respect of…expenditure and taxation has never been one of initiation… The development of responsible government and the assumption by the Government of the day of the traditional role and powers of the Crown in relation to public finance have not altered this basic constitutional principle”.
Either the Government of the day have the right to initiate financial proceedings or they do not. The Crown initiative is a binary issue, and this motion seeks to overturn it.
Nigel Dodds
There have been references to the boundary commission review as though there is just one review, but of course there are reviews in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland. On a point of process, does the Leader of the House intend to table separate resolutions on each of those Boundary Commission reviews, or will they be taken together?
Andrea Leadsom
That is to be confirmed, but the right hon. Gentleman is correct that the boundary commissions of all four nations will be reporting imminently. It has been a huge and very expensive undertaking that absolutely upholds the principles of democracy.
Let us get back to what is under discussion today. The motion seeks to erode the fundamental principle that it is the Crown, through its Ministers, that has the exclusive right of demanding money and of defining the purposes for which that money is required. The core responsibility of the Government is accountability to the taxpayer. The Opposition may not understand that, but we on this side of the House most certainly do.
The motion would allow the Bill Committee to consider the substantive clauses of the Bill, amend the Bill and potentially introduce new material into the Bill. The conventions of the House are very clearly set out in “Erskine May”, which states that
“any financial provisions which”—
a Bill—
“may contain must be authorised by a resolution of the House, i.e. a money resolution, before they can be considered by the committee on the bill.”
The financial provisions contained in a Bill—in this case the money clause, which is clause 5—are there on First Reading to indicate that the Crown initiative is needed. The existence of these money clauses, or in other cases the existence of italicised provisions, is the practice by which it is indicated that Second Reading is contingent on a financial recommendation from the Government. This financial recommendation must come before the House or its Committees can proceed with detailed consideration of the Bill’s contents.
If a Committee is allowed to consider the substance of the Bill in the absence of a money resolution, the Crown, through its Ministers, loses its centuries-old right to initiate and define the purposes for which that money is required; putting the power of the Executive into the hands of the legislature.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
The Leader of the House is trying to blow this issue out of proportion slightly by making it sound as though we are trying to overturn a years-old, decades-old, centuries-old convention. Is this motion not merely asking to allow a Committee to consider a Bill? If the money resolution did not come by the end of it, the Bill would not be passed. We are seeking to allow Parliament to get on with it. Is the point of an unwritten constitution not to allow flexibility and to understand that in times of need we can change procedure?
Andrea Leadsom
The hon. Gentleman walked in late and did not hear the start of the debate. If he read his own motion, he would realise that it seeks to overturn not years or decades but centuries of a very clear convention: that the Government initiate financial resolutions. It could not be clearer, and this Opposition motion, for purely party political reasons, is utterly irresponsible. May I ask: where are the previous Cabinet members from the Opposition? Clearly, they are not in this place because they, having been in government, recognise the constitutional settlement, where Governments decide on the money and Parliament consents to it and scrutinises it.
As I was saying, if a Committee is allowed to consider the substance of the Bill in the absence of a money resolution, the Crown, through its Ministers, loses its centuries-old right to initiate and define the purposes for which that money is required, putting the power of the Executive into the hands of the legislature. This questions the role of the Executive, whichever party is in power. The fundamentals of having a Government—of having any Government—are that they are there to take decisions and to be accountable for those decisions. Taxpayers want and require the Government to be accountable for the way in which public money is spent. That is what it means to be a responsible Government.
Rachel Maclean
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is about a fundamental principle upon which our general elections are run: we set out our manifesto and the public vote on how they want their money spent? The attempt to change that is a fundamental undermining of our democracy in this country.
Andrea Leadsom
My hon. Friend is exactly right on that. This Government are responsible for initiating financial transaction resolutions, and the Opposition and Parliament are responsible for scrutinising, amending and reviewing; they are not responsible for initiating resolutions. It is disappointing to waste parliamentary time today explaining this point to an Opposition who really should know better and who, in their actions today, are showing no signs that they would act as a responsible Government.
The motion would set a dangerous precedent, but there would also be further potential consequences of allowing it to pass. First, the scope of any money resolution is one of the factors in determining whether amendments are within the scope of a Bill. The change in practice that the motion seeks to introduce would remove that restriction on what can be considered and voted on in Committee. The Committee would be pointlessly wandering through the Bill, agreeing to clauses —with or without amendments—that may not actually be permitted by any money resolution that may or may not be forthcoming in future. Why should the House foot the bill for whatever the Committee decides?
The House must first provide financial authorisation, if and when the Government are ready to initiate it, and the Committee must then work to agree or amend the Bill in the light of that authorisation. The Committee should not be asking for the House’s retrospective forgiveness; it has to wait for the House’s permission for its money resolution. Ultimately, I would be very concerned with the situation in which the approval of this motion would leave the Bill Committee itself. It would make discussions in Committee theoretical at best, and at worst it would make the whole process farcical.
Secondly, it is worth remembering that once the Committee has been through the Bill, agreeing its provisions clause by clause, the Committee cannot refine those decisions. The motion would not empower the Committee, as the Opposition might seek to argue; it would actually disempower the Committee, giving it a false sense of making progress while in fact damaging its ability to amend the Bill in the light of any developing circumstances that may in future give rise to a money resolution. I question whether all the members of the Bill Committee are fully aware of the terrible damage that the Opposition Front-Bench team are trying to impose on them.
This House runs on its conventions and on the assurance that centuries-old practice and procedure is there to protect the rights of all parliamentarians. The Government absolutely respect the right of the House to establish its own practices and procedures, but that respect must work both ways. A responsible Parliament must also respect the constitutional settlement, the relationship between Government and Parliament and the conventions that underpin the Crown initiative. By undermining all that for party political reasons by tabling this motion, the Opposition show how poorly they understand what it means to be responsible parliamentarians, let alone a responsible Government.
Financial responsibility is at the core of responsible government. Taxpayers have the right to see their Government held to account for how public money is handled, and it is Parliament’s legitimate right to hold the Government to account on that. However, Parliament —in the form of the Opposition or Back Benchers—does not have the right to undermine the Crown initiative on financial matters. Parliament does not have the right to propose taxation; that is a matter for the Government. Nor does Parliament have the right to bypass the need for the Government initiation of tax measures through, for example, Ways and Means resolutions. Parliament does not have the right to impose public spending; it is the Crown’s exclusive right, through Ministers, to propose increases in expenditure in a fiscally responsible way for which the Government are then held to account.
I am gravely concerned about the motion’s longer-term unintended consequences for the separation of powers between the Government and Parliament. Once the lines are blurred on decision making, the role of Parliament in scrutinising and holding the Government to account is put into jeopardy. Ultimately, a line does have to be drawn, and it is drawn under the historic practices of this House, under the constitutional rights of the Crown and under the long-established relationship between Government and Parliament. The line is there whether Opposition Members like it or not.
The Government are elected by the people, and the Government alone have the constitutional right and duty to initiate financial proceedings that are in the taxpayers’ interests, because it is the Government who are accountable to the taxpayer for their decisions and for defining the use of public money. Today, the Opposition are doing nothing more than abusing long-standing constitutional principles and seeking to manipulate the procedures of the House for political ends. At last year’s general election, the people of this great country had the opportunity to give the Leader of the Opposition the chance to be in charge of public spending. They did not take that opportunity. This Government will not allow the Opposition to take that opportunity by stealth, which is what is being attempted through this motion.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Here we go again. Yet another debate on the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill and yet another attempt from the Government to thwart it and stop any sort of progress. I listened carefully to the speech of the Leader of the House, and it was extraordinary. It was a sort of “Know your place, Parliament” assertion of the rights of the Crown, making the distinction somehow that this Government are not going to be accountable to Parliament in whatever this Parliament chooses to do. I have never heard a speech quite like it, and I hope that when the Leader of the House has a look at it in Hansard she will reflect on what she said. I have never known the House to be lectured in such a way about its rights and responsibilities. We are Members of Parliament, elected directly by our constituents, and we come here to make sure that their interest is properly and effectively represented. To be told just to know our place in the House and allow the Government to do whatever they want was quite disgraceful. I hope that the Leader of the House reflects on what she said today.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that providing a money resolution does not spend the money? All it does is allow Members to discuss the Bill line by line. That is what the Government are not allowing.
Pete Wishart
Absolutely. My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) made that point to the Leader of the House. The money resolution does not commit the Government to anything in money terms. It allows the Bill to progress. At any point during that process the Government can come along with new clauses, and might have legitimate grounds for making sure that the Bill is delayed. I accept and respect that, but let the Bill progress for goodness’ sake.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The Leader of the House said that the Opposition were given a chance last year to become the Government and did not get it from the electorate, but she should be reminded that she did not get it either. She mentioned the Crown and ancient conventions a lot in her speech. She should remember what happened to a king who defied Parliament.
Pete Wishart
That is a salutary lesson from the hon. Gentleman. He knows and respects his history, and knows exactly what is being debated here and the impact that that type of speech has.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
This is not an area where I have expertise, but my understanding was that the money resolution enabled money to be spent in preparation for the Bill becoming law. So there is a financial implication of passing a money resolution, even if the Bill has not proceeded to Third Reading and Royal Assent.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Gentleman is right that he is not an expert on this particular issue; he has just demonstrated that by what he said. There is no obligation on the Government to commit money in a money resolution. A money resolution would allow the Committee stage of the Bill to be given the authority that the Leader of the House suggests this motion would not allow. I looked today at some of the proceedings of the Committee. It is like “Alice in Wonderland” meets “Groundhog Day”, without any progress. The Committee seems to come together and adjourn; as quickly as it sits to consider some of the issues, proceedings are abandoned because there is nothing for the Committee to do. What an absolute and utter waste of time.
The key point is not Parliament’s responsibilities and the distinction between Government’s and Parliament’s roles in the House. The key issue is that the private Member’s Bills system is broken. It may be broken beyond repair. This is the fifth Parliament I have been involved in, and I have never known a Parliament to obsess so constantly and continually about private Members’ Bills. Usually they go through without any real issue or difficulty. The Leader of the House mentioned a couple of Bills under the coalition Government for which money resolutions were withheld. In the periphery of my memory, I remember those Bills, but that was about the first time in my 17 years in this place that the Government withheld money resolutions. We are entering a new sort of territory with this Government weapon to stop the progress of Bills that they do not particularly like. The House should consider deeply the increasing use of this method as a blocking tactic for private Members’ Bills before we continue down such an avenue.
Mr Harper
I think I can help the hon. Gentleman a little by explaining why there have been several such examples. It is because private Members’ Bills have started to be used inappropriately by people trying to deliver significant constitutional change, which should properly be done in detail on the Floor of the House. Perhaps that is why the Government have reflected carefully on whether they should allow money resolutions at every stage.
Pete Wishart
I have a reasonably neat solution in response to the right hon. Gentleman. If the Government do not like private Members’ Bills—if they object to them on constitutional grounds or for whatever reason—they should get up, tell the House and put their case on the Floor of the House. If the House agrees with the Government and finds particular issues and difficulties with a private Member’s Bill, the House can vote against it. If the House says, “No, we do not accept the Government’s arguments”, Members can vote for the Bill so that it passes. That is called democracy. The right hon. Gentleman used to believe in that principle. It is certainly something that I still value.
Siobhain McDonagh
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) is underestimating the power of private Members’ Bills historically in this House? They have paved the way for very big social change. For example, the Abortion Act 1967 and the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 by Lord Morris—both very powerful pieces of legislation —came via private Members’ Bills. They have always had a huge and significant impact, so what the right hon. Gentleman says is just nonsense.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Lady is absolutely right to remind us of some of the really important private Members’ Bills in the history of the House. She will remember her colleague, Tom Clarke, who got two private Members’ Bills through Parliament: one on international development and another on disability. We owe a great deal of credit to Tom Clarke for what he did to ensure that those Bills were brought before Parliament. The Governments of the day were not prepared to consider those Bills, but Members of Parliament thought they were important enough to bring to the House, and to spend time and effort on getting them through. There are also really important private Members’ Bills in this Session. My hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is not here, but his Refugees (Family Reunion) (No. 2) Bill is really important. Again, that Bill has been stalled by this Government refusing to provide a money resolution.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
The hon. Gentleman accused the Government of having an aversion to private Members’ Bills, but he also said that he has been here for five Parliaments. In fact, 22 private Members’ Bills were passed in the 2005 Parliament and 31 were passed in the 2010 Parliament. If we include the 2015 and 2017 Parliaments together, more than double the number of private Members’ Bills have been passed than in 2005. That is hardly an aversion to private Members’ Bills.
Pete Wishart
I do not think that I ever made the charge that this Government have an aversion to private Members’ Bills. If the hon. Gentleman wants me to be accusatory, I will accuse the Government of blocking Bills that they do not like. That is what we are getting to here. There are lots of Government-sponsored private Members’ Bills, a couple of which I have personally sponsored and that I want to see progress, so I am not saying that they have an aversion to them. I think that they value them as much as possible, but the system is broken just now. The current way in which we do this business is not satisfactory, and every Member of this House should be concerned about that.
David Linden
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. One of the reasons that the Government, under the current regime, are putting through so many private Members’ Bills is because they skip over the ones that they do not like. In the case of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), his Bill was 13th in the queue. The Government just decided that they did not like it, so they went to the Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), which was 92nd in the queue. We cannot have a situation whereby the Government decide just to skip over Bills. The Leader of the House spoke about overriding centuries-old tradition, but the centuries-old tradition is that we go to the next available Bill, so it is the Government who are riding roughshod over the procedures of the House.
Pete Wishart
That is right. I am trying to be helpful to the House, as always. You know me, Madam Deputy Speaker; if I can think of a way in which to bring the House together so that we can try to make satisfactory process, I will offer it to the House. I see it as part of my job, obligation and responsibility as a Member of Parliament to see whether we can broker a solution. I suggest to the Leader of the House that the system is not working. I think that she and I would agree on that. She can nod her head if she wants.
Pete Wishart
She is not nodding her head; she thinks that it is working satisfactorily. Okay, I may be on my own. In my view, and probably in that of most Members on the Opposition Benches, something is wrong. Something is not working with the system of dealing with private Members’ Bills. There is real disappointment and anger in this House about how all this is working out. This is the third time we have debated it, as the Leader of the House said, and it is not getting any better—if anything, it is getting worse. After her lecture to the House today, it feels a lot worse to Opposition Members.
If money resolutions are a sticking point, how about we try to design some sort of solution? I have tried to suggest this notion to Conservative Members: if they do not like something, they should come here on a Friday to oppose it and get their way; and if they do not get their way, they should accept the role of the House. We are going to have to try to find a way round this. We cannot continually come back to the point where Members secure support for their Bill from this House, believe that they are making progress with it, and then are ultimately blocked by a Government who do not like it and so are not prepared to give it a money resolution.
I do not know how we might do this, but may I suggest to the Leader of the House that we try to get a cross-party solution? I know that it has been suggested that the matter should be put to the Procedure Committee. That has happened twice in my time in this House. We have had the Procedure Committee consider private Members’ Bills, and maybe it should do so again. How about if all the parties got together and tried to see what we could do to ensure that we get round some of these very tricky issues? The current situation is not good enough.
I was out in my constituency campaigning over the weekend. Our constituents look at these sorts of issues and get more and more concerned. We have a particular issue in Scotland. People in Scotland are furious about the disrespect that this Government have shown to our nation in taking about 15 minutes to turn the devolution settlement on its head. However, they are also seeing some of these issues about private Members’ Bill going through. [Interruption.] I know that Conservative Members do not like it, but this perception is building up. I saw over the weekend that there is bewilderment more than hostility. What is the House of Commons doing? Why cannot we properly debate issues that are really important? Why cannot we consider private Members’ Bills?
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
What my constituents and most people in Scotland, I think, got frustrated with and annoyed by was the pantomime performance we saw last week of SNP Members storming out of the House, not representing the interests of their constituents or of Scotland. The Leader of the House spoke very well about the importance of the Government keeping control of financial resolutions. I would be interested to know if the right hon. Gentleman would advocate the same proposal for the Scottish Parliament with regard to how the Scottish Government manage similar matters.
Pete Wishart
First of all, I am not a right hon. Member. For some reason, Scottish National party Members are not made Privy Counsellors, regardless of how long we have served in this House. I thank the hon. Gentleman for the promotion, but I have never actually secured that position.
I wish that the hon. Gentleman had been on the streets in Perth, as I was, on Saturday. He would have seen the deep frustration and anger that there was with this House after the massive disrespect demonstrated to our Parliament—the Scottish Parliament—which secured 15 minutes of debate before its devolution settlement was turned on its head. There is a growing frustration with this House as more and more people, particularly in Scotland, are seeing—because they like watching us speak—how this House is treated. There is real bewilderment about what is going on.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
I hesitate to move the hon. Gentleman off one of his favourite topics, but does he agree that there is another fundamental point that is being missed? The current boundary review is inaccurate because its formulations do not include the many extra voters who have gone on to the electoral rolls since the Boundary Commission did its basic analysis. This needs to be done again, and that would strengthen our democracy.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I know that a lot of people want to speak, Madam Deputy Speaker, so I will try to make a bit of progress if I could be allowed to do so.
I hear what the Government are saying. Of course, there is the news that we will have the report of the Boundary Commission before we come back in September. However, my feeling—perhaps it is just me again—is that what the House decided on the Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) trumps what the Boundary Commission is about to deliver, because it was a democratic decision of the House that favoured his Bill and wanted to see it progress. My understanding is that that should come first. I think that outcomes decided on the Floor of the House—
Pete Wishart
I will not give way. I have given way to the right hon. Gentleman before, and I know that Madam Deputy Speaker wants me to rush.
I believe that outcomes decided on the Floor of the House take precedence over anything that the Boundary Commission review will conclude. As hon. Members have said, there is not a majority for what the Boundary Commission is proposing. At some point, that will have to be tested in the House. The House will either have to agree that we should cut the number of our constituencies to 600 or say to the Government that we need 650 Members.
There are good reasons why the number should stay at 650, and they have been outlined. We will lose our 73 Members of the European Parliament in March next year, so all their responsibilities and duties will have to be prosecuted by Members of this Parliament. The point was also made about the relative imbalance that there would be between Members of Parliament and the Executive if there were 600 MPs, with more Ministers per Member of Parliament. That is a real point. Then there is the absurd circus down the corridor—the House of Lords. We are talking about reducing the size of Parliament, while there is one new Member of the House of Lords after one another. We have to be very careful about all those things.
The key point that the Leader of the House made today was that this is all about precedent, because it is in “Erskine May” and the Standing Orders of the House that the Government have the right to introduce money resolutions. Let us take that out of their hands. Another solution that the Leader of the House might want to consider is that once a private Member’s Bill passes its Second Reading, a money resolution should be put forthwith to the House. If the Government disagree with the money resolution, they should put forward their reservation at that point, which would allow the House to make a decision. What is the point of this private Member’s Bill purgatory that the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton is experiencing? It is not fair to him, for a start. Why can we not do that at the outset of the process?
Lastly, this is about the democratic outcomes of the House and how we do our business. We dispense with that at our peril. We have to look carefully at how we are organised in this House and how it is being observed. Private Members’ Bills are a feature of this House that our constituents like. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned the big, important pieces of legislation that have been passed as private Members’ Bills. We mess with them at our peril. They are broken just now; they are not working. Let us see if we can work together to find a solution that will allow us to continue to enjoy bringing pieces of legislation to the House as ordinary Members and make sure that they are not obstructed by Government. For goodness’ sake, surely we can achieve that.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. This is a well-subscribed debate. If colleagues stick to a maximum of nine minutes, we should be able to get everybody in. I call Mark Harper.
Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will be mindful of your injunction and try hard to stick to it.
I am going to do something radical—I will try to stick to the motion—but first, since this is a debate, I want to deal with a number of points that Members have made. I should declare my interest as a member of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Public Bill Committee. We spend very pleasant Wednesday mornings in Committee Room 11, where civilised discussions take place between the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), myself and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) for the Scottish National party. We gambol around the issues as far as we are able to, staying in order of the motion to adjourn. It is certainly not purgatory.
I will repeat, albeit at greater length, what I said in an intervention on the shadow Leader of the House, the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz). We have received a message from the Boundary Commission for England. I received it as a Member representing an English seat, and I presume that the other boundary commissions will write to Members who represent other parts of the United Kingdom, if they have not already, to confirm the process that they have undertaken. The Boundary Commission for England carried out a consultation that was widely publicised. It received more than 35,000 individual responses, which represents a great deal of interest from members of the public. The commission has confirmed that it will report its recommendations to the Leader of the House on or shortly before 5 September to give her the opportunity to lay the report in Parliament before the conference recess. I raise that point because it sits squarely with the timing issue.
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), but I have to confess that even when I was the Minister taking through the Bill that became the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, I was not overrun by constituents grabbing me to discuss the finer details of that legislation. Clearly his constituents are different, taking a massive interest in these constitutional matters, but it was not my experience that people were hanging on to every detail of such matters.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my near neighbour for giving way. If his constituency was emasculated, as mine was, a different number of issues might have been raised by those said constituents.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but the point about the Boundary Commission review is that there has been clear public consultation, with 35,000 responses from participants, meaning that this was a democratic process. The Boundary Commission has undertaken a clear process in coming to its conclusions.
People outside the House may think that September is a long way away, but it is only four full sitting weeks away, so it is sensible that we do what the Government suggest and wait for the Boundary Commission reports to be produced, for the Government to have an opportunity to introduces Orders in Council, and for the House to make a decision. I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire, who did not take an intervention from me, but he was factually wrong in saying that a motion in the House should trump what the boundary commissions are doing. I fundamentally disagree, because the commissions obey an Act of Parliament—the law of the land passed by both Houses of Parliament. I know that he does not accept the other end of the building as a legitimate part of Parliament, but it is until that is changed. Parliament passed an Act and that is the law of the land. That is what the boundary commissions are following, and a motion of the House does not trump an Act of Parliament; only another Act of Parliament can trump it. Fundamentally, I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s premise.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Is not the point that a previous Parliament, which does not bind this Parliament, passed a set of guidelines for the Boundary Commission that this Parliament thinks were not accurate and do not take in the right detail, and that that has bound the hands of the Boundary Commission? We are not complaining about the work of the Boundary Commission but, unfortunately, about the work of a previous Parliament. This Parliament, which is not bound by that Parliament, has agreed that a Bill that would change those requirements should go into Committee. All that we are asking for is a consideration of this Parliament’s views.
Mr Harper
I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman, but he is not right. The previous Parliament passed an Act that remains the law until another piece of legislation changes it. That has not happened. A motion in the House has not in itself changed the law. I shall come on to the point about process.
Mr Harper
If my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will make a little process because I am mindful of Madam Deputy Speaker’s injunction about trying to keep our remarks to nine minutes.
I want to gambol through some of the points made by the shadow Leader of the House, including what she said about numbers. As the Minister who introduced the original legislation, may I say that there is nothing magical about 600? I was asked the question at the time, and it was a manifesto commitment when we were elected in 2010 that we would reduce the size of the House to save money. It was a reduction of about 10%, but we settled on a sensible number rather than a random one. There was nothing magical about it. There was a huge suspicion among Opposition Members that that was some magical number with magical properties. It was not—it was a round number that was significantly lower than 650. The reduction would save a significant amount of money, but there was nothing particularly suspicious about the number.
The shadow Leader of the House mentioned the Opposition’s wish to move from boundary reviews every five years to every 10 years. There was a specific reason why we went for five. There is a choice to be made. My own view is that we can either have infrequent boundary reviews, which will be significant, because there will be a lot of population movement in between, or we can have more frequent boundary reviews which, by virtue of that fact, will be less disruptive because they take lesser population shifts into account. The decision made by the last but one Parliament was to have more frequent boundary reviews that individually would be less disruptive. Of course, the first one—particularly if moving from 650 Members to 600, and if there has not been one for 20 years—is clearly disruptive, but once that has taken place, subsequent reviews will be less disruptive. There is much to recommend in that approach.
Mr Harper
I took a lengthy intervention from the hon. Gentleman, so I will make a little progress.
The issue of the so-called missing voters was raised by the hon. Member for Walsall South and in a couple of interventions, including from the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith). Matt Singh from Number Cruncher Politics has done a significant piece of work on this, which was also validated by the Library. There would be an issue if the distribution of new voters who are not on the register used for the current boundary review was significantly different across the country. However, analysis shows that the distribution of new voters on the electoral roll is broadly consistent with the distribution of those on the existing registers. In other words, although the absolute number of voters is different, those voters are not significantly differently distributed across the country, which means that they will not make a material difference to the distribution of constituencies.
It is worth pointing out that we have to carry out a review and draw a line somewhere, and that as soon as we start a review, it will effectively be out of date. The Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton refers to the register for the 2017 general election. That is already out of date because there has been another one. If we take his logic, we will never have a boundary review, because every time we start, a new register arrives and is out of date.
Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)
Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that the new legislation to which he referred made it far more difficult for young people to register? That legislation was passed under a coalition Government. One party in that coalition supported an increase in tuition fees having promised that there would be no fees, and the other party knew that its support among young people was minimal to say the least.
Mr Harper
I do not agree with that at all. I would argue that the individual electoral registration system that we introduced, which addressed the accuracy and completeness of the register, as well as the fact that we enabled online registration made it much easier for people to register to vote. The vast majority of people who register now do so online, using a very straightforward piece of software that is particularly attractive to younger people. Before each of the last significant electoral events—the European Union referendum and the 2017 general election—significant numbers of people, particularly young people, seemed to have no trouble registering to vote.
I am mindful of your injunction, Madam Deputy Speaker. Given that I have taken a number of interventions, let me make my final argument for why the House should reject the motion and what we should do instead. The right way to proceed would be to allow the boundary commissioners to report. The Leader of the House could then consider those reports, bring forward Orders in Council and allow the House to take a decision. If the House decides to accept the Orders in Council, we are done. The boundary review will have been accepted, we will have new boundaries and the problem will be sorted out.
If, for some reason, the House chooses not to do that, there will be a debate about those Orders in Council and the Leader of the House will be able to reflect on that debate. If the Government decide to table a money resolution, we can then consider the Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton in the light of that debate, but with one significant change. This is a constitutional measure. When the original legislation was taken through Parliament, it was considered in Committee on the Floor of the House, rather than by a Bill Committee upstairs, meaning that every Member from every part of the United Kingdom could take part.
We should allow such a debate to take place. If the House does not support the boundary reviews and decides that it wants a money resolution and to proceed with the Bill, it should be considered on the Floor of the House so that every Member can contribute, rather than in Public Bill Committee. That is why we should wait. We should look at the results of the boundary review and allow the Government to reflect on the debate that will take place, and if the House chooses not to adopt the proposals, we can then proceed on a more sensible basis. That is why it makes sense to follow the Leader of the House’s arguments, to reject the motion, and to allow the House to consider the boundary commissions’ reports in the usual way.
Several hon. Members rose—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Just before I call the next speaker, let me be clear. When I said everybody could take nine minutes, that does include interventions. Otherwise, I will have to impose a time limit.
Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
We can all agree that boundary changes are needed. Our current boundaries are based on an electoral register that is 18 years old. There is, however, a question as to how we go about it. We have a boundary review going on at the moment, which is due to report to Parliament in September. The 2017 election gave us a minority Government who have spent the past year hobbling from week to week trying to keep themselves together. This weak Government do not have the support to win a vote in the autumn and push through controversial constitutional changes. The Tory-dominated Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee said as much in its recent report. It concluded that the Government “cannot be confident” that the House of Commons will support the implementation of the Boundary Commission’s proposals when they come before us in the autumn.
The question we are faced with now is this: do we let the Government continue in their delusion that if they put off addressing the issue until the autumn the enormous opposition to the current review will magically melt away, or do we deal with reality and put in place a realistic cross-party compromise that delivers new boundaries before the next election? My private Member’s Bill is a serious attempt at the second option, but it has been frustrated by the Government’s procedural manoeuvrings.
My Bill does three major things. First, it retains the 650 MPs we have at the moment. Secondly, it provides for boundary reviews every 10 years. Thirdly, it ensures that the 2 million people who have registered to vote since 2015 have their voices heard in the boundary review. The referendum and 2017 general election saw huge surges in voter participation, primarily among young people. I am passionate that they should be represented in the boundaries that will shape the result of future elections, but the Government are not interested in encouraging participation in our democracy. Recent voter ID pilots disenfranchised legitimate voters, many of whom already faced barriers to democratic engagement. All the while, the Government have been padding out the unelected House of Lords to avoid defeat on proposed Brexit legislation.
Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his Bill. I think it does have some good points. First, on voter ID, in my Woking constituency the turnout actually increased and we had very strict voter ID in place. Secondly, I would like to ask him a question. During all the years the Labour party was in power over the past 40 or 50 years, was there any occasion when it supported a private Member’s Bill on a constitutional or parliamentary boundary issue from a Member of the main Opposition, or, if it passed Second Reading, gave it a money resolution? Any Bill at all over the past 50 years?
Afzal Khan
I am not sure how relevant that is to this discussion, but I am a new Member and I do not know the whole history.
The Government are happy to increase the size of the unelected Chamber, at greater cost to the public purse, while cutting the elected side and discouraging participation in what goes on here.
On the money resolution, many people are put off getting involved in politics and Parliament because it is so difficult to understand what goes on here. The private Members’ Bill process is arguably the worst culprit. The process is clearly broken. The public were rightly outraged by how easily the upskirting Bill was blocked last week, even when it had the support of the Government. Similarly outrageous is how easily the Government can block a private Member’s Bill, even when it commands overwhelming cross-party support. Today marks 200 days since my Bill passed its Second Reading unanimously. Our Committee has so far met five times. We have had discussions about money resolutions, the financial sovereignty of the Crown, “Erskine May” and the Bishop of Chester, but we have not yet discussed a single line of the Bill.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the difficulty of getting private Members’ Bills through. I will have a private Member’s Bill on 23 November—it is No. 21 of 23, with the House set to sit for only five and a half hours. There is absolutely no chance of the Bill being debated and we will then be in a situation where it has to come back another time. Is one of the solutions to have more sitting Fridays for private Members’ Bills to allow more time for them to become law?
Afzal Khan
I would be quite happy if the House decided to have more Friday sittings.
I never expected to become an expert in such a narrow aspect of parliamentary procedure, but unfortunately I have spent the last few months reading up on money resolutions, rather than working towards a compromise on boundaries. I have learned that there is a clear parliamentary convention that the Government bring a money resolution after Second Reading of a private member’s Bill. In 2015, a Government Minister reaffirmed this, saying that
“once the House has given a private Member’s Bill a Second Reading, the convention is that the Government, even when they robustly oppose it, always table a money resolution”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2015; Vol. 601, c. 926.]
Since their devastating failure at the general election, the Government have gone against their words. Despite money resolutions having been tabled for many Bills further behind in the queue, none has been forthcoming for this Bill. Too weak to defeat my Bill on a vote, the Government are hiding behind procedure. With complete disregard for democracy, this minority Government are abusing their Executive power to defy the will of the House. We have had business questions, points of order, an urgent question and an emergency debate on this already. These have surprised even me by the extent of cross-party agreement. Opposition parties were united in calling on the Government to table a money resolution. Conservative Back Benchers were lining up to condemn their own Ministers.
It is a shame that we have been pushed to table this motion today. It would be much better for the Government to respect procedure, the will of the House and the will of their party, and bring forward a money resolution, but, given the Government’s continued refusal, we have been forced into this position. The Government’s time is up; we must make progress on this important Bill. To honour the conventions of the House and the will of Parliament, Members must support this motion.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I find myself in an unusual position today, because it is a matter of record that I very much support the aims of this private Member’s Bill, but I am very concerned that the motion before the House sets a dangerous precedent that undermines the role of the Government and the Executive. We have heard a lot today about the respective roles of Parliament and the Executive, and it is very important that we understand and uphold the convention of that separation of powers and that those roles are understood and maintained. I may return to that point in a minute.
I do not believe that now is the right time to be cutting 50 Members of this House. I understand the reasons why the coalition Government made that decision. At the time, I was not a Member and I did not think that it was the right thing to do, but I understood why the decision was made. However, the fact is that the world has changed since that Bill was passed. We are leaving the EU. We will be losing 73 Members of the European Parliament and all their work—I understand that we could have a debate about how much work MEPs actually do—will be coming to this place. Therefore, I do not believe that it is a sensible move to reduce the democratic representation in this House by cutting the number of MPs. That is my position.
If we want to cut the size of Parliament, let us start by cutting the number of Members of the upper Chamber. That is where I would begin.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I agree with my hon. Friend’s arguments, but I also think my right hon. Friend the Member for Gloucestershire West has found a good way forward. If we act in accordance with his suggestion, we could satisfy both courts.
Steve Double
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has jumped straight to the conclusion of my speech. I will come to that point in a moment.
This is very much a local issue for me as a Cornish Member.
Nick Smith
I want to take up the point made by the right hon. Member for Gloucestershire West when he said the then Government were trying to bring down the cost of politics by reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600. Does the hon. Gentleman accept that that argument is undermined by the fact that since 2010 more than 200 new peers have been created?
Steve Double
I understand that point.
In Cornwall, the proposed new boundaries will result in a cross-border seat between Cornwall and Devon. In many parts of the country, people might not understand why that is such a big deal, but it is felt very strongly in Cornwall, and is felt even more strongly now, because in 2014 the Government recognised the Cornish as a national minority under the framework convention of the Council of Europe, saying that doing so would afford the Cornish the same recognition as that enjoyed by the other Celtic peoples of the United Kingdom—the Scottish, the Welsh and the Irish—and no one would entertain a cross-border seat between Wales and England or Scotland and England.
Given the protection the Cornish now enjoy under the framework convention, I believe it was fundamentally wrong to have proposed this cross-border seat. If his Bill proceeds, I would ask the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) to consider a protection for Cornwall like that provided for Northern Ireland, so that the six Cornish seats might be protected and maintained in recognition of the minority status the Cornish now enjoy.
Mr Harper
I wish to make a public service announcement, Madam Deputy Speaker. In case other hon. Members wish to make interventions referring to me, I wish to let them know that my constituency is the Forest of Dean, not West Gloucestershire. It could possibly become West Gloucestershire if the current Boundary Commission proposals are voted in, but at the moment it is the Forest of Dean, and very proudly so.
Emma Hardy
The hon. Gentleman has my full sympathy when he talks about constituencies crossing boundaries. It might sound like a joke to Members, but the fact that the new constituency boundaries would cross over from east Hull into west Hull is felt very deeply by people in my area. There is a strong and long-standing division between the east and the west, yet the new boundaries would take a lump out of west Hull and add it to east Hull. The proposals do not respect the traditional areas.
Steve Double
I would not dare to comment on the sensitivities of Hull, but the hon. Lady has made her point very well.
As I said earlier, we have today discussed the role of the Executive in Parliament, but fundamentally it is the responsibility of Parliament to decide how many Members there should be. It would be wrong for the Executive to try to force through a cut when the new number does not enjoy the support of a majority in the House. It would be undemocratic. I accept the point that a Bill was passed in a previous Parliament to cut the number, but that should not be imposed on the House in the current circumstances. I ask the Government to consider allowing Members a free vote when the boundary proposals are brought before the House, so that we can express our views free from the Whips and look to our consciences in deciding whether this is right for our nation. It would be the right thing for the Government do.
Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)
I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that his point about Cornwall is shared in Wales, where the proposal is to reduce the number of seats from 40 to 29, which arguably would shift power from Westminster to Cardiff and so have significant consequences for devolution. The situation in Wales is similar to that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy). Under the new proposals, there are seats where people cannot get from one end of the constituency to the other without driving through two others on route. Does he accept that this is not a desirable proposition?
Steve Double
The boundary proposals throw up many anomalies in various parts of the country, which, in my view, are very unhelpful and, in certain cases, unacceptable. That is why I think that it would be right to reconsider the proposals.
I will not support the motion, because I believe that it is the wrong way to address this issue. Although I support the Bill, I believe that passing the motion would undermine the Government’s role, for all the reasons that have already been given today. I am content to wait, as the Government propose, to allow the new boundaries to be discussed in the House and for us then to take a view.
If there is a majority in favour of the boundaries, so be it—I will have to accept that—but my hunch is that there will not be. If the House accordingly rejects them, one way to deal with that is to pass the money resolution, and we can then consider the Bill on that basis. I would prefer us not to have to go through all that, but I accept that the right way for the House to address the issue is to allow matters to take their course on that basis. Let us see what people’s views are at the time, and then decide how to proceed. If the private Member’s Bill does make progress, however, it will have my wholehearted support.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
Before addressing the specifics of the motion, let me make a general point. I have no problem at all with the argument that constituencies should be of equal size. My concern relates far more to the fact that the Government are proposing that we reduce the number from 650 to 600, which is a completely arbitrary figure pulled, essentially, out of thin air.
Let us get one thing straight. The Government’s arguments for that reduction are completely spurious. They talk about the cost of politics, but we are already set to lose 73 Members of the European Parliament, which will deprive the public of the representation that they provide; and, of course, they are more than happy to continue stuffing the House of Lords to the brim. The whole process is, in essence, a bare-faced gerrymander.
Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend observed that there has been absolutely no word from the Government that they intend to cut the number of Ministers? What they are actually doing is proportionately increasing the size of the Executive as well.
Stephen Kinnock
My hon. Friend is clearly psychic, because that is precisely the point that I was about to make. The ratio between Front-Bench and Back-Bench MPs is, in terms of balance, vital to the way in which our democracy works. Back Benchers play a critical role in holding the Government to account. The fewer of them we have, in whichever party happens to be in power, the fewer are able to fulfil their public duty, and that will reduce, critically, the amount of scrutiny that is given to vitally important issues. Arguably the most important issue that our country has faced since the second world war is coming towards us, so the House will have an increased workload, and the role of Back Benchers in holding the Executive to account will become even more important. Workloads will increase for not only for Westminster, but for Cardiff, Edinburgh and Belfast.
There is also a compelling constituency reason to undermine the argument for reducing the number from 650 to 600. There is real concern about the impact of the reduction on the social and cultural dynamics of each constituency. It is crucial for MPs to represent areas with natural communities and shared interests.
Emma Hardy
I made a point earlier about Hull East and Hull West. There is also a proud fishing tradition among the Hessle Road community in Hull, which goes back for years. The new boundary will divide that community—a community that has existed for hundreds of years. Does my hon. Friend agree that that should be looked at again?
Stephen Kinnock
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Some absurd things are being thrown up by this review. For example, in my constituency the proposal was to have a boundary line which separated the shopping centre from the high street. It is utterly absurd and ludicrous.
The fact is that wherever we draw the line on a map when driven by a rigid mathematical equation we carve up communities, force unnatural alliances and throw communities together in ways that do not make sense and that end up deeply alienating the people we are elected to represent.
Rachel Maclean
The hon. Gentleman is right to identify these critical issues that affect communities all over the country, as Members on both sides of the House have done, but does he not agree that this is precisely why the Boundary Commission is doing its work, during which he and all of us, and members of the public, have had the opportunity to put forward precisely such views, which the commission will consider and then produce proposals?
Stephen Kinnock
The fundamental problem with the logic of the hon. Lady’s argument is that this is about the terms of reference that the commission was given: it was given terms of reference based on 600 and on a very narrow quota of 5%. Based on that, the Boundary Commission had its hands tied and inevitably was going to end up with some of the completely absurd proposals we have seen.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
Does my hon. Friend also agree with the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the previous Parliament, which said that the changes every five years will mean there is great disruption for communities meaning that they never settle down? It will also cost the Exchequer more because there is a five-year rotation. The Bill’s proposal would change that to 10 years, provide safety and security for communities to build, and save the Exchequer money.
Stephen Kinnock
I agree with my hon. Friend. It provides that stability and continuity and also, given the 7.5% quota, the changes would not be that radical even on a 10-year basis, so it is an incremental change.
Why are the Government ploughing ahead? The bottom line is that the entire boundary review process has been a bare-faced gerrymander, and that is combined with the use of procedural devices and backstairs manoeuvring to block the will of the House. That is further evidence of the Government’s willingness to abuse the power vested in the them. The Procedure Committee’s 2013 report concluded:
“Government policy is not to refuse a money or ways and means resolution to a bill which has passed second reading.”
The view of the Procedure Committee must be paramount in this case.
The Government clearly have no respect for this House or our democracy more widely: first, there was their £1 billion bribe to the Democratic Unionist party and now there is this. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), who unfortunately is not in his place now, is therefore absolutely right to push the Government to do right by our democracy and to bring forward his Bill.
It is essential that 2.1 million new voters are heard. It is essential that my constituents and many of the constituents across this House are fairly and properly represented. And it is essential that this Government are prevented from riding roughshod over our democracy.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), although I will be taking issue with some of the more lurid assertions he made in his speech.
I recognise the importance of this issue. I started my political career canvassing in 2009-10 and I vividly remember the expenses scandal and the anger of our constituents and voters on the doorstep. I remember, too, the calls at that time to reform this House and to look at some of these very important issues. It is therefore right that the Government at that time kicked off this process: they appointed the Boundary Commission and set about this important work as part of the wider work to reform politics and cut the cost of politics and bring transparency and decency back into this place. However, I have trouble with, and cannot agree with, some of the arguments that have been advanced in today’s debate. The debate seems to be based on a suggestion that the Boundary Commission’s original terms of reference were flawed—
Rachel Maclean
We have heard that a few times. Of course, I was not here at that time, but in my opinion, the arguments that have been brought forward today do not stack up. Did someone want to intervene on me?
Sir Desmond Swayne
I’ll have a go! The issue before us is that private Members’ Bills are determined by a queue which is the result of a ballot. The Government are accused of manipulating the queue by withholding money resolutions. Interestingly, what happened last Friday was an attempt by the Government to manipulate the queue by taking a Bill that was No. 8 and getting it a Second Reading on the nod, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) has attracted universal opprobrium for preventing that. That is the irony.
Rachel Maclean
Well, I think “Follow that if you dare” is an apposite comment. I thank my right hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will proceed with my remarks.
The hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) is not in his place at the moment, but he is an honourable man and I respect his campaign on this issue. Of course he has garnered a lot of sympathy across the House. We have heard about the issues that our constituents have with boundaries, and they are valid concerns. It is right that we should be airing them in this House. However, the assertion seems to be that this private Member’s Bill is the best way of dealing with those issues, and I do not agree with that.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle
The hon. Lady says that she does not understand the flaws of the previous Bill. The only way to correct the flaws of a previous Bill is to bring forward an alternative Bill. Surely, taking figures not from an election but from a lull period in the electoral register, reducing the number of seats and not allowing the Boundary Commission to take into account census figures, demographics, community boundaries and county boundaries are all reasons why—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Order. Interventions need to be brief. There are plenty of people waiting to speak, and it is not fair if interventions are too long.
Rachel Maclean
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. It is not that I do not understand; it is that I do not agree. Those are two different things.
We have here an assertion that a private Member’s Bill, which was debated on a Friday, can better reflect this very serious issue than the Boundary Commission itself. The Boundary Commission has carried out thousands of hours of investigation and heard submissions from members of the public up and down the country. It has given all our constituents an opportunity to have an input on these important issues. That is the way to do democracy, and that is the way to deal with this important issue.
Steve Double
I am listening carefully to my hon. Friend, and she is making some very good points. On that last point, the overwhelming majority of the thousands of people in Cornwall who submitted representations to the Boundary Commission do not want a cross-border seat. However, the legislation as it stands does not allow for there not to be such a seat; there has to be one. The views of local people cannot be taken into consideration because the legislation does not allow it.
Rachel Maclean
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I would not dare to comment on the sensitivities of Cornwall and Devon, but I am sure that his comments have been heard and that they are very valid. He made some good suggestions in his speech about how to proceed—or possibly it was my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). There have been some very good suggestions from people who are much more expert on this topic than me, and I think we should go further with those.
I would like to address the point about the lack of an ability for voters to register. That argument seems to have been used several times to suggest that we should stop the Boundary Commission’s work or that it is flawed, but this issue is always going to exist. However, we have recently seen some excellent work by the Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who has brought forward a number of successful initiatives. Government money has been committed in order to get more voters on to the register, with hugely successful results. Surely this is the right way to tackle this issue. We need to look carefully at what is preventing voters from registering, and to make it easier for them. It is now possible to register online, for example, and I welcome that.
The work is bearing fruit, and it is the way to tackle the issue, rather than bringing forward private Members’ Bills to undermine something that has been going through Parliament for some considerable time. It seems that we are tying ourselves up in knots. My constituents would be surprised to hear that the Government are accused of gerrymandering or trying to undermine democracy when they have seen, week after week, attempts by Opposition Members to undermine Brexit—the biggest democratic expression of will that this country has ever seen.
I reject the assertion that has been levelled at the Government and the Conservative Members. Democracy needs to work through this process. Members have made many sensible suggestions as to how sensible concerns can be taken on board, but if we allowed today’s motion to pass, that would be an abuse of process and would set a dangerous precedent that I do not support. I will therefore not be voting for the motion today.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I hear what the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) says, but I do not agree with her. However, I do agree with the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). The problem is that the House needs an early indication from the Government of what they propose to do with the boundary review’s proposal, as laid by the Government, to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600.
I know that enough Conservatives feel unhappy with what the proposal implies. It was always going to be controversial, notwithstanding the fact that the Government thought that they had the majority of the House behind them. My contribution will be short, because I just want the Government to test the will of the House to see whether they have the support to reduce the number of MPs to 600. I do not believe that they have that support. It would be much better to clear that matter out of the way and avoid the boundary commissions ending up in a stramash, with them feeling that they have wasted a lot of time in trying to take forward something that is unacceptable to the House. I hope that they will be able to start again and carry out a process that they would find a lot easier without being under the imprimatur of having to reduce the number of MPs by a ridiculous amount.
The boundary review could not achieve the 600 figure without doing things to my seat and to that of the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay whereby we would end up with something that is fundamentally flawed. The House has always understood that the constituencies are based on not just number, but location.
Steve Double
I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I used to feel very much like him, but does he agree that we are now so close to the boundary commissions’ reports—only four sitting weeks—that we as may well wait? Voting on the commissions’ submissions will be the test that he talks about.
Dr Drew
That might well be true but, to be fair, the boundary commissions must to some extent try to pre-empt things and read into what has happened in successive debates and discussions—not necessarily just in the Chamber, but as result of what has happened in the Chamber. We should have an early vote and clear away some of the unnecessary disagreement.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) said, this is entirely based on the idea that we can just chop 50 people out of this House without making a difference, but that is fundamentally flawed. This is either gerrymandering for party political advantage or it is just about cost saving. As I said on Monday, the easiest way to save costs would be to get rid of the other place. That might be controversial, but it would be more democratically acceptable to many of our constituents who feel that this primary Chamber should be protected. Some of our constituents will unfairly end up in a constituency that they do not know, despite coming from one in which they had at least some idea of what the location meant, with the knowledge of who their MP was and that they could feel some confidence in them.
Let us get on with it and have an early vote, let us dump the notion that we can just chop 50 MPs, and let us go back to 650 MPs. We can then move forward. Whether we do that through the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) or some other device, let us do it. That is the fair approach, and I think it is what the vast majority of our constituents want.
I hope that the Government will take notice and that we can have a clear system in which we stick to 650 MPs, with constituency boundaries that mean something, rather than what we would end up with if we went to 600 MPs. I think that everyone would be largely satisfied with that.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to take part in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew). He said that he agreed with my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). If he follows my hon. Friend’s arguments exactly, he will be voting with the Government in the Lobby, so I look forward to seeing whether he agrees or not.
I have taken a keen interest in private Members’ Bills in my short time in the House. Some have accused me of taking a rather curious interest, but I blame my hon. Friends the Members for Torbay (Kevin Foster) and for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), neither of whom is able to speak in the debate because of their other duties.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills promoted the NHS (Charitable Trusts Etc) Act 2016—Peter Pan and Wendy’s Bill—which was the first private Member’s Bill in which I participated on a Friday. I have successfully taken a presentation Bill, the Road Traffic Offenders (Surrender of Driving Licences Etc) Bill, through Second Reading and Committee, only for it to be objected to on Third Reading. Yes, there was a lone voice of objection, but it was not the voice of my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope); it was another Member. I will return to that procedure in due course.
I entirely understand the passion of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) and his concern for piloting his Bill through this place. Taking legislation through the House is a difficult and treacherous business, and perhaps it should be, because surely it should not be easy to place legislation on the statute book. The one consolation of losing my private Member’s Bill was that it would not have succeeded in any event, because a general election got in the way, although of course that is rather cold comfort.
The motion does not touch on the merits of the boundary changes, but it is important that I express my view, as other hon. Members have done, because it seems beyond argument that there should be an equalisation of the number of constituents in each constituency. Doubtless there will be exceptions from the south to the north, and both my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Seely) and the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) would argue passionately for why their constituency should be of a different size.
At the moment, for example, we have Arfon, a constituency of about 41,000, whereas North West Cambridgeshire has more than 93,000 electors. I have an electorate of 65,000, and also in my county is the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), which has an electorate of over 82,000. My other hon. Friends in Dorset have electorates ranging between 72,000 and 75,000. They may well think that I have an easy time of it and am slightly less busy than they are. I, of course, would argue that that is not the case, but there is a point about reorganising the boundaries to equalise the electorates.
Dorset, not unlike Cornwall and other areas, presents challenges. On the current iteration of the proposals, there will be a cross-county seat and we will lose a Member of Parliament. Be that as it may, I firmly believe that reorganisation and the equalisation of constituencies is beyond argument.
I have a novel point to make, which is not always possible for the last Government Back Bencher to speak. G. K. Chesterton is not quoted often enough in this place, and I think that I have time to read out the full principle of Chesterton’s fence—the principle that reforms should not be made until the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is properly understood. I will quote this section in full:
“There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, ‘I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.’ To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: ‘If you don’t see the use of it…Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.’”
We would be well advised to take advice from that principle in this case, in two respects. The first is in relation to private Members’ Bills when one Member objects; the second is in relation to the financial privilege afforded to the Government of the day.
I was bitterly disappointed, of course, when my Bill was objected to by just one Member—I repeat that it was not my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch. When that procedure was raised in a point of order by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), Mr Speaker rightly noted that a single voice objecting to a Bill does not count just on a Friday. He said:
“I should point out, in fairness and for accuracy, so that no one is misled, that the rule about a single objection applies similarly to any other business before the House after the moment of interruption. —[Official Report, 18 June 2018; Vol. 643, c. 50.]
He then referred to Standing Order No. 9(6).
Before we look at procedures and say, “Let’s just get rid of that,” we should first look at what their purpose is, and then at whether they serve that purpose and, if not, how we should reform them. On reform, the second area to which all this applies is the financial privilege afforded to the Government of the day, whereby there is a clear constitutional right to initiate financial resolutions. That is my novel point: Chesterton’s fence, which should be spoken about more often. Perhaps Chesterton should also be quoted more widely in such debates.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend’s point about objections relates to my point about the proper consideration of the Bill. One reason why we should not accept the motion is because this is a constitutional matter. If we were to proceed with the Bill’s Committee stage, that should be done not upstairs, where only a relatively small number of Members are able to participate, but on the Floor of the House. However, that should not happen until we have had chance to consider the boundary review proposals.
Michael Tomlinson
As so often, I am grateful to my right hon. Friend. What he says is right, and it links to my initial point that it should not be easy for us to make laws in this place—there should be challenge and full debate, both on Second Reading and in Committee.
We should look forward to the Boundary Commission bringing back its proposals. My right hon. Friend made another astute point when he said that that is only four sitting weeks away. We can wait that long for the commission to bring back its proposals so that they can be introduced and debated in this place. Let us then see what the consequences of that are. It would be rash and foolish—it is too soon—to support the motion today, and I will not be doing so.
David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), who recited G. K. Chesterton —that is a new one and I might try it tomorrow in the Public Bill Committee. I have the distinct pleasure of leading on this Bill for the Scottish National party. Although I am thoroughly enjoying our standing engagement to meet on a Wednesday morning to discuss a motion to adjourn, I really think it would be better for the Committee to move on to discuss the substance of the Bill brought forward by the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan).
The House will recall that this Bill was given a Second Reading, unanimously, on 1 December 2017, after the Government’s attempts to defeat the closure motion were voted down by 229 votes to 44. Hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, will talk about how we have to wait only four sitting weeks, but they do not mention that this Bill passed its Second Reading last year. Frustratingly, it then took some 159 days to establish the Bill Committee, which has met on five or six occasions now. As you will know, Madam Deputy Speaker, the job of the Bill Committee is to scrutinise the proposed legislation clause by clause, line by line and, if necessary, to scrutinise any competent amendments.
As I set out on 1 December last year, the SNP broadly supports this Bill. However, it is not a perfect Bill and I am seeking to amend it in one specific regard. We certainly welcome the relaxation of requirements so that the electorate per constituency has to be to within 7.5% of the electoral quota to preserve local representation. However, I am concerned that the Bill contains a provision in clause 1 for a fixed number of MPs for Northern Ireland but not for Scotland. I shall certainly seek to table amendments to that effect in Committee but, of course, I am currently prohibited from doing so because the Government have not granted a money resolution. That is troubling, because when he gave evidence to the Procedure Committee in 2013, the then Leader of the House of Commons, Andrew Lansley, said:
“To my knowledge, Government has provided the money resolutions…whenever we have been asked to do so.”
A 2013 report by the Procedure Committee, of which I am a proud member, concluded:
“Government policy is not to refuse a money or ways and means resolution to a bill which has passed second reading.”
I understand that Conservative party policy is to cut the number of MPs to 600, and I am not questioning the Conservatives’ entitlement to hold that legitimate view, but we all know that there is a parliamentary majority in the House for retaining 650 MPs while committing to review what I accept are old boundaries. The current boundaries came into force when I was 11 years old and I am now 28. I do not think any of us contest the need to look at the boundaries again, but we do contest the concept of reducing the number of MPs from 650 to 600.
Trying to kill the Bill in Committee by grinding Members into submission or holding up the parliamentary process is not clever, and nor do I believe that it will actually work.
Michael Tomlinson
Will the hon. Gentleman accept that the Government are not trying to kill the Bill? As the Leader of the House set out clearly in her speech, we are waiting for the boundary commissions to come back in four short weeks. Thereafter, we will consider the Bill’s position. We are not trying to kill the Bill; we are waiting.
David Linden
No, the Government have essentially treated the Bill like the bins: they have put it outside and are waiting for it to fester. We all believe that Parliament is taking back control—that we are leaving the European Union and this is going to be a sovereign Parliament. On 1 December last year, Parliament gave the Bill its Second Reading and the House resolved that it should go into Committee. That is the issue. It is not for the Government to decide that they are just going to leave it there in some sort of political purgatory. That is the fundamental point.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
I serve on the Procedure Committee with the hon. Gentleman and am always interested in what he has to say. He is making an interesting case, but is he against the idea of reducing the House’s size from 650 to 600 MPs? That is one of the two issues that really ought to be considered today.
David Linden
I fundamentally object to the number of MPs being cut from 650 to 600. My view is that we could cut 59 MPs from this Chamber by Scotland being independent, but until such a time as the people of Scotland vote for that in a democratic referendum, I believe that this House, which is taking back lots of powers from the European Union, should have MPs who are able to scrutinise the Government.
I am mindful that the terms of the motion do not allow for a rehash of last year’s Second Reading debate, and nor is it about the general principles of the Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill. The motion before us seeks the leave of the House to permit the Bill Committee to move from parliamentary purgatory to legislative scrutiny. Arguably, the motion is perhaps not the sexiest that the House has ever considered, although perhaps I think it is: right hon. and hon. Members will see that it is largely procedural. I must confess that when I saw the motion on the Order Paper, my initial reaction was to lament how disappointing it is that rarely allocated Opposition slots are being taken up to unblock the logjam of Back-Bench Bills, but the reality is that the Government have caused this problem.
Now, more than ever, Westminster has become a place of limited democracy, as perhaps best exemplified by the utterly broken private Member’s Bill system. On a point of principle, I fundamentally disagree with the notion that the main way for Back-Bench MPs to introduce Bills is via a lottery or a ballot. I have more chance of winning a raffle at the Garrowhill Primary School fair than I do of being able to introduce a private Member’s Bill through the route available.
Michael Tomlinson
The hon. Gentleman could always do what I did and queue up for the chance to introduce a presentation Bill. He would then have the opportunity to get his own Bill on the statute, as well. Many Members from different parties have followed the procedure.
David Linden
The hon. Gentleman is right, but the presentation Bill that he queued to introduce under Standing Order No. 57 was defeated—it was objected to —so there was not actually a way to get it on the statute book.
I do not agree with some of the tactics deployed, when it suits them, by what some in this place have dubbed “the awkward squad”. Over the weekend, the hon. Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) rightly found himself the centre of what I can only presume was much wanted public attention, after he objected to necessary English legislation introduced by the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) that would stop perverts taking photos up ladies’ skirts. The hon. Member for Christchurch appears to have a long-standing, albeit selective, view that private Members’ Bills should not receive parliamentary approval. I must confess that I was somewhat surprised when the House considered the Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone). During exceptionally short proceedings, the hon. Member for Christchurch did not object to the money resolution that evening, and I see that the Bill, which was 92nd in the queue for this Session, has now reached Report stage.
Perversely, Bills that have passed Second Reading on sitting Fridays but do not have the support of the Government have been kicked into the parliamentary purgatory that is Public Bill Committees. Indeed, some have not even got that far. The UK Government have failed to heed calls for reforms of the private Member’s Bill process, and now they break their own conventions and ignore the will of Parliament. The Procedure Committee issued reports calling for major changes to the process in September 2013, March 2014, September 2015, April 2016 and October 2016. I certainly hope that the Procedure Committee will hold another inquiry very soon. Their changes have largely been ignored by the Government. They have noted that the procedures
“disenfranchise Members who may wish to support a bill being promoted by a colleague and are misleading to the public and to the interest groups who seek to use it to advance legislative change”.
The problem is that this is a Government who are still acting as though they have a parliamentary majority. They do not appear to engage properly in Opposition day debates, and they certainly do not vote in the vast majority of them. If the House divides this evening, I will be very interested to see whether the Government take part. They have stuffed the Standing Committees of this House with a majority of their Members, even though they are a minority Government. They have done their level best to ensure that the Democratic Unionist party has been given £1 billion to ensure that some of their legislation gets through; and they have dealt with private Members’ Bills in a way that is exactly consistent with that approach.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman and I enjoy our sparring on Wednesday mornings, and I look forward to doing so again tomorrow. I have just a couple of points to make. First, the Democratic Unionist party has not been given a single penny. That money is for the people of Northern Ireland, and it is important to make that point. Secondly, the House decided the composition of Public Bill Committees, not the Government.
David Linden
We all remember the photographs of the former Government Chief Whip, the Prime Minister and the leader of the Democratic Unionist party. I don’t know; maybe it was a coincidence that it was announced that £1 billion was going to Northern Ireland on the same day that the confidence and supply agreement was signed. I am no expert.
The way in which the Government continue to deal with private Members’ Bills makes a mockery of this place. In essence, the Government are treating the House with sheer contempt. The Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill is, I am afraid, probably just the tip of the ice berg. The Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil) is also still awaiting a money resolution. Indeed, it has not even gone into Committee. His Bill has not even got to the pleasurable stage of meeting on a Wednesday morning to consider a motion to adjourn, yet my hon. Friend has cross-party support. I think that the reason why the Government are stonewalling that Bill is that, again, they realise that there is a majority for it in the House of Commons.
I am mindful of time, and I will close by saying that the Government are playing fast and loose with the procedures of this House. They might think they are being big and clever, but they must remember that one day—perhaps sooner rather than later—they will be on the Opposition Benches and they could be subject to the same type of behaviour. The Government risk setting a precedent that may just one day come back to bite them on the bottom.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
I am not one of the awkward squad, I trust, in the Chamber today. I hope that I am a paragon of reasonableness, but today I really must protest because my constituency is the elephant in the room. It is one of the two largest constituencies in the United Kingdom. I have the honour to represent the counties of Caithness, Sutherland—a vast county—and part of Ross and Cromarty. It is a gargantuan, gigantic constituency. I would like to share some facts about it with the House.
The journey from Evanton in the south-east to John O’Groats is 103 miles; it takes me two hours and 21 minutes. It takes two hours and 49 minutes to drive the 115 miles from Lochinver in the south-west to Wick in the north-east. My constituency covers 3,675 square miles. To give hon. Members an idea of just how big that is—although I know that some already understand —we could fit all 73 London constituencies in my constituency, and have room left over around the sides.
Members might think that, although I am not in the awkward squad, I am mumping and moaning today. But I get about. I am young, fit and enthusiastic, but with the best will in the world, it is very hard to cover the communities within my constituency, even when driving hither and thither at maximum speed. The point is that constituencies and communities have a right of access to their elected Member. Despite doing what I hope is my best, if there is a shortfall in what I can do in terms of reaching out, why would I not suggest that there is a slight democratic deficit?
The hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who is no longer in his place, said that the identification and identity of communities is colossally important. I can tell hon. Members that somebody speaking Gaelic in the south-west of my constituency and somebody living in Caithness not only do not speak the same language; the cultures are also very different indeed. It makes as much sense as putting Aberdeen city with Argyllshire. It just does not make sense.
The proposal of the Boundary Commission for Scotland would make my constituency even larger—massively larger. We can talk in this place until the cows comes home about money resolutions and private Members’ Bill, but when an idea is stark raving bonkers, like this one, it just has to be said loud and clear. We have heard a quotation from G. K. Chesterton, so let me give the House a famous quotation by P. G. Wodehouse, who said:
“It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”
Well, today I do have a bit of a grievance.
In closing, I take comfort from the words of the right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) and others on both sides of the Chamber. I do hope that some sense can prevail. My constituents talk about many things, and one of them is the prospect of making my constituency even bigger. I may not hold the seat, as I may be voted out, but whoever represents the seat will have a very difficult time representing those good people if the constituency gets any bigger.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
It has been the honour of my life to represent the constituency in which I was born for the last 21 years. For all but a brief and unheralded period as a Whip, I have been a Back-Bench MP. I do not regard my job as second rate to any shadow Minister or Minister, as the role of constituency MP is a vital one in our democracy and political discourse. Everything that has happened over the past 20 years has made me feel that even more. Whether on Brexit, austerity and the huge effects of significant cutbacks in public expenditure that have fallen on the poorest in our constituencies, people who have had hard times finding work, people who cannot find homes or people who feel that the NHS is not meeting their needs, it is our job to represent those voices. Reducing the number of constituencies would make that job harder. It would make it more difficult to represent the voiceless and therefore to keep our political show on the road.
Under the first proposals from the Boundary Commission, my constituency of Mitcham and Morden was to be split across five different parliamentary constituencies. That is the fault not of the Boundary Commission, but of the rules that it was required to enforce. One fairly moderately sized London constituency was to be split between Streatham, Wimbledon, Tooting, Sutton and Cheam, and Carshalton and Wallington—a total of four different London boroughs. Whether I continue to be the MP for Mitcham and Morden or not is not the point. My constituency has deep and abiding ties that bind it, including hundreds of years of history in the parishes of Morden and Mitcham. People believe that they live in an area, that they are part of a community and that they know who to blame when things go wrong.
So why do it? Why reduce the number to 600? Why not 700? Why not 550? Why 600? People talk about equalisation. What do we mean by equalisation? We mean the numbers in the parliamentary constituency. But what about the people who live in my constituency, some 11,000 of them, who cannot vote in a parliamentary election but can vote in a local election? When somebody comes to my advice surgery, I—like, I am sure, all Members of this House—do not ask them, “Are you an EU citizen? Can you vote in a parliamentary election? Are you on the electoral register?” That is not my job. It is my job to represent my constituents, whatever their status, to the best of my ability.
Equalisation—what equalisation? What list, what community, and what factors? We know that young people are less likely to be registered than older people. We know that certain ethnic minorities are less likely to be registered. We know that private renters are less likely to be registered. We know all those things but we wish to exclude those people and have more of them living in some urban constituencies. Is a poor black boy not as entitled to be represented as an older woman from the home counties? Equalisation—what equalisation?
We hear about saving money. I have a suggestion: if we want to save public money, which is a perfectly laudable suggestion, why not introduce automatic electoral registration? Victoria state in Australia, with a population of 3.5 million, managed to get 95% accuracy on its register by employing five people. In my borough of Merton, there are currently 155,841 people on a register of some sort, and we employ more than five people to get that number of people on to it. So if we want to save money, we could get a better form of electoral registration.
But this is not about any of those things. It is not about representation. It is not about saving money. It is not about equalisation. It is about the profound effect of the American Republican party on the Conservative party. It is about issues of electoral registration, presenting ID at polling stations, gerrymandering boundaries and breaking up communities. I have had the absolute honour to fight for President Barack Obama, as candidate and President, in two elections. I have been to Ohio; I have been to Virginia; and I have seen where they deregister people, taking away their right to vote, and gerrymander their boundaries. That provokes anger and discontent, and people feel that they are not a part of legitimate society.
I urge one nation Conservatives to think about the impact of these reforms on our society at a time of great turbulence. Some things matter more than small issues of political expediency. This is about the way we run our democracy. The fact that our boundaries are determined by rules and not by party political preference is really important to us. We need to have a cold, hard look at what the impact of these boundary changes will be and what this says about us and our democracy.
Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)
We have heard today from G. K. Chesterton and P. G. Wodehouse, which is of course a pleasure. Nevertheless, it is a matter of regret that we have had to hold this debate because the Government should long ago have respected the wishes of this House and proceeded to move the necessary money resolution. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) for persevering in holding the Government to account.
The Public Bill Committee, of which I am a member, has now had six sittings to try to scrutinise this important Bill, which passed its Second Reading in this Chamber by 229 to 44 votes. However, we have been unable to consider a single clause because of the highly unusual step taken by the Government to refuse to table a money resolution.
Michael Tomlinson
I think it is in fact better than the hon. Gentleman stated, because those were the votes on the closure motion. I believe the House voted unanimously for the Bill’s Second Reading.
Christian Matheson
I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for correcting me, and he is absolutely right.
This has not only become a routine drain on parliamentary time and resources for everyone involved, but is deeply disrespectful to Members across the House who sent a strong message to the Government last December that they wanted the Bill to be considered in Committee. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton that it is now 200 days since that vote took place. It is vital that we uphold parliamentary sovereignty, which is why I am pleading for all Members across the House to support the motion.
We are where we are, and I pay tribute to hon. Members for their participation in the debate. The right hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper)—or, dare I say it, West Gloucestershire?—talked about the fact that his constituency might become West Gloucestershire. Of course, he would also have to be adopted by the association to be the candidate, but I am sure that it would have no problem adopting him. He mentioned the 35,000 responses to the Boundary Commission’s review. I will hazard a guess that most of those responses were complaining about how daft the review was, based on the parameters set by the Government. I will say one thing about him: he has been an assiduous attender of the Bill Committee, even when only a motion to adjourn was moved, and I pay tribute to him for being one of the few Conservative Members who has taken that procedure seriously.
My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, who is an old friend, told us that he has become an expert in parliamentary procedure. With that expertise, he reminded us that the convention is that the Government always table a money resolution on Second Reading.
The hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) gave a brave speech and said that the circumstances in the world have changed. He talked about the motion setting a dangerous precedent, but I put it to him that the dangerous precedent is surely the Government ignoring the will of the House by ignoring the Second Reading vote.
The hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) talked about her introduction to politics in 2009-10 and all the demands for parliamentary reform at that time. I suggest that those demands were for reform of the expenses system, which is what was causing all the difficulties around this place, not of parliamentary boundaries.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Drew) presented us with an easy solution to the problem: an early vote, so that the Government could test the will of the House on a reduction from 650 to 600 seats, which would save time and resources. He made the important point that we need to remember that we represent place as well as simply numbers.
Then we come to the G. K. Chesterton fan, the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson), who talked about the difficult and treacherous business of taking forward legislation. He is right that legislation should be difficult and should be tested, but if there is any treachery, dare I say it?—I hope I am not being unparliamentary—it might lie on the Government’s side of the House, with Ministers not respecting the will of the House on Second Reading.
The hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) reflected on his experiences on the Procedure Committee and reminded us that money resolutions are always provided. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) said that his constituency is 103 miles one way by 115 the other—as big as London—and that the new boundaries would make it even more impossible to manage.
Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who represents the constituency of her birth, talked about the history of those parishes providing a real sense of community. She reminded us that our role here is to represent the voiceless, and she spoke of the 11,000 residents of her constituency who are not on the register but nevertheless need representation. It has been an excellent debate.
Mr Goodwill
People not being on the electoral register is not just an urban issue. In constituencies such as mine, many people have second homes and are not on the electoral register. They vote in local elections in many cases, but they require help from their MP if they have problems concerning the local authority. It is not just in inner-city constituencies that there are more constituents than the number on the register.
Christian Matheson
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Of course, someone who has a second home is perhaps registered elsewhere, but my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden was making a particular point about those who are not on any register but still require representation.
The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton seeks to resolve a controversial 5% variation in the size of constituencies. As we all know, under the new rules outlined in the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Act 2011, all constituencies are required to have a quota between 95% and 100% of the national quota. The consequences of that rigid 5% threshold are that some communities will be split up, while others are merged and dragged into other communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock) discussed that and spoke about the crazy effect on his high street, which would be split, with the shopping centre on one side and other shops on the other.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee recommended that that constraint be relaxed to 10%—a proposal rejected by the then Government in 2015—so I welcome the flexibility that my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton has shown. He has listened to Conservative Members who believe that the 10% quota is too large, and he has taken their views into consideration. Relaxing the quota to 7.5% would mean that a majority of constituencies would not change at each election, which would strike the right balance and mean that each boundary review would be less disruptive.
The reduction in the number of MPs from 650 to 600 runs contrary to good sense in many ways. At a time when we are planning to leave the EU—hon. Members made this point—and supposedly return control to the UK, we need to maintain numbers in the House. All that the reduction in numbers would achieve is a reduction in the ability of Parliament to scrutinise the Government—another point made in the debate. At the same time, the Government have appointed more unelected peers to the other place than any other Government, so it is absurd that they should reduce numbers in the elected Chamber.
The Hansard Society did not find any rationale for the Government’s decision, noting that there was
“real concern”
that the number had been
“plucked from thin air—600 simply being a neat number.”
Cutting 50 MPs represents a crisis of scrutiny—a concern expressed by the Electoral Reform Society and by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon. Finally, it is vital that constituencies represent the communities that they serve.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
There is no better example of that than my constituency and the number of people I represent. Thirteen thousand people registered to vote in the 2017 general election, increasing the size of the electorate by nearly 10,000. Under the Government’s proposals, that community would be decimated because of the arbitrary point about numbers. The Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan) absolutely rectifies that and puts the registration date at the right point.
Christian Matheson
My hon. Friend gives an example of communities that are not reflected in parliamentary constituencies. My fear is that there are plenty of examples across the House, not simply in Leeds, where that would happen. We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden and plenty of others that that link would be broken.
A major flaw with the boundary reviews is that they were based on the December 2015 electoral register. Since then, as we have heard, over 2 million people have been added to the electoral roll, following the increase in registration for the EU referendum and the 2017 general election. Some Government Members argue that the date for any boundary review is inevitably a snapshot. However, 2015 was not just any year. It was the year 600,000 people dropped off the electoral register after the Government’s decision to rush through the introduction of individual electoral registration, against the advice of the Electoral Commission.
Mr Harper
It is absolutely right that a significant number of entries were removed from the register, but the point was that many of them were not legitimate. Individual electoral registration was introduced to deal with accuracy and completeness. Having lots of people on the register who do not really exist is not a good thing—it is a bad thing—and it is good that we fixed it.
Christian Matheson
I have no doubt that electoral registers have to be cleaned up, but I cannot believe that there were 2 million people on the electoral register who simply did not exist. The right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby (Mr Goodwill) discussed people with second homes. I am on two electoral registers, as I have a place in London because of this job, but the numbers are few and far between, and I do not believe that 2 million have dropped off for any reason other than that when IER was introduced it made it more difficult to register.
My hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden referred to Republican party tactics that I would describe as voter suppression. I am not suggesting this of the Government, but I would be concerned if those tactics found their way to this side of the Atlantic and it became harder for people to vote and take part in the democratic process.
Rachel Maclean
I feel that I need to put it on the record that I completely refute any assertion that I, as a Member of this House, have been influenced by the tactics of the Republican party on the other side of the Atlantic.
Christian Matheson
I consider that point to have been put on the record.
London lost almost 100,000 voters, despite experiencing a rise in population. However, the bigger issue—bigger than the details of the flawed boundary review—is the relationship between the Government and this House. This House gave the Bill a Second Reading with a hefty majority; indeed, it did so unanimously, as the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole reminded us. It should not be for the Government to ignore the wishes of the House, which were expressed so clearly on Second Reading. If we are taking back control, that control should reside in this House, not with the Executive. Running away from debate by using procedural chicanery gives a dreadful impression of the Government, so our proposal tonight is to allow the Bill to continue its detailed consideration in Committee.
I know that, like me, many hon. Members across the House cherish the status of this House and its sovereignty. They might not agree with the aims of the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton, but they will understand that it is wrong to block its passage by anything other than a vote in this House. For that reason, and to stand up for the primacy of the House of Commons, I invite all hon. Members to join me tonight in supporting the motion and allowing democracy to thrive—not to vote against the Government, but to vote for this House.
The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Chloe Smith)
It is a pleasure to close this Opposition day debate. I welcome the contributions from hon. and right hon. Members from across the House. May I take this opportunity to welcome the new hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who I can see in her place? I hope she has enjoyed this afternoon’s debate, in the first of many weeks in which she will be participating in the House’s business. It is a pleasure to see her in her place. As a fellow by-election winner, I can sympathise with her, given her no doubt frenetic first week. I wish her every success in her work, as does the whole House.
We heard from the inimitable hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who gave us a tour of his views on many things and who likes to paint himself as a peacemaker. I for one in the Government would welcome that role from him. I look forward to spending many more pleasurable hours in his company, talking about, for example, the frameworks that we will put in place on our departure from the European Union and how they will add to the powers of the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and a future Northern Ireland Assembly.
I also welcome the remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who helpfully reminded the House that the debate on the order relating to the current boundary review is but four sitting weeks away. Like him, I think that that is a reasonable period to be able to anticipate.
I thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Afzal Khan), who rightfully spoke on his Bill. May I say what a pleasure it is to spend time with him and the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) every Wednesday morning? We are endlessly entertained by the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who most recently did his best to list every single Member of the House of Lords. As you will know, Mr Speaker, it is not in order in any debate in this House simply to read out a list, so he was gently guided back towards a better form of debate.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who reminded us that Cornwall and the issues of the Cornish must never be shared and must never be split asunder. Only a few nights ago, we had a debate I remember very clearly, relating to another part of my portfolio, on the representation of the Cornish national identity, which I look forward to reprising with him.
We heard from the hon. Member for Aberavon (Stephen Kinnock), who I cannot see in his place at this moment and from my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean). She reminded us of the height of public opinion in 2009 and 2010, which was when I entered the House, arguably as a result of the expenses scandal, in the by-election I had the great privilege to win. We also heard from the hon. Member for Stroud (Dr Drew), who put on record some very serious points, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson). He was extremely helpful in enlightening the House about the rule of G.K. Chesterton.
Let me add to this list the comments of the hon. Member for Glasgow East, who I have already mentioned, and the hon. Member for Stone, who reminded us of what it means to fulfil constituency duties in a considerably larger geographical constituency than many of the rest of us. I thank the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), who put some issues on the record with passion. I admire and respect that passion, and I am glad she came here today to do that.
Let me address some of the issues raised in the debate before returning to the motion. A number of points were made about the procedures of the House for private Members’ Bills. I will not go into that in detail, because it is not my place to do so. It is a matter of procedure. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the House made a few remarks about that earlier on, but I think it is a matter for another day.
Remarks were made about reform of the House of Lords. The hon. Members for Glasgow East and for Stroud and I, with others, had a debate on this matter only yesterday in Westminster Hall—what a long time ago that already seems. In that debate, I had cause to remind Members, and I will do so again now, that the size of the House of Lords is smaller than when the current Prime Minister took office. To all those hon. Members who have said that the House of Lords has grown, I say in fact it has not; it has become smaller.
Afzal Khan
What is the Conservative party’s position in relation to the upper House? Why are you stuffing it with the unelected when you are trying to cut the elected?
Mr Speaker
I have not been stuffing the upper House for anybody. I am not doing that. The Government can answer for their own position, of course.
Chloe Smith
And nor are the Government. The key point, as I have just said, is that the other place is now smaller than when the Prime Minister took office. That is as a result of a policy of restraint, which she is showing in appointments, and of the Government policy, which the hon. Gentleman invites me to set out. I will take just a minute on it, Mr Speaker.
Chloe Smith
I am just in the middle of setting out the Government’s policy, which I have been asked to do.
We do not believe that reform of the House of Lords is the correct priority at this moment. There are many other things that the two Houses are being asked to consider. The House of Lords itself has set out a number of ways to reform without the need for primary legislation. We seek to support it in that.
David Linden
I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. She talks about reform of the House of Lords and cutting the number of MPs in this House. The Bill received a Second Reading on Friday 1 December 2017. Since then, how many new Conservative peers have been put into the House of Lords?
Chloe Smith
The hon. Gentleman will remember from our debate only yesterday that the number of the most recent appointments made is 13. Let me repeat one more time, should it be needed, that the number of Lords has reduced since the Prime Minister came into office. In part, that is due to a culture and a new policy of retirement, which I welcome and which we did go into in some detail yesterday, so I will leave that there.
I want to respond to a couple of points that were made about the policy of individual electoral registration. I welcome the hon. Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson) to his relatively new position on the Front Bench—it has already been very good to serve with him on Bill and statutory instrument Committees—but I am afraid that he is wrong in his remarks about IER. He spoke about a drop in the register that he thinks occurred after it was introduced. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean explained, what we saw after the introduction of IER was that both accuracy and completeness were maintained. The crucial point is this: we expect the accuracy of the register to be able to be maintained at a higher level with the introduction of IER, because it encourages individuals to register themselves, individually—the clue is in the name. It is about accuracy.
The hon. Member for City of Chester conflated it with a second, separate issue, which is whether more have joined the register since. That is indeed the case. As the register currently stands, it is larger than it was in December 2015. That is a good thing. That is because our reforms to open up online registration, for example, and the occurrence of several major elections have encouraged many people to register. That is an unmitigated good thing. This Government are committed to helping more people to register to vote. That is what I stand for as the Minister responsible for electoral registration and other matters. I want to see it done with the security and integrity of the register foremost in mind. We have had debates in this place and elsewhere that suggest that the Labour party is not quite so committed to those principles. That is what we saw in some of the desperate slurs that have been made this afternoon. We have heard words such as “gerrymandering” and about the “manipulation” of the register from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood. I think that is outrageous. I said so early on in the debate and I say it again: it is an outrageous calumny to say that the Government are gerrymandering or trying to manipulate the register. I am not. The Government are not—does he think we are, really?
Chloe Smith
I stand corrected, and I thank the hon. Gentleman. Let me move on to the ways in which this debate has been important this afternoon and deal directly with the motion in front of us.
Jamie Stone
I thank the Minister for her gracious reference to me a few minutes ago. I point out in passing that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and I are two exceedingly different people, and we would both be equally embarrassed to be confused. Does the Minister recognise my point that distance and geography have to be taken into consideration by the Boundary Commission for Scotland?
Chloe Smith
I stand corrected twice in a row on hon. Members’ constituency names—perhaps I need the help of the Boundary Commission to rearrange constituencies and thus learn them better. In all seriousness, I say to the hon. Gentleman that the Boundary Commissions are independent. This is crucially important, and he would not expect me in this debate to be able to prejudge their reviews, and nor would I try to do so. Although I respect the points that he came here today to make, it is not for me to answer the question that he just posed.
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman makes a very sensible point about the geographical size of constituencies. That was indeed considered when we looked at the rules that the Boundary Commissions were set. I accept that he may not feel that there was sufficient flexibility, but there are rules that govern the maximum geographical size of constituencies, thus giving the Boundary Commissions some scope to reflect the issues that he raised in the House today.
Chloe Smith
I very much welcome that reminder from my right hon. Friend.
Turning to the motion, the debate has been about a fundamental principle of how this House functions, but this is not about the Bill from the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. It is about whether a Committee—any Committee—can be permitted by the House to disregard this place’s rules and conventions.
The Opposition motion seeks to undermine a fundamental principle and cornerstone of our constitutional settlement: the financial initiative of the Crown. It is a long-standing constitutional principle that the Government of the day initiate financial resolutions. I can only apologise to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire if he thinks this another lecture—perhaps in his day students walked out of lectures if they did not like them. It would be regrettable if he felt the need to walk out of this discussion. The Government have to be responsible and accountable to taxpayers for the money they spend. The motion seeks to erode the fundamental principle that the Crown, through its Ministers, who are accountable to Parliament, has the exclusive right of initiation and of defining the purposes for which the money is required.
Mr Goodwill
The Minister drew our attention to the situation over the border. Do the Scottish Government delegate power to the Scottish Parliament to set spending, or do they protect the money as the UK Government do?
Chloe Smith
I welcome the opportunity to add to this discussion, but the question of whether we can learn from the mechanisms of other Parliaments and Governments might have to be a debate for another day.
The mechanisms of this Parliament are that a Committee requires a money resolution to go through the substance of a Bill. If a Committee is allowed to consider the substance of a Bill in the absence of such a resolution, the Crown, through its Ministers, loses its important constitutional right to define the purposes for which that money is required. That is not just about being able to make progress; it is not just about saying, “Don’t worry about the money. It’ll come later”; as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House set out earlier, to do this to a Committee would strip it of the ability to consider matters properly. As she set out, without such a resolution, a Committee would just be aimlessly wandering through a Bill with or without amendments but not properly guided by a money resolution. At best, it would be theoretical, at worst farcical, and that is not what our constituents expect of us.
The motion questions the role of the Executive—that is regardless of what party is in power. The fundamentals of any Government are that they take decisions and are accountable for them—to taxpayers where it is about how public money is spent. That is what it means to be a responsible Government. From what I see on the Order Paper today, I do not think the Opposition believe in responsible government; they believe in political points scoring. The House runs on its conventions and the assurance that centuries-old practice and procedure is there to protect the rights of all parliamentarians. The Government respect those rights of the House, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House set out earlier. To undermine that for party political reasons by tabling such a motion compromises the idea of the Opposition ever being a responsible Government. The Government are elected by the people and have the right and duty to initiate financial proceedings in the interests of the taxpayer.
As my right hon. Friend made absolutely clear at the start of the debate, the motion has nothing to do with the private Member’s Bill of the hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton. I am sorry about that. I am sorry that he has come here today, as he does every Wednesday morning, to talk about a Bill for which the House has not granted him financial authority. I am sorry about that because he is a lovely man—we get on well on Wednesday mornings—and clearly has the support of his friends around him in the Chamber, but I am afraid that his party is letting him down with the motion on the Order Paper tonight. They are suggesting a huge move in the procedures of the House, all hung around his Bill. His Bill has merits, and those could be discussed, but there is not the time to do so.
Afzal Khan
I thank the Minister for her kind words. For me, this is not the fault of the Labour party. Every week for five weeks we have come here, only for nothing to be done. Not a single word in the Bill has been dealt with. That is the issue. That is where time is being wasted.
Chloe Smith
If that is the issue, the hon. Gentleman should have had a word with his Front-Bench team about laying a better Opposition day motion. This motion did not allow him to have those issues out today, although many hon. Members have enjoyed going through related subjects.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.
Business without Debate
Mr Speaker
With the leave of the House, we will take motions 4 and 5 together.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Capital Gains Tax
That the draft Double Taxation Relief (Mauritius) Order 2018, which was laid before this House on 23 April, be approved.
That the draft Double Taxation Relief and International Tax Enforcement (Cyprus) Order 2018, which was laid before this House on 30 April, be approved.—(Rebecca Harris.)
Question agreed to.
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 118(6)),
Police
That the draft Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (Codes of Practice) (Revision of Codes C, E, F, and H) Order 2018, which was laid before this House on 21 May, be approved.—(Rebecca Harris.)
Question agreed to.
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome
(6 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
It gives me great pleasure to speak in my first Adjournment debate since being elected last year.
Complex regional pain syndrome—CRPS—is one of the most painful conditions known, registering a staggering 42 out of 50 on the McGill pain scale. That is worse than the pain of the amputation of a finger or toe with no anaesthetic, which registers as 40 out of 50, and it is worse than childbirth—the Minister may sympathise with me on that. CRPS is not a short-term pain that will heal in time. The most excruciating part is that the pain is long-term, and likely to be for life. In fact, CRPS is known as the world’s most painful incurable condition. In the United States, it is referred to as the “suicide disease” as it can lead sufferers to resort to suicide as the only means to escape the huge pain that they bear.
CRPS is a chronic neuropathic pain condition—a disease of the nervous system—and it usually starts with a minor injury or fracture to a limb. The major indicator is the huge amount of pain involved, which is out of all proportion with the original injury. The affected limb can swell, change colour and change in temperature and, instead of reducing in time, the pain just gets worse. It can lead to weakness of the limb, ulceration of the skin, wasting tissue and bone thinning. The pain caused by CRPS spreads over time and may even develop in the opposite limb or in other limbs. Patients with CRPS most likely live with anxiety and depression because of the amount of high-level pain they are in 24/7.
CRPS is not a well-known condition, although awareness of it is increasing thanks to the national charities that work hard to support sufferers and to promote the need for treatment. Six months ago, I was not aware of CRPS, so I want to pay tribute to my constituent Victoria Abbott-Fleming, whom I have met. Victoria qualified as a barrister, but six months after a minor accident at work, at the age of just 24, she received a diagnosis of CRPS. The symptoms included a burning, severe pain in her lower leg, a freezing cold sensation, and a stabbing feeling that she said was like 1,000 ice picks pushed into the skin and bone. Victoria described it as like having petrol put through one’s veins and set alight. Her other symptoms included major swelling, hair and nail loss, hypersensitivity, temperature change and stiffness that prevented her from walking.
Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)
The hon. Lady, through her constituent’s experience, is painting a vivid picture of the pain. Does she agree that hearing accounts such as that of my constituent Helena Stone—she said it was like barbed wire being tightened across one’s leg—give an insight into the viciousness of this debilitating condition and make it all the more important that we raise awareness of it?
Ruth George
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. While we can listen to descriptions of the pain, we can never really have any idea of what it is like. The worst thing about CRPS is that the pain is not occasional and something that a person knows will get better—they know it may be with them for the rest of their life.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I sought the hon. Lady’s permission to make an intervention before the debate.
Whenever I say in my office that I am in pain, my girls say to me, “You don’t know what pain is. If you had given birth, you would know what pain is.” The girls in my office tell me that chronic regional pain syndrome is even more painful than labour and giving birth, so I understand just how extreme it is.
We look to the Minister for support and help, as we always do—and we always get it, by the way. Does the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) agree there is an onus on GPs to be more aware of the illness and to see how they can provide help in their surgeries? The Minister can give some direction to the NHS as a wee bit more needs to be done in surgeries and health clinics.
Ruth George
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and I know that he has made inquiries and asked questions about CRPS over the years. All the sufferers thank every MP who raises the issue and helps them to feel that they have hope.
Apart from the physical and mental pain suffered due to CRPS, a severe part of the torture that my constituent Victoria experienced was the judgmental attitudes of medical professionals who did not understand or were not aware of the condition and the shame that she felt. She says, “The medical profession sometimes don’t believe your symptoms, or try to fob you off by saying, ‘Are you sure it is not in your head?’ or, ‘You look well. Are you sure you’re actually ill?’” Those problems are even worse now that we see children being diagnosed with CRPS, because children are often not believed when they say that they are in excruciating pain.
Alex Chalk
The hon. Lady is being extremely generous in giving way. My constituent experienced the problem of not being believed. Does the hon. Lady agree it is all the more galling that the NHS website recognises the condition and states that it is “poorly understood”? Does that not make the point that the situation needs to change?
Ruth George
The hon. Gentleman makes the pertinent point that CRPS is poorly understood, and that more understanding and awareness is needed from medical professionals.
After Victoria developed ulcers and total skin breakdown, she was told in 2006 that she needed to have her leg amputated above the knee at just 27 years old. Like many CRPS sufferers, she was unable to use a prosthetic limb because the prosthetic was too tight, pressing hard on the hypersensitive skin where she had had CRPS and inducing excruciating pain in her stump.
Victoria was left wheelchair-bound and unable to work as a barrister because many courts are completely inaccessible to wheelchair users, and because of her strong medication and her mental unwellness due to her situation. She pays tribute to her husband Michael, who saw her through the toughest of times and still supports her.
In 2014, Victoria received the even more devastating news that the condition had spread to her remaining leg, which she needed to have amputated. Amazingly, as a dual amputee, she has come through the experience and set up a national charity, Burning Nights, which offers support, understanding and explanation to CRPS sufferers. The charity offers a voice at the end of the phone, as well as very important advice when sufferers feel they cannot take any more.
The trouble is that we do not know how many people are living with CRPS. When I asked a parliamentary question, I was shocked to be told that the Department of Health and Social Care does not collect data on the number of people diagnosed with CRPS as it
“is not classifiable within the ICD10 clinical coding”.
That means that a box on an NHS computer cannot be ticked for CRPS. Various statistics have been suggested by the health profession and in the light of experience in other countries, but the most widely accepted figure is that there are about 26 people in 100,000 living with CRPS, which would equate to more than 15,000 sufferers in the UK. That means that CRPS does not even qualify as a rare disease but, as other hon. Members have said, many medical professionals have not even heard of it, let alone are aware of its symptoms and signs that would lead to diagnosis.
Too many patients are made to feel that they are making a fuss when they are actually in agony. That is not surprising, given that only 20 minutes during a medical degree concentrate on chronic pain—it is only 90 minutes for physios, who deal with people in pain all the time. Diagnosis takes an average of six months, but it may take even longer, especially for children, who are less likely to be believed when they are in severe pain. Once a diagnosis has occurred, it can take two years, or even three in some parts of the country, for a referral to a specialist pain clinic. I cannot imagine the pain of CRPS, let alone the added pain of knowing that nothing will be done to help for two or three years when every day, and especially every night, is agony—that does not bear thinking about.
Many treatments are effective only in the early stages of the disease, such as neuromodulation or DRG—dorsal root ganglion—treatment. Pain clinics usually offer medication and some physio for about six months, but sufferers are then usually discharged and told that there is nothing more that can be done. Unsurprisingly, they therefore may seek whatever they can, and in some cases that is amputation. I am afraid that private surgeons are offering amputations to people with CRPS at the knockdown price of £5,000 below the knee and £10,000 above it. People with CRPS are in such agony that they are prepared to undergo such an amputation because they think it may get rid of their pain. Unfortunately, as my constituent Victoria has told me, it does not, and often the pain does not go away. However, serious problems can arise when such amputations and major surgery are carried out by private surgeons. At the moment, the NHS picks up the bill for that. I very much hope that it will continue to do so, but this really makes the case that what we actually need is some hope, proper diagnosis and proper support, and a clinical pathway for people with CRPS that will see them through not only their diagnosis, but long-term and lifelong treatment.
I have various proposals for the Minister, as I am sure she was expecting. They are based on the parliamentary questions I have been asking over the past few months. The first and perhaps most important is for her to put that tick-box on the NHS computer so that we can collect data for CRPS diagnoses. Without data on diagnoses, it is difficult to make a proper case for research and for the increased training and awareness of the medical profession that is needed.
In response to my parliamentary question about research, the Minister said:
“The NIHR is committed to maximising the potential impact of research that it funds for patients and the public. Applications to NIHR for research funding are subject to scientific peer review, with awards being made on the basis of value for money, scientific quality and the importance of the topic to patients and health and care services.”
Unless we know the numbers of patients who are suffering, however, it is impossible to decide whether an application for research is value for money.
My second request is on the protocols for diagnosis. Yes, we need to raise awareness among health professionals, as other Members have stated, but we also need to introduce protocols such as the one used at Liverpool’s fracture clinic. CRPS is common after a fracture, and at Liverpool the limb is checked after a plaster cast comes off if it looks unusual, or if unusual pain is reported. In that way, a diagnosis can be made early.
My third request is for an increase in the capacity of pain clinics. It is not acceptable that people have to wait an average of two years, and up to three years, to get the support that they so desperately need. That would probably help to address my fourth request, which is for mental health support for CRPS sufferers, with a 24-hour helpline—the pain is particularly excruciating at night—to help them to get through without feeling that they have to resort to amputation or even suicide.
My final request is for the Minister to meet my constituent, Victoria Abbott-Fleming. In spite of the difficulty involved in travelling with her condition, she has come down from Derbyshire to hear the debate. She has done so much to support and fight for other sufferers. CRPS is not a diagnosis that we would wish on anyone, and I hope that the Minister can offer some hope to its thousands of sufferers.
The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)
I congratulate the hon. Member for High Peak (Ruth George) on securing this debate on such an incredibly important issue. She has articulated quite beautifully the hell that people suffering from complex regional pain syndrome go through. The only thing that I can even slightly identify with is the pain of childbirth, but even after that it is unimaginable for us to conceive of the sort of day-by-day endurance and the relentless pain that people suffer. It is a devastating condition and can lead to an overwhelming impact on sufferers and their families, so I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this subject to the House.
The potentially extreme nature of the condition and its symptoms, some of which the hon. Lady described—the excruciating pain, burning, swelling and skin discolouration —can be totally disruptive to everyday living and destroy a person’s quality of life. She spoke very movingly about her constituent Victoria Abbott-Fleming, whose story is incredibly upsetting. I very much forward to meeting Victoria and assuring her that I will do everything I can to move forward on the issues that the hon. Lady mentioned. In circumstances in which extreme decisions have to be considered, high-quality care and support can sometimes make a huge difference to someone’s experience of our health and care services.
I hope that, as I am sure the hon. Lady intended, this debate will help to raise awareness of this very debilitating and extremely painful condition. It has actually been recognised as a medical condition for around 150 years, but problems remain with the diagnosis of CRPS in its very earliest stages. Diagnosis involves excluding a lot of other more common conditions—such as infection or things like rheumatoid arthritis—that can have similar symptoms, and the causes remain largely unknown. Precipitating factors can include injury or surgery, but there is no relationship to the severity of trauma and the development of the pain. In some cases, there is no precipitating trauma at all. It is considered likely that because of the complex nature of the condition, there is absolutely no one single cause. That means that it is difficult to estimate how prevalent CRPS is, as many cases may not have been correctly diagnosed in the first instance.
To improve public awareness, the NHS Choices website provides comprehensive advice on the causes, symptoms and treatment of CRPS. In addition to that, various charities work in this area. The hon. Lady mentioned Burning Nights, which was set up by her incredibly brave constituent; if someone is in unimaginable pain, I can only imagine what a comfort it is for them to be able to speak to or hear from somebody who has experienced it themselves. The charities do great work to support not only the patients who have the condition but their families.
As the hon. Lady says, general practice is where patients with CRPS are most likely to be seen in the first instance. CRPS is a key part of the GP curriculum; it is identified as a key area of clinical knowledge in the Royal College of General Practitioners’ applied knowledge test content guide. The test is a key part of GPs’ qualifying exams, and it ensures that they have the knowledge needed to work as a GP in the NHS.
To improve identification and management of the condition, in 2013 the Royal College of Physicians published best practice guidance for clinicians on the diagnosis, referral and management of CRPS. This guidance was developed with the involvement and endorsement of 21 key organisations involved with the care of people with CRPS, including the Royal College of General Practitioners, the British Orthopaedic Association, the British Pain Society, the British Society for Rehabilitation Medicine and so on.
The guidance, as the hon. Lady says, recommends prompt diagnosis and early treatment. This is to avoid the secondary physical problems associated with disuse of an affected limb and the incredible psychological consequences of living with undiagnosed chronic pain. It has been shown that an early referral to physiotherapy, for example, and encouraging gentle movement as early as possible, may prevent progression of the symptoms. Patients with CRPS are generally best managed in specialist pain management clinics.
Ruth George
Will the Minister look at the proposal to set up protocols in fracture clinics and clinics where carpal tunnel surgery is performed? Prevalence of CRPS following such surgery or an injury is particularly pronounced.
Caroline Dinenage
I will certainly look at that.
The hon. Lady mentioned delays in referral to a pain clinic, which is something that concerns me. Waiting times should be about 13 weeks once a GP has referred someone, but, as she says, some people wait longer. NHS England commissions the highly specialised pain management services for adults and children, and we will raise the issue with it. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence has also published guidance for the pharmacological management of neuropathic pain, which includes CRPS. The guidance was updated earlier this year to reflect the latest available evidence.
Patients with CRPS will usually be managed through routine access to primary or secondary care. For patients with the most chronic and intractable pain, a referral can be made to a highly specialised pain service, commissioned by NHS England. Here, patients can receive multidisciplinary expert care and specialised treatment. Once diagnosed, patients can expect access to a range of other healthcare professionals for support and on-going treatment. This includes physiotherapists, occupational therapists, neurologists, a psychologist to help with the associated psychological problems caused by living with CRPS, and other healthcare professionals trained in pain relief.
The hon. Lady spoke about research. The National Institute for Health Research welcomes research funding applications for any aspect of human health, including CRPS. The CRPS UK clinical and research network was established in 2006. It is a research collaboration between a number of UK NHS trusts and academic institutions with an interest in the disorder. Its primary aim is to raise awareness and understanding among health professionals, patients and the general public. This year it is 10 years since the network established the CRPS registry, which now holds over 500 records and contributions and has contributed to seven different national and international research studies.
I thank the hon. Lady again for bringing this important debate to the House. I have attempted to answer as many of her questions as I can, but I will come back to her with anything that I have not covered. I hope that the debate has been helpful in raising the profile of this very difficult and distressing condition.
Question put and agreed to.