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Speaker’s Statement
Mr Speaker
Now that the Chief Coroner has published the conclusions of the inquest, I know that the whole House will want me to say again how deeply grateful we are to PC Keith Palmer, the courageous police officer who was killed on 22 March 2017 doing the job he loved: keeping Parliament and us safe. Everyone who works here was shocked and saddened by his death, and we continue to express our heartfelt condolences to his family and friends.
As we reflect upon the findings of the inquest, we pay tribute to PC Palmer and to those whose lives were lost on Westminster bridge. We need to take all possible action to prevent a similar tragedy in the future. Carriage Gates are now kept closed and opened only to allow vehicles in or out. The Parliamentary Security Department and the Metropolitan Police continue to work hard to protect us from danger, but our co-operation is required, too. In that light, I encourage all Members to wear their security pass when on the estate. We should remember that security in Westminster is everyone’s responsibility.
Business Before Questions
Oral Answers to Questions
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
Mr Speaker, may I share in your remarks about PC Palmer and pay tribute to him and his work in this House?
As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on debt and personal finance, the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) is campaigning hard on this important issue, and she is right that bailiffs are not operating as they should in some areas. I was pleased to have the opportunity to meet with the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones) and her constituents, the Rogers family, who sadly lost Jerome as a result of and following some action by bailiffs. We intend to launch a call for evidence shortly to evaluate our most recent bailiff reforms.
Yvonne Fovargue
I, too, met the family of Jerome Rogers, and I pay tribute to them for their courage in taking the campaign forward. However, Jerome’s case perfectly highlights why the industry needs regulating, because his problems were just the tip of an iceberg. Citizens Advice helped 41,000 people with 90,000 bailiff issues last year—one person every three minutes. The call for evidence relates to rogue bailiffs, but this is not just about one or two wayward individuals; the whole system is rotten. Will the Minister consider the need for an independent body to regulate and police the industry properly?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Lady makes some important points. Officials in my Department recently met with Citizens Advice, StepChange, the Money Advice Trust and AdviceUK to discuss such issues. Last month, they also met the Certificated Enforcement Agents Association. I have met Peter Tutton, the head of policy at StepChange, and he made a statement similar to the hon. Lady’s about the need for independent regulation. We will be putting forward a call for evidence and questions will be asked on a variety of issues.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
There will always be difficulties when debts are pursued, particularly when people may genuinely be struggling to pay them. As for the call for evidence, how will the Minister be working with local authorities, which obviously engage bailiffs to enforce council tax debt against those who may be struggling most to pay off such debt?
Lucy Frazer
As my hon. Friend highlights, council tax debt is an important area in which we must ensure that bailiffs and enforcement agents are operating appropriately, and we will be looking at the enforcement work that bailiffs do.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Minister call for accurate statistics as part of the review? It is difficult to get to the facts in this area, including the number of people who are suffering because of bailiffs, so will she look into that as a matter of urgency?
Lucy Frazer
Of course, evidence is extremely important. I should mention that when we reviewed the legislation earlier this year, we found that not all bailiffs act inappropriately. A large number act in accordance with the regulations that we set out, but we need to look at the small number who do not.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
But it is like the wild west at the moment, and often there is no redress when the bailiffs have made a mistake. I have one case in which a family lost their property because the bailiffs went to Treorchy instead of Treherbert. Three years later, the police will not investigate and there is no body to which the family can go to get their place back. It is surely time that we acted instead of having yet more consultation.
Lucy Frazer
I would be very interested to hear about the case that the hon. Gentleman mentions. There is regulation in relation to bailiffs. For example, they have to be appointed by the court every two years. They come to the court to get their authorisation. So measures are in place to protect people, but we are looking at the issue and we must go further.
Andrew Rosindell (Romford) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that prosecutions can be brought by private bodies as well public bodies. The Ministry of Justice data does not currently identify whether a prosecution is public or private.
Andrew Rosindell
Like me, the Minister will have heard reports of police allowing perpetrators of domestic violence and especially of FGM to escape justice by a reluctance to prosecute. Will the Minister please inform the House of what is being done to ensure that we do not simply push responsibility to prosecute on to already traumatised victims?
Lucy Frazer
We must of course prosecute those who are alleged to have committed the terrible crimes that my hon. Friend talks about. We have strengthened the law. Failing to protect a girl from FGM is now an offence, and we have introduced an element of coercive control in domestic violence. We in the Ministry of Justice continue to work closely with the Home Office and the Attorney General, who is responsible for the Criminal Prosecution Service, to ensure that crimes are prosecuted.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
In May we published the education and employment strategy, which will set each prisoner on a path to employment, with prison education and work geared towards employment on release from the outset. Since publication of the strategy, we are working with about 70 new organisations that have registered an interest in working with offenders.
Stephen Crabb
I welcome the Secretary of State’s response. Given that we have a shortage of about 60,000 HGV drivers in this country—it is a good job, paying a decent wage—does my right hon. Friend think that there is an opportunity in his strategy to work with industry bodies and other Government Departments to deliver a pathway for ex-offenders to train, get their HGV licence and be able to walk into a job on day one when they walk through the prison gates?
Mr Gauke
My right hon. Friend is right to raise the point. My hon. Friend the Member for Monmouth (David T. C. Davies) has also raised that point on the Floor of the House, and we are working on proposals to do precisely that. Getting offenders into work makes them less likely to reoffend and enables them to contribute to society. It is something that we should absolutely aspire to.
James Heappey
Despite progress in some prisons, too many prisoners still leave custody without a bank account, which is liable to increase the incidence of reoffending. As part of the ongoing review of probation services, will the Secretary of State look at what more could be done in prisons to ensure that this most basic of facilities is held by all prisoners before they are released?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend raises an important point. It is worth pointing out that the offender banking programme ensures that prisons that release a significant number of prisoners have a relationship with a commercial bank to enable prisoners to open a basic bank account in the last six months of their sentence. A record number of accounts—6,500—were opened in 2017. He is right to highlight the matter.
Nigel Huddleston
The Right Course is a programme set up by celebrity maître d’ Fred Sirieix, which helps train prisoners to run prison restaurants and therefore qualify for jobs once they have left prison. Will the Minister meet me and Fred to discuss how similar programmes can be expanded?
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
The Secretary of State is correct to say that it is through employment that we often have the best chance to reduce and stop reoffending. What discussions has he had with his counterpart in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy about mainstreaming incentives to employee ex-offenders in apprenticeship and internship strategies?
Mr Gauke
We work across government on this matter and are considering a number of proposals across government, including with BEIS, on how we can encourage employers in this area, including on apprenticeships. Let me make a point I have made before: employers are increasingly looking at employing ex-offenders. We should all welcome that, and I would be supportive of any constructive steps to progress this.
David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The biggest employer in Britain today is the Secretary of State and other Ministers, through themselves in their Departments and through the suppliers that they use. What steps has he taken to improve employment opportunities for offenders within his remit?
Mr Gauke
That is a good point. One thing we announced when I launched the education and employment strategy was the fact that the public sector—the civil service—was taking people on. We had a pilot in the north-west of England, which we are now extending to other parts of the United Kingdom. The Prison Service also takes on ex-offenders. The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight this, and the public sector has a role to play in the area, too.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
Five years ago, the Government sold off half the probation service, giving the justification that “through the gate” services would be improved. That aim has not been met by that project, and neither have any of the other aims described at the time. Is it not time to bring probation back together?
Mr Gauke
The reoffending rate has actually fallen since then, but we recognise that issues need to be addressed. That is why earlier this year I announced a series of reforms to the probation system, including spending an additional £22 million on “through the gate” services to address this specific point.
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
One problem with “through the gate” is not who delivers it, but the fact that too often the interventions start so late on in the prisoner’s career. If six months is appropriate in terms of opening bank accounts—sensibly, it is—is it not sensible that resettlement interviews and work should be started at least at that time, if not earlier, rather than at 12 weeks or so, as we currently have it?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee on Justice, raises an interesting point. The point I make to him is that we need to make sure that this system is working. There is scope for improvement, and, as I say, we have announced additional expenditure in this area, but he is right to say that this is not about who does it, but how it is done. There are steps we can take to improve it.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
Prison officers play a vital role in equipping offenders for their release, including by helping them prepare for work or education on the outside. In his speech to the Tory party conference, the Justice Secretary committed to recruiting more prison officers to fill the huge gap created by his Government’s austerity cuts. So can he guarantee that by the end of this Parliament there will be the same number of frontline officers in our prisons as there were in 2010?
Mr Gauke
What I can guarantee is that we are increasing the numbers—they have gone up by 3,500 in the past two years. That is enabling us to implement a key worker strategy, so that prison officers have the ability to spend more time with prisoners and can build that personal relationship, providing the support and advice necessary. That is an important step forward and I am pleased we are able to do it.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
We do not believe this is an ideological divide between the private and public sectors. We are looking at the relationship between the community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, in terms of their geographical spread and how they work together. However, we are finding across the country that having the public sector focus on the highest risk prisoners and the private sector and other, non-profit actors focusing on delivering for the lowest risk offenders is delivering innovation, from Cumbria right the way down to London.
Alex Cunningham
In the Committee on the Bill that created the service we have today, many weeks were spent trying to convince the Government that their privatisation experiment with the probation service would fail, and it has. The exception might be the only not-for-profit public sector CRC, which covers the Tees Valley, part of which I represent. It has been singled out in Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation reports as delivering best practice. What will the Minister do to ensure that the Tees Valley CRC is not subsumed into another privatised contract, to learn from it, and to return the probation service to the public sector?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s local CRC, which is a good example of how CRCs can work. Durham CRC is a good example of the local authority and the previous probation trust working together. It has met 85% of its targets and is a well-performing CRC. There are also good examples to be followed elsewhere in the country, including in Cumbria, where the CRC is working with rural communities, and in London, where the CRC has improved dramatically and done some very good work with Grenfell survivors. I certainly pay tribute to the work done in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Does the Minister agree that one key to aiding the rehabilitation of offenders is to ensure that probation officers have manageable case loads, so that they can give sufficient time and energy to each case?
Rory Stewart
A manageable case load is of course absolutely central, as is the flexibility to make sure that when a probation officer has a high-risk offender—a criminal who is more challenging to deal with—they have smaller numbers of offenders to deal with and can adjust their case load according to the risk posed by the individual and the complexity of the case.
Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)
What assessment has the Minister made of NHS and non-NHS-provided drug-curing services? The drug problems seem to be getting worse, rather than better, in so many of our prisons.
Rory Stewart
This is a serious issue, not only in England but in the devolved Administrations such as Scotland, where I saw very high levels of methadone prescription. I am happy to sit down with the hon. Lady to discuss the subject in more detail.
Robert Courts (Witney) (Con)
What assurances can the Minister provide that the services provided by community rehabilitation companies are robustly monitored?
Rory Stewart
The best guarantee that these companies are performing is the action of Parliament and of the chief inspector of probation, to whom I pay tribute for her series of hard-hitting reports, most recently on domestic violence. As the Secretary of State has pointed out, we have seen a 2% reduction in reoffending. That has been driven by these companies and is to be welcomed, but there is of course much more to be done to protect the public.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
Vicky Foxcroft (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)
Ellie Reeves (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
As I have said recently, there is persuasive evidence that short custodial sentences do not work in terms of rehabilitation. In certain circumstances, community sentences are more effective in the reduction of reoffending and therefore keeping the public safe. The reoffending rate of offenders who serve fewer than 12 months is around 65%, but earlier research has shown the reoffending rate for similar offenders who receive a community penalty to be lower. We will look at what more we can do to emphasise that short custodial sentences should be viewed as a last resort.
Chris Elmore
The Secretary of State may be aware that the rate of women reoffending and being recalled to prison is higher than that of men, with three out of every five women offenders being recalled or re-prosecuted and sent back to prison. There is now a real need to implement the female offender strategy and ensure that women are given as much support as they can be given. There is also a real need for the Secretary of State to take action on short-term offences and look into other ways to sentence women, because the current approach simply is not working.
Mr Gauke
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his remarks. He referred to the female offender strategy; as he will be aware, its focus is on alternatives to custody, particularly for minor offences. There are particular issues for females offenders in respect of the nature of the offences and the issues that female offenders face, so it is right that we implement the new strategy.
Jeff Smith
Over the past five years, the use of community sentences has declined, and it has declined fastest for theft and drugs offences. Does the Secretary of State think that prison is the best place for people with drug addictions and shoplifting convictions? If not, how is he going to reverse that trend?
Mr Gauke
Often, it is not the right place, which is why my hon. Friend the Prisons Minister and I have been clear that we need to consider alternatives to custody and explore what more we can do with community sentences. In some cases, the issue is getting to the heart of the problem, which often might be drug dependency and so on. Some encouraging pilots are ongoing in respect of community sentence treatment requirements. Those are some of the steps that we are taking. I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s support for our approach.
Vicky Foxcroft
Short-term sentences are catastrophic for reoffending rates, and if the Government are serious about reducing both crime and our prison population they must recognise the importance of early intervention. With the Home Office now pursuing a public health approach to violent crime, will the Minister tell us how he is engaging with this strategy?
Mr Gauke
We are very much engaging with the strategy, and it is a strategy that I support. We are ensuring that we work across government to intervene as early as we can and that we have strong alternatives to custody that are not soft options but are effective. I draw the hon. Lady’s attention to the work that we are doing on community sentence treatment requirements as a way in which we can work across government to address some of these issues. For some people, prison is the right place, but for many of the petty offenders, there are more effective things we can do, and I welcome her support for the approach we are taking.
Ellie Reeves
The Justice Committee report on transforming rehabilitation recommended a presumption against short sentences. Statistics show that the reoffending rate for women prisoners currently stands at 61% for those serving sentences of less than 12 months, yet, since 2010, community sentences for women have nearly halved. Will the Secretary of State therefore fully commit to the Committee’s recommendations and implement a presumption against sentences of less than 12 months?
Mr Gauke
We are looking at various options in this context. I know that Scotland introduced a presumption against three months. I think it is fair to say that that did not make much of a difference, and it has now been extended to 12 months, and we are looking at the evidence from that. I hope it is very clear to the House that, when it comes to reducing reoffending and to rehabilitation, we do question the effectiveness of short sentences.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Would not the effectiveness of all custodial sentences be increased if we reduced the number of prisoners who were released on a Friday night when no public services are available for them, often leaving them to fall into the hands of the local drug dealer and go straight back into a life of crime?
Mr Gauke
My hon. Friend is right to raise that concern. There are different ways in which one can address that matter. More support could be provided. For example, there could be release on a temporary licence a few days before the final release so that many of the public services can be accessed. Whether we look at release on a particular day or at other ways of addressing that matter, I completely understand his point. We need to make sure that when people are released, they are in a strong position to access accommodation and a job and to be able to maintain their family links; that is what we want to do.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The figures from the Ministry of Justice consistently show that the longer people spend in prison the less likely they are to reoffend. When the Secretary of State says that he wants to see the end of short-term sentences, does he agree with me that those people should be sent to prison for longer, or does he agree with the Opposition that those criminals should not be sent to prison at all?
Mr Gauke
I had a feeling that the consensus was not going to last much longer. The reality is that for petty offenders who tend to be prolific and tend to be repeat offenders, the evidence shows that non-custodial sentences are more effective at reducing reoffending than custodial sentences and that is the approach that we want to take.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
Would not reoffending rates for those on short-term prison sentences go down if life was made as uncomfortable as possible for them while they were in jail? Instead of spending all day in their overcrowded prison cell either on their mobile phone or going through the satellite TV channels, should they not be out breaking rocks in a quarry or picking up litter in the rain?
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I support the idea that short custodial sentences often serve little purpose in reducing reoffending, but does the Secretary of State agree that to convince the public of this—to take them on this journey—they need to see both transparency of sentencing and that any discounts on tariffs are rewards, rather than the rule?
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
My party agrees with the Secretary of State regarding the evidence on the inappropriateness of many short-term prison sentences, but community sentences need to be properly resourced to ensure that they work as an appropriate alternative. Will the Government increase funding to local authorities for the delivery of effective community sentences alongside any presumption?
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
I recognise the value of sport and physical activity for the physical and mental health benefits they bring, and for the role that they can play in encouraging positive behaviours among offenders. That is one of the main reasons that the Ministry of Justice commissioned Professor Rosie Meek’s review of sport in prisons, which published its recommendations this summer and to which I have responded.
John Lamont
The impact that sport can have is highlighted by the incredible story of John McAvoy, who discovered a talent for endurance sport while in prison serving a long sentence, and who is now a world record holder and a professional triathlete. Although not every offender will go on to complete an Ironman, sport can greatly reduce reoffending rates. What consideration has been given to improving the opportunity for offenders to participate in sport while in prison, and to encourage people such as John McAvoy to share his experience by speaking to offenders?
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. John McAvoy’s story is an important one, and he helped to play an important role in promoting sport in our custodial estate. On my recent visit to HMYOI Wetherby, its impressive governor Andrew Dickinson set out the work that he is doing with local sports clubs such as Leeds Rhinos to provide important role models in that institution. Sport and programmes such as these can help to develop attitudes and skills such as discipline and teamwork that are valuable in making a success of life outside custody and in reducing reoffending.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
With more over-60s in our prisons than under-21s, and claims that provision for women and girls is being underdeveloped, will the Minister outline whether he believes that a holistic approach for sports programmes throughout prisons is a realistic approach to prevent reoffending?
Edward Argar
The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about the ageing population in our prisons. The approach that we have adopted—which was set out in Professor Rosie Meek’s report—is designed to provide sport and physical education opportunities for all those in our custodial institutions, regardless of gender or age.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
Yesterday I attended the launch at Chester cathedral of an impressive display of artwork by prisoners, the production of which had clearly helped many in their journeys towards personal wholeness. In what other ways can the Ministry of Justice produce an environment that is conducive to good mental health?
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend raises an important point; she has done a lot of work in this area and more broadly around mental health. Sport can play a significant role in addressing mental health issues in prison, but so too can arts, education and others approaches, as she highlights. If she feels that it would be useful, I would be happy to meet her to discuss further her visit and what she took away from it.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I am glad that the Minister prefers sport to chain gangs, but can he tell the House when the use of sport for prisoner rehabilitation will be the norm, rather than the exception?
Edward Argar
The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight again the importance of sport. The report published by Professor Meek in the summer, of which we have accepted 53 of the 54 recommendations, sets out a clear direction of travel—that is, alongside education and developing skills, and provisions for mental and physical health, sport plays a key role for prisoners in the rehabilitative process.[Official Report, 22 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 3MC.]
Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
The influx of drugs has had an impact on violence levels in both public and private prisons, which is why we are investing in body scanners, improved searching techniques and phone blocking technology. In 2017, four of the top five assault rates in local prisons and category C prisons were in public prisons.
Liz Saville Roberts
It remains the case that the prisons with the highest number of assaults are all private. In the first quarter of 2018, the top five most violent prisons were privately run. Will the Minister commit to an independent review of violence in private prisons and to a moratorium on any new private prisons in the meantime?
Mr Gauke
No, the reality is that there are issues with violence in both public and private sector prisons. Certainly, the numbers that I have suggest that there is a significant issue in public sector prisons such as Liverpool, Exeter and Bedford, where there have been urgent notifications. We should not take an ideological approach. There are very good private sector prisons, and there are some very good public sector prisons, and it is right that there is a diversity of prisons in our system.
Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the prison officers in both public and private prisons who, by and large, do an exceptional job in very, very difficult circumstances? Does he agree that we should on every occasion do what we can to encourage them and raise their status as an important part of the whole process of judicial sentencing?
Mr Gauke
My right hon. Friend is right to make that point, and I happily pay tribute to the work that prison officers do in this country—a point that I made in my party conference speech in Birmingham last week. The work that they do in protecting the public and rehabilitating prisoners should be valued by us all. It is not often very public, because it is, by definition, behind locked doors, but they do excellent work and we should recognise that.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
There is a worrying level of violence, and increasing violence, in both state-run and privately run prisons. Does the Secretary of State agree with Phil Taylor, a former governor of Wormwood Scrubs, who said:
“What we’ve got here is a reduction in prison staff by over 10,000, and the government lauding the fact that they replaced it with three and a half thousand inexperienced staff who lack confidence and ability to deal with the things that they are confronted with on a daily basis”?
Mr Gauke
It is the case that in the past two years we have increased the prison officer population, and we will continue to do so. That enables us to implement changes, as we have key workers—a point that I made a little earlier—and a relationship is built up between prison officers and prisoners. Alongside additional measures that we have taken to stop, for example, drugs getting in, and the announcement that we have made on PAVA, all of that is designed to assist prison officers in doing a very, very important job.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
The prison officers in my constituency continue to be worried about the lack of a deterrent to prevent prisoners from assaulting them. Will the Minister reassure the House that far harsher sentences should be handed down to those who dare to assault our prison officers? [Interruption.]
Mr Gauke
Indeed, and as my hon. Friend knows there is a new law that does precisely that. We were very happy to support the private Member’s Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) on that front. We are increasing legislative ability, and we want to make sure that we work closely with the police to ensure that prosecutions are brought. It is the case, as I have mentioned, that we are giving prison officers a new tool, with access to PAVA.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The prisons Minister theatrically announced to the press this summer that he would resign if the 10 prisons he had identified did not improve on his watch. I have been looking at the prisons that he chose. It turns out that, of the 10 prisons he identified, only three are in the bottom category of the four prison performance categories. It gets still stranger when we see that there are 15 prisons in that worst performing category. I am sure that the Minister is sincere in his desire to improve prison standards, so instead of cherry-picking prisons for a media stunt, will he agree today that if all the 15 worst performing prisons identified by his own Ministry do not improve on his watch, he will quit?
Mr Gauke
The prisons Minister has set out a plan for 10 prisons that we are going to focus on. If the hon. Gentleman wants an explanation as to why we have chosen those specific 10 prisons, I am happy to meet him, and I know the prisons Minister would be happy to meet him. This is an area where we believe it is necessary to take action, and we have a plan to reduce violence in those prisons. If it works, we can look to extend it elsewhere. The fact is that we are gripping this issue. We are putting measures in place to address it, and we will deliver.
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
There are basically four ways in which we can detect mobile telephones coming into prisons: we can get them at the gate, coming over the wall, in use on the landings and in the cells. We are addressing it in all those ways. We are increasing searching at the gates. We are putting up grilles and netting to stop phones coming over the walls. We are putting dedicated search teams into cells, and we are using equipment to detect phones in use.
Sir Henry Bellingham
I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. He obviously is aware that illegal mobile phones in cells are currently being used for drug trafficking, intimidating witnesses and other criminal activity. Can he make it 100% crystal clear that under no circumstances will he or the Secretary of State ever go down the route of allowing prisoners to have legal mobiles in their cells?
Rory Stewart
We are absolutely clear that a mobile telephone, and particularly a smartphone, in a prison is a form of weapon. It allows a prisoner to jump the prison walls, effectively; they can transfer money, record videos and intimidate witnesses. We are encouraging prisoners to continue to use regulated landlines in prisons to contact their families. We are investing in in-cell telephony, because keeping family relationships will reduce reoffending by 37%, but a mobile telephone is a weapon, and we will find them and remove them.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that answer. The Justice Committee was told at a recent session that prison governors do not have sufficient flexibility to purchase the equipment they need—particularly the right scanning equipment—and that if they had more flexibility over their budgets, they might be able to invest in that equipment or other things that they feel their prison needs. What is the Minister’s response to that?
Rory Stewart
Thanks to a private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield), which we have been proud to support, new technology is available that should not force governors to have to come up with a bespoke solution prison by prison, but will allow us nationally to have much better technology to identify these phones, listen to them and ultimately seize them.
James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
Prison education is key to achieving better outcomes for offenders and has been proven to reduce reoffending by approximately 9% and increase P45 employment by 1.8%. We are empowering governors, who will be given the budget and controls to tailor education provision in their prisons, to both better engage their prisoners and meet their specific learning and employment needs. On 17 September, we launched a new innovative commissioning portal, which will give governors direct access to a huge range of learning and skills providers, including local educators and employers.
James Cartlidge
I thank the Secretary of State for that answer. Does he agree that in some cases, self-employment—for example, as a sole trader—may be appropriate? Can he set out whether those new support measures will include mentoring for offenders who want to start a business when they leave prison?
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that most veterans make a successful transition from the armed forces into civilian life, but inevitably some will end up in the criminal justice system. Will he say what work is taking place to support veterans with employment and training, not only to reduce reoffending but, frankly, to ensure that they do not end up living on the streets?
Mr Gauke
The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. He will know that there is a strong voluntary sector that provides a huge amount of support. I pay tribute to the work that many of those charities do. We work closely with them because it is particularly important, for those who have served their country, that we do not let them down subsequently.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
We are taking a large number of measures to ensure that our court system is brought up to date in the 21st century. For example, we are allowing people to make applications online, with over 50% of divorce petitions now submitted online. We are making better use of technology, so that in some cases vulnerable witnesses can give pre-recorded evidence. We are also allowing those with small claims, up to £10,000, to start their claim online, defend it online and in some cases settle before the case comes to court.
Kevin Hollinrake
Will my hon. and learned Friend consider establishing a financial services tribunal to provide a low-cost dispute resolution mechanism to ensure justice for small and medium-sized businesses when they have a dispute with their bank?
Lucy Frazer
I was pleased to meet my hon. Friend, together with Heather Buchanan from the all-party group on fair business banking and finance. The APPG has produced a thorough report on this very issue, which I have read with interest. As he identifies, it is important that small businesses can bring claims against the banks when they need to do so. I have spoken to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is carefully considering the APPG report, together with—when it comes out—the Financial Conduct Authority’s consultation on expanding the role of Financial Ombudsman Service, and who will consider Simon Walker’s independent review of complaints. I know that he is keen to set out the Government’s position as soon as possible after that.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Given the findings of the Lammy review, which showed that those from black and ethnic minority backgrounds face discrimination in the criminal justice system, what progress has the Department made in ensuring that juries and judges better reflect the communities that they are there to serve?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Lady makes an important point, because everyone who takes part in our justice system, as in politics, should reflect the society that it represents. That is not only juries; it is the professions that are there to support the judiciary on the bench. It is important that we look at the position in relation to juries.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Following the decision to close courts in Bicester and Banbury, will the Minister agree to meet me and a group of local magistrates to discuss the provision of a mobile court locally, such as people have in Kent?
Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend has campaigned hard on the closure of her court. I am always happy to meet with her. She made a lot of submissions to me during the consultation on the closure and put in a fair report. I am happy to meet her, and I know that she is very keen on alternative provision.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
We hear a lot from the Government about this so-called court modernisation programme, but many people believe that it is simply a smoke-screen to cut the number of courts and reduce the provision of legal representation for those in court. Will the Minister agree to the Law Society’s call for an independent economic review of the long-term viability of the criminal legal aid system?
Lucy Frazer
We do make a lot of court reform because we are spending £1 billion to bring our court system up to date. In relation to legal aid, we have an ongoing review that will report at the end of the year, and we will be evaluating our court reform programme.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
On 10 September, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and I published the first ever cross-Government victims strategy, reflecting the Government’s clear commitment to further support victims of crime. Central to the strategy are commitments to strengthen the victims code and develop legislation to underpin it, to continue ongoing work to improve the court environment, as the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), has already set out, to increase the use of digitisation, to increase facilities for the use of video links, to improve provision for pre-recorded cross-examination for vulnerable witnesses and to raise awareness of the importance of the victim’s personal statement and opportunities for how it can be used.
Tom Pursglove
I am grateful to the Minister for that comprehensive answer. I know from some of my constituents about the stress, strain and emotional toll of having to repeatedly face those who have hurt them or their loved ones. What steps is his Department taking to support victims who find themselves having to repeatedly give victim impact statements?
Edward Argar
My hon. Friend takes a close interest in this area. I can entirely understand the impact on a victim of having to relive a crime multiple times. That is why the victim’s personal statement is hugely important. One of the measures that we are putting in place is the use of body-worn cameras to record the statement, which should help to reduce the number of times it needs to be made. Underpinning the strategy is the aim of reducing the number of people a victim has to interact with. If my hon. Friend wishes to highlight a specific case, I would be happy to meet him.
Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)
What steps will the Minister be putting in place to support litigants in person, particularly those employees who have to take their employer to court to seek damages for personal injury at work under the raising of the small claims limit in the Civil Liability Bill?
Edward Argar
With regard to litigants in person—I am conscious that you might wish me to keep this answer short, Mr Speaker—we already spend well over £6 million supporting them, and we continue to look carefully at how they can continue to be supported.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
My Department greatly appreciates the great work that law centres are doing across the country. We support law centres with grant funding and through legal aid contracts. In April, I met Julie Bishop, the director of the Law Centres Network, and I was pleased to share a panel with LawWorks at our party conference last week. My officials are engaging actively with law centres as part of the review of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012.
Mr Sharma
I declare an interest, having been an employee of the Hillingdon legal resource centre and the Ealing law centre before entering Parliament. Since the Government’s disastrous cuts to legal aid, many law centres have been forced to close, leaving advice deserts in parts of the country. Will the Government commit to new funding for solicitors and paralegals to work in law centres in those parts of the country that have the greatest unmet legal needs?
Lucy Frazer
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman for the work he did in his community before becoming a Member of Parliament. I should also declare that I did voluntary work in a law centre for a very brief period as part of my work as a barrister. We must encourage people to volunteer to do that work, because it is greatly appreciated. As part of the LASPO review, we are looking at how we provide advice to those who need it most, and the work that law centres do is a key part of that advice. We will be reporting on that by the end of the year.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
Burglary is a particularly disgusting crime, especially domestic burglary—it is not just the loss of someone’s possessions, but the terrible intrusion on their privacy and the humiliation of having someone in their home. The majority of first-time offenders do receive a conviction—73% of domestic burglars receive a prison sentence.
Mr Robertson
I thank the Minister for that response and particularly welcome his condemnation of burglary, which, as he rightly says, is a very serious offence. I therefore urge him to ensure that the sentence fits the crime, so that potential reoffenders are deterred from doing it again.
Rory Stewart
The maximum sentence for aggravated burglary is currently a life sentence. The maximum sentence for burglary is 14 years. The sentence length given by judges, and reflected by the Sentencing Council, has increased over the past 10 years. That is as it should be, because domestic burglary is a particularly disgusting and uncivilised crime, and society should be making a symbolic statement against it.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are running over time, but I feel the parliamentary day would be incomplete if we did not hear from the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), so we shall.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
My right hon. Friend is right to highlight this issue: 23% of those given short custodial sentences were previously excluded from school. I have not personally met the Secretary of State for Education to this discuss this matter, but I have corresponded with the Minister with responsibility for schools on exactly this issue. I regularly meet the Under-Secretary of State for the Department for Education about linked issues, and my officials and I are engaged with the Department for Education on its exclusions review.
Robert Halfon
Thank you, Mr Speaker. An increasing number of pupils are being excluded from our schools, and 60% of our prisoners were excluded when in our education system. What action is the Ministry of Justice taking to work with the Department for Education to provide serious support to those who have experienced exclusion and are at risk of offending?
Edward Argar
As I briefly mentioned, my officials and I have already engaged with the Department for Education’s exclusions review, submitting an analysis by the Ministry of Justice on the correlation between offenders and exclusions. Key to tackling this issue is joined-up working across government and agencies. I heard about this issue on a recent visit to Hackney youth offending team. I will continue to work closely with Ministers and other Departments to develop measures to support the exclusions review when it reports.
Mr Speaker
We have heard it from Harlow, so I think we should hear it from Glasgow.
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Edward Argar
I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I am always happy to look at the devolved nations for examples of best practice from which we might learn. She is right to highlight the links in this area, which is one reason why, in the victims strategy, we allocated moneys to support children who have witnessed domestic abuse in their past—to help to break that cycle and give them a chance of recovery.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
Following a successful pilot, we have made the decision to equip every prison officer in the public sector adult male estate with PAVA spray. PAVA can help to prevent serious harm to staff and prisoners alike, as well as being a tool to persuade prisoners in the act of violence to stop. All officers will receive specialist training before being allowed to carry the spray, and it will be delivered only where key worker training has already been rolled out. Key working will allow officers to build more positive relationships with prisoners, support their rehabilitation and manage difficult behaviour.
Sarah Jones
I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), for meeting me and the family of Jerome Rogers before the summer recess. Jerome took his own life after aggressive bailiff threats and intimidation. Does the Secretary of State not find it astonishing that charities giving advice about debt, such as Citizens Advice, are regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority, yet bailiffs, with infinitely more power, are not? Will he confirm that this will form part of the consultation?
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
As the Secretary of State has made clear, we feel very strongly that we should look and act on the evidence that a short-term prison sentence is more likely to lead to reoffending than a community sentence, and that therefore, in a sense, it endangers the public. The point of a sentence of any kind must be primarily to prevent offending happening in the future. For that reason, we will look very carefully at emphasising community sentences.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
It defies belief that a spouse convicted of attempting to murder their partner can have any financial claim on their assets as part of a divorce settlement. Does the Minister agree with that principle and will she meet me to look into changing the law to ensure that there is no financial entitlement in all but the most exceptional of those cases?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Lucy Frazer)
The shadow Minister makes a very important point, and the issue has also been highlighted by The Guardian. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 says that the conduct of the parties in a divorce can be taken into account in the distribution of assets and, if it would be inequitable, to disregard it. I am very happy to discuss the issue with her and to meet her to do so.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Lucy Frazer
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Once parties have made a decision to get divorced, the law should make it straightforward for them to do so, making it less acrimonious, which makes it better for children. For that reason, on 15 September we launched our reducing family conflict consultation on no-fault divorce.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
People are still having to wait an average of 42 weeks to get a hearing before the immigration and asylum first-tier tribunal, which is a long time to be in immigration limbo. What steps are the Government taking to reduce that time and what do they regard as an unacceptable waiting time target?
Lucy Frazer
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight that waiting times for tribunals could be reduced. We are recruiting new members of the tribunals; in February and March, we appointed 226 new medical members of the social security tribunal. I am also meeting, and have met twice, my counterpart in the Department for Work and Pensions to ensure that we can get those waiting times down.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Lucy Frazer
As I represent a rural constituency, I completely understand my right hon. Friend’s point. The Government have recently consulted on the powers available to local authorities to deal with such problems and we are now looking at how we might strengthen the powers of local authorities and landowners.
Richard Burgon (Leeds East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister told her party conference that austerity is over, but if that were true, everyone in the justice sector would be breathing a huge sigh of relief. Tory cuts have unleashed an unprecedented crisis in our prisons and wider justice system. Justice faces the deepest cuts of any Department, totalling 40%, with £800 million in cuts between April 2018 and 2020 alone. Those cuts risk pushing justice from deep crisis into full-blown emergency, so will the Secretary of State confirm that that £800 million of cuts will not go ahead? If not, will he agree with me that the Prime Minister’s words were nothing more than yet another Tory con trick?
Mr Gauke
What I can confirm is that we are continuing to recruit more prison officers and to invest in court reform. As the hon. Gentleman mentions party conferences, I have to point out to him that as the shadow Lord Chancellor, when somebody suggested an illegal general strike, the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] Well, he denied that he joined in a standing ovation, but he did say that he stood up and clapped.
Richard Burgon
To bring things back down to earth, the people who clean and tidy the Secretary of State’s office—perhaps even when he is in it—have been demanding a real living wage of £10 an hour. Those Ministry of Justice cleaners are sick and tired of being treated like dirt, and his security guards, who keep the Ministry of Justice safe, are in the same boat. I wrote to the Secretary of State demanding that he sort this out, but he used outsourcing as his excuse for inaction. Instead of repeating his excuses to me today, will he address the Ministry of Justice staff watching us today and tell them why he thinks that they are not worth £10 an hour?
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
Lucy Frazer
I referred earlier to the steps we are taking in the MOJ in relation to medical members to reduce social security PIP and ESA appeals, but we are also introducing 250 more judges across tribunals. I welcome the very recent appointment of Grant Harvey Bird in September as a salaried judge for the first-tier tribunal in Gloucestershire.
Ms Marie Rimmer (St Helens South and Whiston) (Lab)
Lucy Frazer
As I mentioned, we are looking into this, and we will, I hope, very shortly launch our call for evidence, which will look at a number of issues.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
People in Chelmsford are concerned about levels of violence in the prison, and they want to know that prison officers are safe. Will pepper spray help?
Rory Stewart
This morning, we announced that officers will be able to carry pepper spray on their belts. This is to be used as a last resort, in the same way as a baton would be. It means that if, for example, a prisoner was in the process of stamping on another prisoner’s head, an officer could intervene safely from a distance to resolve the incident and potentially save lives. It is only one measure, along with a dozen other measures that we have to take to improve safety in prisons, but it is an important measure to protect the people who protect us.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/ Co-op)
Rory Stewart
We take the report very seriously, as we take all reports, including the recent report on domestic violence. It is absolutely right to say that we need to improve the risk assessment, the programme plans and the frequency of meeting. We are doing a consultation at the moment, to which we invite the hon. Lady to make a submission, on exactly what we can do to tighten up procedures for the CRCs. They have reduced reoffending by 2%, but there is much more that we can do on the quality of delivery.[Official Report, 22 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 3MC.]
Robert Neill (Bromley and Chislehurst) (Con)
Given that, yet again, the recruitment round of High Court judges has fallen short, and given that many distinguished retired judges are kept busy as arbitrators and wish to continue working, is it not time to look again at whether the arbitrary judicial retirement age of 70 is out of line with modern practice?
Mr Gauke
This is an issue that we continue to look at. I think it is a finely balanced matter, and we continue to look at the evidence. The argument is sometimes made that if we increase the retirement age, we will increase the age at which people apply to become judges. We will continue to look at the matter.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Lucy Frazer
I read that advice from the Law Society with interest. I recently met the Law Society and a number of solicitors that it brought with it to discuss the issues that face the profession, in relation not only to legal advice but to the age of the profession. As I have mentioned, we are doing a legal aid review, which will report at the end of the year.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Ministers in the Department are aware of the deep concerns of one of my constituents, who has been impacted by a very long wait for a second post-mortem following the loss of her brother. This has also impacted on other people, up and down the country. Will the Minister agree to meet me to see what more can be done to address the concerns of my constituent and her fellow RoadPeace campaigners?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Edward Argar)
I am very happy to give the assurance that I will meet my hon. Friend.
Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)
Rory Stewart
As I have said, we have looked very seriously at the inspectorate’s domestic violence report. It is worth bearing in mind that this has been a problem in many probation services across the world, and that it was, in fact, a problem before the CRCs were introduced. We are looking closely at the question of qualification during the current consultation, which will run for a further six months.[Official Report, 22 October 2018, Vol. 648, c. 4MC.]
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I know that the Lord Chancellor takes the role of the rule of law in this country very seriously, but can he reassure me that the Government will always stand up for it, and would resist—and certainly would not stand up and clap—any suggestions that it should be broken?
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Last month prison officers took unprecedented action by staging a day of protest outside prisons, including HM Prison Liverpool in Walton. Has the Minister spoken to the Prison Officers Association since then, and what has changed since its members took their unprecedented action?
Rory Stewart
That action was very regrettable. As the hon. Gentleman knows, prison officers are not entitled to strike legally, because it endangers prisoners and other prison officers. I met the chairman of the POA on the morning of the action—two hours later—and we had a number of discussions, which focused particularly on safety. We believe that working constructively, and not engaging in illegal strike action, is much better for prisons and prison officers.
Mary Glindon (North Tyneside) (Lab)
If the Minister is sincere when he insists that the decision to build new private prisons is not ideological but based on evidence, why is he trying to bury the evidence by refusing to release the official report on public-versus-private procurement for the two new prisons, despite freedom of information requests from the Prison Officers Association and parliamentary questions that remain unanswered?
Rory Stewart
If it is okay, I would like to meet the hon. Lady to understand in more detail exactly which request is being discussed. I am very happy to talk about it in person.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Given the very lucrative public contracts given to Atos and Capita, and the fact that they are clearly failing—71% of assessments for personal independence payments are overturned in the upper courts—what discussions has the Justice Secretary had with his counterpart in the Department for Work and Pensions about the imposition of a fining system? Atos and Capita are not only blocking up the courts, but treating disabled people appallingly.
Food Labelling and Allergy-Related Deaths
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab) (Urgent Question)
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs what action he is taking to improve the quality of UK food labelling to prevent further allergy-related deaths.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I call the Minister to respond, I should make it clear that I have waived the sub judice resolution to allow reference to the inquest into the death of Mrs Celia Marsh. However, I ask right hon. and hon. Members to exercise caution in referring to that case—if they are minded to do so at all—in order to avoid any possible prejudice to those proceedings.
David Rutley
First, I want to say how deeply upsetting the deaths of Celia Marsh and Natasha Ednan-Laperouse are and that my heart goes out to the families, friends and loved ones affected by those tragedies. This House will appreciate that investigations into Celia Marsh’s death are ongoing and it would be inappropriate for Ministers to make further comment on this particular incident at this stage. However, Members should be in no doubt about how seriously we take these issues. It is essential that all UK consumers have complete trust in the food they are eating.
Current food labelling law is set out in the EU’s food information to consumers legislation. This legislation includes a list of 14 allergens, including milk and sesame, which are legally considered to be mandatory information that must be available to consumers. The regulations currently allow for some flexibility at a national level as to how this information is provided on food that is not pre-packed and food which is “pre-packed for direct sale”. The former includes products such as loose cookies or sandwiches which are prepared and wrapped directly for the consumer. The latter category—“pre-packed for direct sale”—includes products such as freshly prepared sandwiches made on site, as compared with packaged food such as a chocolate bar or ready meal that we might find in a supermarket.
I must make it absolutely clear that, under the current regulations, information must be made available to the consumer in all cases. However, whereas packaged food must include all allergens in bold in the ingredients list, information about non pre-packed food, such as pre-packed food for direct sale, can be made available by any means the operator chooses, including the use of clear signs indicating that the customer should speak to a member of staff who will provide the information orally.
As the Secretary of State announced at the start of this year, we have been looking at developing new approaches to food labelling to ensure that consumers have the information they need. The death of Natasha has shone a harsh spotlight on the issue of allergen labelling in particular and whether the current framework is still suitable. Natasha’s parents have made a powerful case for change, and I am sure the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the tremendous grace and strength they have shown in these particularly challenging circumstances.
The Secretary of State has asked the Department for urgent advice on how we can strengthen the current allergen labelling framework. That review is under way, and DEFRA is working closely with the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Health and Social Care. This morning we received the coroner’s report into Natasha’s death and we will study it very carefully as part of that review. Tomorrow, DEFRA will be holding talks with the devolved Administrations to see what approach they may wish to take, as this is a devolved matter.
We take this issue very seriously. I assure Members that we are working at pace to review the current rules and will set out our proposed way forward as soon as possible.
Melanie Onn
I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for allowing this urgent question. The Minister is absolutely right: it is the tragic cases of 15-year-old Natasha Ednan-Laperouse and Celia Marsh that have thrown into sharp focus the common practices used by high-street convenience food providers to avoid doing all in their power to ensure their customers are safe. The Minister says the Government are taking this very seriously, but if that were the case surely the Secretary of State would be here to respond to the urgent question.
For years, this situation has been defended by the Government, who have said that tighter definition around, for example, regulation 5 of the food information regulations would be damaging to small business. But when did the Minister last review food label standards, and, given that regulations are supposed to be the bare minimum expected of companies, what have the Government done to make clear their expectations of food providers? The Minister referred to the expectation that, where there is signage, staff would be asked by customers whether there were any products with allergens, but how does he know whether those staff have been properly trained? Does he still think that signposting is sufficient as notice of potential allergy risks?
Have the Minister or the Secretary of State ever told larger companies that the expectations of Government are higher for them, given their vast customer base and extensive resources? Pret now says that it will include full ingredient labelling on all products—so they can do this when they want to. Must it always take a tragedy to effect meaningful change from this Government? Has the Secretary of State ever put this case across when in meetings with representatives of the sector?
Earlier in the year the Secretary of State spoke of “gold standard” food labelling but failed to mention allergies. Do he or his Department regret putting off a review of food labelling until after Brexit? If the Department introduces new legislation as recommended by the coroner in this inquest, will he also be ensuring that the Food Standards Agency is adequately resourced to make preventive checks in advance of another fatal incident occurring? Finally, does the Minister agree that, with food allergies seemingly on the rise, improved labelling, regulations around labelling and broader education about food allergies need to be put to the top of his “to do” list?
David Rutley
I thank the hon. Lady for her points, which she has raised with great sincerity and conviction, as always. I am sure that food is an important priority for the businesses in her constituency; it certainly is for many of us as well. She made an important point about discussions with small businesses. The Food Standards Agency, with whom I have been speaking this afternoon, is responsible for policy, and our local authorities work hard to take forward enforcement. In those conversations, it is clear that we are taking forward campaigns to improve awareness among consumers and businesses.
The hon. Lady also made important points about the steps that Pret a Manger is taking. It has set out what it is going to be doing initially, and it will—like the rest of us, particularly officials in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—be studying the coroner’s report carefully, as it sets out some challenging conclusions. Pret will want to consider how it will approach its business in the light of those conclusions. I hope that I have set out clearly that it is a priority that we take action here, and as I have said, this is something the Secretary of State talked about in January, saying that we wanted to move this forward. Clearly, because of these tragic cases, that work needs to be accelerated with real pace.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
These are tragic cases, and it is clear that the law needs to be updated. Will my hon. Friend tell us how quickly he expects the law to be changed in this regard? Will he also say more about what the Government are doing to provide guidance to retailers, to ensure that this type of tragedy does not happen again?
David Rutley
I thank my hon. Friend for his questions. As I have said, we are taking this review forward at pace, and it is now being accelerated so that we can take forward a review of food standards and food labelling at real pace.
The other thing that we have been doing—clearly, in the light of these cases, we need to do more—is to make consumers and businesses aware of the options available, particularly to consumers. It is worth highlighting that we need to find ways of communicating to 16 to 24-year-olds, who are very vulnerable, the ways in which they can find the important information that they need when making food choices.
Sue Hayman (Workington) (Lab)
Clearly, the recent news of these two deaths caused by allergic reactions to Pret a Manger products has been absolutely tragic; I would like to echo the Minister’s earlier comments and say that all our thoughts are with the families and friends of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse and Celia Marsh. These cases have demonstrated just how serious food allergies can be and the fatal consequences that can ensue. That is why proper, rigorous food labelling is paramount to our food safety standards. It was welcome that the Prime Minister called last week for a review of food labelling laws; that is something that I agree with and support. The Minister mentioned the review earlier, but when can we expect further information on when it will be completed and what it is likely to contain?
I appreciate that it is early days, following these events, but as we have seen, food labelling is a serious public health matter. To that end, what discussions have DEFRA Ministers and officials had with their colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care? We welcome the fact that Pret a Manger and other retailers such as Greggs have said that they will review how they label their food. Pret is now saying that it will list all the ingredients, including allergens, in its freshly made products, but we need this to happen right across the board. This is absolutely vital for people with life-threatening food allergies. Full ingredients lists should not just be a “nice to have”. For some people, they really are the difference between life and death. Food producers, suppliers and retailers have a public health duty to ensure that every food item is properly labelled.
Tomorrow, we will be discussing the Government’s Agriculture Bill, which will mean that the Environment Secretary will be in charge of our nation’s food production for the first time in decades. The Bill also provides a unique opportunity to put in place strong laws around food that could include the full labelling of all ingredients, allergens in particular. As we have heard, the Food Standards Agency states that food products containing the 14 main ingredients likely to cause an allergic reaction must be labelled as such and that manufacturers must then make it clear whether products contain those allergens. However, under EU law, as the Minister mentioned earlier, that can be done orally—it does not have to be written down—so customers will have to go out of their way to ask staff if allergens are not listed on a label.
I am pleased that the Minister referred to that anomaly but, as requested by my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), does the Minister believe that it is time to mandate that all allergens must be set out clearly in written format? Will he provide the House with a cast-iron guarantee that there will be no attempt to water down any current food labelling laws after Brexit? For example, in US law only eight major allergens have to be listed, as opposed to the FSA’s 14, and any trade deal with the US cannot come at the price of watered-down food safety standards. We clearly need urgent action to ensure that British food labelling is as good as it possibly can be to ensure that such tragic cases never happen again.
David Rutley
I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. She makes penetrating points, as always. As the father of a daughter with allergy problems, I assure her that I take such things incredibly seriously. I have recently come to this post—we have worked together on issues such as the ivory ban—and she can rest assured that I will be taking this matter up with the utmost seriousness and will tackle it as a matter of urgency.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
When will we make it a requirement to label halal and kosher products as such to better inform consumers who may or may not wish to buy such products?
David Rutley
I will come back to my hon. Friend with further thoughts when we can meet to discuss that matter further.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Natasha Ednan-Laperouse was my constituent. When I met her father early last year, he relived the hour he spent trying to save her life on the British Airways flight from Heathrow to Nice. No parent should have to go through such an appalling experience. I say gently to the Minister that I think he is the wrong person giving the wrong response today. Pret and the other food outlets have passed the buck to the Government, and the Government should not pass matters of policy to the Food Standards Agency. Will he at least say when the review will report back and whether he will issue unofficial guidelines to food outlets in the meantime about listing ingredients and contamination? Finally, will he co-ordinate with his colleagues in Government on consumer safety? Local authorities are now so denuded of funds that trading standards and other agencies are unable to enforce the law even as it is.
David Rutley
I am sitting next to a Health and Social Care Minister, so I can assure the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) that we will be working closely and carefully across Government. He makes an important point about the tragic circumstances in which Natasha’s parents found themselves, and this situation is testament to them and the way that they have conducted themselves. The Secretary of State has written to them and is keen to meet them to discuss their concerns and how to move things forward. The report will be swift, but we received the coroner’s report only today and it sets out some challenging conclusions to which we need to respond properly.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
I am sure that every one of us who is a parent will have found the account of what Natasha’s parents had to go through harrowing and awful. I am therefore delighted that the Minister is responding as he is. Does he agree that a new law to recognise their daughter would be a fitting tribute to their bravery and dedication?
David Rutley
Absolutely. As a parent, one can barely consider what they must have gone through during those hours on the flight and afterwards.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Speaking as one who always has to carry two epipens, I think that the Government need to take a wider view. Please could the review also include restaurant food, and will the Minister talk to his colleagues in the Department of Health about better training for medics and paramedics and more research into this growing crisis?
David Rutley
Yes, it does need to be wide. Yes, we need to involve other areas such as training for paramedics. We need to make sure that there is much better information and training. It is very serious, and I will make sure that that happens.
James Heappey (Wells) (Con)
I very much echo the condolences offered from the Dispatch Box, and warmly welcome the review that my hon. Friend the Minister has outlined today. However, in my constituency there are dozens of small food producers, many of whom produce food for direct sale at markets around Somerset and the wider south-west. While my hon. Friend will want to strengthen the regulations for large retailers, may I encourage him to apply some common sense in the way in which we apply them to small producers selling locally?
David Rutley
Common sense, yes, but the priority has to be food safety. UK consumers need to feel safe when they consume food, wherever it may be, and we need to find mechanisms to ensure that, whether food manufacturers and retailers are small or large, they get information across to consumers. It needs to be proportionate, but it needs to be effective as well.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
I am sure that the hearts of the whole House went out to Natasha’s family as they relived at the coroner’s inquest her tragic and avoidable death. Natasha was a careful consumer who was not given the information that she needed from Pret a Manger to keep herself safe. Does her death not show that the current food labelling regulations are not fit for purpose? Will the Minister ensure that no amount of special pleading, loopholes and laxity on the part of the food industry deters him from his, I am sure, definite intent to tighten the labelling regulations, strengthen trading standards enforcement and increase the money that goes from his Department to the public analysts so that food in shops can be tested?
David Rutley
As I have said on several occasions in responding to this urgent question, there is no question but that we need to strengthen the regulations. We need to get to grips with the coroner’s report. I echo the hon. Lady’s point that there should be no wriggling off the hook here. It is important that Pret a Manger and other companies look at that report and its implications and work out how they are going to respond.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is 30 years since my father was diagnosed as a coeliac—a condition that I know is shared by at least one person on the Treasury Bench this afternoon. In that time, we have gone from having to walk round a supermarket with a book, hoping that ingredients had not changed since it was published, to being able to rely on the labelling on a product to know whether it is suitable for him.
What further progress does the Minister think that the Government could make in looking at technological solutions that allow consumers to use smart phones and apps to get a full list of ingredients, not just the ones that might be on a label?
David Rutley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. We need to look at all means possible to provide the information. It is pivotal that we respond to the needs particularly of 16 to 24-year-olds, who are beginning to make independent choices about their food. Let us find ways of making that information available. Technology will be important, especially for that generation.
Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)
Most of those who suffer from food allergies rely on medicines to manage their reactions, but the data sheets for the medicines themselves are often incomplete. A constituent explained to me last week that medicines for handling anaphylactic reactions can often include lactose and soya without having that on the data sheet. So as well as looking to his own departmental responsibilities, will he speak to his colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that when people rely on medicines, they know that they can use them safely?
David Rutley
That is another important point, and I will make sure officials factor it into their review; we need to work closely with colleagues from the Department of Health and Social Care to make sure it is factored into the approach we take forward.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
As well as more careful food labelling, will my hon. Friend look at fake labelling? I do not know whether he has seen today’s Daily Mail, which suggests that the claims made by Pret a Manger of supplying fresh bread are far from the case and that the bread is actually frozen for a year and comes from France. It is important that consumers are not deceived—they pay a lot of money for these products. Will he therefore look at fake labelling and make sure that it does not happen?
David Rutley
We should be proud of the standard of our food in the UK; we are world-renowned for it. My right hon. Friend makes an important point: retailers and manufacturers need to be transparent about the quality of their food. We want it to be of the highest level. We need to be clear as to where the product—in this case, bread—is sourced from and how it is then prepared for consumption. All these things need to be much more transparent for the consumer—he is absolutely right.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
Pret is not a small corner shop, but a large industrial producer of food. It baked into that baguette a known allergen and then proceeded to sell it without labelling it, using a loophole meant for small corner shops. The Minister should be outraged about that. I welcome the fact he has said he will strengthen the law, but what is he going to do to strengthen enforcement and the capacity of trading standards and the FSA to enforce the rules? Enforcement is as important as getting the rules right.
David Rutley
Yes, we need to get the rules right, we need to enforce and we need to ensure that business steps up to the plate. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to say that Pret is not a corner shop, but a major player in the food sector. I hope Members of this House will read the coroner’s report, because it is incredibly challenging and Pret needs to step up to the plate and see what the reports are—[Interruption.] She asks from a sedentary position what the Department is doing. As I have said, we are going to be strengthening the allergen labelling framework. That review is under way, but I hope she will understand when I say that we do need to take into account what the coroner’s report has said and we received it only this morning.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
I absolutely share the sentiments that have been expressed this afternoon, but in advance of being able to change the law is there any scope for an industry-led approach, working with Government, to see things improve sooner?
David Rutley
It is important that we take forward this review to ensure that this is done robustly, but it is crucial that businesses step forward and address any concerns that consumers have. It is good business practice and businesses should be doing it.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Surely the Government should step out of their complacent attitude to regulation and strengthen enforcement, too. Instead of seeing regulation as something to be avoided and red tape as a dirty word, surely it is about time the Minister and his Department stepped up to the plate and did the things that need to be done to protect the consumer.
David Rutley
And we are; I have said on numerous occasions that we will be strengthening the allergen labelling framework. We are committed to doing that—
David Rutley
As soon as possible, because we do not want to see any more of these cases that we have so tragically heard about in recent days; we need to take the steps to do that in an organised way.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
The investigation into Natasha’s death showed that she died a tragic and avoidable death, one that could have been prevented by better food labelling. I welcome the fact that the Minister is looking at this issue with great speed. Can he give any indication about the timeframe, because others remain at risk during this period?
David Rutley
I cannot given any further indication, other than that we will be working at pace and taking the report forward as soon as possible. As Members have said—and I feel the same way—we want to make sure that all consumers are safe. I re-emphasise, though, that the coroner’s report has only just been received and we need to take it into account in the final conclusions.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Food labelling concerns put pressure on the NHS as people check for allergies. Knowing about an allergy can be a matter of life or death. What are the Government doing to approve and promote fast and reliable tests to diagnose allergies and help to save lives?
David Rutley
We need to work closely with the hospitals, and I will work closely on this with my colleagues in the Department. Interesting feedback mechanisms are being piloted in the north-east, where hospitals are providing feedback to local authorities on allergies and how best to respond to them. That sort of best practice needs to be taken forward.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
For how long does the Minister think that large conglomerates have been taking advantage of this loophole, in the form of looser regulation of food prepared on the premises, which is meant to protect small businesses? What message will he send out to those conglomerates to stop taking advantage of it prior to the publication of his review?
David Rutley
When the initial regulations were established, stakeholders were involved in framing them, and those stakeholders included organisations involved with allergy work. There are some situations, especially those involving younger people who may not be familiar with packaging, in which people can have a conversation with an individual across the counter so that they can understand what allergens might be in a particular product. I have had those conversations myself. That is a mechanism and we need to make sure that it is properly enforced. As I have said a couple of times at the Dispatch Box, it is really important that businesses look into how they can increase consumer confidence in their work. We will take forward at pace the review of the regulations, in order to play our part, too.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
I add my condolences to those expressed for the family and friends of the two victims.
In January, on being notified by the coroner that Celia Marsh had died at the Royal United Hospital in Bath, Bath and North East Somerset Council notified Pret A Manger, but it appears that the council did not notify the FSA, which was notified by Pret A Manger six weeks later—a long delay. What public responsibility does Bath and North East Somerset Council trading standards have to regulate and enforce food safety in our city?
David Rutley
I am not able to give a complete update on the situation in respect of Celia Marsh’s death because the investigations are still ongoing. On the hon. Lady’s point about enforcement in her local area, I will gladly meet her and we can decide how to take the matter forward.
Dangerous Waste and Body Parts Disposal: NHS
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to make a statement on the accumulation of hundreds of tonnes of dangerous waste.
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
As I set out in the written statement published this morning, on 31 July the Environment Agency notified central Government of an issue concerning clinical waste disposal. The primary concern was that too much waste was being held by a contractor, Healthcare Environment Services, in a number of waste storage and treatment sites. This included waste collected from hospitals and other public services. Although the waste was stored securely, it was not being disposed of within the correct regulatory timescales.
The Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Environment Agency and the Cabinet Office have worked together to resolve the issues. Our priority throughout has been to ensure that proper measures were put in place to enable trusts to continue to operate as normal. A major part of the contingency plans concerned commercially sensitive contractual discussions with HES and other providers.
Following the Environment Agency’s partial suspension of HES’s Normanton site, which came into force on 3 October 2018, NHS Improvement wrote to HES to raise its concerns. NHSI gave HES an opportunity to set out how it was complying with its legal and contractual obligations; HES failed to provide that assurance. As a result, 15 NHS trusts served contract termination notices on Sunday 7 October. As part of our contingency arrangements, we ran a tender process with the clinical waste sector before awarding a new contract to Mitie. As contracts with HES were terminated over the weekend, Mitie stepped in and, from Monday morning, provided continuing waste collection and incineration across all of these organisations.
In September, officials from the Department of Health and Social Care visited each of the major trauma centres affected and confirmed that waste was being stored correctly and that contingency plans were in place.
In addition, visits have been undertaken to each of the sites by the Environment Agency this weekend and this week, alongside earlier visits. The Environment Agency is continuing its enforcement action against HES. This includes ensuring that excess waste is cleared from non-compliant sites. The Government are working with the Environment Agency and the NHS to ensure that lessons are learned, and we are reviewing how contracts will be awarded in the future. I have updated the House on this situation today as new contracts were implemented on Sunday following the conclusion of this commercially sensitive process. Our priority throughout has been to ensure that measures were put in place so that the NHS could continue operating as normal. No gap in service provision has been reported and we are working to ensure that that remains the case.
Jonathan Ashworth
This is an absolutely horrific scandal. A private contractor has failed in its responsibilities to a quite staggering degree. Three hundred and fifty tonnes of waste, including human body parts, amputated limbs, infectious fluid and substances of cancer, was left effectively stockpiled and not safely disposed of; it is an absolute scandal. How on earth did we get to this? If the Environment Agency first raised concerns in March, if Ministers were formally informed in July, and if Cobra was convened and chaired by the Health Secretary last month—by the way, I really think that the Health Secretary should be answering questions at the Dispatch Box today—why was the decision taken not to inform Parliament and the public sooner? Given that concerns were raised in March, why did the NHS not intervene earlier? In fact, concerns were raised with NHS England last year, so can the Minister tell us what monitoring, if any, of the HES contract was put in place by the Department and Ministers?
The Minister referred to 15 trusts having terminated their contracts. The Health Service Journal reported that up to 50 trusts were affected. Will he clarify what the status is of the contracts with the remaining 35 trusts? Where Mitie has taken over the contracts, what regulation and oversight of Mitie and its subcontractors is now in place? Is he confident that there are enough incinerators across the country to dispose of waste in a timely manner?
Let me turn now to the public health implications. At the Normanton site, we were told that waste is now in refrigerators, but where was it before if not in refrigerators? Hospitals are now using temporary containers, but questions have been raised about the public safety implications of those containers. Can the Minister give us an absolute guarantee that those containers are safe and that there is no public health risk?
We are picking up the pieces, yet again, of another disastrous procurement of an outsourced contract by a private firm going wrong. What plans are now in place to ensure that something like this never happens again?
Stephen Barclay
Let me pick up on the various points that the hon. Gentleman has raised. On when Parliament was told, as I said in my statement, the partial suspension notice was served on the company on 3 October and new contracts were put in place over the weekend. This is, therefore, the first opportunity, following what had been commercially sensitive negotiations, to notify the House. It is also right to remind Members that the key strategic objective throughout has been to maintain operations at NHS hospitals to ensure that clinical waste is being collected. That strategic objective has been maintained at all times.
The hon. Gentleman asked a number of other questions, including whether there is enough incinerator capacity in the system. The answer to that is, yes there is. There are 24 incinerators. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs estimates that there is more than 30,000 tonnes of spare capacity in the system, and that there is significant capacity over and above that required by HES to perform its contract, so I can be very clear to the House that, moving forward, there is sufficient incinerator capacity.
The hon. Gentleman used some inflammatory language. It is worth reminding the House that just 1.1% of this clinical waste is anatomical, so some of the media headlines are slightly out of step with reality. The partial suspension that has been served on Normanton is solely in respect of the incinerator; it does not apply to the other sites under HES contractual arrangements with the trust.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether the waste was being secured safely. The answer is yes; the Environment Agency has been inspecting the situation. The issue is the overstorage of waste, not that the waste is not being stored in a safe manner. [Interruption.] Well, that is the legal remit of the Environment Agency, which is an independent body. It is right that the law is applied; the hon. Gentleman may not like to apply the law, but this is the legal process. Officials from the Department of Health have been to the major trauma sites to see the contingency plans at first hand, and the storage and capacity is in place at those sites.
The reality is that there was a contractual arrangement with a supplier that stored the waste correctly, but stored too much of it. The Environment Agency is enforcing against that. We have put in place contingency plans within the trusts and set up alternative provision in the form of a contract with Mitie. The key strategic objective of ensuring that NHS operations continue has been secured.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I thank the Minister for the prompt action that he has taken since being notified of this situation. Will he reassure people in the community and in community settings that this issue will not affect their safety?
Stephen Barclay
The Chair of the Health Committee raises an important point regarding residents in the areas where the sites are located, and I see the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in her place. The Environment Agency has confirmed that the waste is being stored safely; it is the amount of waste that is the issue. Many of our constituents are waiting for operations on these sites and will want reassurance that those operations can continue in a timely fashion. That has been a key focus of the Department, and I pay tribute to the work of officials in the NHS, the Department of Health, DEFRA and the Environment Agency, who have ensured that that strategic objective has been maintained.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
This situation does indeed sound graphic and horrific. Equally, I recognise that much of this waste will be cytotoxic, including drugs and syringes. We are talking about materials that are contaminated with faeces, infectious material and blood. We are discussing five sites across England. HES also has two sites in Scotland, both of which have been checked and do not have overstorage.
We hear that HES was served with 13 warning notices and two compliance notices over the past year. If that information was not accelerated up to the Department of Health, should it have been? HES says that it has been reporting its issue with incineration to regulators for quite a long time, yet the Minister says that there is no issue of capacity, so could not the Department have responded by directing HES to all this extra incineration capacity that apparently exists? As more local authorities are going towards zero-waste and incinerating material that would have been in landfill, the pressure will increase. There is probably ageing infrastructure and a need to expand, so do the Government plan a waste incineration strategy?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that HES has sites in Scotland; I think there are four. The Scottish Environment Protection Agency has been conducting regular site inspections and we are looking closely at the situation there—not least regarding the movement of waste from one site to another. However, she is correct that we are not aware of any specific issues at those sites.
The primary purpose of enforcement notices has been to encourage the company back into compliance. That has been the focus of the Environment Agency. The reason for the partial suspension in Normanton has been the unwillingness of the company to respond. Some notices are for what might be seen as relatively minor issues such as documentation, but obviously some relate to the overstorage on these sites.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
I am pleased that new contracts have been signed and enforcement action has been taken—and quickly—but what is really important are the lessons learned, so will the Minister expand on that? While this is a sensitive matter—understandably, it evokes all kinds of concerns for the public—will the Minister assure us that there has been no risk to patients at any time or indeed to the wider public from this most concerning of issues?
Stephen Barclay
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question, and I am happy to give her constituents an assurance that there has been no risk to patients at any point during this time. As for lessons learned, clearly we will need to look at some of the lessons, particularly what triggers a breach of contract. A series of contracts were held by a wide number of trusts with the supplier, and it is important that we look at what the notification periods are, what the monitoring and enforcement processes are, and what powers there are under the terms of the contract to ensure that the company is acting as it should.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
We still do not have the basic facts about what medical waste is being held at the Normanton site, how far over the environmental limits it currently is, and what the timetable is for compliance. Perhaps the Minister would share that information with us. Does he not accept that it is a basic principle that, when dealing with any kind of public health or environmental health risk or incident, proper, full, factual information is provided to the public and the community at the earliest possible opportunity? You do not hide behind contractual negotiations. Does he accept that there is nothing in the contract negotiations that would have prevented him or the Health Secretary from providing some basic facts about those risks much, much earlier than today?
Stephen Barclay
On the split to which the right hon. Lady referred between clinical waste and other waste at the Normanton site—she rightly focused on that for her constituents—just under a third of the flow of waste to the site is clinical. Just over two thirds, in my understanding, is non-clinical. It is not the case that all the waste on the Normanton site is clinical waste. As I have mentioned, some media reports about what the term “clinical waste” constitutes are slightly different from the reality.
As for notification, I set that out in my written ministerial statement and in my comments today. The key focus is on maintaining the continuity of operations and service within the NHS trusts so that we are not in a position where clinical waste cannot be cleared from them. That is the focus, and that is why, given the commercial negotiations and the contingency arrangements that have been put in place, we came to the House today, and not at an earlier point.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
In the end, the system has worked. There has been no back-up of clinical waste in hospitals—it has just been overstored in these sites. However, it is worrying, if it is true, that 13 warning notices and two compliance notices were issued to the company. Does the Minister think that he should be alerted earlier by the Environment Agency if this sort of thing happens in future?
Stephen Barclay
My hon. Friend makes a valid point about the lessons to be learned from this. Part of what I would expect to look at as we move forward are questions about when the NHS was first made aware of this and what powers are available to enforce at an earlier stage. As I have mentioned, enforcement notices cover a spectrum of risk. Some of those risks are more technical in nature than others, so while there have been 13 notices, their enforcement encompasses a range of severity.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
According to its most recent accounts, HES made a gross profit of over £15 million last year. What financial penalty will it suffer because of its gross incompetence?
Stephen Barclay
The first financial penalty it has suffered is the prompt action we took over the weekend, with 15 NHS trusts cancelling those contracts and moving across. There is a clear financial penalty in that loss of business. As for fines, that is a matter of legal process, through the Environment Agency, in the normal way. That is not an NHS matter. The focus for the NHS is on maintaining continuity of service.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
The Minister will be aware that my constituents want to be assured that their operations in Redditch and Worcester will be able to continue as normal. Can he give them that assurance?
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
The Government like to talk tough on waste criminals, but here we have waste criminals storing 350 tonnes of clinical waste illegally—five times the amount to be compliant—at their site in Normanton, and despite the Minister being told about this on 31 July, neither the local MP nor constituents were informed. Cobra was informed. A criminal investigation is now under way into the company. Can he ensure that not a single acute hospital trust will lose one penny piece as a result of this criminal negligence?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Lady raises several points. On the 350 tonnes of waste, I clarified the flow of that waste in my comments to the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) and I said that not all of it is clinical. I was not personally told on 31 July. I set out in my written statement when the NHS and then Ministers were told.
The question about whether there is any cost to NHS trusts is a very valid one for all constituency MPs who wish to understand the situation. The contingency cost—for example, from the additional capacity being put in place at trusts—will be borne centrally by the NHS family, and the cost of processing clinical waste will be borne by NHS trusts, as it has been to date.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I welcome the action the Minister has taken to terminate the contracts with this company, given its clear breaches and failure to deliver what it said it would. In his statement, he referred to the capacity for clinical waste incineration. Can he give us further detail about how he satisfied himself that there is capacity in each region? Clearly, these are specialist facilities, and having to transport waste could have a knock-on effect.
Stephen Barclay
I should clarify that it is not me personally who has terminated these contracts. These contracts with HES are held by the trusts themselves, and therefore it is a decision taken by those trusts.
As I said earlier, there is significant additional capacity within the incinerator landscape to process the waste generated by this contract, and therefore the suggestion in some quarters that this is an issue of a lack of capacity is simply not valid. To be clear, HES produces 595 tonnes of waste a month that goes to incineration, and the NHS identified 2,269 tonnes of incineration capacity, so reports that there is a lack of capacity in the market are not valid.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I learned from the Health Service Journal that Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust was one of those affected. It is totally unacceptable that clearly one of Ministers’ objectives was to cover things up for as long as possible to save their own blushes because of the failure of a Government contractor. Members of this House should not learn of such events from the media. We should hear it from Ministers via the Dispatch Box or the relevant Select Committee—or there is such a thing as email.
Ministers have announced that £1 million of contingency funding is to be made available to support trusts affected. Will that be met from existing departmental budgets, or will money be allocated by the Treasury? Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), surely it should be the failing contractor that coughs up £1 million, if not more. It should not come from taxpayers.
Stephen Barclay
We all learn things on a regular basis from the HSJ, but it seems misplaced to suggest that the hon. Gentleman should have been told about this when we were ensuring continuity of service and putting in place alternative arrangements to ensure that operations could continue at Barking and other hospitals. I have already addressed that point.
As I said, some of the cost—the contingency cost—will be absorbed centrally. The normal cost of clearing clinical waste was borne by the trusts before and will continue to be borne by the trusts.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I welcome the fact that there has been no gap in service provision and no public health risk and that the Minister has confirmed that nobody’s operation has been delayed because of this build-up of clinical waste, but it is still concerning that the contract was not properly delivered. How long has he given the site to return to compliance and what action is he taking to supervise the remaining contracts?
Stephen Barclay
The key issue for performance under the contracts is what, contractually, the legal requirements on HES are and whether those contractual terms have been breached. Part of the lessons learned is to look at whether contractual enforcement powers are sufficient. In terms of moving forward in respect of the other HES sites, that will depend on the contracts that the supplier has and whether it is in breach of those contracts or of enforcement action from the Environment Agency. To date, the Environment Agency has served one partial suspension, on the Normanton site. As I referred to, the Environment Agency was at the other site over the weekend. This is an area of significant scrutiny, but it will be for the Environment Agency to determine whether the company is not in compliance with its permits.
Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
So far, the Minister appears to have been far more interested in contractual arrangements than in public accountability. Can he explain how come Cobra has met and this House has not been informed of it? This House should be informed about Cobra meetings as soon as possible after they are finished.
Stephen Barclay
I am not sure about the exact protocols for when Cobra should and should not be reported, but given that it usually deals with highly confidential matters, I would have thought that not every issue should necessarily be reported in the first instance. We have been focused not on contractual niceties, but on ensuring that the NHS continues to deliver first-class services. As I referred to earlier, this is the first opportunity we have had following the conference recess to notify the House, following the contractual arrangements being made.
Tom Pursglove (Corby) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend confirm that the backlog of waste will be dealt with speedily, in accordance with the requirements of the law and with appropriate supervision?
Stephen Barclay
I very much share my hon. Friend’s desire for the backlog to be cleared as speedily as possible. As I referred to a moment ago, this is an area of scrutiny for the Environment Agency, and it is important that the company complies with its legal requirements and ensures that the level of waste is in line with its permits as soon as possible.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Hospitals such as Scunthorpe general cannot run effectively without the safe and secure disposal of clinical waste, which is exactly why it is important that the Minister has made the comments that he has today. Northern Lincolnshire and Goole trust quite properly put in place local contingencies, because obviously it could not rely on things being sorted out. It now looks as though contingencies are sorted nationally, so can he be very clear that local trusts will not face a penny more of extra costs as a result?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Gentleman raises a fair point, and I want to be clear about the distinction. Additional cost arising from the contingency arrangement—for example, putting in place extra storage on the trust’s sites—will not be an additional cost on the trust. I hope that that will reassure him, although I do not want to suggest to him that there will be no financial impact on trusts, because the requirement to clear clinical waste sits with the trust. That is why the trusts themselves had contracts with the supplier. The ongoing arrangements are likely to mean some increased cost, as the new supplier comes on board. That will fall to the trust, but not the contingency element.
Government Overseas Aid Commitment: Private Investment
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for International Development if she will make a statement on her plans to use private investment to make up part of the Government’s commitment to spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas development aid.
The Secretary of State for International Development (Penny Mordaunt)
Combined global investment flows into developing nations are currently $1.4 trillion, leaving a funding gap of over $2.5 trillion to deliver the global goals. With 12 years left on those goals, we are currently 80 years adrift on nutrition, 100 years adrift on education and 200 years adrift on ending extreme poverty. If we want to deliver those goals, we have to let others help, including the private sector.
We know that we have had good returns from our investments in developing nations—CDC manages an average annual return in sterling of 7%—so investing in developing nations could offer investors and pension holders a greater return on savings. We have £8 trillion under investment in the City of London. If 1% of that were redirected to Africa, that would lever $110 billion. Compare that with the total aid spend of $50 billion currently going into Africa. I believe that the public would be interested in their savings and pension funds helping this agenda to deliver the global goals. Imagine an app that allowed someone to select which particular goals they wanted their savings or pension fund to help.
We have the tools to do this. At the United Nations General Assembly a few weeks ago, we unveiled the World Benchmarking Alliance, which will grade companies’ performance against the global goals. We have the expertise to do this, in the City of London, in the Department for International Development, with our partners, and also through our world-beating impact investment organisations. We therefore want to explore doing this.
Today, I have announced a national conversation with financial institutions, with savers, with pensioners and with the wider public. We will announce the results at a UK-Africa investment conference next year. This is the only way we will deliver the global goals. Over the past two years, we have also worked with our partners to shift the dial on international aid rules, allowing our aid budget to help the private sector invest in sustainable development more than ever before. I will continue to work with our partners at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to ensure that the aid rules incentivise donors to lever in private sector investment where it is needed.
In future years, as the amount of funding coming back into our own development financial instruments—publicly owned financial instruments—increases, we should be open to using the profits to count towards the 0.7%. I am exploring the scope to reinvest those funds with the Development Assistance Committee to maximise the value of our investments. We remain committed to 0.7%—it was this Government who introduced it—but as we do so, we should ensure that the British public get a triple return on their generosity and compassion; a stronger personal return to them, a stronger Britain, and a more prosperous and secure world.
Kate Osamor
I thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question and the Secretary of State for being here. This country’s commitment to spend 0.7 % of our national income on overseas aid is a clear expression of how deeply the UK public care about eradicating poverty overseas. The public are therefore right to feel betrayed by the Secretary of State’s speech today, in which she has suggested that global poverty can be utilised as a lucrative investment opportunity. It is deeply concerning to learn of her plans to redefine aid through today’s media reports.
As the rules that govern aid spending are set at an international level by the OECD, can the Secretary of State tell us what precise rules she wants to change? In the absence of any detail, we can only speculate on how she believes these new investments will help the world’s poorest. Her claim that private investment is a win-win is not based on the evidence. We all know that there are both winners and losers from foreign investment in the global south. Her vision will leave the most vulnerable people at the mercy of global markets.
Does the Secretary of State recognise that her approach will mean major development issues that are not considered profitable will no longer get the funding they need? The press report that this private investment will replace public contributions to the UK’s aid budget. Will she confirm whether this is indeed her plan? I think the public deserve to know.
Penny Mordaunt
I gave a lengthy speech this morning and there is plenty of detail in there. [Interruption.] It is online, so the hon. Lady can read it.
Let me be very clear about the rule changes we would explore. Currently, when we capitalise an investment instrument, we count it as official development assistance. When we make the investment, we do not. We are very happy with that—we have argued for it—and that is what happens now. In future years, however, once we have capitalised those instruments, we may wish to change the way we do it. [Interruption.] It is not double-counting; it is allowing the returns we make on those investments to be used more flexibly. We are very happy and it suits us at the moment to do this. The issue is that if we then reinvest those funds in development, they do not count towards the 0.7%, and if we take them out, to spend on the NHS or another domestic priority, it counts negatively. What we are arguing for is exploring, at this stage, changing the rules to allow us to do that.
In addition, we have to accept that, even with the combined total of our budget and those of other nations, we will not deliver the global goals unless we let the private sector do more. Currently, the £8 trillion in the City could be put to better use and may actually deliver higher returns for pension funds. They will do a huge amount of good in the developing world.
The hon. Lady asks me for examples. CDC, which I understand she wishes to abolish, is the oldest development financial institution in the world. Last year, it made investments of over £1 billion, which created 735,000 jobs. We need to create 18 million jobs every year until 2035 just to keep up with population growth in Africa, and that is what we need to do to eradicate extreme poverty. If the hon. Lady has a better suggestion on how to raise $2.5 trillion I would be very interested to hear it.
I am here not to make us feel good about spending aid money; I am here to eradicate extreme poverty. We cannot do that without business and we cannot do that without the private sector. Dogma has no place in this debate.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
If we are to avoid a growing army of underemployed, desperate and angry young people, we need 600 million new jobs over the next decade. Does the Secretary of State imagine that that can be provided without an enormous mobilisation of private sector investment in the developing world?
Penny Mordaunt
My right hon. Friend is right. We are entering into the final decade and the last push towards the global goals. We have to be realistic. If we are going to achieve them, and I want to achieve them, we have to let other people help.
Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)
It is disappointing that this has had to be an urgent question and not a statement and that it has been made while the International Development Committee is travelling, which is why I am standing here and not my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee West (Chris Law).
It is also disappointing in terms of the impact of this announcement. For many years, despite everything else going on, there has been cross-party consensus and huge public support for the delivery of the 0.7% target through public funds. The UK is supposed to be a world leader in this area. This kind of back-peddling and backsliding, and finding different ways to leverage the 0.7%, actually risks undermining that global leadership, which I thought was supposed to be a Government priority in the face of Brexit.
Does the Secretary of State accept that meeting the global goals is in our interests of building a safer, more sustainable and secure world? They are not things that just happen elsewhere in poor countries overseas; they are for everybody’s benefit. Why not be more ambitious and use this money to go beyond the 0.7 % target, which is what the Scottish National party proposed in our White Paper on independence? Will she confirm that she is committed to retaining that target in one shape or form? The Government are already double counting money spent to defence, and this is simply more of the same. If there is going to be an app that lets us choose how money is spent, when can I go on to it and choose to have my tax money spent on not Trident but on aid instead?
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Gentleman for those questions, but I think he is a little confused about what the 0.7% is. It is not possible to count private investment towards that figure, so a pension fund down the road cannot count towards that 0.7%, but public funds can. The Development Assistance Committee measures many things, including private sector investment, but the 0.7% is public money.
If a future Government wished to, they could spend more than 0.7%, and we are committed to spend at least that amount of money. They could do so by counting the returns that were made. At the moment, we are spending more than 0.7% because we cannot do anything other than that with these funds—they do not count towards the 0.7%. We need to get the balance right between our commitments in this agenda, which are world leading—we introduced them and we believe in them—and the demands we make of the British taxpayer. If in future years we can meet 0.7% without having to ask the British taxpayer for more money, that is an option we should explore.
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
As the UK leaves the EU, does my right hon. Friend agree that it remains in our national interest to continue to tackle these global challenges, including migration, humanitarian crisies, peace work and security, but that we also need to maximise the effectiveness of our overseas aid?
Penny Mordaunt
My right hon. Friend is right. We have the opportunity to look in future years at what we might do with the £1.5 billion that we channel into the EU. I have set out very clearly that we would like to continue to work with our European partners. If that is done through the EU, we would have to ensure that they do not discriminate against British non-governmental organisations, and I have outlined both before the Select Committee and in my speech today how we would protect British NGOs and their beneficiaries in such circumstances.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
Does the Secretary of State stand by the unnamed briefing to newspapers done today on her behalf, which stated that
“when investors step in, the taxpayer can step back”?
Does she think there is any interpretation of such a statement other than that she intends to resile from this country’s honourable commitment to spend 0.7% on development?
Penny Mordaunt
I and my staff—both my political staff and my DFID staff—did not brief that. What I can say is that if we can lift people out of poverty, which we need the private sector to do, as they are the ones who can create jobs and close that enormous funding gap on the global goals, I hope that in future years we will be able to spend less money on these things, because there will not be the need. But that lies many years ahead. There will always be a need for humanitarian aid, but we have made huge progress over the past few decades in lifting people out of poverty, and I want us to finish the job in Africa.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
I welcome the comments from the Secretary of State on her commitment to the 0.7% target. Will she reassure the House that it remains a mission of this House and this Government to tackle the global challenges of climate change, humanitarian crises and economic development?
Penny Mordaunt
I absolutely can. That is why I am saying to the House, to the City and to our fellow donor nations that we have to start levering in others to help us with this agenda. If we really want to develop the global goals—we have been talking about the billions to trillions agenda for a very long time—we need to start delivering on it. Today, I have set out how we will start to do that.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
What steps is the Secretary of State taking to allow Parliament properly to scrutinise private investments in developing countries to ensure that they have a positive development impact on poorer countries?
Penny Mordaunt
I hope that the hon. Lady will welcome the announcement that was made at the UN General Assembly and that I reiterated in my speech today. For the first time, we have a tool that allows us to see how companies are graded against the delivery of the global goals—to see what they are doing socially and environmentally to ensure that the global goals are met. The benchmarking alliance unveiled at UNGA will be a huge tool not just for Parliaments and investors, but for the public, who, I think, care very much about how their savings and pensions are invested.
Nick Herbert (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is surely right to focus on the need to increase private sector investment in developing countries. However big the aid budget is, it will be dwarfed by private sector trade and investment flows, which are essential. Does she agree that aid is particularly important where private sector investment fails—for instance, in the development of new drugs that are essential to beat diseases such as tuberculosis?
Penny Mordaunt
I absolutely agree. The more we can help others to lean in and assist with job creation, the more we can do on areas that only we can deal with, particularly health and humanitarian matters.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
I am not sure whether this was the Secretary of State’s intention, but most of the press coverage about her speech this morning seemed to suggest that it was a leadership bid. On the subject of CDC—which, as I understand it, lost £73 million last year—can she confirm that she understands the concerns about CDC’s investment in things such as shopping centres, which may not deliver the best bang for our buck in terms of aid?
Penny Mordaunt
As I mentioned, CDC has a long history. It has been around for 70 years, and over that time it has done many things. One of my right hon. Friends, a former Secretary of State, got CDC to change how it focused its investments. It is focused now on the poorest countries, and on Africa in particular, which is where the heavy lifting is still to be done. CDC still has some legacy investments in places such as Latin America and so forth, but it is primarily concerned with Africa. We need to dispel some of the myths about investing in such countries. We get good and very competitive returns on those investments, and I urge financial institutions and investors to look at the opportunities that exist in Africa and Asia.
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State on her speech today. Can she confirm that she believes, as I do, that it is right and proper for our aid budget to support our national interest?
Penny Mordaunt
I set a new, higher spending bar for the Department, because in addition to spending money well, we have a duty to ensure that it could not be spent better. That means ensuring that we are doing the right thing within the development world and doing the best we can with that budget to improve health and education, but we also need to look across to our domestic priorities. If we are as explicit as we can be about the benefits to the British public of what we are doing in aid—for example, research that we have done has led to new treatments that are being used today on our NHS wards—I think the public will be pleased with that.
Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)
The global goals seek to end poverty, violence and hunger in all their forms in this country as well as overseas. The figure of 0.7% of gross national income on development assistance should be a floor, not a ceiling. Although I have some sympathy with the accounting issues that the Secretary of State is dealing with in terms of the reinvestment of any profits, I seek a guarantee from her that any investments that we make with that budget—either through the World Bank or the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank—are climate-neutral and environmentally friendly. I also say to her that not a single pension trustee in the country will invest overseas if they think that their investment is going to displace Government investment.
Penny Mordaunt
I thank the hon. Lady for her understanding of the issue of how we account for ODA. I can reassure her: this is the Government who introduced the 0.7%, and I have been an aid worker and believe in aid spending. I think that if we do not spend money on development, we pile costs on to other areas of public spending such as defence. I can also reassure the hon. Lady that the speech that I made today—I urge her to read it, if she has not already done so—makes it clear that we want to do more. Indeed, we must do more, because otherwise we will not deliver the global goals. So I can give the hon. Lady that guarantee. She is absolutely right: the public want to know where their investments are going. They want to know the environmental issues, and they want to know the social issues.
Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the aid budget should be used to encourage investment from new sources, which includes helping the British public to invest in companies that will invest in the global goals? Does she agree that in the light of the serious and desperately troubling climate change and global warming issues raised this week, it is more important than ever for us to adopt this funding model, because otherwise we will never address the carbon issues that we face?
Penny Mordaunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that only one in five high-net-worth individuals invests in ethical businesses, and businesses that will help us to deliver the global goals. We must do more if we are to deliver those goals, and we want to explore how we can help that to happen.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
This morning, I searched in vain for any content in the Secretary of State’s leadership bid—I mean, her speech. The only content that I found was the statement that she was going to start a national conversation. Her party has only just successfully lobbied the OECD to change the rules to allow the billions invested in CDC to be counted as aid upfront, and now she says that she wants another change. May I, for the purpose of clarity, ask whether, if the Government have invested £1 in CDC and it recirculates two or three times, she counts that once as £1 from the Treasury, or counts it three, four, five, six times and pats herself on the back while reducing the 0.7%? Will she commit herself to the 0.7% as a floor and not a cap?
Penny Mordaunt
Let me reiterate that it is this Government who introduced the 0.7%. [Interruption.] We introduced it, and we have kept it. I am sure that Opposition Members have not read the speech that I made today—if they had, they would know that the thrust of it was about levering more in.
What we are trying to do has nothing to do with some doctrine of the purity of aid, or what we should do with public money. It is about changing people’s lives and about saving lives, and this is about our ability to deliver what is needed for us to do that. Because we are capitalising those investment vehicles, we are currently choosing to deal with ODA in one way. We argued for that, and we have agreement to do that. [Interruption.] What I am saying is that in future years, if we want to do more of this—if we want to make our aid budget more sustainable—we should explore these options now. We should do that in consultation with the people whose money we are spending, the British taxpayers, and in consultation with the organisations that are investing their savings and pensions. Otherwise, folks, we are not going to deliver the global goals, which is what we are here to do.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on injecting a big, cold dose of common sense and reality into how international aid might best be delivered. The poor, starving child in Africa who lives in a tin shack and whose parents do not have work does not really care whether it is the private sector or the public sector that delivers that aid, but if the involvement of the private sector means that that child is fed, his family housed and his parents employed, then bring it on.
Penny Mordaunt
I agree with my hon. Friend and stand ready to receive other advice from the Opposition Benches about how we might close the £2.5 trillion funding gap—the shadow Home Secretary is not allowed to help with the maths. If we can deliver that through private investment, we can deliver the global goals. We must stop this dogma in the aid sector that anything done by the private sector is a bad thing; it is the only way we can actually deliver the goals.
Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)
I remain committed to the 0.7% figure, but I have no issue if that is made up of taxpayers’ money and a rate of return from taxpayers’ money, so long as the sum total is 0.7%. But may I ask the Secretary of State for reassurance that decisions will be made not on what gives the greatest investment return, but on what will give the greatest humanitarian outcome?
Penny Mordaunt
Absolutely, and businesses are very interested in this agenda. They are interested in seeing how they can embed the global goals into their company reporting; there is huge demand for that, and for advice and support to enable them to do that. The possibilities are truly incredible, and we should support our entrepreneurs and those philanthropists who also want to donate, because they are another part of this issue with the potential that impact investing has. They want to do some good in this world, and we should support them to do that.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The Prime Minister’s cuddly, compassionate Conservative pitch has not even lasted the first day back: not only have we just had a totally unnecessary and gratuitous attack on the shadow Home Secretary from the International Development Secretary, but it is clear from the briefing that her speech this morning was a pitch to the right wing of the Conservative party as part of her leadership ambitions. The pitch is simple: we are going to roll in the private sector and roll back the state. That is what she has announced today, isn’t it?
Penny Mordaunt
I will circulate my speech to hon. Members.
Hon. Members must understand that ODA, the 0.7%, cannot be private funds; it can only be public funds—whether money Governments have put in or returns potentially from those funds in those publicly owned investment vehicles. The hon. Gentleman accuses me of playing to the gallery; I am sorry, but I think Opposition Members are doing that. I have not heard an Opposition Member stand up and defend good British business that wants to use its resources to help alleviate and eradicate poverty. We are behind that agenda, and I urge Opposition Members to get with it, too.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
As the Secretary of State will know, hundreds of millions of people around the world have been brought out of extreme poverty by global trade and investment, so it is bizarre to hear it attacked today. Does she agree that proper aid policies, teamed up with sustainable investment and good trade, are the very thing that will deliver a vision for the future for many third-world countries, rather than a vision of Venezuela?
Penny Mordaunt
I agree with my hon. Friend. We have talked about distant investors and pension funds, but this is also about British entrepreneurs. I had a meeting with an entrepreneur this afternoon; he is a young gentleman who is setting up factories to produce clothing around the world. He is taking women who have been living on the streets and giving them a job, and giving them healthcare, education and childcare. He is doing amazing things. Business can be a huge force for good. We now have tools to monitor what business is doing and what progress businesses are making, and we ought to get behind them and let them help.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I chair the all-party group on Africa, which has been at the forefront of promoting greater good trade and investment links with Africa as being in all our interests. However, that must complement, not replace, our aid commitment. In treating pensions investments as aid, the Secretary of State is sending a signal that our pensioners should be dependent on returns on charitable donations and that trade with Africa is a question of charity. Is she really saying that we will be monitoring these new funding investments through company reporting, rather than making the investment fund managers accountable to this House?
Penny Mordaunt
No, I am sorry, but the hon. Lady is confusing two things. There are private funds completely separate from Government, including pension funds and other financial instruments, investing in Africa, and that is what we want them to do—[Interruption.] Well, we do not do enough of it. There is £8 trillion in the City that could be levered to that cause, so we do not do enough of that. The hon. Lady is confusing that with something else—namely, public funds and publicly owned investment vehicles such as CDC, the India Infrastructure Fund and the Private Infrastructure Development Group. Their profits, which are wholly public funds, have the potential to be used for years hence to count towards our aid.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend welcome the fact that, as we leave the EU, we will be able to have additional control over the £1.5 billion within our international aid budget that we currently channel through the EU? Does she think that we could use that money to achieve the global development goals?
Penny Mordaunt
We have all sorts of choices ahead of us as we take back control of that money. I have outlined today that I think we should be doing more investment to create the jobs and livelihoods that these nations need to lift themselves out of poverty and to bring a return to the UK, so that we can make the work that we do more sustainable and, if we choose, increase it.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
There is a legal duty under the International Development Act 2002 to ensure that aid spending is spent on poverty reduction overseas. There is also a responsibility on investors to maximise returns for their pension holders and shareholders. Those are probably contradictory priorities. Does the Secretary of State recognise that, if she is talking about this investment in terms of aid rather than of investment, she is going to have to change that legislation? Alternatively, is she talking about something entirely different from what we currently understand aid spending to be?
Penny Mordaunt
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the answer that I gave a moment ago. These are two different things, and I think many Opposition Members are confusing them. One reason why we are in the 0.7% club is that we do not mark our own homework; someone else does. That should provide some reassurance to people that we are not doing something that we are saying we are.
There is a difference when it comes to what a private company, entirely separate from Government, chooses to do—and what we are trying to encourage them to do: do some good in the world by investing in the developing nations that need investment and get a great return on their investment. There is a separate issue about what we do with public funds, which count towards the ODA spend. We are not talking about using private funds to replace that.
In terms of the Development Assistance Committee rules, we are talking about looking at how we count ODA, and about ensuring that when we get returns back we have more flexibility on what we do with them. We could spend more money on development or we could retain our 0.7% commitment and spend some of those returns on the national health service.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the Secretary of State. I appreciate that it is sometimes convenient, not least within Government Departments, for Ministers to use shorthand, but for the avoidance of doubt and for the benefit of those attending to our proceedings who are not within the curtilage of the Chamber, I should point out that ODA refers not to an unpleasant smell but to overseas development assistance.
EU Exit Negotiations
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Dominic Raab)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I will update the House on the progress in the negotiations to leave the EU and on the Government’s planning for no deal. Since I last updated the House, our negotiations with the EU have continued and intensified, and we were engaging constructively with our EU counterparts over the recess break. Let me take the main areas of the negotiations in turn.
On the withdrawal agreement, while there remain some differences, we are closing in on workable solutions to all the key outstanding issues, building on the progress made during the summer on issues such as data and information, the treatment of ongoing police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters, and ongoing Union judicial and administrative procedures after the date of exit. We have also been discussing our proposals on the linkage needed between the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship, and the EU is engaging constructively.
On the Northern Ireland protocol, we remain committed to the undertakings we made in the joint report back in December to agree a backstop in case there is a delay between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the treaty on our future relationship. That was agreed to avoid any risk of a return to a hard border in the intervening period, but we will not accept anything that threatens the constitutional or economic integrity of the United Kingdom. Creating any form of customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, which is what the EU had proposed, would put that at risk and that is unacceptable. As my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, it is not something that she, nor any British Prime Minister, could agree to. We are engaging with the EU on our alternative proposals that preserve the integrity of the UK. They will be in line with the commitments we made back in December, including the commitment that no new regulatory barriers should be created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK unless the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree.
On the future relationship, we continue to make progress on, for example, both the internal and external security arrangements for future co-operation, although there is still some way to go. As the House will know, the Prime Minister presented our proposals on the economic partnership to EU leaders at the informal Salzburg summit. We understand that the EU has raised some concerns, particularly around the distinction between goods and services under the common rulebook and with respect to the facilitated customs arrangement. We continue to engage constructively with the EU, and we continue to press our case. The UK’s White Paper proposals are the best way of ensuring that there is continued frictionless trade in goods after Britain leaves the EU while fulfilling the joint commitment to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland and respecting the referendum.
The negotiations were always bound to be tough in the final stretch. That is all the more reason why we should hold our nerve and stay resolute and focused, and I remain confident that we will reach a deal this autumn because that is still in the best interests of the United Kingdom and the European Union. It is the best way of protecting trade between Britain and the EU—trade which underpins jobs across the continent. It is the best way of ensuring that we continue to co-operate seamlessly on security matters and to tackle crime and terrorism to keep UK and EU citizens safe. It is also the best way to avoid a hard border in Northern Ireland that would adversely affect communities living there or separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, which we will not countenance. To achieve those aims, the UK has brought forward serious and credible proposals. We continue to engage with the EU to press our case and to better understand the nature of their concerns. Equally, it is time for the EU to match the ambition and pragmatism that we have shown.
While we intensify our negotiations to secure the deal we want and expect, we are also expediting preparations for no deal in case the EU does not match the ambition and pragmatism that we have shown. As the Prime Minister stated on 21 September after the Salzburg summit, the Government have made it clear that we will unilaterally protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK in the event of no deal. To the 3 million here, we say, “You are our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues. We want you to stay.” We will set out the details as soon as is practical, and we now urge the EU and all its member states to step up and give UK citizens on the continent the same reassurances. It is time, on both sides, to provide all our citizens with that comfort and confidence.
Since I last updated the House in September, we have published 52 more technical notices in two further batches. They inform people, businesses and other key stakeholders of the steps they need to take if we do not reach a deal with the EU. They cover a wide range of sectors, building on other work that has taken place across Government over the past two years to prepare the UK for Brexit irrespective of the outcome of negotiations. They acknowledge that there are risks to a no deal scenario, but they also demonstrate the steps we will take to avoid, mitigate and manage any potential short-term risks and disruption. Overall, we have now published 77 technical notices, which form part of the sensible, proportionate measures we are taking to prepare the country for every eventuality.
Our most recent batch of technical notices were published on 24 September; they are set out in a written ministerial statement today. There are 24, and they range from aviation—the advice for airlines on the impact of no deal and the actions for them to consider to maintain services on the day we leave the EU—through to car insurance and the arrangements to ensure that green cards will be available free of charge from insurance companies to enable UK drivers to continue to drive on the continent. The publication of the technical notices enables further engagement as part of our no deal planning. For example, our earlier technical notice on VAT set out the VAT changes that companies will need to prepare when importing or exporting goods from the EU, when supplying services to the EU, or when interacting with EU VAT IT systems. It was welcomed by the British Chamber of Commerce, and we are grateful to them and all of our stakeholders for their constructive ongoing engagement on that necessary planning.
More broadly, on 17 September I met with the British Chamber of Commerce, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, the EEF and the Federation of Small Businesses, as part of the Government’s business advisory group, to make sure that we are explaining our negotiating proposals and no deal planning, and listening to UK businesses of all sizes and across all sectors. We will keep providing people and businesses with the advice that they need as we negotiate our exit from the European Union.
We also keep working with the devolved Administrations on all aspects of our planning for exit. I attended the Joint Ministerial Committee on 13 September. It has now met 12 times, and our last meeting was a valuable opportunity to give the devolved Administrations a full update on the negotiations, as well as to discuss the necessary no deal planning. We continue to listen very carefully to all their views. Mr Speaker, that is the way, with a concerted effort on all fronts, that we have put ourselves in the best position to make the very best of Brexit, and I commend this statement to the House.
Keir Starmer (Holborn and St Pancras) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. It is always good to see him in his place, but may I politely point out that it would have been much better if this statement had come from the Prime Minister? It is no good hiding behind the badging of the Salzburg summit as informal. It was the Prime Minister who pushed for Brexit to be on the agenda at Salzburg; it was the Prime Minister who was there to lead the negotiations, and it was the Prime Minister who failed to secure a breakthrough. So it should be the Prime Minister, not the Secretary of State, in Parliament this afternoon explaining what went wrong.
After all, while the Prime Minister was negotiating in Salzburg, the Secretary of State was busy writing gimmicky letters to me about Labour policy. The image of the Secretary of State writing gimmicky letters on the very day of the Salzburg negotiations speaks absolutely for itself. It would also have been better if today’s statement contained details of substantive progress. Instead, it is like groundhog day. We get the same old story. The Secretary of State pretends that everything is going according to plan; it is just a question of dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s; everything will be all right in the end; and if it isn’t, we just crash out with no deal, stockpile food and medicines and declare that to be a great success.
I know that the Brexit Secretary will be tempted in reply to me to do what he usually does—to read out his pre-prepared attack lines about me and the Labour party. Can I urge him to resist that temptation and respond to the very serious questions to which this House and the country deserve answers? First, this Secretary of State repeatedly assured Parliament, including from that Dispatch Box, that a deal would be reached by the October Council—his words. Well, that is next week. The statement contains no such assurance today, so can he, first, update the House on when he now expects a deal to be put before Parliament?
Secondly, it is all very well the Secretary of State saying that we are
“closing in on workable solutions”
and listing the areas of agreement reached months ago, but we have been here before—many times—and that overlooks the fact that the remaining bit is the hard bit of agreeing the backstop in Northern Ireland. A solemn commitment to a legally binding backstop in Northern Ireland in all circumstances was made last December. Ten months later, all we are hearing is that the Government will publish updated proposals on the backstop at some unspecified date. There are nine days to go, so when will that be? There is no answer in today’s statement and we need an answer. Can the Secretary of State take the opportunity now to scotch rumours that the Government are not even intending to publish a backstop proposal by next week? [Interruption.] I am being repeatedly asked what I would do. I would happily swap sides at any stage, and a lot more progress would be made in the negotiations. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I have had reason to say to you before, Mr Spencer, that I am quite worried about you. I always regarded you as a rather laid back, gentlemanly farmer, but you seem to have mutated into something altogether more vociferous and aggressive. I cannot believe it is what you are eating. Calm yourself, man!
Keir Starmer
On the backstop, it is being reported that the Government are now willing to accept an indefinite UK-wide customs union as part of the Northern Ireland backstop offer—of course, it will not actually be using the words “customs union”. So can the Secretary of State set the record straight: is a customs union now the Government policy, at least for the Northern Ireland backstop—yes or no?
Thirdly, the Secretary of State repeatedly told Parliament that the final deal this House votes on would include a “clear blueprint” for the future relationship with the EU. In recent days, the Government have been emphasising just how precise this will be, yet it is nowhere to be seen. The Chequers proposals have been widely rejected by the EU and by MPs from across this House, and there is growing concern now that the Government are heading for no deal, as recent warnings from businesses, including Toyota and BMW, underline. If it is not no deal, will it be a vague deal asking us to jump blindfolded into the unknown? Labour will not support that. So will he take this opportunity to rule out a vague or blind Brexit?
For all the warm words, the reality is this: the Government have had 18 months yet they have not even concluded the terms of the withdrawal agreement and they have barely started negotiating the details of the future relationship with the EU. A responsible Government would realise the fix they are in. Instead, this Government simply repeat the mantra, “It’s Chequers or no deal.” It is not so much “nothing has changed” as “nothing can change”. This is not a necessity; this is a political choice, and it is deeply irresponsible. No Government have the right to plunge the country into chaos as a result of their own failure. Time is running out, but there is still time to change course, and I urge the Secretary of State to do so.
Dominic Raab
I thank the shadow Brexit Secretary—for his opening remarks at least. He asked a number of questions. First, let me say that the Prime Minister would not normally update the House on an informal summit; that was not the practice under the previous Labour Governments, as he probably well knows. He asked me about the October Council. We have always been clear that we would aim for the October Council but there would be leeway that it might slip into November—we are still clear on that. The October Council next week will be an important milestone. We expect that to be a moment where we will make some progress. Of course, as I have said already in my remarks, we need the EU to match the ambition and the pragmatism that we have shown.
The shadow Secretary of State asked whether we were signing up to an indefinite customs union for Northern Ireland; no, that is categorically not correct.
Dominic Raab
Had the hon. Gentleman been paying attention, he would have heard me set that out clearly in my statement.
The shadow Secretary of State talked about investment into this country, so I was surprised that he did not welcome Rolls-Royce’s recent decision to increase its investment in the UK or Unilever’s decision to maintain its dual UK-Dutch structure.
The shadow Secretary of State referred to my letter asking him some of the most basic questions on Labour’s policy on the substance. He has almost become the prince of process: he argues about protocol and procedure but cannot answer a single question on the substance. In reality, we got some answers at the Labour party conference. We had the shadow Secretary of State saying that Labour would whip a vote against any deal outside the customs union that the United Kingdom strikes with the 27 EU member states. Let us be clear: if all 28 Governments agree on a deal that works for the UK and for the EU, the Labour Front-Bench team, at least, would vote against it—they would try to veto it.
Worse still, the leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn)—I am glad that he is present to answer for this—has opened the door to a second referendum. That is a thinly veiled ruse to reverse Brexit altogether. It is now clear to every voter that the Labour leadership team have trashed their promise at the general election to deliver on Brexit; they have allowed political opportunism to consume what is in the national interests; and they have demonstrated, yet again, that they are just not fit to govern.
Mr Kenneth Clarke (Rushcliffe) (Con)
Our opening offer from the Chequers meeting is that we will join part of the single market, so long as we do not comply with all its rules as they are at the moment, and that we will join the customs union, so long as we are allowed to have an exception that allows us to put holes through the tariff wall with our own third-party agreements with other countries. The other EU leaders have been signalling for months that that is unacceptable, and so far it has not got us very far.
As our chief negotiator, will the Secretary of State assure me that he now expects that, as with all international organisations, the EU will indeed move a little nearer to our position, just as we move a little nearer to its position as a matter of compromise? Will he reject as quite ridiculous the arguments from some quarters that we can resolve this serious international dispute by tearing up Chequers and moving even further away from the EU’s minimum requirements for anybody to have an open trading relationship with the continent?
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his comments. Our proposals deliberately deliver on not only the referendum result but the manifesto commitment that all Conservatives stood on at the general election, which was to exit the customs union but secure the best possible trading relationship and preserve the integrity of the whole United Kingdom. As my right hon. and learned Friend said, we have clearly set out the ambition and pragmatism of our proposals and it is now quite right to expect the EU to move in our direction. If the EU does match that ambition and pragmatism, I am confident that we can still reach a deal.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for the advance sight of his statement—both the advance copy of today’s statement, which I received a few hours ago, and the statement that he made on 4 September, which was basically an advance copy of today’s statement, because very little seems to have changed since then.
It was nice to spend some time listening to Ministers from a united, competent Government who very much have the citizens of their nations at heart and to listen to political disagreements being heard and debated in a respectful and consensual manner—but then I had to leave the Scottish National party conference early to come down here, and everything has changed.
We still do not know what the Government intend to propose to the European Union in respect of Northern Ireland. We know the litany of what they are not going to do—it has to be thrown over every time to keep the Democratic Unionist party on side—but we do not know what is being proposed on Northern Ireland. We are running out of time and need answers very quickly indeed.
There was a brief update on the EU’s response to the trade package in the Chequers proposal. The EU did not raise concerns about it, it said that it will not be acceptable to its member states. It is not going to happen. Chequers has been bounced. The Government should take it off the table and try again.
May I gently correct the Secretary of State and say that the single, simplest and easiest way to achieve everything that the Government say that they want to achieve through Brexit is to stay in the customs union? We welcome the progress and the commitments that have been made on citizens’ rights, but the rights of those citizens would never have been under threat had it not been for the unilateral decision to come out of the single market. If they are that worried about the rights of future generations of citizens, they should stay in the single market. Why cannot we do that? It is because of an unnecessary, dogmatic, unilateral decision that was taken by the Prime Minister almost before the negotiations had even started. From day one, the approach has been dictated by hardliners who, if they are lucky, constitute one in five of the parliamentary Conservative party; they could not manage one in 10 of the membership of the present House of Commons. Those Members would happily go for a hard no deal Brexit, although they say that that is not what they want—I am talking about those who are serried, appropriately enough, to the far right of the Secretary of State right now. An entire dogmatic approach is still being driven by a tiny minority of this House. We could almost say that the tail is being allowed to wag the dogma.
What assessment have the Government made of the cost to every business in the UK of complying with the avalanche of technical advice that they are now being expected to follow? Has any assessment been made of that, and, if it has, will we be allowed to see it this time? Will the Secretary of State confirm that, whatever some who prop up this Government may tell him, peace in Northern Ireland is not expendable, it is sacrosanct and it is not negotiable under any circumstances whatsoever?
Will the Government reject once and for all the demands of the hard-line minority? Will they accept that it is now time to listen pragmatically and constructively to the compromises that were offered almost two years by the Scottish Government and to the compromises being offered by others in this House right now? Will he agree to talk to those who might have an answer before we all crash off the cliff edge together?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his call for sensible and respectful debate and agree with him that every effort needs to be made to preserve our precious Union. One thing that is very clear in this House, notwithstanding all the differences that we have, is that we will not allow any proposals from the EU to draw a customs line down the Irish sea.
The hon. Gentleman asked about Northern Ireland and our proposals. Our White Paper proposals on the economic partnership will provide the long-term sustainable answer to this question. As well as preserving frictionless trade with our EU partners, they will, in the process, resolve the concerns around the Northern Irish border. At the same time, we remain committed to the joint report in December, which would be for a limited, finite and temporary backstop.
The hon. Gentleman also asked about economic analysis. That will be made available in time for the meaningful vote. Finally, he asked about staying in the single market and the customs union. The reality is, as he well knows, that if we stay members of the single market and the customs union, we would not be leaving the EU.
Mr Iain Duncan Smith (Chingford and Woodford Green) (Con)
I am astonished that my right hon. Friend has written to his opposite number attacking Labour policy. Nobody here knows what Labour policy really is, so perhaps he can share those letters with us to help us understand it better.
Did my right hon. Friend read the recent paper by two former Northern Ireland Secretaries of State, Lord Trimble and my right hon. Friend’s predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), explaining how practical solutions are available right now to resolve any issues around having a hard border in Northern Ireland? If he read it, does he agree that that paper demonstrates that there is now no need for a backstop proposal?
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. Friend for his questions. The search for a Labour party policy on the EU and on Brexit continues, but on the reports that he mentioned—there have been various reports on the technical solution to Northern Ireland—they have provided very important, useful additional insights. The reality is that we have committed, on top of the technical solutions, to agree a legally binding backstop with the EU, but it will have to be temporary and it will have to meet the conditions that we have set out and that the Prime Minister repeated in her statement after the Salzburg summit.
Hilary Benn (Leeds Central) (Lab)
The more no deal technical notices that the Secretary of State published over the summer, the more he confirmed as correct the judgment of the Select Committee that a no deal Brexit would be chaotic and damaging. My question, however, relates to the outstanding issue in the negotiations, namely agreeing a legally operable and sound backstop to keep an open border in Northern Ireland. Given that the backstop, if it is used, will have to last until such time as another agreement is reached that achieves the same outcome, can he please explain to the House how on earth a backstop could be limited by an artificial time limit?
Dominic Raab
The point is that we hope the backstop will never be used. If it is required, it should be for a temporary, limited period. The right hon. Gentleman asked how that can be guaranteed. In fact, there are limits to the extent to which the EU can rely on article 50 for the backstop—there are very real legal concerns on the EU side—but of course we expect that there is no deal until we have the whole deal. That includes not just the withdrawal agreement and the protocol on Northern Ireland, but clear steps and a clear pathway to the future relationship, which will provide the lasting, sustainable answer on the Northern Ireland issue by ensuring that we have frictionless trade.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
Given the vote to leave and the promised future control over our laws in this Parliament, why are UK voters and businesses being confronted indefinitely with binding EU rules on goods that are made behind closed doors by 27 other member states, with no effective parliamentary lock? Or will the Secretary of State explain now how the parliamentary lock that is being put about would actually work in practice, rather than in theory?
Dominic Raab
I do not accept that characterisation of the White Paper proposals. There would be not just technical consultation, but consultation on any legislative proposal in advance. My hon. Friend is right to say that we would be taking an up-front decision to sign up to the common rulebook on industrial goods and agrifood in order to maintain frictionless trade. There would be a parliamentary lock, but we would have to be mindful—as the White Paper sets out—of the consequences of exercising that lock.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Secretary of State rightly ruled out a hard border in Northern Ireland and a customs border in the Irish sea, but is it not now time to be honest with people about what that means? He appeared to be ruling out a customs union in the backstop. Is he also ruling out a common external tariff in the Irish backstop—yes or no?
Dominic Raab
We have been very clear that the arrangement needs to be time-limited. We would not accept an arrangement that drew a customs border down the Irish sea. It needs to be limited so that we can bridge to the future relationship, which would give us all the advantages of free trade that we want to take advantage of, including export opportunities from Latin America to Asia, and the reduction of the cost of living here at home.
John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend confirm that if we just leave without signing a penal and one-sided withdrawal agreement, we will have £39 billion to spend on our priorities, which would be a huge boost to our economy and public services—a true Brexit bonus? How can an agreement be better than that?
Dominic Raab
My right hon. Friend is certainly right to point to the countervailing opportunities that a no deal scenario would have, but it is only responsible to be very clear—as we have in our 77 technical notices and our wider planning—that the no deal outcome is sub-optimal because there are risks and short-term disruptions, including a buffeting to the UK economy and all those other things. I am confident that we could get through that, but it is by far and away a superior outcome to get a good deal with the EU that is good for the UK and for the EU, that preserves our trade and security co-operation, and that at the same time liberates us to trade more energetically with the growth markets of the world.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
If the Tories want to know what Labour policy is, they should read the excellent motion that was passed recently at our party conference. Does the Secretary of State agree that any withdrawal agreement must include precise guarantees that Britain and the EU will enjoy frictionless trade in the event of Brexit, as the No. 10 Downing Street spokesman said yesterday?
Dominic Raab
The right hon. Gentleman will know that our proposals are set out very clearly in the White Paper. That is what we are pursuing. He is right to say that the negotiations have been tough, but you do not throw your hands up in despair; you knuckle down and hold your nerve. We will keep pursuing and pressing our case. What I cannot do is accept the case that the right hon. Gentleman makes for reversing the referendum. That would be a democratic outrage and it is not something that we will countenance.
Amber Rudd (Hastings and Rye) (Con)
I welcome the deliberative approach to Brexit that protects businesses and endeavours to make sure that frictionless travel will continue across the board, but may I ask the Secretary of State what his plans are in the event of a no deal for security matters? I remain very concerned about the somewhat gung-ho approach to a no deal, given that security matters are not yet in place to ensure that our country remains safe from terrorists and from organised crime and that the EU has the same benefits from our efforts?
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. Friend for her remarks. I am confident that in the medium to long term we will resume all the kinds of co-operation that one would expect, but it is right that in a no deal scenario we could not rely on the EU continuing that in the short term. One thing that could be said is that in that scenario there would be countervailing opportunities, for example—she talked about security—preventive checks at the border and the ability to deport when we are beyond the free movement rules that we are bound by under the EU.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
May I return to something that the Secretary of State said in response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw), because he did not quite respond, and I think that it is an important point? Yesterday, we heard from a No. 10 spokesman that there must be “precise” guarantees that Britain and the EU will enjoy frictionless trade after Brexit. Will the Secretary of State confirm that those guarantees will be a condition in the withdrawal agreement?
Dominic Raab
I am not sure that I am going to allow or let the Opposition set conditions on the UK’s policy—[Interruption]—no, when it has been clearly set out in our White Paper. We want to pursue the frictionless trade with the EU that we have right now, and that is what our proposal will deliver, but it requires the EU to meet us halfway to match the ambition and pragmatism that we have shown.
Mr Owen Paterson (North Shropshire) (Con)
If the backstop comes into operation, the UK will effectively be within the rules of the single market and the customs union and ultimately the European Court of Justice. Three times, the Secretary of State has said that that arrangement will be temporary, but it will be open-ended. What will be the exact legal process by which we will end this, and what will be the incentives for the EU to end this arrangement, as it is happily taking large sums of public money from the British taxpayer?
Dominic Raab
We have made it clear that it would be temporary and finite. The reassurance that I can give my right hon. Friend in advance of the publication of our proposals is that it is very difficult for the EU. From its perspective, there is a difference in the way in which customs union is described, because, for it, it would normally include free movement and the rules on that, which in the case of the backstop would not apply. There will be a lot of pressure on the EU, both legally and as a matter of policy, to end the backstop, and we will not agree to anything that does not include a clear process and steps to exit. [Interruption.] No, I am afraid that the right hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) does not.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
The idea that the sort of proposals that are floating about from the EU side and, indeed, some officials from our side in Brussels are necessary to prevent a hard border on the island of Ireland is complete rubbish. There is already infrastructure on the border, and there are financial, fiscal and other differences because it is an international border. Of course it can be managed.
May I draw the Secretary of State’s attention to what the Prime Minister said in her commitments to Northern Ireland on 6 December? She said that there would be no new borders within the United Kingdom and that the whole UK, including Northern Ireland, would leave the customs union and the single market. On 17 December, she agreed that nothing would be done to create any border, constitutional, political, economic or regulatory, between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom. Does the Secretary of State stand by that, because he needs to understand that, as a democratic Unionist party, we will not tolerate anything that separates Northern Ireland from the rest of the United Kingdom on customs or the single market as we leave the European Union? We have been clear about that from day one. It is why we had the debacle in December—let us not repeat that mistake.
Dominic Raab
I listened carefully to the right hon. Gentleman. He registered his position very clearly. We intend, as he knows, because we have been engaging on this issue, to honour all the commitments that we made in December, and we will not do anything that would be a threat to the economic or constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
I am sorry to see the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) looking mildly anguished.
Mr Speaker
No? Well, I am heartened to hear it. We must hear from the voice of Harwich and North Essex, Sir Bernard Jenkin.
Sir Bernard Jenkin
I commend my right hon. Friend and the Government for being absolutely determined to avoid any new infrastructure at the Northern Ireland border. Can he explain what the Government’s policy will be if we leave the European Union with no deal, and therefore there is no backstop and we have a customs frontier? Will the Government implement the technical measures to maintain an invisible customs frontier? Will he rule out any new infrastructure at the border between the north and the south?
Dominic Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We have been clear that we will see no return to a hard border under any circumstances. That has been made clear to not just all parties in Northern Ireland but the Commission in Brussels.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Let me try again, because the Brexit Secretary is trying to shimmy his way out of this. Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said:
“There can be no withdrawal agreement without a precise future framework”
on trade. Is that true—yes or no?
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Any decision to exit a backstop agreement must be one for Her Majesty’s Government, must it not?
Dominic Raab
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that we could not allow any third party—in this case, the EU—to have a lock on the process and that it could not last indefinitely.
Mr Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
I commend the Secretary of State for his frank answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), because it sounded as though he was finally ruling out the notion of a blindfolded Brexit and the idea that there would not be precise guarantees of frictionless trade in the withdrawal treaty on the future relationship. When he brings the motion before the House, if that is exactly what is presented, will he make sure that we have full details about the trade relationship for the future?
Dominic Raab
First, there is no question of some kind of blindfolded Brexit. We will be agreeing the withdrawal agreement and the Northern Ireland protocol, and we want to make sure that we have enough detail and enough of the substance in the political declaration on the future relationship, so that this House and the country at large understand the model of economic and security co-operation that we will be pursuing.
Damian Green (Ashford) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has rightly paid much attention to the Northern Ireland border, but may I draw his attention to other important borders—notably, the cross-channel border and all the trade that comes through Dover and the roads of Kent every day? Can he assure me that the deal he is looking for will ensure frictionless trade through the port of Dover, so that we avoid any kind of local chaos on the roads in Kent and wider economic chaos in the supply chains of the manufacturing industry throughout this country? That is a very important part of the negotiations.
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is absolutely right that, as well as on the issue of Northern Ireland, our proposal is designed to guarantee frictionless trade—in particular, for manufacturing businesses that rely on those supply chains. That is a critical element of the White Paper proposals, which is why we are pressing it so hard.
Stephen Kinnock (Aberavon) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has said that the backstop has to be time-limited. Can he share with the House which particular date he has in mind and how he came to settle on that date?
Dominic Raab
We are not in a position yet to give a date. We will publish that when we publish the proposals in the round. What cannot be allowed to happen is for either Northern Ireland or the UK as a whole to linger in an indefinite limbo of the customs union.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The intransigence shown by the EU at Salzburg and some of the other antics there will have reminded every leave voter in the country and a great many others that leaving the EU is the right thing to do. How confident is my right hon. Friend that we will see an outbreak of the spirit of pragmatism that he spoke of earlier, to land a deal later this autumn?
Dominic Raab
I thank my right hon. Friend for his question. He is right in his summary of the Salzburg summit, but the thing to do in such a negotiation is to keep your cool, hold your nerve and keep doing the professional, statesman-like thing, which is exactly what our Prime Minister has done. In terms of our confidence in reaching a deal, we cannot control the other side, but I think that the prognosis is good, because it is in the EU’s interests just as much as the UK’s interests to get a strong deal on everything from trade to security co-operation, to secure livelihoods and jobs on both sides and, in particular, to keep UK and EU citizens safe.
Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)
At the heart of the Brexit promise was that we could gain full control and free ourselves from EU institutions and regulations, while maintaining the same economic prosperity we have enjoyed during 40 years of membership. Is it not time to come clean that both simultaneously are not possible? There is a choice: we can choose Brexit, or we can choose prosperity.
Dominic Raab
No, I do not accept that sort of binary choice. The one thing we must all do in this House, as democrats, is respect the result of the referendum. We are seeking to achieve the win-win of retaining our strong trading and security links and co-operation with our EU partners and being free to not just take back control of our own laws but trade more liberally with the growth markets of the future, from Latin America to Asia.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Time and again, customs experts from a range of countries in the EU, including Holland and Ireland, tell us that a free trade agreement can be made to work across the Irish border using pragmatic arrangements. When will the Government take the key that has been handed to them in the prison of this negotiation and admit that we can leave on an FTA basis, which would make this a proper, independent country, able to control its domestic regulations as well as its tariffs, so that we can lead the world into a new era of free trade?
Dominic Raab
I respect my hon. Friend and, as ever, I pay tribute to the work he has done, but he will know, because he was in government—indeed, in DExEU—at the time, that while it may be theoretically possible for us to do that, we cannot do it and have a deal with the EU. The EU is not offering us a Canada or super-Canada FTA without our keeping to the commitment we made when he was in government in December to come up with a legally binding backstop. That is a shortcut to no deal. We have always said that we will be ready if that outcome is forced on us, but the optimum aim and objective that we are working towards is a good deal with the EU. We could not get that if we pursued what he suggests.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Is the Secretary of State aware that I consider myself sent here to secure the health, welfare and future prosperity of my constituents and the people of our country? Is he aware that nothing he has said today has convinced me that we are not heading for a steep decline and a miserable future for our country and my constituents?
Dominic Raab
All I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that we are ambitious for our post-Brexit relationship with the EU. The economic news from the Bank of England on GDP accelerating in growth terms and rising real wages is important. This is the moment to go into these negotiations with some economic self-confidence and political ambition. If we do that, this country’s best days lie ahead.
Mr David Jones (Clwyd West) (Con)
The Japanese Prime Minister recently declared that Japan would welcome the United Kingdom into the Trans-Pacific Partnership “with open arms”. Does my right hon. Friend agree that membership of the TPP is highly attractive and should be pursued? Does he also agree that membership of it is virtually impossible for so long as we remain part of the customs union?
Dominic Raab
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. We want to pursue trade deals, whether with the US or Asia-Pacific countries, precisely because it is better than purely leaving on no deal and WTO terms. I certainly accept the premise and the assumption underlying his question, which is that we should not allow ourselves to remain in the customs union, because we would then avoid all the opportunities of Brexit that we need to grasp.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
My constituents are worried about the political declaration to come from the Secretary of State, because so far all they have heard is warm words and political rhetoric, which does not guarantee their jobs. I want to ask him a simple question. Can he define “frictionless”?
Dominic Raab
I have listened to the hon. Lady in these debates, and she always makes sensible and constructive arguments, but we have not just given warm words. We have set out in our White Paper, which is 100 pages long, detailed proposals on the frictionless trade that she refers to and on security co-operation. If she wants to give her constituents some reassurance, she can point to that.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
The Secretary of State will have heard the clear intention of many colleagues on our Benches to vote down the Prime Minister’s pragmatic deal. Meanwhile, the clock ticks down to 29 March and there is a serious risk that we could crash out with no deal and no transition. The consequences of that would be disastrous and very different from the dodgy prospectus that was set out in the referendum. Particularly if that is the case, will the Secretary of State commit to giving the British people the opportunity to give their informed consent to that final deal? It is not about obstructing the referendum; it is checking that we have informed consent, and no decent surgeon would proceed without it.
Dominic Raab
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend about the need to pursue a good deal with the EU, and all our efforts are focused on achieving that. I do not accept the premise of her suggestion of a second referendum. I think it would inevitably be aimed at trying to reverse Brexit, and that would create democratic outrage and a huge amount of mistrust in the establishment and the political system.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
The Secretary of State mentioned the Joint Ministerial Committee in his statement. An issue of huge importance to Wales is post-Brexit cohesion funding. Following Salzburg, the Prime Minister seemed to indicate that the proposed shared prosperity fund would be the sole responsibility of the British Government. As he knows, economic development is a devolved issue, but the indication seems to be that it would be clawed back by Westminster. Is it not now clear that, for Wales, Brexit means the complete opposite of taking back control?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. It is important to ensure that Brexit works for all parts of the United Kingdom. We continue to engage with all the devolved Administrations on all the devolved issues, including in Scotland, as I set out in my statement, in relation to Scottish and Welsh Ministers and officials from the Northern Ireland secretariat. We want to make sure that we continue to engage in the process that he has described and ensure this great opportunity for the people of Scotland.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I thank the excellent Secretary of State for coming to the House to make this statement. Obviously he would like to get a Chequers deal, but as the European Union has already rejected that—in some ways insulting the Prime Minister in the process, I have to say—and as he thinks that coming out without a deal is sub-optimal, should we not learn from a former great Labour Prime Minister about a third way? Labour Members didn’t cheer that point; I do not know why. If Chequers fails, is not Chequers-plus-plus-plus the way forward?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend knows that we have made it clear that we will listen to the other side, but we need to understand their objections. We are not going to just take the face-value, “computer says no” approach, when we have put in a huge amount of effort and looked at our proposals in a very innovative way. We will therefore continue to press our case to make sure that we get a good deal, but I hope that my hon. Friend agrees with me that, whatever the view on no deal, it would be a far better outcome for this country if we can secure a good deal, and that is what we are aiming for.
Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)
The Prime Minister has said that a Canada-style free trade agreement is nowhere near good enough for the United Kingdom. Does the Secretary of State agree?
Dominic Raab
I think we should be aiming for the best possible outcome. Our White Paper proposals give us that, and one of the crucial things we need to disabuse people of is the illusion that the EU is offering us CETA-plus or anything else without the legally binding backstop. That is what we are focused on achieving.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
Many jobs rely on getting a free trade deal and frictionless trade, but such a trade deal also relies on fair competition between both parties. May I urge the Secretary of State to continue to reassure those in Europe that this country will not lead a race to the bottom in environmental standards, consumer standards or welfare standards, and that this Government are committed to fair competition?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we want to make sure that we have a pro-competition regime at home. As she will know, in our White Paper we have set out reassurances on a level playing field, and they come as a package with the Chequers deal, so we have also been clear with the EU that there cannot be any cherry picking from the proposals that we have put forward.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Secretary of State said in his conference speech that he would rather leave with no deal than negotiate any form of deal that involved a customs union. Did he run that past the management at Jaguar Land Rover? How does he think the poor workers at JLR, now enjoying a three-day week and a two-week total shutdown, will respond to such a stubborn, intransigent attitude?
Dominic Raab
JLR wants the deal that we are pursuing through our White Paper proposals. What it certainly does not want is all the extra additional uncertainty of a second referendum, which the leader of the Labour party has now exposed it to.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Ind)
Representing the port of Dover, I have given the situation a lot of thought. The reality is that a Canada-style deal could work and could be made to work in a frictionless way if we build on already existing juxtaposed controls, which enable frictionless movement with passport checking. We could do that for goods as well, to ensure that we have a Canada-style agreement and frictionless trade as well. Will the Secretary of State take that forward?
Dominic Raab
I always listen very carefully to my hon. Friend. He makes his case in a powerful way. I would still suggest to him that if we are looking for the right balance between making sure that we protect our precious Union, preserving our frictionless trade with the EU and also liberating the country to trade more energetically with the growth markets of the future, then the proposals that we have set out are the only credible plans that deliver on all those objectives. That is why we are pursuing them.
Stephen Doughty (Cardiff South and Penarth) (Lab/Co-op)
In contrast to some of the suggestions coming from parts of the Government Benches about a minimalist free trade-style agreement, the director general of the CBI told the BBC recently that a minimalist agreement would introduce friction at borders, would not solve the Irish border question and would damage our supply chains. Will the Secretary of State say whether he agrees with the director general of the CBI and therefore rule that out as an option?
Dominic Raab
We cannot rule out leaving with no deal, because we do not have full control of the EU, but I addressed the CBI president’s committee recently, and the hon. Gentleman will know that the CBI is fully supportive and wants to see the Government’s approach as laid out in the White Paper proposals delivered. He should get behind that.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I commend the Secretary of State for his approach to the negotiations, notwithstanding their difficulties. He talked about pragmatism. Businesses in my constituency and across the west midlands are very pragmatic, and the outcome that they want from these negotiations is our being able to do free trade deals around the world, to stimulate exports and improve our prosperity. Can he reassure me that that is still the centrepiece of what we are trying to achieve in these negotiations?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and he is also right to talk about the future opportunities for businesses. It is also right to say that an energetic, global free trade policy is good for consumers at home as well, because reducing prices eases the cost of living for low and middle-income families.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
In his statement, the Secretary of State said that the Government are expediting their no deal preparations. He also referenced the technical note on aviation, which advises airlines that they will need to secure permissions from the national authorities of each state they want to fly to, as well as authorisation from the European Aviation Safety Agency. Can he explain how telling airlines that they need to sort it out themselves is making preparations for a no deal?
Dominic Raab
The technical notices set out our proposals and all the actions that airlines and the aviation industry should take. We cannot control what the EU would do in a no deal scenario, but as it set out earlier this year, this is one area where it would envisage at least some sort of bare-bones agreement. I think that is important for giving people and the industry the reassurance they need.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
There has been much talk of the Irish border in relation to Brexit discussions—indeed, it has become a political football. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is to ignore the political reality, which he has restated today in part, that the UK will never enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland, that the Republic of Ireland will never enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland and that neither the UK nor the Republic of Ireland are going to allow the EU to enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right in his depiction of the UK position, and I think it is also an accurate reflection of the Republic of Ireland’s position. I cannot say what the EU would do in that scenario, but it is important that we continue to strive to forge a good deal on the terms that we have set out, which avoids the need for any of that to be even in question.
Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)
With respect, can the Secretary of State hear himself? We are just weeks away from needing any deal, but he is no closer to an agreement; there is urgent no-deal planning, civil contingency planning and secret Cobra meetings; security in Northern Ireland is at risk; and businesses and industry are expressing grave concerns. Surely the only real democratic thing to do now is put this back to the people and let them decide.
Dominic Raab
I think that reversing the referendum would be a big mistake that would create huge distrust in our democratic system. What we have to do in such negotiations, which will be tough in the final stretch, is hold our nerve, keep our calm and recognise that the EU will always try to drag them out. The hon. Lady has ignored a lot of the progress that I set out in my opening statement. What we should not do at this stage is start blinking and panicking. We will hold our course and deliver a good deal for this country.
Mr Marcus Fysh (Yeovil) (Con)
My part of Somerset has one of the highest degrees of exports to the rest of the world, as opposed to the EU, but for every minute that the rest of the world thinks we might remain in some sort of customs union or common external tariff alignment, the less interest they have in negotiating with us on future trade. When will the Government publish their version of the backstop?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is right that we need to be clear in our approach. One of the advantages when we secure a deal, as I am confident we will do this autumn, and publish our political declaration is that we will be very clear about the course we are charting, particularly on retaining control over our tariffs, which will put us in a good position to deliver the free trade deals that will benefit his constituents.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State have an example of any other process so monumental for our constitution, for our way of life, and for our businesses, jobs, trade and environment, that has taken place over such a minute space of time? Will he not consider whether this is insufficient time for our businesses, universities, healthcare services and so on to prepare for what might turn out to be a no-deal Brexit?
Dominic Raab
The hon. Lady is right to point out that there are risks. We set out our plans, through our technical notices and through legislation, to mitigate, manage or avoid those risks. The referendum was held in 2016, so this has not been done in a hurry. The reassurance I can give her is that we will pursue as best we can the best deal with our EU friends and partners. The wrong thing to do now would be to open the door to a second referendum, with all the uncertainty that would bring. That is why the decision of Labour’s Front Benchers is so flawed.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend please remind those who are calling for a people’s referendum, particularly in the Labour party, that we have actually already had one, and that it was one of the greatest democratic exercises that this country has ever undertaken?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Furthermore, when we passed the legislation, all parties on all sides agreed and stated that they would respect the outcome. Nothing fuels mistrust in the political system more than when politicians reverse on commitments they have already made. That is likely only to fuel the kind of mistrust in the political system that we need to avoid.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
The Prime Minister’s entrance just before her speech at the Conservative party conference was one of the worst examples of restricted freedom of movement that we have seen since the referendum. Is the fact that she has restricted her movement today by not coming to the House to make this statement a sign that Chequers is dead? Can the Secretary of State stand at the Dispatch Box and tell us that whatever we will be voting on will be based on Chequers?
Dominic Raab
I will pass on to the Prime Minister the hon. Gentleman’s advice to take dancing lessons from him, but I am not sure that she will take him up on that immediately. What I can tell him is that we will continue to chart a course based on our White Paper proposals, for all the reasons I have set out, because it is good for trade, good for jobs and good for maintaining the security co-operation that we want to continue with our EU partners and friends.
Mike Wood (Dudley South) (Con)
I welcome the more positive language coming out of Brussels over the weekend, but does my right hon. Friend agree that, although warm words are all very well, it is time the EU matched that language with actual movement if we are to reach a mutually beneficial deal this autumn?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The time for warm words is over; now is the time for deeds, actions and political decisions. I am confident that we can get there, as I have said, if the EU matches the innovative approach that we have taken. The EU is often at its best when it is innovative, rather than dogmatic and relying on dry legalism. If it can produce the political will to meet us halfway, I am confident that we can get a good deal, in the way he described.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
When the Select Committee met Michel Barnier on 3 September, he set out four reasons why the EU could not accept the proposal on the facilitated customs arrangement and the common rulebook for goods. The Select Committee then published its evidence. Why, therefore, did the Prime Minister apparently not know when she went to Salzburg on 19 September that those key elements in her Chequers proposals had already been rejected by EU member states? It has been said that she was insulted, but she should have known that that was their position.
Dominic Raab
The right hon. Gentleman is right that the EU has at various points set out objections, some of which I do not believe stand up to scrutiny. For example, there is the distinction between goods and services that the EU takes in relation to Ukraine, so that is at least a precedent showing that it can do it if it wants to.
The reality is that if we are in a negotiation, having taken our time to work out plans and think them through, bearing in mind the equities and key interests on the EU side, we will not just throw our hands up in despair when one or other element of the EU says no. We will continue to press them, understanding the EU’s concerns better, as we have set out in our proposals, and make sure that we can deliver a good deal that works for the EU as well as for the UK.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
In Redditch, we were fortunate enough to have a visit from the Leader of the Opposition recently. I was unable to attend, as I was busy seeing constituents in my surgery. If he had spoken to my constituents, as I do, he would have found that the vast majority do not support a second referendum, because they believe that it would undermine our democracy. Can the Secretary of State confirm for my constituents that he does not support a second referendum either?
Dominic Raab
I can happily confirm that neither I nor the Government support a second referendum. Of course, it would be a betrayal not just of my hon. Friend’s voters, but of all those who voted for Labour at the last election and who thought that the Labour party was serious about respecting the verdict in the referendum.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
Manufacturing accounts for 12% of jobs in the east midlands, and thousands of them are dependent on just-in-time supply chains. Can the Secretary of State explain to workers at Toyota, Rolls-Royce and Bombardier, and to the thousands more working for their suppliers, how the “countervailing opportunities” of no deal could possibly compensate for the threat to their jobs? If he cannot, why is he prepared to contemplate leaving with no deal but not to contemplate remaining in the customs union?
Dominic Raab
Remaining in the customs union would not be giving effect to the referendum. The hon. Lady mentioned Rolls-Royce, which has just announced extra investment in its Goodwood plant in Sussex. Many businesses are saying that, regardless of Brexit, this country is an excellent place to come to and invest in, because of the skills and entrepreneurial creativity of our workforce and our people. I hope that she can have a little more confidence in the ability not only of her constituents but of the people of this country to make the best of the opportunities of Brexit.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement, particularly his clarity and reassurance towards EU citizens living and working in this country. Contrast that clarity with the response from Labour’s Front Benchers, who have refused to set out what their party’s position is and who are still facing both ways on the issue of a second referendum.
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Labour party has no clear or coherent position on any aspect of the substance. The Labour leader’s calling for a reversal of Brexit through a referendum is a betrayal of everyone who voted Labour at the last election.
Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)
Jaguar is on a three-day week and Land Rover’s Solihull plant is ceasing production for two weeks. The company, the workers and their union, Unite, are working together, but it is becoming ever more difficult. Will the Secretary of State rule out any deal that does not guarantee frictionless trade and access to the single market, which are vital to the future of the jewel in the crown of British manufacturing—automotive generally and Jaguar Land Rover in particular—and will he disown those on his side who, when faced with industry warnings about the potentially catastrophic consequences of a no-deal or hard Brexit, wrote them off, saying that they were “making it up”?
Dominic Raab
I agree that we need to listen to businesses. I explained in my oral statement the steps we are taking to make sure we listen to businesses in all sectors and of all sizes. That is an even stronger reason why the hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members should get behind the Government’s approach. Through the White Paper we can guarantee frictionless trade with our EU partners, while expanding our global opportunities. The one thing that would cause more uncertainty for businesses is the prospect, dangled by the leadership of the Labour party, of a second referendum.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
We heard it here today: the Labour party is calling for a second referendum and the Scottish National party is calling for two second referendums. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that while it has always been the case that only the Conservative party has any plan to take us out of the European Union, we are now the only party left in this place that respects the democratic will of the British people?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I do not know what Brenda in Bristol would think about all the proposals from the Opposition parties. The vast majority of the people in this country want to see unity of purpose and for us get the best deal. They are fed up with the political opportunism of those on the Opposition Benches.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), the Secretary of State confirmed what the No. 10 spokesman said: there must be precise guarantees that Britain and the EU will enjoy frictionless trade after Brexit as a condition of the withdrawal agreement. The question is: does he agree with that position?
Dominic Raab
We made clear in our proposals, first in relation to the question that I answered, that we want to see a well detailed political declaration so that people, when they come to vote on the meaningful vote, have a clear idea of the direction of the economic model and the security model of co-operation. As the hon. Gentleman will know from our White Paper proposals, we are pursuing and aiming for frictionless trade. That is the point of signing up to a common rule book on goods and agri-food, and that is the reason for the facilitated customs arrangement. He should get behind those proposals.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
My constituents tell me that they are concerned about the Labour party’s hokey-cokey approach. They also tell me that they have had their people’s vote, in June 2016, and do not need or want a second one. Does the Secretary of State agree with my constituents?
Dominic Raab
They are absolutely right, as they proved by electing my hon. Friend to this place.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Secretary of State mentioned that he is confident of reaching a withdrawal agreement in autumn. He also talked about a political declaration having a clear blueprint for a future relationship with the EU. When will the House be able to scrutinise both the withdrawal agreement and the blueprint, and what level of detail will they have?
Dominic Raab
I thank the hon. Lady for her very important question. The timeframe for scrutiny in this House and the other place is also very important. After the agreement has been reached in all the areas she describes, we will have a period where the documents are laid and a meaningful vote. After that, the legislation implementing the withdrawal agreement would be introduced.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. There has rightly been a lot of focus on one of the land borders affected by the UK leaving the EU, but so far no questions about the second one—the one between Spain and Gibraltar. Will the Secretary of State outline how he is keeping in contact with the Government of Gibraltar on the process of negotiations and ensuring that their views are fully taken on board?
Dominic Raab
My hon. Friend is right. I met the Chief Minister recently. We are making sure that the Government of Gibraltar are fully involved and fully aware of all the negotiations. We have made good progress together in Madrid. The Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), will be seeing him again next week.
Tonia Antoniazzi (Gower) (Lab)
In a letter dated 23 August, the Health Secretary said:
“based on the current cross-Government planning scenario we will ensure the UK has an additional six weeks supply of medicines”
in the event of no deal. However, it was then reported in The Sun that on 8 September that Cabinet Ministers were to be warned of a 12-week disruption at the border in the event of no deal—twice as long as the Health Secretary was planning for. Will the Secretary of State clarify the Government’s current planning assumptions for the length of disruption at the UK border in the event of no deal?
Dominic Raab
May I give the hon. Lady a bit of reassurance? In both the technical notices and the letter the Health Secretary sent to stakeholders, that has been set out very clearly. I can also give her the reassurance that the stockpiling of medicines and vaccines is a standard part of UK planning in the way the Government engage with the pharmaceutical industry in lots of other areas.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
In the course of the referendum campaign my constituents weighed up the arguments on behalf of the leave and remain campaigns and voted overwhelmingly to leave. Since then, there have been siren voices calling for a second referendum. I wonder if the Secretary of State has heard a single argument made since the referendum that was not been made before it, because I have not.
Dominic Raab
I think at the time, come the end of the referendum, everyone was looking forward to getting a conclusion to it, because it seemed to drag on forever and we had gone around the houses with all the different arguments. The country heard both sides, the claims and the counterclaims, and plenty of controversy. I do not think the people of this country are fools. They made their decision, they knew what they were doing and now it is time to leave.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
We welcome the Secretary of State’s commitment that whatever form the backstop, which was foolishly agreed in December, takes, it will not include any customs or regulatory arrangements that treat Northern Ireland differently to the rest of the United Kingdom. However, we are concerned that he still sees the need for a backstop, albeit one limited in scope and time. Will he clarify for the House and for the people in Northern Ireland how such a backstop would be limited? What would it be limited to and how long would it be limited for? Can he also assure us that the comments made by Michel Barnier this week, that Northern Ireland would have to be prohibited from taking part in any trade deals negotiated after Brexit, will not be the case?
Dominic Raab
I understand the points the right hon. Gentleman makes. He will have seen the statement made by the Prime Minister in the aftermath of the Salzburg summit. We have been very clear that the backstop would need to be a temporary and finite bridge to the future relationship, which would subsume and supersede the need for any backstop at all. Of course it cannot be right to have any distinction, in terms of customs regulation, for any one part of the UK. We proceed as one.
Assaults on Retail Workers (Offences)
Tuesday 9th October 2018
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Assaults on Retail Workers (Offences) Bill 2017-19 View all Assaults on Retail Workers (Offences) 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
Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision about offences when perpetrated against retail workers; to make certain offences aggravated when perpetrated against such workers in the course of their employment; and for connected purposes.
My reason for wanting to bring about the Bill is simple: to protect shop workers in the course of their jobs, recognising that they are working in the public interest. I will define that shortly. The Bill would mean that future assaults on workers in the retail sector are treated as aggravated assaults, and that the perpetrators of the violence we often see our shop workers subjected to will receive greater punishment. This protection would act to prevent further assaults and properly punish those who seek to behave in such a manner.
I have been asked quite a few times in recent days why I have singled out retail workers for the Bill. That, Mr Speaker, is because I believe they represent a very specific case. Over the years, Parliament has legislated for shops to regulate over 50 types of products, including cigarettes, alcohol, weaponry and acid, which is of course currently in the news. At the moment, we ask shop workers to act not just in the interests of businesses but in the public interest to make sure that the rest of us are safe. We perhaps do not even know that that is happening. In that moment, the shop worker is in a potential conflict situation. Like lots of us in this place, I have worked in a shop. I know that telling someone who is drunk that they cannot have anything more to drink, or someone who is probably the right age to buy a product but has not brought the right ID that they cannot purchase it, is quite a difficult thing to do. Every time that happens, it presents a potential flashpoint situation with the wrong individual. When researching this issue, I was shocked by the level of such flashpoints. The Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, USDAW, the shop workers’ union, says that shop workers are on the receiving end of 250 such violent situations each day, six involving knives and two involving guns. It behoves us to act.
Here are a couple of cases from my own constituency, kindly gathered by the Co-operative Group, which is, I know, 100% committed to protecting staff:
“A bloke entered the store and nicked some chocolate rice crispies and hid them under his jacket. The store manager approached him and asked him to return the food. This was when the bloke became aggressive. He threw the food at the manager and made a headbutting gesture to the manager and another colleague. Once he’d left the store, he pulled out a small knife and made a gesture towards the colleagues”.
Secondly:
“Another guy came into the store and filled a basket with 7 bottles of booze, he also hid one inside his jacket. On his way out, 5 colleagues cornered him and he left the store. He came back 10 minutes later to try again and pushed a colleague to the floor. When challenged, he also tried to hit her with the bottle but missed and the bottle broke on the floor. 3 other colleagues chased him, but he gave up and handed the bottles back. Whilst leaving, he threatened that he would be ‘back to do them in with a bottle’”.
Incidents of that nature are happening up and down the country in all our communities in high volume, with nearly 2,000 every single week.
I strongly believe that anyone who was assaulted while doing their job should be afforded all the protections of the law, but I believe that what sets retail workers apart is that they have been entrusted with an important civic responsibility that goes above and beyond their duties and responsibilities to their employer. We in this place, as a legislature, should be acutely aware of this, because we are the people who gave these workers these extra responsibilities. Effectively, we have asked them to police the law on the sale of alcohol, knives, glues and now acid on behalf of us all. We have asked them to step forward to protect society, and now we need to show them that we have their back while they do so.
It is also worth recognising that the retail sector is unrepresentative of the wider population that uses the shops. Nearly a third of retail employees are under 25 and nearly 60% of people working in this industry are women. That means we have a young and by no insignificant margin predominantly female workforce. In this place, we are often accused of being distant from the reality of the day-to-day-lives of the people we serve, and I think we have a really good chance with this Bill to show that that is not the case.
We have public support, too. The Co-operative party—I am a Co-op MP, of course—commissioned polling with Populus that showed that 85% of people, when asked, supported my proposal. That reflects how much people appreciate the work of retail workers and want to work free from the fear of violence. I pay tribute to USDAW for its years of campaigning on behalf of shop workers across the country, and to the Co-operative party and my 36 Labour and Co-operative colleagues who have fought so hard for these workers across the country. I feel I need to apologise in advance for being able to have only 11 sponsors, given that they all wanted to sponsor the Bill. We are proud to stand with USDAW, campaigning to take forward the proposals in my Bill.
This must go hand-in-hand with supporting new clause 1 to the Offensive Weapons Bill, tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (David Hanson), which is due to be debated on Monday. I am relatively new to this place, but it might be that the ten-minute rule Bill process might not be the best route to getting the change I want secured. It was the best path available to me at the time, which is why I took it, but we have a good opportunity on Monday to show that we get this and I hope that Members will take that chance.
I am glad that the Ministers are in their place, and I call on the Government to give this subject time. I know where this Bill will go next, and it might well get buried if it is passed today, but if we have the proper time to talk about this issue we could make a real difference.
I know that we support shop workers, and 80% of them believe that the law needs to be strengthened because they are worried about things at work. I think we should hear their call. Through this Bill, we can ensure that those individuals who seek to assault our hard-working retail staff face the appropriate consequences. This is not a party political or partisan issue. It is about protecting those people who support our day-to-day lives, in many cases without our even realising it. I asked Ministers and colleagues across the House to support the Bill. Doing so will help to protect thousands of each of our constituents and to fail to do so will risk the situation worsening. Within the past year, there has been a significant increase in the number of these violent offences that I have talked about. I believe that the Bill is based on our shared values of tolerance and that nobody should be subjected to violence in their place of work.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Alex Norris, Luciana Berger, Anna Turley, Mr Chris Leslie, Lloyd Russell-Moyle, Tracy Brabin, Jo Platt, Mr Paul Sweeney, Preet Kaur Gill, Alex Sobel, Jim McMahon and Stella Creasy present the Bill.
Alex Norris accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 November, and to be printed (Bill 270).
Backbench Business
Baby Loss Awareness Week
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Antoinette Sandbach (Eddisbury) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered baby loss awareness week 2018.
I rise to open today’s debate on Baby Loss Awareness Week, and if you, Madam Deputy Speaker, or others wish to read the account of Fiona Crack and her husband about their daughter Willow that is on the BBC site today, you will understand why this debate has continuing endurance and relevance. I am also extremely grateful to my colleagues and the charities that have worked with us on the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss. I want to use my time to highlight some of the successes, to describe how we can ensure that we build on them and to mention a couple of areas where we must focus our efforts more closely as they have become areas of concern.
Looking back over the past year, I am proud of the higher profile of parental bereavement issues. Whereas before many people felt that they did not know how to approach the subject or what to say, we are increasingly seeing people coming forward and offering words of sympathy, kindness and condolence, and the 60 charities working in this field have produced an excellent video, which is available on YouTube under the title “Baby Loss Awareness Week”. Members of the public and anybody watching this debate can watch and see how to approach and discuss the subject.
This change has come about because of a slow and steady change in how we in this country treat those who have lost a child. All of those involved in Baby Loss Awareness Week can be proud of this change, from those of us in this place today to the fantastic charities and voluntary groups, such as Sands, the Lullaby Trust and the 60 other charities that have been involved in the initiative. In addition, doctors, nurses and midwives on the frontline have been changing attitudes during the past few years.
It is not just attitudes that have changed in the past year, but policy. I am delighted that the past year has seen two major policy shifts: the implementation of a pilot of the national bereavement care pathway; and the passage of the Parental Bereavement Act 2018 into law. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) will want to discuss that Act in more detail, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for his able stewardship in taking the Bill through Parliament. This is a significant step in ensuring that those who lose a child can mourn their loss while knowing that they have a period of paid parental leave from their employment. It marks the introduction of a new benefit such as has not been seen in this country for many decades, and I welcome the progress that the Government have made on that.
I want to spend a little longer concentrating on the national bereavement care pathway. Good care cannot remove parents’ pain and grief, but it can help them through this devastating time. In contrast, poor care can significantly add to their distress. The national bereavement care pathway sets out to deliver that good quality care and it was designed to address the previous postcode lottery in quality of care. The first wave of pilots was launched this time last year, during Baby Loss Awareness Week 2017. Eleven trusts were joined by 21 more when the second wave started in April of this year. This week, we take another step forward, as all the documents, tools and resources are being made publicly available for the first time. The national bereavement care pathway is paving the way for excellent care after pregnancy and baby loss. It aims to improve the quality of bereavement care experienced by parents and families at all stages. That includes miscarriage, stillbirth, neonatal death, molar and ectopic pregnancy, termination of pregnancy due to foetal abnormality, and sudden and unexpected death in infants of up to 12 months. This bereavement care pathway provides healthcare professionals with detailed guidance, training programmes, staff resources and simplified paperwork so that they can provide high-quality bereavement care when families need it most.
We are lucky because an evaluation of the first wave of pilots has taken place, and the results have been really positive. Parents have responded overwhelmingly positively, considering what they went through at the time. Some 95% of parents surveyed agreed that the hospital was a caring and supportive environment; 98% of parents agreed that they were treated with respect; 90% felt that they were provided with information that was easy to understand; 92% felt that the decisions they made in hospital were the right ones at the time; and 96% felt that they were communicated with sensitively. That is so important, because that shows that there has been a huge change in advice and support. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) will be talking about the less encouraging statistics for areas that have not been able to roll out the pathway.
It is not only parents but medical professionals who feel the difference. At the beginning of the pilot, medical professionals were interviewed and asked what was preventing the delivery of the best possible quality bereavement care. One said that
“people were in their own little bubbles. There wasn’t much sharing, nothing was passed around as a standard.”
Medical staff also identified a lack of staff training, poor bereavement suite facilities, complex paperwork, long delays in getting post-mortem results back, staff not knowing how to communicate with parents about their loss, and different levels of awareness or knowledge between departments at the same hospital. The evaluation shows that significant progress is being made on a number of those concerns. Some 77% of the professionals who are aware of the pathway agree that, overall, bereavement care has improved in their NHS trust during the period of the pilot. That is something that our national health service can be really proud of, because it represents a significant change. Two thirds of professionals who are aware of the pathway agree that it has helped to raise the profile of effective bereavement care in their trust. The proportion of health professionals who feel prepared to communicate with bereaved parents, able to discuss bad news with parents and supported to deliver good-quality bereavement care has increased. If this were an exam, the student would have passed with flying colours.
The testimony of one parent who was involved in the pilot says it all:
“There was a doctor who was really, really helpful with me. It was such a shock and took such a long time for me to process why and how this happened; I must have gone in about five times, where she had to sit me down and tell me the same thing again and again. It was never too much trouble for her, and I needed that. Having patience with someone is really, really important—because you might have said it five or six times but I need you to say it again. She’s a doctor, she’s a very busy woman but she always made time to speak to me.”
This kind of care, and this kindness in care, is so important for parents in that position. They are going through the worst experience of their lives, and they are not always thinking straight. They are guaranteed to be sleep deprived and distraught. The kindness of a doctor or the concern of a midwife can be the first small building block on the road to recovery.
However, despite these successes and others, which I am sure colleagues from across the House will mention, we must continue with our work. In the most recent year for which figures are available, 5,500 babies were stillborn or died within 28 days of birth in the UK. Some of our European neighbours have managed to cut perinatal mortality rates by up to half, which shows there is still more to do. I welcome the Government’s target of halving perinatal mortality rates in the UK by 2025.
One thing I am becoming increasingly concerned about is the rising number of child death cases in hospitals. Although I am pleased that the light of transparency is being shone into these hospitals, I cannot help being concerned by the number of such cases in the last year. Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust has been the subject of horrific news, with the investigation into maternity care expanding to more than 100 cases. Likewise, in my own area, the Countess of Chester Hospital is the subject of a criminal investigation amid allegations that a member of medical staff was involved in 17 deaths and 15 non-fatal collapses. More broadly, a recent study found that the baby death rate was 10% higher than expected for a maternity unit.
Just last week, we saw the news from Wales that Cwm Taf University Health Board may have failed to properly investigate historical cases of stillbirth and neonatal deaths in its maternity units. I know that that case—the most recent—is devolved, and there will be things that the Minister cannot say while investigations are ongoing, but I would be grateful if he reassured the House about the steps that are being taken to address these specific issues, and what plans he has to ensure that when such issues arise in the future, there is a plan in place to support affected parents and ensure that the investigation is as quick and thorough as possible.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is speaking with great authority on this issue, as she always does. Does she agree that one thing the Government could do in this area, particularly when it comes to stillbirth, is to extend the power of coroners to investigate stillbirths of full-term babies? We have discussed that previously, and it is the subject of a private Member’s Bill. Does she think that that would help in the investigation, and therefore the prevention, of unnecessary deaths?
Antoinette Sandbach
I know that across the House there is a great interest in the need for coroners’ investigations, and I believe that the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) will be introducing a private Member’s Bill. I think that the idea has support from the Government. It is incredibly important for parents to give consent to post-mortems—that can be a very sensitive area, particularly for parents from ethnic minority backgrounds—because very often, medical findings assist with the research to discover the causes of stillbirth and neonatal death. The hon. Lady makes a very good point.
In closing, I hope that colleagues will recognise that this year has been one of significant policy wins.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I echo the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) made by commending the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on her joint leadership of the all-party group on baby loss and her support for the charities that have come together once again to initiate Baby Loss Awareness Week. Will she praise the intervention of a councillor in my constituency, Sarah Butterworth, and her husband Jon, whose baby, Tiger Lily, was stillborn in June 2005? They have joined in the support for Baby Loss Awareness Week to encourage more debate about this sensitive issue.
Antoinette Sandbach
I certainly join the hon. Gentleman in praising his constituents’ work in memory of Tiger Lily. Let me also refer to the story of Fiona Crack and her daughter Willow. Fiona went to speak to the hon. Gentleman’s constituents, and there is a detailed account on the BBC’s website, highlighting the way in which they have turned a negative into a positive in commemorating the memory of Tiger Lily and the steps that they are taking to help other parents in their grief. I believe that they help with the memory boxes; I have a memory box at home, and I know how valuable that is.
I think that there has been a real uptick and a real positive story to tell this year, given the policy wins that have come from the Government. We know that we must address these challenges, but we have come a huge way in the last three years, and we have won important changes in policy.
Members may be wondering what they can do to drive the changes that we need. First and foremost, they can join me in encouraging the Minister to fully fund the national bereavement care pathway into 2019-20, so that it is embedded and becomes the national standard for best practice. I hope that the Minister will have something to say about that when he winds up the debate. Secondly, Members on both sides of the House can engage with their local charities who help those who have lost a child, as, indeed, many of their constituents have. I know that many Members are present because of the work that their constituents have done, or because of their own experiences.
Members can also help to promote the national bereavement care pathway in their constituencies. We have seen from the pilot that it works, but political support and public awareness are crucial to ensuring that it is embedded throughout the UK. If Members leave this debate with one thing in their minds, let it be the testimony of a grieving parent who experienced the pathway:
“I was shocked at the level of care. I thought ‘this is the NHS, why are they making such an effort for me?’ I didn’t know care like this existed and I was blown away by it—my expectations were exceeded in every way”.
We have all benefited from amazing care from our NHS, but sometimes it does not have all the tools that it needs. The national bereavement care pathway gives it the tools that it needs to deal with this very difficult issue, and we must work to ensure that it is put in place throughout the country.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
Let me begin by expressing my admiration for the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who made such a powerful contribution to the debate and, in particular, for her personification of bravery when recounting what can only have been a painfully traumatic experience.
I speak as someone who has not lost a child and who, as such, cannot begin to imagine how harrowing, how devastating, such a loss must be. I cannot begin to understand what it feels like to have enjoyed the exhilaration of expecting a new addition to the family and the months of anticipation and preparation, and then to be deprived of such joy.
As a society, we must strive to reduce the UK stillbirth rate, which remains high in comparison with those of other wealthy countries. There is also a disparity within the United Kingdom that needs to be acknowledged: Wales still has the highest stillbirth rate, at 4.44 per 1,000 births. Others who are present this evening will have far greater experience and expertise than I—so I will keep my remarks brief—but it appears to me that a range of measures will be needed to reduce our rate significantly. For example, researchers from the University of Edinburgh have recently discovered that introducing a package of care when women report a change in foetal movements can help to reduce the stillbirth rate slightly. Raising awareness among expectant mothers is important, but we should also ensure that training for frontline maternity professionals is not only available but prioritised, so that they are best able to react to any change in movements reported by mothers. Training and resources must be made available to maternity units so that they can act promptly when necessary.
As I am sure will be mentioned later this evening, hand in hand with greater awareness of changes in foetal movement is the potential for an enhanced programme of ultrasound scanning into the third trimester—which occurs elsewhere in Europe—to measure a baby’s growth more effectively, potentially reduce the number of adverse perinatal outcomes caused by foetal growth restriction and prevent avoidable deaths. This is, of course, at the heart of the debate: the desire to represent the experiences of parents who have lost their child and, from their strength, endeavour to prevent others from having to suffer the agony of losing their child.
Let me express my admiration for the bravery of all the parents—some, I know, are in the Chamber this evening—who have lost a child. I am simply in awe of those who are able to speak so eloquently about their loss and work determinedly to improve things for other parents. I pay particular homage to the Members who are so active in the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss.
A young couple in my constituency embody such courage and fortitude. Having lost their little girl, Mari-Leisa Jên, this summer, Clare and Gareth have undertaken a range of initiatives to raise money to help to fund the purchase of additional “cuddle cots” for Ceredigion. The cots allow grieving families to have more time with their children— precious time in which to make lifelong memories—and I thank the charity Cariad Angel Gowns for enabling that to happen for Clare and Gareth.
The couple have climbed Snowdon to help raise money for the cots and to raise awareness of the causes of perinatal loss. Close friends completed the Cardiff half-marathon this weekend in memory of Mari-Leisa Jên. At a time of unimaginable grief, when most would understandably retire into themselves, Clare and Gareth have thought of helping others and, to date, have raised thousands of pounds. Such incredible resilience speaks for the strength and depth of their love for Mari-Leisa, and although her time with us was all too brief, the impact that she has had on family, friends and the local community is second to none. Mari-Leisa fach has brought them together to make a positive difference for others, and I, for one, cannot think of a more loving or a more worthy legacy.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Thank you for letting me speak early in the debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. I should start by apologising for the fact that I have an unbreakable commitment elsewhere and have to leave before the end of the debate. It is the debate that I dread most during the year, but it is also one of which I am determined to be part.
It is a great honour to follow both the Members who have spoken so far, to speak in a debate that marks the beginning of Baby Loss Awareness Week and to serve as vice-chair of the merry band—largely—of people who form the all-party parliamentary group. We have been brought together by horrific circumstances, but we have had extraordinary success. There are hundreds of all-party parliamentary groups, perhaps even 1,000, but very few can boast the success that we have had in the past three years. We have really put baby loss on the agenda, and we have changed the law on, for example, parental bereavement leave.
Victoria Prentis
I gesticulate at my hon. Friend, who has joined us so enthusiastically in championing that issue.
We would not be where we are today were it not for the support that we have received from the Government, especially the Ministers in the Department of Health and Social Care, and, indeed, the hard work of the charities that work with us. This year is particularly special for Sands, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary. I am very proud of my constituent Karen Hancox, who has worked so hard for Sands in Oxfordshire since losing her first daughter, Kayleigh, in 2008. She was responsible for lighting up Banbury cross in memory of Baby Loss Awareness Week last year, and she also helped with the fantastically helpful service in St Mary’s, Banbury last year, which we are repeating this Sunday, and at which I hope any hon. Member passing on the M40 will join us.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I want to take the opportunity of this intervention to congratulate the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who has been tirelessly campaigning on baby loss for many years now. I have listened to these debates before and they are very difficult for everybody, even those who have no experience of baby loss. I can remember the issues around cot deaths, when women were charged and accused of perhaps harming their babies. But there is also the fairly recent problem—I think there are some ongoing investigations and prosecutions—where parents have lost their child at birth but still do not know the reason for that. I congratulate the hon. Member for Eddisbury once again for her tireless work in this area.
Victoria Prentis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, and, if I may on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), I thank him for his kind words.
The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) mentioned the issue of inquests into stillbirths. I have been leading on that area in the all-party group because of my previous legal background and the fact that I spent much of my legal life conducting inquests on behalf of the Government. There is a current private Member’s Bill on this issue. It is a very broad Bill; the Member in charge likes to refer to it as the hatched, matched and dispatched Bill, which gives some idea of its scope. This is an extremely difficult and sensitive area both legally and in terms of the messaging. Many interest groups are concerned that it touches on the law about abortions and the law about when babies become beings and part of society, but there is no need for much of that discussion in this debate; it does not in fact need to touch on those terribly difficult issues. We in the all-party group are working hard with the Department and the Ministry of Justice, which is also very involved in this, to push this issue forward and to try to ensure that that does not happen and that we are able to address any concerns in the very small number of cases where an inquest would be helpful and extra transparency is needed. I know from my own experience that inquests are very hard for families. The Scots are also working in this area, and, give us time, as next year we may have some announcements, I hope.
Returning to Sands, I want to mention the brilliant work of my constituent Karen. She is one of the 40 volunteers to be nominated as part of the charity’s anniversary celebrations, and I am looking forward to welcoming her to Westminster later this week at our parliamentary reception. I am also very much looking forward to the service we are having in St Mary Undercroft on Thursday and I encourage anybody who works in this House, whether as a Member or peer or any of our staff, to come to that service. It is extremely warm and friendly; everybody might weep throughout, but in a positive way.
I must also praise the BBC—wow, two Conservative MPs praising the BBC in successive speeches—for highlighting our awareness week. The slot on “The Chris Evans Breakfast Show” this morning meant I had to stop the car; it was about the amazing bereavement midwife Nicola Taylor and a couple she helped around the birth of their three babies, and it was incredibly powerful. Fiona Crack’s story is currently on the BBC website. If any Member’s concentration wavers in this debate, I ask them to look at it, or perhaps better to do so when they get home tonight. “Woman’s Hour” is also handling this issue extremely sensitively and well.
I want to touch on three points this evening. First, the bereavement care pathway is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury said, a real success. I received some brilliant care but also some less good care when our baby died 18 years ago. Crucially, the national bereavement care pathway embeds the standards across trusts—across the nation—as a matter of course; that is very important. The situation at present is still patchy. According to Sands, only 46% of trusts with maternity units provide mandatory bereavement care training for maternity unit staff. Of those, 86% provide their staff with just one hour or less of training on bereavement care each year.
While it is of course right that we focus on families, we should also think a little about midwives and obstetricians, who are also very affected by the death of a baby in their care. They often build up an enduring relationship with families, and their future health and ability to function must be considered in thinking about what training they receive.
I want to focus on neonatal units, too. They are very stressful places. Anybody with a child on a neonatal unit is not a happy parent; it is not the place they want to be. Some 41% of neonatal unit patients have no access to a trained mental health worker, and many neonatal units still do not have dedicated bereavement facilities. The Government have funded better bereavement places in nearly 40 hospitals, but this is only the beginning. Prioritising the pathway within the new NHS long-term plan would make a real difference. Planning one year ahead is not good enough. We know that despite our best efforts to reduce neonatal death and stillbirth bereavements will continue to occur, and we need to plan for that. I hope the Minister will have some good news for us on this today. My hon. Friend described the Government as passing the exam with flying colours. I agree and am very grateful for what they have done, but I would say that if the Government want to be an A* pupil, further work is needed in this area so that this becomes the norm.
My second point is that better training is only possible if we have enough midwives. I hosted the launch of the Royal College of Midwives “State of Maternity Services” report recently, which found that finally more midwives are entering training. When I hosted it last year we were very concerned by the ageing of the profession. We are all getting older—we cannot help that—but I am pleased to say that we now have over 2,100 more full-time equivalent midwives in the NHS than we did in 2010, and the vast majority are in their 20s and 30s. It is also important that we focus on retaining these midwives and persuading former midwives back to work. This is progress in the right direction, but the situation remains critical. I really do wake up at night worrying about labouring mothers in my constituency in north Oxfordshire going to the Horton General Hospital to give birth only to be told that the unit has closed because the midwife who staffs it has been sent to cover gaps at the John Radcliffe. This been the case on at least three separate occasions in recent weeks. If anybody knows of anyone who is thinking of becoming a midwife, please encourage them to do so. It is a brilliant profession and it is important that the Department continues to encourage the training and retention of the midwives we need.
Finally, I want to touch on perinatal mental health. On the eve of world mental health day, it seems appropriate to focus on the mental health of mothers and fathers. Pregnancy presents the health service with a brilliant opportunity to engage with people who are becoming parents and to give them life lessons that will improve health choices for them and their children. Their mental health is as important as their physical health. We know that those who have had difficult pregnancies or have lost children will, understandably, struggle with subsequent births. We need to identify families at risk and pour resource in before it is needed. These families may not fit into the usual definitions of post-natal care.
The definition and structure of care in the six-week post-natal period has changed very little in the past 150 years, but during this time there have been dramatic changes in women’s health and our attitude to birth—and indeed in the outcomes of birth. It is critical that contraception is also discussed and is easily available during this time. Waiting months to have a long-acting contraceptive fitted is not helpful to new mothers. It might seem ridiculous to bring up the subject of contraception in a debate on baby loss, but it is important given the maternal mortality statistics. Some of the women who are dying while giving birth should not have been pregnant in the first place. It is critical that we deal with contraception early, where that is appropriate, and that we give people real choices so that they can get the contraception that works for them straight after they have given birth.
We in the all-party parliamentary group will continue to say the unsayable on issues such as baby ashes or the appropriateness or otherwise of inquests. These are dark areas for any society to deal with, but I believe that the APPG has been a force for good. I am really proud to play my part in breaking the silence.
Hugh Gaffney (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to be here for this important debate in the Chamber today. I would like to pay tribute to colleagues across the House for sponsoring the debate and for the work they do to keep this important issue on the agenda. I do not want to speak for too long, but I do have a few words to say. Baby Loss Awareness Week is an important part of the calendar and provides important support networks for bereaved parents, their families and friends. I recall sitting in the House for the debate on this issue last year, and I know that all colleagues agreed that it represented Parliament and politics at their best. In its 16th year, I welcome Baby Loss Awareness Week 2018 and the 60 charities that support it. Those charities are based in all parts of our United Kingdom, and they are doing brilliant work.
Before talking about a link to my own constituency, I want to place on the record my own personal experience of facing the loss of a child. My son was eight months old when he took ill with meningitis and we were given 24 hours to see whether he would survive. Twenty-eight years on, he has survived, thanks to the NHS staff at Monklands Hospital. Today I thank them once again on behalf of my family.
Fifteen babies die every day in the United Kingdom either before, during or shortly after birth; the number of unexplained deaths in children aged over one is not easy to identify across the whole of the United Kingdom. I am particularly interested in the discrepancies in bereavement care. I am firmly of the view that there is a need for bereavement suites in all neonatal units, with increased training and improved staffing levels. This is because 41% of neonatal units have no access to a trained mental health worker and many still have no dedicated bereavement facilities. I hope that we will see the kind of policy decisions in all four nations of the United Kingdom that will allow progress to be made. I welcome the commitment in Labour’s 2017 manifesto that pledged to “significantly reduce infant deaths”. We support the Government’s commitment to reducing the rate of stillbirths, neonatal deaths, maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 50% by the year 2030.
I want to say a few words in honour of my colleague, Gordon Encinias. Gordon was a councillor in Coatbridge South and a colleague of mine in Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill. Gordon died earlier this year and I know that I speak for many in the Scottish Labour family—and, more importantly, North Lanarkshire Council—when I pay tribute to Gordon and thank him for all his work. I mention Gordon because he and his wife lost children to infant deaths themselves, and they committed themselves to championing this issue through supporting Bumblebee Babies, a charity based in North Lanarkshire. Gordon helped it to find a property and premises and gave it his support. It is led by Brenda Murray and now supports parents in all parts of our United Kingdom. I pay tribute to Brenda and all the staff at Bumblebee Babies, and to my late friend Gordon Encinias.
I want to pay tribute to all hon. Members involved in this, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft) and the hon. Members for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Colchester (Will Quince). Importantly, I also pay tribute to all those parents who have lost children, and I pledge to use my office to do all I can to ensure that the right support is there at the right time. Finally, I pay tribute to my mother, Helen Gaffney, who recently passed away at 86. Her first job as a young nurse was to look after stillborn children, and she looked after those angels as if they were her own. Rest in peace, Mum.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney); I am pleased to say that his is one of the Scottish constituencies that I do not have a problem pronouncing. I should also like to thank all the previous speakers, particularly the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake). He and the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill have shown the importance of hearing men’s voices in the Baby Loss Awareness Week debate. I particularly want to thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the time for this debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), the co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group, for securing this important debate for the third year running.
In November 2015, when I was a relatively newly elected MP, I remember coming back after the recess and putting in for an end-of-day Adjournment debate. Based on my own experience, I thought we should have a debate on bereavement care in maternity units. Little did I think that we would have made such progress in just over three years. We now have the all-party parliamentary group, and we are in our third year of marking Baby Loss Awareness Week here in Parliament. That demonstrates the power of this place when we put aside the squabbling and party political differences and work together with a clear aim. It is clear that we are united and speak with one voice when we say that we are committed to reducing stillbirths and neonatal deaths—I include miscarriage in that description. We are also committed to ensuring that we have world-class bereavement care right across our world-class NHS for those who go through the huge personal tragedy of losing a child.
This is a particularly important and poignant week for me and my family, because it is four years ago this week that we lost our son, Robert. We will be marking his birthday on Friday, when he would have been four years old. On Sunday, my two daughters and I picked out the birthday cake that we will be sharing. Sadly, we are just one of the families who are going through this experience week in and week out, up and down our country.
We should not underestimate the importance of talking about baby loss. This is why debates such as these are so important and powerful. Totally wrongly, baby loss is a massively taboo subject. We have made huge efforts over the past three and a half years to try to break the silence and the taboo by working with charities, organisations and health professionals, but the taboo still exists. It exists because we do not like talking about death, full stop, and particularly about the death of children or babies. It is important that we talk about it, however, because that little baby was a huge part of somebody’s life. It is part of their story and their journey, and to ignore it can cause irreparable issues.
We must use the power of Parliament to break that taboo and talk about the issue, rather than crossing the street and avoiding someone who has suffered a stillbirth, miscarriage or neonatal death. We should talk to them about it. We should ask about their child and refer to them by their name, because people do want to talk. If they do not want to talk, they will tell us. It is really important that they should not be ignored.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
I am so impressed by the work of the all-party parliamentary group. I rang my sister, who lost a baby a long time ago, to ask her what she would say if she were here. She asked me to encourage hon. Members to ensure that two things are available in hospitals. First, there should be someone practical to give advice on issues such as burials. The second, more important, thing was to have someone who can give emotional support to people who are in a moment of crisis and panic, and she felt strongly that in today’s era such services should be multi-faith and no faith. The chaplain’s offices in our Gloucestershire Royal Hospital can do that.
I should also like to mention a male constituent of mine who said that there had been a lot of support for his wife when they lost a child, but there had been no male support group. What does my hon. Friend think of those suggestions?
Will Quince
I thank my hon. Friend for raising those very good points, which are entirely valid. His points about support, both in hospital and post-hospital, and about the support available to fathers, are very important and I shall come on to them in a moment.
Just before we move on to the debate proper, I want to talk a bit about my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), because we have not had a chance since his elevation to the position of Foreign Secretary to praise him for the work he did on these matters when he was Health Secretary. From the beginning, we also felt supported by Ben Gummer—I think I am allowed to call him that now, as he is the former Member for Ipswich; he encouraged us to set up the all-party parliamentary group. However, the former Health and Social Care Secretary, now Foreign Secretary, could not have been more supportive, and we felt from the very beginning that we were pushing against an open door. He knew that the issue needed to be addressed, and he threw the full weight of the Department behind it. I thank him on the behalf of the APPG, and I know that all the charities feel the same way. He was hugely supportive and continues to be so.
We produced a video for Baby Loss Awareness Week, which is live now, and my right hon. Friend features in it, showing how passionate he is about tackling this issue. I also want to say how much the rest of the APPG and I are looking forward to working with the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock), who has already reached out to me and other members of the APPG, as have his special advisers, to continue that work, which they recognise is important.
Several colleagues have already referenced the hugely important work done by charities up and down the country. That includes both big charities such as Sands, which is marking its 40th anniversary this year, the Lullaby Trust, the Mariposa Trust, Tamba and so many others and small charities that provide support locally. The support that they provide to parents at the most difficult time in their lives is so valuable, and I thank everyone who works in and volunteers for those charities.
Lilian Greenwood
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful contribution, as he always does, and I congratulate him and all the members of the APPG on their work. Will he join me in congratulating a local Nottinghamshire charity called Forever Stars? Not only is it doing fantastic work supporting parents who have lost a child, but it has managed to raise £300,000 to create two new bereavement suites at the two Nottingham hospitals over the past year. I know that that has already been touched on in the debate, but it makes such a difference to parents who have experienced the loss of a child when they have somewhere suitable to be with their baby and deal with the aftermath of a terrible situation.
Will Quince
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. I will absolutely thank and pay tribute to that charity. In so many cases, bereaved parents want to do something to make a difference and to provide a legacy for or mark the life of their child, however short, and raising money to support our NHS or to provide support for bereaved parents is hugely worth while. If I heard the hon. Lady right, an incredible £300,000 was raised: I pay tribute to the work that parents across the country do to raise such sums, which support the NHS in providing world-class facilities. I will discuss this further in a bit, but although we do have world-class facilities and bereavement suites some of our hospitals do not have them, which is an issue in and of itself.
I have thanked charities, but it is also important to thank the clinicians and support staff within the NHS who work so hard in this area. They really are heroes, and their work is incredible. Midwives do an incredible job, because although they are so often there at the best time in someone’s life—when a child is born—they are sometimes sadly also there at the very worst time in someone’s life. Their ability to, in effect, wear both hats and provide that caring, compassionate, empathetic support is a credit to them. We really do have world-class staff in our NHS.
I also thank all the clinicians who are working so hard on the national bereavement care pathway. Numerous colleagues have mentioned it already, and it is important to reference the progress made so far. I do not want this to be a back-patting debate, because I will move on to some areas where the Government could do more, but we have achieved quite a lot in just over three years. The first, and probably most significant, achievement was the Government’s commitment to reduce stillbirth and neonatal death by 20% by 2020 and by half by 2025. I note that that target has been moved forward—I think the target three years ago was 2030—thanks to the work of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, Health Ministers and clinicians. Having spoken to the Department and to clinicians up and down the country, I understand that those targets are realistic and achievable and that we are on track to achieve them, which is quite incredible.
However, it is important to note that even if we achieve the target of reducing stillbirth and neonatal death by 50%, that still means that around 2,000 or 2,500 babies are dying in the UK every single year and that a similar number of families will be going through a horrific personal tragedy, so we must ensure that we have world-class support. That is why the national care bereavement pathway, which I think it is fair to say was a concept initially drawn up based on the APPG’s work with charities, is game changing. The pathway is game changing, because what we had and continue to have across our NHS is world-class bereavement care, but it can be found only in pockets. It is not consistent across the NHS.
A particular hospital trust may have one or perhaps even two specialist bereavement suites and one, two or maybe more specialist bereavement-trained midwives or gynaecological counsellors, and all sorts of charities may be supporting bereaved parents within that hospital trust. In other hospitals, however, there may be no bereavement suite and perhaps just one or even no specialist bereavement-trained midwives or gynaecological counsellors. That is an issue, so a national bereavement care pathway that provides consistent, compassionate, empathetic care and support across our NHS, whichever hospital one visits, is so important.
Antoinette Sandbach
I congratulate my hon. Friend on that point. However, even where world-class care is not available, that can change, and the Medway NHS Foundation Trust is a great example of that. It received a negative inspection report, but it completely turned the situation around and now has absolutely first-class facilities. World-class care is achievable when hospital managers and NHS trusts are absolutely committed to delivering it.
Will Quince
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The core purpose of the national bereavement care pathway is to show what good care looks like so that it can be rolled out across our NHS. My hon. Friend is right that we can do that by having bereavement suites and trained gynaecological counsellors and midwives, and we are seeing it. The pathway has now been launched in 32 sites, and I must again praise the Government for their initial funding, which supported the establishment of the principle and the pilots, and then the further funding for the roll-out into more sites.
I echo the comments made by my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) about further funding to roll out the pathway to ensure that it reaches the entire NHS nationwide, but 77% of professionals at the pilot sites who were aware of the pathway agree that bereavement care improved in the trust during the trial, and some 95% of parents interviewed agreed that the hospital was a caring and supportive environment. We therefore know that the pathway is making a difference and will work, which is why the Government have been so supportive. We just want to ensure that it is rolled out. The roll-out has deliberately happened in stages because ensuring that it is effective and embedded is just as important as the initial implementation.
Others have mentioned the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, which is an incredible and ground-breaking piece of legislation. It is the first time that workers have had such a right, and it is one of the best rights in this area in the world. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for so ably and passionately steering the legislation through the House of Commons and then ensuring its passage through the House of Lords and beyond. It is game changing, because it means that, from 2020, parents who lose a child up to the age of 18 will be entitled to two weeks’ paid leave. That is particularly important in relation to this baby loss debate, because it means that parents who lose a child to stillbirth will also be entitled to those two weeks.
For a mother, those extra two weeks may not be a huge change because mothers are entitled to their full maternity leave, but for a father it is game changing. Instead of two weeks’ paternity leave, he will get four weeks, because he will get the additional two weeks of paid leave. The Act will make a huge difference to fathers up and down the country who go through the awful experience of a stillbirth.
I said earlier that this was not a back-patting debate. Far, far more needs to be done. Earlier we had reference to bereavement suites. It is essential that we have bereavement suites in every hospital up and down the country. It is not acceptable that any parent should have to suffer a stillbirth or neonatal death in a maternity unit where they can hear happy families, crying babies and people with balloons and teddies—all the joy of that. People who are going through this most traumatic of experiences need somewhere quiet for reflection, to grieve and to spend time with their baby in peace. We know that we can provide this because NHS trusts up and down the country are providing bereavement suites. In Colchester we were lucky to have use of the Rosemary suite, and I am not quite sure what we would have done without it.
So we have to ensure, Minister, that we have a bereavement suite in every hospital away from the main maternity unit. Ideally, I would like another room to be available, because you cannot book in. You do not know when exactly you are going to have a baby—these things do come on, as my wife and I found out with our second, who was born at home, unexpectedly. It was also a pretty traumatic experience, but it ended well. The point is that people do not know and they cannot book suites out. They can just turn up at hospital. If, sadly, the suite is already being used, another room should be available. It might not have the full facilities of a bereavement suite, but it is important to have that room.
As was mentioned earlier, cold cots are also important. Not all parents will want to spend time with their child, but those who want to should be able to spend as much as they need after the birth, and for that cold cots are important.
As I mentioned earlier, it is important that bereavement-trained midwives or gynaecological counsellors are available in every hospital—not part time but full time, and available for parents when they need them. Let us not forget that many stillbirths and neonatal deaths are sudden and unexpected. It is a hugely traumatic experience and people need support immediately. A trained individual is so important. However, there is merit in ensuring that bereavement training is a module in the midwifery course so that every midwife is trained to an extent, because sadly we know that they will come across stillbirth and neonatal death in their career.
The other thing is to ensure that there is learning from every miscarriage and stillbirth. We still do not really understand why 50% of stillbirths happen. I will come on to it, but research is so important. I have already mentioned embedding the national bereavement care pathway.
I want to touch on the new pregnancy loss review, because it has not been mentioned so far. One of its heads is Zoe Clark-Coates of the Mariposa Trust. We often talk about stillbirth and neonatal death, but we do not talk enough about miscarriage and we still do not really know the true numbers of miscarriages. Colleagues in the Chamber have spoken emotively in previous debates about their experience of losing a child at less than 24 weeks. They said that their loss was not recognised in any way because it was classed as a miscarriage, not a stillbirth, even though they gave birth. This is why the pregnancy loss review is so important.
I echo the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury about post-mortems. Too often, people are scared to have the conversation about a post-mortem. It is a difficult subject; I would not want to approach parents who have just lost a child and ask if they would consider a post-mortem. But it is so important that that question is asked, because post-mortems will enable us to start to understand why stillbirths happen. So changing cultures within NHS trusts to ensure that that question is asked as a matter of course is important. The parents can say no, but if they are not offered the opportunity, they may look back and say, “My child’s life could have made a difference to future children.”
I would like to see the national bereavement care pathway and bereavement support more widely included as part of the matrix and assessment regime for the Care Quality Commission. We do not put enough emphasis on bereavement and the support that parents are given. I would also like to see support for subsequent pregnancies. There is pretty good support in many NHS trusts at the point at which someone suffers a loss, but what about subsequent pregnancies? Often the mother and the father will be thinking every single day up until the 12-week scan, every single day up until the 20-week scan, “Is this going to happen again?” But at that point often no support is available unless they reach out. The support network is patchy across the country.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) spoke about fathers, and he was absolutely right to do so. As I said at the beginning of the debate, it is important that men take part in it. So often, men bottle things up. They think they have to be the tough guy and hold it all in to support the family. I did it, and I have spoken to other fathers, so I know that it is a common reaction. Men are often treated like the spare part. That is by accident, not design. The chaplain or midwife will often be talking to the mother—understandably—but the father has just witnessed the woman they love give birth to a child they love and have now lost. They have been through the experience too. They are often the ones who will have to go off and tell family members, register the death and make arrangements for the funeral. So it is important to ensure that fathers have all the necessary support available to them, and it is one area that the NHS needs to get much better at.
It is important that we have more research into baby loss. The taboo nature of this issue means that charities that specialise in it—even the bigger ones such as Sands, the Lullaby Trust, the Mariposa Trust and others—do not get the financial support that other charities do. I implore people up and down the country to support baby loss charities, because they can fund vital research, which will lead to fewer babies dying.
Lastly, I want to touch on another passion of mine. We talk about 15 babies dying every single day in the UK. Every single one is a tragedy. But 7,175 die every single day worldwide. Every day 830 mothers die from preventable causes related to pregnancy, and 99% of them are in developing countries. So let us be passionate about reducing stillbirth and neonatal death here in the UK, but let us be equally passionate about tackling this issue worldwide. I am a big champion of UK aid because I know that it makes a difference around the world. UK aid is not sold, especially by some of the right-wing media, but it is so important in tackling issues such as this. I do not think that there is one person in this country who would say that spending money on reducing the number of deaths of babies is not money well spent. If we were to get the newborn mortality rate of every country down to the average of high-income countries such as our own, or even better below it, that would save 16 million lives a year.
UK aid is already making a huge difference to this issue. In 2015-16, something like £124 million was spent on maternal and neonatal health. That is equivalent to about 15% of aid spending. The Department for International Development is supporting programmes in about 16 countries, focusing on maternal and neonatal health. I recently made a visit with Unicef to Ethiopia, a country that has a high prevalence of baby loss. Although the number of deaths of children aged between one month and five years has dramatically fallen in recent decades, newborn death remains a massive issue. Think of the difference we can make worldwide if we can share some of the learnings from this country and others in the western world by using UK aid and support from clinicians in this country. Let me give an example of that.
One of the biggest causes of newborn death in Ethiopia is sepsis, which is relatively rare in the UK because we have high levels of hygiene and sanitation. UK aid water projects will make a huge difference on that, but we can do far more. At one neonatal unit there, the scrubs and clogs I was asked to put on were dirtier than the clothes I was wearing, which was a little worrying. There was a baby in there with sepsis, and I spoke to the doctor, who was a general practitioner, not a specialist in gynaecology or an obstetrician. There is a real need for some specialism and specialist training there. I asked, “Where is the hand wash? Where is your alcohol rub? This is commonplace. You can’t go about 10 feet along a hospital corridor in the UK without finding an alcohol rub dispenser.” He replied, “Ah, yes, I’ve got some of this” and he reached into a bottom drawer, underneath a load of stuff, and pulled it out. This is exactly the sort of intervention, on cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation, that we in the UK can share with countries around the world and that can make a difference. So I invite the Minister, and I will also be pushing the Secretary of State for International Development on this, to have a little more focus on tackling infant mortality, stillbirth and neonatal death on a global scale.
I have probably spoken for long enough, but I just want to say that this is a hugely important subject. We in the all-party group will continue our work, and I wish to thank all Members here from across the House, the Government and Members from all parties for their ongoing support.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
It is a great privilege to take part in this debate. The hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and others have set an almost unsurpassable standard in their comprehensive, thoughtful and moving accounts of the issue before us tonight. When I thought about what I was going to say today, I found myself strangely circumspect, reticent and shy about what I might or might not say, possibly because I am old fashioned—probably more so than I should be. At the back of one’s mind there is always the thought, “Is it in good taste? Should I go there? Should I not?” But in a flash it came to me: I have only one sibling, my younger brother, who is nine and a half years younger than me, and all my mother ever said about this—she is dead now—was that she had a number of miscarriages between me and my brother. It is very much to my detriment, to my dishonour, that I never broached this subject with my mother and said, “What happened?” I very much regret that. My parents were immensely British, and they got on with it and suffered in silence, but I wonder how many miscarriages she had and what that agony was like. It is too late now, and “too late” are some of the saddest words in English.
The point has been made about parents, and I am a parent, all three of whose children were born relatively easily and successfully. As one or two Members of this place know, I am also a grandparent and a brother-in-law, and for that reason am not untouched by the type of tragedy that has been described today. One thinks, “It is not going to affect me”, but it comes damned close. So I have the experience. The second thing I found to be almost like a searing wound to me personally: witnessing the extraordinary grief of what happened. This was a searing, dreadful, ghastly grief. The hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) has said that we must reach out, give people a hug and ask how we can help, but that grief has to be seen to be believed and it is terrible.
Victoria Prentis
I have really appreciated the hon. Gentleman’s input into our group. We should, of course, have mentioned the importance of grandparents and wider family. They have been present in the all-party group, in the form of my father, right from its inception in the middle of the night, when we were waiting for a late vote, and they play a crucial role in helping parents and others to get through the awful loss of a baby. Of course grandparents matter!
Jamie Stone
The hon. Lady makes the point much better than I can. I take great comfort in the thought that I may be slightly more than just a doddering old fellow who amuses the kids. I like to think, and I hope, that I helped my two daughters through their trauma.
The hon. Member for Colchester made the point about the partner—about the man in the equation—several times, and nothing was ever truer. How terrible it must be to witness a stillbirth—a child who arrives too early to survive. I would dare to suggest that the man is emotionally every bit as bruised as the woman.
I wish to conclude simply by saying that in a debate such as this the House is at its best, and I give credit to the hon. Member for Eddisbury and others for that. I hope and believe that if people out there chance upon this debate online or read the record of it, they will find some human comfort—some milk of human kindness—which shows that we care. The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) mentioned to me the service in the Crypt on Thursday, and I will take part in the service and contribute a reading with the greatest of pleasure. Finally, I cannot even begin to surmise how, but when we had my family traumas, to my great surprise several Members, from all parts of the House, came up to me and said, “We understand. We know what you are going through.” When a completely unexpected hand reaches out like that, it is pure gold and reminds one of what friendship is really all about.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
I wish to join my colleagues in commending the Members who have so bravely recounted their own experiences of baby loss here tonight and at last year’s baby loss debate. As many have said, the loss of a baby is one that no parent should ever have to bear. I am fortunate not to have suffered such a loss, but as a children’s doctor I have, unfortunately, been the bearer of such bad news on too many occasions.
In my experience, the first reaction of a parent confronted with the tragic death of a baby is to ask, “Why? Why did this happen? Why my child? Why me?” In these agonising circumstances, answers as to why this situation has occurred can help to provide respite. The second reaction, one that is testament to the incredible empathy human beings have, even in the most difficult circumstances, is the desire to ensure that lessons are learned from their personal tragedy so that no one else has to endure that same heartbreak. I am in awe of colleagues, such as those here this evening, who have been through such a traumatic experience and found the strength not just to share that experience, but to use it to campaign successfully for improvements in care and to highlight areas to improve so that others do not experience such suffering in the future. I commend the work of the all-party group and my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) for their work to develop the bereavement care pathway. I have worked in hospitals where there has been excellent bereavement care, with the bereavement suite that has been described, and in others where the care has been less well developed, and I have seen the importance of the national bereavement care pathway. I congratulate them on it.
Although he is no longer in his seat, I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on his private Member’s Bill, which has developed child bereavement leave. As my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester has said, it will enable mothers to have an extra two weeks of maternity leave and fathers to have a doubling of their leave—some extra time to reflect and be at home with their family.
One recent improvement that the Government have made is the introduction of independent investigations by the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which will look at every case of stillbirth or life-changing injury. That will help to meet the needs of parents in respect of that first question—“Why did this happen?”—and to prevent it from happening again. When the lessons are disseminated throughout the health service, doctors and midwives will be able to learn from previous experience to ensure that problems do not occur in future. It will be important—I look to the Minister to respond on this—to ensure that health professionals can speak openly in investigations without fear of blame. A blame culture will deter people from speaking openly and prevent improvements to patient safety. I have spoken numerous times in the Chamber about patient safety, and I am hopeful that the national roll-out of investigations will help us to meet the NHS’s goal of becoming the safest healthcare system in the world in which to give birth.
One development in neonatal care that I have seen in my 17 years of practice is the increasing centralisation of neonatal care, with the smallest and sickest infants now transported to specialist centres. I have worked in these centres and, although they provide exceptional care, they are often many miles away from the hospital where the child was first admitted or where the family live. For example, if a baby’s family live in Sleaford and North Hykeham, their nearest tertiary centre is in Nottingham. If the centre in Nottingham is full, the family may be sent many hours away to Norwich, Sheffield or Leicester. For working families on low incomes, the need to visit their sick baby several hours away imposes significant travel costs. Some families go through intense financial difficulty to meet that need to travel, while others have the distress of being physically unable to travel to see their baby as often as they would wish because they do not have the money to get to the tertiary centres. I raised the very same issue in the debate last year and would be interested to hear an update from the Minister on any measures being taken to help struggling families, many of whom work, to meet the travel costs in such an extremely distressing situation.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
My hon. Friend makes a good point about safety. In respect of smaller hospitals retaining maternity services, some years ago there was an attempt to downgrade Worthing Hospital and St Richard’s Hospital, such that they would lose their maternity departments and the service would be centralised in Brighton or Portsmouth. Fortunately, we defeated those proposals, and Worthing maternity department is now rated outstanding. It is also rated as the safest maternity department in the country; indeed, many mums now come from Brighton to Worthing because of its success. There is clearly a case for larger specialised hospitals for particular ailments and problems that need specialist treatment, but in most cases we need a good-quality, safe and trusted maternity service closer to where the parents live.
Dr Johnson
I congratulate the hospital in Worthing for its outstanding success. My hon. Friend is right that there is a balance to be struck between the centralisation of care for babies who require very low-volume but high-specialist care, and the need for care to be delivered as close as is reasonably practical to the individual family concerned. That is true of all medical specialties, really. In the case of neonates, we probably have the balance roughly right, but a trend may be starting whereby people ask for things to be centralised that in my perception do not really need to be centralised. As a professional, I often see babies who are not returned to the step-down care as quickly as they could be. Babies are sometimes kept in the tertiary centres for longer than is absolutely necessary. There are complex reasons for that, but I would be grateful if the Minister looked into the issue so that babies can be returned closer to home as soon as possible.
I welcome the Government’s ambitious aims to halve the rate of stillbirths and neonatal deaths by 2025. That will be possible only by reducing the number of pre-term deliveries, which are the leading cause of neonatal death in the UK. The Department of Health and Social Care’s goal of reducing pre-term birth from 8% to 6% will require a lot more research and intervention. We have a healthier population of women, but the number of pre-term babies continues to increase. More funding is needed for pregnancy research, and particularly for research into the causes of pre-eclampsia, cervical length and infections such as group B strep, as well as for the identification of small babies with early scanning. There must also be more work to discourage smoking, which we already know is an established risk factor for pre-term delivery. I welcome the previous Secretary of State’s saying in November 2017 that the Government will reduce smoking during pregnancy from 10.6% to 6% and raise awareness of foetal movement. All those things will contribute towards the reduction of the number of neonatal deaths and stillbirths. Through that work, the Government are best placed to meet their “halve it” aim, and in doing so save 4,000 lives.
Finally, I wish to discuss those babies who die in the post-neonatal period—that is, under the age of one but after 28 days of life. Currently, 1.1 in every 1,000 babies die in the post-neonatal period. The major reason is babies having congenital malformations, and the second most common reason is sudden infant death, the rate of which has recently increased, although the cause is not clear. What is the Minister doing to identify the reasons for the recent increase in sudden infant deaths? What is being done to prevent the number of sudden infant deaths from rising further and, indeed, to bring it down?
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank Mr Speaker for granting this debate and the Backbench Business Committee for selecting the subject. I thank the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who as always set the scene on a subject about which she is very passionate and knowledgeable, with her personal story. I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who have made incredible contributions, every one of them straight from the heart. They have certainly set the scene for a very serious debate in which we acknowledge what has happened. The hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) put forward ideas that he thought would be helpful. Everyone did that, to be fair, but he did so especially.
I will never begin to speak in a debate of this variety without first expressing my sincere sympathies to all those who have been affected by the loss of their baby, at whatever stage. My thoughts are with those people today, and I pray that the God of peace and comfort will be their strength. Baby loss is an extremely painful topic, but it is one that is being spoken of more and more. Such debates enable some of the pain and hurt to be talked about, and that can only be a good thing. We must thank charities such as Saying Goodbye for raising the topic and saying that it is okay to speak out, remember and reflect. Whatever way a person deals with their pain is okay, as long as they know that they are not alone. Such debates allow us to express the message, “You are not alone.” The Members present who speak in these debates reflect the opinions of our constituents outside the Chamber, about whom we talk.
As I have said in previous debates, my mother suffered several miscarriages, as did my sister and a member of my staff—in fact, the member of staff who helps me to prepare my speaking notes. For me and for all of us in the Chamber, this is a matter that is very close to our hearts. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) spoke of the miscarriages that his mum had between his birth and that of his younger brother. That is probably very real to me, as well. As we spoke about my staff member’s workload for the coming week, we realised that it was Baby Loss Awareness Week. Might I suggest that if a debate ever came at the right time, this one did? We discussed how during the last two weeks of September, we had heard of six couples who live in my constituency who had suffered miscarriages. That is six children lost; six expectations never to be fulfilled; six homes filled with sadness; six women who felt empty; six partners who felt so helpless; and countless loved ones who simply had no words. Those six people were known to all of us very personally, and the fact that one in four pregnancies ends in miscarriage has never felt so real.
In the past eight months, I have known three ladies, who are also constituents of mine, who have carried their babies for the full nine months only to have them for just two hours. I can well remember my wife, Sandra, informing me that she was pregnant with our first son, Jamie. Like every parent, I had never felt such joy. I planned for our future and imagined what he would look like. I did not check whether the baby was a boy or a girl as I have always liked the element of chance. I just hoped that whatever sex the child was, they would be accepted. To be truthful, I did ask for three boys and I got three boys—I am not sure how that worked. As I held my child, I realised that the expectation could never meet the reality of having a child in my arms. I also remember very well holding my first grandchild, Katie—I know that there are other Members here who are grandparents as well. Katie is now nine years old. I remember when Del Boy, the character on TV, took Damian in his arms and he looked at him in wonder, and there was I at the Ulster Hospital in Dundonald. I said, “Next year, Katie, we will be millionaires.” Of course, we were not millionaires, but we were in a way as we had our grandchild. Such was the joy that we felt. Therefore, when I think of those families who have lost that hope for their future, my heart simply aches. Through my constituents, I have stared into the face of pure sadness and emptiness, and I would have given anything to change the outcome. That was never going to be in my power, or in the power of anybody in this Chamber, but, having spoken to many women, one theme is clear: they cannot forget their loss and they do not want others to forget it either.
I know that my parliamentary aide will not mind me saying that she lost her first baby abroad while on a church mission trip. She returned a few years later with her family—she now has two wee girls—and planted a tree with a simple plaque in remembrance of the wee child who had died. This simple act of remembrance, while not addressing her grief, helped her to move forward, as she knew that that tree would grow and be a testament to the life that began but could not flourish and grow. This is a desire that is reflected in the events that are organised to celebrate the short lives of babies. Women no longer feel that they must and should grieve in silence. The taboo that existed in my mother’s generation that kept women silent in their grief has gone now. One look on social media will reveal messages that say no more than a date, or a number of dates, and that is proof that it is good for some women to acknowledge and commemorate their loss. Balloon releases and services of remembrance indicate that those who grieve want to see their loss acknowledged.
There are, of course, other women who wish to grieve in silence and that is their right, and I absolutely respect that. Some pain can never find a voice. We may never know the people around us who have gone through baby loss—I am sure that a trawl of families of staff members in this place would show us all to be connected in some way to a loss of child—but what we must know is that there is a way in which we can remember and pay tribute to those lives, those hopes and those dreams that have been lost.
I want to take a brief moment to think about the fathers. This is something that my aide mentioned to me and that others have referred to as well. Fathers suffer emotional loss—not the physical emotional loss—and have to watch their loved one going through the physical and emotional trauma of loss and they need to be remembered as well. It is their loss as well and they have a right to grieve, and that should be said in this place, too. Others have also referred to grandparents and other family connections. There must be support available for the whole family, and I feel that this is lacking. I have heard it said that the leaflet that is handed to a mother when she miscarries does not help. It is often not read or thought about. A follow-up phone call offering help and advice may go a long way to dealing with the pain and the fear, and I am grateful to the charities that fill that breach when perhaps, with great respect, the NHS does not.
What words do I have for those who have lost babies?
Will Quince
I distinctly remember the intervention that the hon. Gentleman made in that speech back in November 2015 when he raised the importance of the hospital chaplain and the huge comfort that they give to families. Does he agree that the point he made then is as valid today as it was three years ago?
Jim Shannon
Absolutely, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for reminding us of that debate. Like many others in this Chamber, I am a man of faith who feels that it is important to have a chaplain available—to have someone to share one’s grief and hard times. The intervention that he mentions was right along those lines. I felt that it was so important to have that help at that time, just when one needed it the most. I thank him for his intervention and for his salient reminder.
Richard Graham
Chaplains play an incredibly important role, as do the volunteers who work with them. I think that we have more than 30 in Gloucester Royal Hospital, all of whom go through a significant amount of training for about a year. They are multi-faith, so we have Muslims and Sikhs as well as Christians. We also have chaplains of no particular faith, and they are very clear about not trying to differentiate so that a Baptist chaplain might only talk to a Baptist patient and all that sort of thing. Increasingly, there are secular patients who need someone who can engage with them without religion. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it would be useful for the Minister to say a few words about the role of chaplains in hospitals and whether the encouragement that they and the volunteers who work with them get at our hospital should become best practice around the country?
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. He is right: the chaplain has a responsibility for all those of faith and of no faith, because that is the time when a person needs that wee bit of succour, support and compassion—perhaps even a shoulder to cry on. Those are important things, and he is right to mention them.
I have asked a few women for the things that have been said by them or to them, and this is the message that I want to leave with the House today, “What has happened to you is not okay, but you will be okay. Give yourself time. It doesn’t matter how much time you need. One day you will realise that the smile that you have faked for so long is now a real smile. It doesn’t mean you have forgotten your baby—it means that you can remember them while you live. Weeping endures for a night, but joy comes in the morning.
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
I want to begin by echoing the words of the hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who is no longer in her place, that this is indeed one of the most difficult debates—if not the most difficult, debate—in the entire parliamentary calendar. It must be debated because it is too important for us not to. A number of my colleagues would have dearly liked to participate in this debate today, but, sadly, our conference is not accommodated in the recesses of Parliament, so therefore they were unable to be here.
As the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) has pointed out, this is the third year that we have made a special effort in this House to mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, which culminates in International Pregnancy and Infant Loss Remembrance Day 2018 on 15 October. In a cruel twist of fate, sadly, that is the same date that my own baby was stillborn at full term in 2009. Kenneth would have celebrated his ninth birthday on that day. It is in his honour that I began to talk and to campaign—and will continue to talk and continue to campaign—about this issue. I want to shine a light on it to break the taboo around it and to break the silence that we all know exists and that we are all working to change.
I want to thank my fellow members of the all-party group—the hon. Members for Colchester, for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) and for Banbury. As a Scottish member of that group, I like to think that I am able to provide a Scottish perspective. Health in Scotland is devolved, but on this issue, as in all issues, I believe that where we can work together and learn from each other then we most certainly should do so, because this issue is certainly above politics. I also want to thank all those across the House who have championed the issue of baby loss and shared their personal and painful experiences and circumstances, as well as the charities that work on the frontline every single day, helping bereaved parents through this life-changing and traumatic event, as the hon. Member for Eddisbury reminded us and others in this debate have pointed out.
It is important for all the parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers and sisters who have been affected by such an appalling tragedy as baby loss to know that even though they feel isolated in their grief, they are not alone. Sadly, the tragedy of baby loss and stillbirth is terrifyingly common, with around 6,500 babies dying before or shortly after birth—one baby every hour and a half. During this debate, two babies have died. Some 4,000 of these 6,500 babies are stillborn, with another 2,500 surviving for less than a month after birth.
We are all working to the same end in this House and across the UK—to reduce these terrible statistics. Behind each one is a family devastated by grief, living under the shadow of the pain of this for the rest of their lives, while appearing to function normally on the surface, because the grief of losing a baby and all the hope invested therein does not go away. Families and parents simply find a way to learn to live with it somehow. However, I am pleased to say that progress is being made. The hon. Member for Colchester made a good point about back-slapping, but I do think that we have to acknowledge it when we make progress.
Although we are not yet there, Scotland is now close to the high standard set by Nordic nations in minimising stillbirths and early infant deaths. I was very pleased to read that, according to a University of Leicester study, rates have fallen across the entire UK, with Scotland leading the way, although of course there can be no room for complacency. The rate of stillbirths and deaths of babies within 28 days in Scotland was 4.72 per 1,000 live births in 2017, which compares with the Nordic rate of 4.3. Probably everybody here who has an interest in these matters—I think that we all do—will know that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland are generally regarded as having the gold standard in neonatal survival. The 2015 rate of stillbirths and deaths of babies within 28 days of birth for the entire UK was 5.61 per 1,000 live births—a drop from 6.04 in 2013. So, yes, improvement has been made, but this is not job done; far from it. Nevertheless, it is extremely welcome progress. Prevention is, and absolutely must remain, the key.
Mary Ross-Davie, director of the Royal College of Midwives in Scotland, has said that in recent years Scotland has undertaken very important work in this area that has improved outcomes for Scotland, with the national stillbirth group established in 2013. In addition, we have had the Maternity and Children Quality Improvement Collaborative since that time. Moreover—as we have heard about today with regard to England—the Scottish Government have funded the national bereavement care pathway, which will benefit bereaved parents across Scotland. I think that this is being rolled out in parallel with the care pathway in England.
The pathway is important because it seeks to improve the quality of bereavement care experienced by parents and families at all stages of pregnancy and baby loss, so that all bereaved parents across the UK can expect the same high-quality, sensitive bereavement care that they need and deserve. It is still in the process of being established, and it will involve collaboration and partnership with baby loss charities and stakeholders, and so it should. The stillbirth and neonatal death charity, Sands, is working with—and will continue to work with—the Scottish Government, other baby loss charities and other healthcare partners in Scotland to develop the approach over the next two years, with the plan to pilot, implement and embed the pathway across Scotland by March 2020.
When the worst happens and parents must face this nightmare, it is important that the correct support mechanisms are in place. That is the least that can be done, but sadly this was not always the case in the past, when bereavement care experienced by parents and families during pregnancy or shortly after birth could be patchy and variable, as the hon. Member for Banbury pointed out and to which I can personally testify. Support and the right kind of care in the immediate aftermath of such a life-changing event can make all the difference to those affected, as we heard from the hon. Member for Eddisbury.
I have lobbied the Scottish Government, who are now also investigating the provision of fatal accident inquiries for stillbirths in some circumstances, as was mentioned earlier. This is another mark of how far we have come and it is a huge step. Nobody should underestimate the complexity of this step forward—of the fact that the issue is even under discussion and investigation. It is also being explored by the Department of Health in England.
Currently, until a baby lives independently of its mother, any change in the law here would be profound and require the law around it to be looked at very carefully. Of course, no one would expect a fatal accident inquiry—in England, a coroner’s inquiry—to be carried out routinely following a stillbirth, although it may be appropriate in very specific circumstances, not as a way of seeking to punish anyone who may have made mistakes, but as a learning tool to better inform medical practitioners as they carry out and seek to improve antenatal care. The only reason that this idea has even been raised at all is that in the past many hospitals have been extremely reluctant to investigate stillbirths fully and transparently. Parents often report feeling excluded from the process and denied proper answers to the question, “Why did our baby die?” We know that sometimes it is not possible to answer that question; sometimes we just do not know. But when explanations or information can be given, they should be. Any relevant information needs to be shared with bereaved parents. The fact that it has not been in the past is not good enough, and it is hoped that the bereavement care pathway and a more transparent ethos around baby loss will help to address these issues.
Of course, we could not measure progress and the support that parents and families can access without mentioning the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, which we heard about earlier in the debate. This legislation means that, for the first time ever, bereaved parents who lose a child up to the age of 18 years old are entitled to statutory paid leave under the law. Parents who go through a stillbirth are also protected.
An age-old wrong has been corrected in this legislation. The law has rightly recognised the enormity of losing a child and the protection in the workplace that parents should be entitled to expect as a right, not as a gift conferred on them by their employer. I thank everyone in the House whom I had the privilege to work alongside on this legislation, particularly the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), whose approach was sensitive and reflective; for that, I think we all thank him. The Act is not perfect, but it is ground-breaking and I am sure that it will evolve over time.
Another measure that will help with baby loss is the move in England to permit the registration of babies lost before 24 weeks’ gestation. The Scottish Government are also actively looking at this with input from professionals in the field and baby loss charities, examining the current system, its effects and how a potential voluntary registration process or other kind of process could work in practice. Certainly, parents who lose their baby before the 24-week threshold—when it is classified as a miscarriage, rather than a stillbirth—often feel that their loss is dismissed, officially at least, because there is no documentation to testify to the fact that their baby existed, was eagerly awaited and that their loss has left a lasting impact on the entire family.
In such cases, the opportunity to register their baby’s death may provide many parents with some comfort at an extraordinarily difficult time. For that, if nothing else, such a provision must be seriously examined. We are all mindful of cases we have heard about whereby twins are lost—one before the 24-week threshold and the other after it—but only one baby is eligible for registration. Imagine being the parents going through that. It is not hard to see how much worse that makes parents and families feel. That is something that we are looking at in both England and Scotland—it is something that we should look at, and it is time that we did so. All that can be done to ease the trauma of losing a child must be done.
The speech that I have delivered today on this issue is, thankfully, more optimistic than previous speeches that I have delivered on it. Progress has been made, and I am delighted about that. Slowly—very slowly, but we are getting there—we are beginning to break the taboo on this issue, which demands that we move forward. We have come some way, but there is still much to do, and the hon. Member for Eddisbury pointed out some sobering examples in England and Wales. According to Embrace, 15 babies are stillborn or die within the first 28 days of life, and 80% of stillbirths and deaths that are investigated could have been avoided with better care. We can and must do better, and progress in recent years shows that we are capable of doing so. For my part, as a Scottish MP, I will continue to communicate with the Scottish Government and maintain a dialogue on this matter. I will also work with the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss.
We have discussed the emotional trauma of baby loss, but we should remember that there is also a social cost. Parents who lose a child, whatever the circumstances, are eight times more likely than their counterparts to divorce. They are more likely to drop out of the workforce, perhaps never to return. We have to do everything that we can to support parents in this position. The former Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, Shona Robison MSP, was receptive to concerns that I raised with her. Her successor, Jeane Freeman MSP, has continued very much in the same vein. I very much look forward to next year and continuing to work to challenge the silence, taboo and difficulties surrounding baby loss and neonatal death. Cross-party work has never been so constructive, I suspect, and on an issue that we all care about and which impacts all too often on too many families in every single constituency across the United Kingdom. We have a duty to work together, we have a duty to make things better, and we have a duty to break the silence.
Justin Madders (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)
I am humbled once again to respond to such an important debate on behalf of the Opposition. I would like to begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on securing today’s debate and on her continuing work in drawing from her personal experience to campaign on behalf of thousands of others who have been affected by this important subject. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who could not be with us tonight. As we have heard, her contribution to the all-party parliamentary group is greatly valued, as is the work of all the members of that group who have spoken tonight. There are something in the order of 630 registered APPGs, but few if any can claim to have so much success in bringing attention to a vital subject and securing a tangible change in policy.
As several Members have said, today’s debate has once again shown Parliament at its best, and I would like to reflect on some of the contributions that we have heard. The hon. Member for Eddisbury spoke in positive terms about the success of the national pathway and gave interesting statistics on parents’ feedback. Some 98% felt that they had been treated with respect, which is really important and, critically, 90% felt that they had been provided with information that was easy to understand. She gave the example of a parent who had to go and speak to the doctor on about five occasions to get an explanation that they were comfortable with, which brought home how important it is in this difficult area for parents to be empowered to ask questions and understand what has happened. It was also interesting to hear that medical professionals gave positive feedback as well.
The hon. Member for Eddisbury expressed concern about ongoing investigations in the Shrewsbury area at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and I am sure that when they conclude we will both have questions to ask. It is worth saying that one of the things of which I have been aware, particularly in relation to the Countess of Chester issue, is the impact on the local community. Many parents, whether they are directly affected or not, have children who were born at the hospital, and were understandably concerned when the news came out. We need to take that on board for future learning.
We heard from the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake), who gave specific examples of how we should improve outcomes, and raised the importance of training and awareness of foetal movements, and improvements in ultrasound scanning. The hon. Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) gave a wide-ranging speech. She always speaks with great personal knowledge and authority on this matter. She said that media coverage of this issue was pretty impressive and very sensitive, and that there was much more of it. She spoke positively, as did every Member who contributed, about the impact of the pathway. However, she pointed out that only 46% of maternity units provide mandatory bereavement training, some of which lasts only an hour or less. She was right to talk about the impact on staff of some of the issues with which they have to deal. She was right to highlight the fact that of course we need more midwives and that the focus should not just be on recruitment but on retention, and the serious challenges not just in midwifery but across the NHS workforce.
My hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) spoke from personal experience, and I thank him for doing so. He again raised access to mental health support and the lack of bereavement facilities in all units. He discussed the Bumblebee charity in his constituency, which was another example of how individuals turned their own experiences into a force for good. He ended with a tribute to his mother, who had to deal with stillborn babies in, presumably, the early years of the NHS, when things were treated very differently. We ought to pay credit to the service that she gave to the health service in a very different era for dealing with these issues.
It was a pleasure, as always, to hear from the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), who gave a wide-ranging and compelling speech. He spoke about why it was important that we talk about these issues. No matter how short someone’s life, it is incredibly important to the parents. He will know of my own constituent, Nicole Bowles—the badge that I am wearing gives a signal that someone has suffered child bereavement and it is all right to talk about it. That is a really important message that we cannot repeat enough: it is okay to talk about these things, because it helps to raise awareness and discuss matters.
The hon. Gentleman was crystal clear that we need bereavement suites in every unit up and down the country, and he was right about having more midwifery training. He made a very fair point, which I presume comes from his own personal experience, about continuing support for parents when they are dealing with subsequent pregnancies. One can only imagine the anxiety that they face throughout the whole pregnancy in that situation, and I am sure the Minister will reflect on that. The hon. Gentleman also made one of the strongest arguments I have heard in support of international aid and what a difference it can make to tackling baby loss around the world.
The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) eloquently reminded us that this issue affects grandparents and the wider family, as well as the parents. The hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) spoke from her professional background and experience when she said that the first question the parents always ask is, “Why?” and the second question is, “What can be done to prevent this happening again?” We have heard countless stories of parents taking that second question and using it as a force for good. She raised, as she did in the last debate, the impact on families of having to go to specialist units a long way from their homes, and I hope the Minister will reflect on that. She was also right to highlight the recent increase in sudden infant death syndrome, which is of great concern and is certainly perplexing.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke with great sincerity about his own family’s experiences. He drew a contrast between how his mother’s generation dealt with such issues and how we are beginning to talk about them much more openly today. He was right to say that we are all probably connected in some way to someone who has suffered such a loss.
As we have heard, today’s debate coincides with the 16th year of Baby Loss Awareness Week, which is an important opportunity for us all to unite with bereaved parents and their families and friends to commemorate the lives of babies who died during, before or shortly after birth. I echo the comments made in praise of the more than 60 charities that now collaborate on this week. When I first spoke on this subject two years ago, around 40 charities were involved. That increase in numbers shows what an impact this week has had on raising awareness and bringing people together, which is what we want to see. Each of those organisations should be extremely proud of what they do and of the way they work together to drive through change on a national basis. It seems to be a characteristic of this issue that personal tragedy moves people to go to huge lengths to help others in the same position. In doing so, they display extraordinary levels of courage and resilience, and I pay tribute to them all.
As well as using today’s debate to raise awareness, this is an opportunity to take stock of progress and once again highlight the fact that although excellent care is available in the country, it is not available to everyone everywhere. It has been said many times before and during the debate that one of the key challenges for the Government is to tackle regional disparities. In England alone, there is still a 25% variation in stillbirths. Although there has been a reduction in the stillbirth rate and the perinatal mortality rate, it is quite a slight one, and sadly the neonatal mortality rate in England and Wales has increased two years in a row.
While we can rightly say that we are beginning to improve the approach to those dealing with the consequences of baby loss, it seems that we still have a long way to go in understanding and really tackling the causes of it. The example we have heard a number of times today is that 15 babies every single day are stillborn or do not live past the first month, and it is believed from studies that up to 80% of those deaths could be avoided. As the hon. Member for Colchester said, too many deaths remain unexplained, and as many Members have said, we are still a long way behind where we should be in terms of prevention. According to The Lancet, the annual rate of stillbirth reduction in the UK has been slower than in the vast majority of comparable high-income countries.
One measure that may hopefully make inroads into improving outcomes is the maternity safety training fund, but as a one-off limited fund, it was by definition restricted. I raised the concern last year that time might not be found for the training to reach all those who would benefit from it, so it was disappointing to hear from Baby Lifeline that workforce pressures meant that many staff could not access the training available under the scheme. It gave clear examples of where the training given has improved outcomes, but this must not be the end of the story. The fund needs to be repeated on an annual basis and, crucially, staff need to be given the time and space to take advantage of what is on offer.
In many areas of the NHS, workforce challenges are the biggest barrier to improving outcomes. The “Bliss baby report 2015: hanging in the balance” stated that 64% of neonatal units did not have enough nurses to meet safe staffing levels and 70% of units looked after more babies than is considered safe. That was three years ago, and on many indicators the staffing situation is more acute now than it was then. We know that we have a shortfall in nurses of more than 40,000. We have more nurses and midwives leaving the register than joining it, and registrations by people from the European economic area are dropping dramatically. We know that the demographics of the existing workforce are not in our favour, which is why the retention issues raised are so important. I would be grateful if the Minister updated us in his concluding comments on whether any progress has been made to improve the figures that Bliss set out in 2015.
It is also worth considering staffing challenges in the context of the worthy aim of introducing a continuity of carer model, when even the modest target of 20% of women being covered by March 2019 looks challenging. Can the Minister say whether we are on track to meet that and when he anticipates there being full coverage? There is ample evidence to show that continuity of care can make a big difference to outcomes as well as the patient experience.
Finally, I want to say a few words about the national bereavement care pathway, as it has been rightly trumpeted this evening. It is clearly making a big difference on the ground, but it needs to be rolled out comprehensively as soon as possible. The Prime Minister indicated some time ago that it would be rolled out nationally by about this time. Again, I wonder whether the Minister can update us on that ambition.
In conclusion, the debates that we have had over the last few years, and again tonight, underline the importance of the work undertaken by hon. Members and the many charities in the sector. It means that the silence that we talk about is now beginning to end. It is not possible to overstate how courageous those who have spoken out about their personal experiences are or how influential those interventions have proven to be. Having now spoken out, we must continue to talk about what we need to do to improve outcomes. This year my council will be joining the wave of light, and I am hopeful that other public buildings in my constituency will join in—I am doing what I can to encourage them. Such symbolism can only increase public awareness of this subject, and if actions like that reach just one grieving parent who may have felt that they were alone, but who now feels that they have someone to turn to, then it will have been worth it.
The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
May I join colleagues across the House in paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) for securing this debate on Baby Loss Awareness Week? It is particularly appropriate, as today marks the start of the 2018 campaign. How we reduce the numbers of baby losses is an issue that unites the House, as has been very much reflected in the tenor of this evening’s debate. May I also say to my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) that I am sure that all in the Chamber will be thinking of Robert and him on Friday, as he marks that particularly poignant fourth anniversary?
My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury raised a number of important points in her speech, including about the national bereavement care pathway and the ongoing investigations at the three hospitals in England and Wales. I will address those shortly. She is right to recognise the higher profile that this issue has received in recent years, this being the third such debate in the last three years. That is very much testament to the work of the all-party group on baby loss and in particular my hon. Friends the Members for Eddisbury, for Colchester and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who is not in her place, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), to whom my opposite number correctly paid tribute and who very much moved the House in a previous debate, and the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), who quite rightly spoke of Kenneth, who is very much in her thoughts and reflects much of the work that she has done in this place. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) also made the point very well that this issue affects the family as a whole, including grandparents.
Martin Docherty-Hughes (West Dunbartonshire) (SNP)
I join the Minister in congratulating all the Members who have brought this issue to the Floor of the House today and especially the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach) on securing the debate. The Minister has talked about the family, and we have heard much about the emotional journey for mothers and fathers who experience loss. We are living now in a more equal society, in which more lesbian women are becoming mothers, and they, too, experience loss through the death of a baby or young child. Will he ensure that that is reflected in the opportunities to learn about the lived experience of mothers, to which my hon. and good Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) referred, whether they have a husband or a wife?
Stephen Barclay
The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. He will have noticed that my colleague the Minister for Women and Equalities was in the Chamber for part of the debate, and I am sure that those sentiments are very much reflected in the work that she is doing. I am very happy to work with him to ensure that the Government’s approach takes those points on board.
Before coming to the wider areas of progress and considering what still needs to be done to deliver the improvements that we all want to see, I will address some of the specific comments made by Members across the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester rightly mentioned the inconsistency between trusts. I understand that Sands is asking for the national bereavement care pathway to be included in the CQC’s inspection framework for maternity. I am happy to write to the CQC to request that this becomes part of the inspection regime. I think that can build on the point my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury made about recent progress in Medway.
My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester also suggested a training module for midwives on bereavement. Again, I am happy to write to Professor Ian Cummings, the chief executive of Health Education England, on that point and to share the correspondence with the all-party parliamentary group. One of the objectives of the pregnancy loss review is to recommend options to improve maternity care practice for parents who experience baby loss, so that is part of that work.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), who so often brings her clinical expertise to debates, raised the issue of travel costs. The Patient Advice and Liaison Service can advise on eligibility for schemes, as this tends to be specific to individual trusts, but it can apply in certain instances, particularly when linked to benefit entitlement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place, mentioned the important work of the hospital chaplaincy, and I think that Members on both sides of the House recognise the support that chaplains can offer following baby loss. Indeed, the bereavement care pathway guidance recommends offering parents contact with the chaplaincy team, so the role of the chaplaincy will be given greater visibility as the pathway is rolled out across more trusts.
The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Justin Madders) rightly mentioned midwife numbers. We recognise that the workforce do face pressure, as is reflected in the 25% increase in the number of midwifery training places that the Government are committed to. Indeed, numbers have increased in each of the last four years. But he makes a valid point and we are focused on dealing with the workforce pressures.
As a number of Members have recognised, the Government have a clear ambition to halve the rates of stillbirths, neonatal and maternal deaths and brain injuries that occur during or soon after birth by 2025, and to achieve at least a 20% reduction in these rates by 2020. Since the launch of the national maternity ambition in 2015, the Government have introduced a range of evidence-based interventions to support maternity and neonatal services, under the leadership of the maternity safety champions, who are responsible for promoting safety in their organisations.
I am pleased to report that we remain on course to achieve our 2020 ambition. The stillbirth rate in England fell from 5.1 to 4.1 per 1,000 births between 2010 and 2017, representing a decrease of almost 20%, which equates to 827 fewer stillbirths. We currently have the lowest stillbirth rate on record. The neonatal mortality rate also fell from 2.9 to 2.8 per 1,000 live births between 2010 and 2016. Many Members will be aware that multiple pregnancies are at greater risk of perinatal death, so I welcome the findings in a recent MBRRACE-UK report showing that the stillbirth rate for UK twins almost halved between 2014 and 2016, with a fall of 44%. In addition, neonatal deaths among UK twins has dropped by 30%.
There are areas of progress, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester rightly said, part of the focus of today’s debate is on the areas where we need to improve, not just on the areas where there has been progress. One key area relates to ethnic minority groups, where we know stillbirth and neonatal mortality rates are increasing rather than decreasing. The Government continue to work with others to develop and implement policies to tackle such inequalities. This is an area on which we would be very happy to work with the APPG. It is an issue of concern to Members on all sides of the House.
A number of Members raised the role of the Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch and the importance of identifying where there are lessons to be learned. My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham is right that clinicians must be free to speak up where mistakes have been made. Indeed, the former Secretary of State championed that in his work on patient safety. It is also why we are improving investigations into term stillbirths. There is a role for the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists in terms of the Each Baby Counts programme. Considerable work is under way, part of which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury recognised, is on ensuring that in respect of the investigations at the specific hospitals she mentioned the appropriate lessons are learned. She will appreciate that, as they are live investigations, I cannot comment on them in detail.
Evidence demonstrates that women who have a midwife-led continuity model of care are less likely to suffer baby loss. In March, the Secretary of State pledged that most women will receive such care throughout pregnancy, labour and birth by 2021, with 20%, or about 130,000 women, benefiting by 2019. This will help to bolster maternity safety and further improve care standards.
It is positive to see the impact that many initiatives can have on reducing baby loss, but the Government recognise the need to improve the care bereaved families experience. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), the Minister with responsibility for maternity care, recently announced full funding of £106,000 to the charity Sands to continue the roll-out of the national bereavement care pathway. I hope that reassures my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury that the value of the care pathway is very much recognised within Government. As my hon. Friend mentioned, this initiative has seen a positive response from parents and medical professionals, with 77% of professionals saying bereavement care has improved.
On pregnancy loss and the pregnancy loss review, which my Department commissioned earlier this year, the review has been considering the question of whether legislation should provide new rights to bereaved parents to register pre-24-week pregnancy loss, as well as investigating the impact of such losses on families and how care can be improved for parents who experience it. That review is currently scheduled to be completed in the new year. A number of very important points on that pre-24-week period were raised.
The Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice have been consulting with coroners, patients’ groups and charities to consider the role of the coroner in relation to stillbirths. This is about ensuring that bereaved parents are given a full account of the events leading up to the loss of their baby and that important lessons are learned. The hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) in particular made a point on the role of coroners in an intervention. This work will continue over the coming months.
In conclusion, progress is being made. I think that was recognised in a number of the speeches this evening, particularly in respect of: the commitment to fund in full the national roll-out of the bereavement care pathway in 2018-19, for which guidance and resources have been released today; the ongoing pregnancy loss review, which is due to report in early 2019; the work being done by the Department of Health and Social Care and the Ministry of Justice regarding the role of the coroner in investigating stillbirths; the progression of the private Member’s Bill, which will have its Third Reading on 26 October, promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on those last two issues; and the recent passage of the Parental Bereavement (Leave and Pay) Act 2018, mentioned by a number of Members, through the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake).
I would like to close by making it clear that the Government are actively listening to concerns on this issue. This issue unites the House. On behalf of the Government, I very much look forward to working with the APPG, and Members across the House, to ensure that the progress we have seen in recent years continues, so that we can all tackle the most appalling loss that the families we represent can face.
Antoinette Sandbach
It is a pleasure to follow the Minister and the commitments he has made. As he said, this issue unites the House. The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) spoke about her dread about today’s debate, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), and I did not go to sleep last night because of the worry and the feelings that it brings back. But the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran also spoke about the optimism for this year and what we have achieved in the past three years. As the Opposition spokesman said, personal tragedy moves people to go to enormous lengths, and we have heard from Members across the House about constituents who have gone to enormous lengths to try and build on their experiences, ensure that lessons have been learned and make sure that things are better for those who follow.
Three themes emerged from the debate. The first, which is where we started three years ago, is about breaking the silence. My hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), in the week in which Robert has his fourth birthday, spoke about taking on the taboo of speaking about childhood death. We have all taken on that taboo in this House. Each year, different aspects of it emerge. The hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) spoke about his mother suffering in silence. So many people have suffered in silence; indeed, the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) had his mother and sister share that experience. We are breaking that taboo, we are breaking that silence, working together with those 60 charities that cover all sorts of loss and that are embedded in our communities and supporting our constituents who have been through this.
There is some optimism and hope in Baby Loss Awareness Week, not least because on Saturday we have the wave of light, which travels across the world as parents light candles in memory of their children. The hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney) also spoke about the role of his mother. At that point in time, with the newly emerging NHS, looking after what are commonly referred to as angel babies must have been very difficult, and I know that my own mother suffered in silence from her own experience, although she was not looking after stillborn babies. That work is important, as was the work of his constituent, Gordon, with Bumblebee Babies.
The second theme was pregnancy support. The hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) spoke about this, and particularly about ultrasound scanning in the third trimester. I campaigned on that in Wales when I was an elected Member of the Welsh Assembly, and I urge him to work with his colleagues in the devolved Assembly to try to deliver it. Ultrasound scans in the third trimester have been proven in other jurisdictions to reduce stillbirth and neonatal death, and they can make an important contribution to the debate going forward. He also spoke about the work of Gareth and Clare in memory of Mari-Leisa.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) was the only Member to mention Group B Strep Support, which forms an incredibly important part of this debate. A test for group B strep can be done for £11, and people can discover whether or not their baby might be vulnerable to it. That is an area that we can perhaps work on. I am grateful to her for raising the matter, in the light of her clinical experience, and I know that other Members of the House have campaigned on it.
The hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said that prevention was the key. Pregnancy support—both around smoking and for BAME communities, who are, as the Minister mentioned, particularly vulnerable—is absolutely critical to that. The MAMA Academy wellbeing wallets have been used in the Countess of Chester Hospital trust, and they recently saved two lives. Because the women had on the front of their medical notes the areas of concern that they should look at, they went and sought help, and there are two babies alive today who might not otherwise have been. Prevention is key.
The third theme that came out of today’s debate was post-bereavement care and support. The Government have made huge strides, working together with the third sector. The best abilities of the third sector have been harnessed together with the drive and ambition of the Department of Health to deliver the national bereavement care pathway, and that is a really good example of co-operative working. I think it will lead to a huge change in the quality of care and help to end the postcode lottery that parents face.
I know that the previous Secretary of State for Health was absolutely committed to the idea that health professionals should not close ranks to try to protect other health professionals when things go wrong. The idea is to promote transparency and openness. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham said, it is about the “why?”—the desire to find out why something happened and make sure that it does not happen to anyone else. I think we should take forward such positive learning experiences to help to reduce the number of neonatal deaths, stillbirths and perinatal losses. There is work to be done, but there is much to celebrate. Many other events are taking place during Baby Loss Awareness Week, and I urge Members to get involved in them.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)
Thank you. It has been an excellent, honest and constructive debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered baby loss awareness week 2018.
Business Rates: Small Retail Businesses
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am privileged to follow the emotional and sensitive debate secured by my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach). I sometimes wish the public could see more of such debates, where sensitive subjects are discussed so constructively on a completely apolitical, non-partisan basis. I congratulate my hon. Friend.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am grateful to you and Mr Speaker for scheduling this important Adjournment debate on reforming the business rates system for small retail businesses. I am particularly grateful to the Paymaster General and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, my right hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) for being here to answer this debate at such a late hour, when I am sure he would much rather be at home with his family.
I am quite sure that right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House will agree with me when I say that protecting our country’s small businesses is of paramount importance. There are more than 5.7 million small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK, and we must recognise their importance to the local economies of all our constituencies in providing much-needed jobs for our constituents.
I have been working closely with the British Independent Retailers Association and with many businesses in my constituency to promote their business rates reform proposals. It is an eminently sensible idea for the so-called small business rate relief, which has a £12,000 threshold and has to be claimed, to be replaced by an allowance which would be automatic. That would benefit the huge majority of the small businesses that currently qualify for the small business rate relief. Retailers pay nearly a quarter of the collective rates bill, amounting to a staggering £7 billion a year. They pay far more than those in any other industry. The present system does not value business rates on the basis of business profitability. That unfortunately results in a system that fails to place the burden of taxation on the businesses that are most able to pay.
The national decline of the British high street is a worrying trend. More than 8,000 shops have closed over the last 18 months, and one in eight high-street shop units in England and Wales now stands empty. Large shopping centres away from town centres qualify for much lower rates than smaller retailers on our high streets, owing to their peripheral locations. That, of course, does not take into account the significantly higher turnover of retailers such as the “big four” supermarkets.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
My golly! I will give way to both hon. Members, but I will give way to the hon. Lady first.
Rachael Maskell
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who is making an excellent speech. In York, there are 47 empty units in the centre of our city, partly because of high valuation rates. Offshore landlords are more concerned with their investments than the revenue from the rentals, so they keep pushing up the rents. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the whole system needs to change if order is to be restored?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Yes. The whole thrust of my speech is that we shall ultimately need to reform the rates system, but it will take time. The Government have to be very careful to guard the huge amount of revenue that they gain from the rates in any change that they make. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Financial Secretary will have something to say about my proposals in that respect.
I have a problem in the Cotswolds. The rents are very high, which influences the rateable value. It takes time to deal with that when there are a number of empty units, such as the ones in York that the hon. Lady mentioned. When the rents are lowered the rateable values follow, but the district valuers are, of course, reluctant to lower the rateable values, because they do not want to lose revenue. That problem is increasing, as I shall explain shortly. Offline businesses, IT businesses and so on, do not need premises as large as those required by some of the businesses in the hon. Lady’s constituency. For example, furniture shops, bed shops and cycle shops need large premises, which inevitably means large rateable values, but they do not necessarily have the turnover to match those rateable values. The ability to pay is not necessarily reflected in the rates that must be paid. However, I sympathise with the hon. Lady.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this issue, which is a problem in my constituency as well as others. He referred to a national decline, and the evidence of that is very clear: planning portals in local areas show a downturn in the number of businesses applying for extensions and renovations. Does he agree that that is because businesses cannot expand because of costs, and does he agree that a review of business rates might just allow some companies to take the plunge, upgrade their businesses, sow into them and, hopefully, reap the benefits, rather than continually treading water—as they often do—just to keep afloat?
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I entirely agree, and I will shortly demonstrate the way in which the current rates system is a disincentive for small businesses to expand. Surely what we should be doing, in the entire economy, is encouraging small businesses that will one day become medium-sized businesses, and will hopefully one day become large businesses, employing more people, selling more goods, and exporting more goods around the world. That is exactly what we want to see in a dynamic UK economy, particularly in the post-Brexit era. We need to look very carefully at the rates system, which is why I initiated this debate.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) Lady was talking about the relationship between the ability to pay and the rates payable. I do not want to knock the banks as I have great regard for them, but I was shocked to hear that HSBC has six banks in London alone that qualify for small business rate relief. I am sure that HSBC would not have those banks open unless they were making a good profit. That is an excellent demonstration of how the rates payable are not related to the profits a business makes.
I am not for one second questioning the importance of competition in the marketplace, but to reverse the decline of our high streets we must ensure that competition is fair in every respect, and if the rates system is making it unfair, we should look at reforming it. There is a stark example in my constituency in the beautiful town of Stow-on-the-Wold. The large edge-of-town Tesco store is excellent; I go there myself to shop. It is only a five-minute walk from the town centre and pays business rates of £220 per square metre. However, a small independent delicatessen, with much higher costs because it occupies a listed building and which, no doubt, as the hon. Member for York Central says, will have to pay considerably more rent per square metre than the Tesco store would pay if it were not the owner of the store, has to pay £500 per square metre as opposed to £220 for the out-of-town supermarket. I cannot believe that that system is fair, and that, of course, is what is leading to a decline of some shops in our high street. It is therefore imperative that we support our small businesses through these measures.
However, sadly, the Federation of Small Businesses small business index for quarter 3 of 2018 showed that small business confidence has fallen into the negative for only the third time since 2013. Small retailers continue to report the lowest confidence level of any sector. That has to be a worrying trend for all of us.
Another concerning consequence of the current business rates system is the penalties that businesses face when expanding under current rules, which is the point made by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) made. The majority of small businesses growing from one premises to a second will lose the existing small business rate relief, which has a negative effect on business growth. This quirk in the rules means that a business can receive full relief if it has a single property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less, but a business with two properties each with a value of £3,000 would not receive any relief. That is clearly unfair and discourages businesses from expanding to more than one site.
I have another constituency example. The beautiful village of Guiting Power contains two pubs: The Hollow Bottom and The Farmers Arms. You might like to come and sample them, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see whether what I am saying is true. The Farmers Arms recently invested a significant amount of capital into the business and is now a very nice gastropub. However, The Hollow Bottom remained a traditional Cotswolds pub, much loved by many of my constituents. Unfortunately, even though The Farmers Arms and The Hollow Bottom started as the same size and as roughly similar businesses, because they are both in the same village only The Hollow Bottom now receives business rates relief because it is not possible for two pubs in the same village to receive the relief whatever the circumstances, and The Hollow Bottom is regarded as the smaller of the two pubs and is therefore the pub designated for relief. It would be helpful to understand why this inequality exists and how business rates could be reformed to promote, rather than penalise, investment.
It is troubling that the current rates system in certain respects discourages, and even stifles, investment by penalising ratepayers who invest in their business, as I have just demonstrated with The Hollow Bottom pub. For example, if a business owner were to add an air conditioning unit or CCTV cameras to their business, their rates bill would increase. To tackle this, time-limited exemptions for new store developments should be provided. I am keen to understand from the Minister what steps the Government are taking in linking business rates more closely to a company’s turnover, not just its physical size. As I indicated to the hon. Member for York Central, I find the example of a large IT firm pertinent. Such a business requires, by turnover, much less space compared with a cycle shop, a furniture shop or a bed shop, which would inevitably have a lower turnover but require more space.
In the last revaluation announced by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor, the Government did offer some help to smaller businesses by doubling the threshold from £6,000 to £12,000, and I want to make it absolutely clear to my right hon. Friend the Minister that I am not carping about the reliefs that are currently available. Many of the small businesses in my constituency, and in those of other hon. Members, benefit from small business rate relief. However, this does not help the majority of my retailers, who are above that level. The average rateable value in this country is £34,000.
To provide further detail, the new allowance proposals that I support—as opposed to the relief that businesses have to claim—would be based on the same principles as the personal allowance currently applied to income tax. This is a pragmatic, pro-business solution that would simplify the tax system and significantly cut the burdensome tax levels that small retailers are facing. A simple allowance, ahead of a full review of the system, would see a reduction in rates for the majority of those small businesses that qualify for the relief and that are struggling with their tax. All those below this allowance—for example, £12,000—would be out of the system entirely, because they would not have to claim the allowance. This would cut down on the resources required to process these claims. Perhaps my right hon. Friend the Minister has a figure in mind for the Government’s current compliance cost for processing small business rate relief claims. That compliance cost affects not only the Government; in percentage terms, it is even more burdensome for the small businesses that have to claim the relief, because they often need to employ specialist professional practitioners to enable them to claim the tax satisfactorily and not have their claim disallowed.
An additional benefit of introducing such an allowance, as opposed to a threshold, would be the simplification of the relief system. In other words, there would no longer be any need for small business rates relief as there would be a standard application for all small qualifying businesses across the country. Furthermore, the small business relief system currently costs the Government £2.6 billion. Introducing such an allowance and erasing the £2.6 billion in rates relief—even though we would be redeploying it as an allowance—would result in businesses reducing their compliance costs. Perhaps the Minister can tell me what the compliance cost is for the Government. If not, perhaps he could ask his officials to look it up. We could then redeploy the money involved in that compliance cost—and in the bureaucracy involved in administering the system—and perhaps consider raising the £12,000 threshold and introducing the allowance that I would prefer, so that even more small businesses could benefit.
I, and I am sure all hon. Members, want to see this country’s small businesses thriving in post-Brexit Britain, and we should be encouraging small enterprises, not penalising them for wanting to expand and grow further. We should cherish the fact that 500,000 new businesses have been created under this Conservative Government in the past five years and under their predecessor coalition Government. That shows the strength of the British economy. That is why we have such full employment rates, and we need to keep it that way. We need to keep employing as many of our constituents as possible, particularly the youngsters, and to encourage them to consider forming their own businesses. As I have said, from small businesses come medium-sized and large businesses. This country has always been full of entrepreneurs. I have great optimism for the future, post-Brexit, but we need my right hon. Friend the Minister and his team in the Treasury to consider the fairness of the current rating system. I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to say these few words tonight.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
Madam Deputy Speaker, may I say what a pleasure it is to see you in the Chair after the recess? It is also a pleasure to realise that I have an hour and 16 minutes in which to address my response to my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), but I may cut it down just a little bit to please the House.
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to the House tonight. It is entirely characteristic of him that such a debate is in his name, because throughout his parliamentary career he has been a strong advocate of business both across the country and, importantly, in his constituency. He was right to highlight in his opening remarks the sheer size and importance of our small business community—there are 5.7 million small businesses, a figure that he cited—and the recent growth that we have had under the coalition Government and this Government. He has worked closely with the British Independent Retailers Association on various thoughts and proposals, some of which he put forward this evening and to which I shall respond in a moment.
My hon. Friend is right that business rates are an important tax. When we consulted on business rates back in 2015 and considered the various alternatives, several different suggestions were made, such as turnover taxes, taxes on gross value added and so on. Inevitably, with every kind of measure or metric that one focused on, they had their own particular drawbacks and complexities and so on. The conclusion that was reached at the time was that business rates were a stable tax that is difficult to avoid because property is static by definition. Of course, as my hon. Friend also rightly pointed out, business rates raise around £25 billion a year, which is a significant contribution to our public services and funds, in turn, our doctors, nurses, policemen and policewomen and so on.
The Government recognise that business rates represent a high pressure on small businesses, particularly for high street retailers. Rates are a fixed cost that cannot be avoided, irrespective of whether a business is profitable or otherwise, which is why we have undertaken a series of important measures. In the 2016 Budget, we made 100% small business rate relief permanent, at that time increasing the threshold for the relief and taking 655,000 of the smallest businesses out of business rates altogether. We also increased the threshold for the standard multiplier, taking 250,000 properties, including most high street shops, out of the higher rate of business rates.
However, that is not all. Following the most recent property revaluation in 2017, we introduced a £3.6 billion transitional relief scheme to cap and phase in bill increases. Additionally, at spring Budget 2017, we announced an extra £435 million to support those businesses facing the steepest increases in bills, including £110 million to support 16,000 small businesses losing small business rate relief or rural rate relief to limit increases in their bills to the greater of £600 a year or the real-terms transitional relief cap for small businesses in each year. We also provided local authorities with £300 million of funding for discretionary relief to support individual cases in their local area.
In parallel to all that, we have taken significant steps to ensure the fairness of the business rates system as a whole. That is why, at spring Budget 2017, the Chancellor announced that we would reform the revaluation process to make it fairer. I am pleased to say that we have delivered on that by increasing the frequency of business rates revaluations from every five years to every three years, following the next revaluation. That is an important point in the context of what my hon. Friend said about the difference in the rates being paid by the out-of-town store and by retailers on the high street. If we can have more frequent revaluations, as rateable values on the high street perhaps fall, we can more quickly pass on the benefit of that within the system.
Rachael Maskell
Does the Minister recognise that inequality exists between property size and turnover and that online businesses do not have the same huge valuations as retailers on the high street? Therefore, there is a complete dissociation between the success of a business and its ability to pay under a rateable system, whether that system is based on turnover or profitability, as opposed to a system that is dependent on an external landlord and the rents that they are charging for their property.
Mel Stride
The hon. Lady will probably be aware of the Chancellor’s speech at our recent party conference, in which he spoke quite strongly about the importance of a level playing field for online businesses that derive value in the United Kingdom and end up paying very little tax and about the international tax approach that we may look at taking unilaterally as a consequence. The most important thing overall is that the Government recognise that when it comes to high streets and the smaller retailers to which the hon. Lady refers, we should take measures to reduce the burden of rates, particularly among smaller businesses, in the way that I have described this evening. That makes bills fairer for everyone, as they more closely reflect the current rental values and relative changes in rents. To ensure that ratepayers benefit from this change at the earliest point, the spring statement 2018 included an announcement that the next revaluation would be brought forward by one year to 2021.
Before I address some of the specific points raised by my hon. Friend, it is worth highlighting that, at autumn budget 2017, we brought forward the planned switch in the indexation of business rates from RPI to CPI by two years. This switch is worth £2.3 billion over five years, and the move to CPI is worth £4.1 billion in total by 2023. So once more, the Government are making a significant investment to recognise the pressures that rates introduce.
My hon. Friend raised the specific issue—
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Before my right hon. Friend goes on to the specific BIRA proposals, may I put to him something about the out-of-town retailers, particularly supermarkets? As I explained to the House, the rateable system is based on rents payable, which one would assume in a market would sort itself out. The problem with out-of-town supermarkets is that they have a monopoly on these sites and they manage artificially to keep the rents low, so their rates are unfair compared with the in-town shops, as I have already demonstrated with my Stow-on-the-Wold example. Something needs to be looked at. I do not know whether the issue could be looked at in a revaluation system or whether legislation is needed, but it is an issue particularly when the out-of-town supermarkets are competing with the small in-town businesses. For example, the owner of a card shop recently told me that the out-of-town supermarket started selling cards and immediately put him out of business.
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I know that the Valuation Office Agency is thorough in the way in which it conducts revaluations. It is an independent agency. However, I note the point that he has made, and if he would like to write to me or meet me to discuss it in the context of potential undervaluations, I am open to doing so.
The points that my hon. Friend made included the idea of an allowance instead of the threshold. I assume that he wanted to apply that allowance to all retail businesses, and of course that would come with some cost. It would mean providing further additional relief to some companies or businesses that do not currently receive it.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I hope that I chose my wording very carefully. I said that the allowance would be applied only to businesses that qualified for small business relief. It would be nonsense automatically to give the big businesses an allowance. That would cost the Treasury, and I want to make it clear that my proposals are revenue neutral.
Mel Stride
I thank my hon. Friend for clarifying that point, and I am sorry that I misunderstood. He asked what the costs of compliance were under the current system and suggested that, if we changed it, we might be able to absolve ourselves from those costs and pass the benefits on to these businesses. That is certainly something that I am happy to look at and discuss with him. The overarching point is that we had a fundamental review of business rates in 2015, and many of the issues that my hon. Friend has raised were carefully looked at.
My hon. Friend said that he recognised that change would take some time, and we are likely to be considering these matters over some reasonable period. He raised the issue of the confidence of small business retailers at the moment, and this is where I would broaden the debate’s scope a little by saying that it is not just bearing down on business rates that is the mission of this Government. We also provide the employment allowance and we are bringing down small business tax rates, with corporation tax having fallen from 28% in 2010 to 19% now and set to reduce further to 17% in time. A lot of small businesses, including retailers, will be benefiting from other measures such as fuel duty freezes. We have just announced that fuel duty will be frozen for yet another year—the ninth year in succession.
In conclusion, let me again thank my hon. Friend for this very important debate. He is focusing on one of the great challenges of our time for our high streets, which lie at the heart of our local communities. It behoves us all to do all we can to make sure they are live, whole and thriving.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
I want to impress on the Minister that this problem is not going to go away. The decline of our high streets is getting worse. It is accelerating, so the Government cannot just sit back. With great respect, just providing allowances in the rating system to try to make this work means that the tax base is being eroded, because the allowances have to be provided. The Government need to look at this seriously to see how they can make the system work a little better, particularly in favour of small businesses.
Mel Stride
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; high streets face a variety of challenges, of which business rates is but one. One of the greatest challenges they face is the change in how we are now shopping, with just over 18% of all retail now going online; that presents a huge challenge and that number is likely to increase in time. That tells us that high streets will need to transition, reinvent themselves, change and come up with new ways to serve their local communities and drive traffic into our high streets. We recognise the importance of making sure that all those things are looked at through the planning system and the reviews we are carrying out at the moment and through the important work we have been carrying out to date. I see this debate as being very important in that regard. We will continue to keep this under review in terms of making sure we keep those cost pressures through the business rates system as low as they can be for our important high street retailers.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Corrections
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Treasury
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Sir Vince Cable (Twickenham) (LD)
British families are currently spending considerably more than their disposable income and, as a consequence, debt levels in relation to income are rising back to crisis levels. At the same time, France and Germany have big savings surpluses. Which is the most sustainable of the two options?
John Glen
What is sustainable is that real household disposable income is up by 4.6% since 2010. I acknowledge that there are those who are experiencing challenges, and that is why I have set out the measures the Government are taking and are determined to take to assist those in a vulnerable position.
[Official Report, 11 September 2018, Vol. 646, c. 586.]
Letter of correction from the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, the hon. Member for Salisbury (John Glen):
An error has been identified in the response I gave to the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable).
The correct response should have been:
John Glen
What is sustainable is that real household disposable income is up by 3.4% since 2010. I acknowledge that there are those who are experiencing challenges, and that is why I have set out the measures the Government are taking and are determined to take to assist those in a vulnerable position.
Work and Pensions
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Guy Opperman
For the avoidance of doubt among everyone reading the debate, the PPF compensation scheme ensures that individuals receive at least 90% of their pension benefits.
[Official Report, 10 July 2018, Vol. 644, c. 330WH.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).
An error has been identified in my response to the debate.
The correct wording should have been:
Guy Opperman
For the avoidance of doubt among everyone reading the debate, the PPF compensation scheme ensures that individuals initially receive at least 90% of their pension benefits, subject to an overall cap.
Women and Equalities
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Sarah Newton
The hon. Lady will be aware that £1.1 billion of concessions have been made, and it is really important to note that as a result of our reforms, more than 3 million more women will receive £550 a year more by 2030.
[Official Report, 13 September 2018, Vol. 646, c. 866.]
Letter of correction from the Minister for Disabled People, Health and Work, the hon. Member for Truro and Falmouth (Sarah Newton):
An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson).
The correct response should have been:
Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)
Sarah Newton
The hon. Lady will be aware that £1.1 billion of concessions have been made, and it is really important to note that as a result of our reforms, more than 3 million women will receive on average £550 a year more by 2030.
Petitions
Football club ownership
Home Education: draft guidance and the consultation
Funding cuts to North Lincolnshire Citizens Advice Bureau
Park Rangers in Wrexham County Borough Council
Westminster Hall
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Oil and Gas Industry
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Westminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
John Mc Nally (Falkirk) (SNP)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the future of the oil and gas industry.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.
I start my contribution today by taking a moment to remember the 167 workers who lost their lives 30 years ago in the Piper Alpha disaster, off the coast of Aberdeen, on 6 July 1988. Piper Alpha is the world’s deadliest ever oil rig accident. This anniversary is and should be a reminder to us all that we must remain vigilant and do all we can to help the oil and gas sector in seeking to eliminate major hazards and risks.
I will focus my remarks on the success of the North sea oil and gas industry, and on how the sector is working alongside its partners downstream and in its supply chain to secure a lower-carbon future. I will also outline two choices that the UK Government must make. The first is to protect existing labour and supply chains through the single market and customs union membership, or risk sacrificing world-leading firms and skilled, productive jobs.
Martyn Day (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (SNP)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for securing this important debate and for taking an intervention so early. Grangemouth, which is in my constituency, is home to Scotland’s only crude oil refinery, as well as the terminus of the North sea Forties pipeline system. It hosts a number of petrochemical plants and leading players in the chemicals industry, and it accounts for more than a third of the chemical sector’s gross value added in Scotland. In total, 60% of the UK’s chemical exports and 75% of imports are to and from the EU. How important is it to have frictionless, tariff-free trade, and to ensure that multinational companies can move their staff between different countries to support local jobs and growth across districts?
John Mc Nally
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point; it is absolutely essential that we remain in the customs union. Of course, I will come on to the importance of frictionless trade and the supply of labour later in my speech; indeed, I hope that everybody will speak about that.
The second choice that the UK Government must make is to recognise the £350 billion contribution to the Treasury that the sector has made over the past 50 years and provide the political certainty and financial support it needs now, or risk undermining North sea oil and gas by once again using it as a cash cow, this time to pay for Brexit Britain.
With sales up by 18.2% between 2016-17 and 2017-18 and the North sea holding up to 20 billion barrels of oil, the sector is in very strong health. Recent industry announcements, such as BP’s successful discoveries in the Capercaillie and Achmelvich wells, Nexen’s phase II development of the Buzzard field, and the Norwegian oil and gas giant Equinor’s deal to buy Rosebank’s share of the oil reserves to the west of Shetland, demonstrate the enormous investment potential that the United Kingdom continental shelf still holds.
The sector supports 283,000 jobs across the UK. In the town of Grangemouth, which is in my neighbouring constituency of Linlithgow and East Falkirk, INEOS alone employs 1,300 people, including seven new apprentices, who started training in 2017. Those figures somewhat contradict the predictions we hear about the sector’s constant decline. Healthy investment is continuing.
Martyn Day
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again and for mentioning the great work that goes on in my constituency. INEOS, which now owns the Forties pipeline system, estimates that the economic life of the asset will be extended to 2040, which is 10 years longer than BP’s original projection. INEOS has already invested £500 million in the Grangemouth site in the last five years, and it is now investing in infrastructure projects at Grangemouth that will have a further positive impact on the longevity and reliability of the Forties pipeline. The firm has already committed to the UK’s North sea sector with investment in the northern gasfields west of Shetland, which contain the Lyon prospect. However, I wonder how much potential investment by the wider sector has been delayed until the uncertainty of Brexit has passed. Will he join me in calling on the UK Government to do more to stimulate exploration and investment?
John Mc Nally
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention; again, he makes a very good point indeed. He is right to raise the concerns about investment, and I join him in calling for the UK Government to support and encourage investment in this vital asset that we have on our shores. I give him my full support in that regard.
Healthy investment is continuing, even though in some cases the level may not be as good as it should be, and new discoveries are being made and developed. In 2017-18, revenues from Scottish North sea oil and gas increased to £1.3 billion. Surely it is now time that the UK Government acted to support the sector’s future.
The sector recognises the need to decarbonise our economy and its responsibilities in supporting that transition. It is an international leader in supporting the low-carbon transition. Average emissions per unit of production on the United Kingdom continental shelf—its carbon intensity—have fallen year on year since 2013, with total emissions in decline from their peak in 2000. Firms are increasingly diversifying and using their existing skills to grasp opportunities emerging from the green economy, thereby providing sustainable employment. Often, infrastructure owners and operators in the oil and gas sector are already part of wider portfolios across a range of conventional and renewable energy sources. Contractors and supply chain companies with expertise in offshore operations and maintenance are also providing solutions across a range of energy industries, to diversify and replenish their order books.
As we all know, innovation is absolutely key to that process. Building the sector of tomorrow presents exciting and challenging opportunities for our people. The Offshore Petroleum Industry Training Organisation’s workforce dynamics report has predicted that by 2025 there could be as many as 10,000 roles that require completely new skills. It is reassuring to note that the industry continues to attract young people to build its future. There were 105 new entrants to the oil and gas technical apprentice programme in September alone. Once again, I have seen that forward-looking agenda at first hand in my neighbouring constituency of Linlithgow and East Falkirk.
As I mentioned, the town of Grangemouth is home to Scotland’s only crude oil refinery. It is a truly remarkable site. For example, the refinery was the first to introduce ultra low sulphur diesel and ultra low sulphur petrol to the UK market. Grangemouth already makes up approximately 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing base. Many of my constituents are employed at the site or in its supply chain. Grangemouth’s success shows the impact that downstream operations and manufacturing can have on the economy, locally and globally.
Martyn Day
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his indulgence in giving way to me so many times.
Grangemouth has one of the country’s largest concentrations of energy-intensive industries in down- stream petrochemicals operations, and its development of a strategically located carbon capture and storage infrastructure in its industrial cluster may be essential to ensuring that those industries can compete in the low-carbon world that is coming in the future. I know that the Grangemouth site, INEOS and others are working with Imperial College as part of a wider collaboration to evaluate the feasibility of CCS for the UK. Does my hon. Friend agree that this developing technology would have been given a huge boost if the UK Government had not cancelled its CCS competition back in 2015, and that that decision demonstrated how they are failing the long-term interests of the industry?
John Mc Nally
Once again, my hon. Friend makes a good point about the need for long-term certainty of investment and policy. The CCS decision was an example of a shambolic state of affairs, given that many hundreds of millions of pounds had been invested for the future. That future was basically taken away from under investors’ feet, so I absolutely agree with him.
The export-orientated supply chain generates about £30 billion annually across the UK, and its exported services deliver £12 billion, and the future blueprint for the sector, “Vision 2035”, grasps the importance of that. Alongside adding a generation of productive life to the basin, the blueprint has the objective of doubling the long-term opportunities for the supply chain. If we work together to maximise production from the UK continental shelf and to help the supply chain grow its share of the global energy market, we can boost that prize by half again and generate £920 billion of revenue for the UK economy through to 2035. That is a real game changer for us all. By doubling its share of the global market and embracing the opportunities available through diversification into other markets, the sector can achieve an additional £150 billion of revenue above the baseline estimate of £350 billion.
However, Grangemouth, its workforce and the wider sector are being put at risk by Brexit. The latest Oil & Gas UK report makes it clear that Brexit will have a significant impact on the oil and gas sector, warning about the impact on frictionless access to goods and services, and that the UK Government’s Brexit plans could cause a “skills shortage” for vital North sea services such as emergency response and rescue vehicles.
The Scottish National party is clear that the best way to achieve the goals I have mentioned is to protect Scotland’s place in the single market and the customs union. The Scottish Government have delivered an exceptional range of support for the oil and gas sector and its workforce, including an investment of £2.4 billion in enterprise and skills through our enterprise agencies and skills bodies, £90 million over the next decade to support the Oil & Gas Technology Centre as part of the Aberdeen city region deal, and a £12 million transition training fund to support individuals and help the sector to retain talent.
The other major risk that is looming also comes from Westminster, and that is the Budget on 29 October. With the Treasury having taken about £350 billion from the oil and gas sector in the past 50 years, this is an opportunity for the UK Government to repay their debts and show their support for the sector. The Chancellor must ensure in his autumn Budget that the UKCS is globally attractive for investment, with a competitive and predictable fiscal regime. The UK Government must not repeat the mistakes of previous Administrations and undermine the sector by using it as the Treasury’s cash cow. Instead, they must protect tax incentives designed to support the sector, introduce measures to improve exploration and attract fresh investment, complete the work on transferable tax history, urgently ensure that the tax treatment of late-life assets is addressed so that those assets are in the right hands, and support the urgently required alternative solution to end-use relief.
The SNP also demands that the UK Government use the autumn Budget to implement an oil and gas sector deal, instead of dragging their feet, as is currently the case in Ayrshire, Tayside and Inverness. A sector deal should support practical steps to protect, progress and promote operators, the supply chain and the offshore and onshore workforce. A sector deal for the industry must include visionary national hubs for underwater innovation, transformational technology and decommissioning, based in Aberdeen but serving the whole industry.
In conclusion, North sea oil and gas is booming and the sector is working hard alongside its downstream and supply chain partners to secure a bright, lower-carbon future. The sector has a clear route map in “Vision 2035” and is ably supported by the Scottish Government, who are using their limited powers to the full. The UK Government must now make two choices: to protect the supply chains and the labour supply through single market and customs union membership, and to provide the long-term political certainty and financial support that the sector needs.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The debate can last until 1 pm. I am obliged to call the Front-Bench spokespeople no later than 12.27 pm, and there will be 10 minutes for the SNP Front Bencher, 10 minutes for Her Majesty’s Opposition and 10 minutes for the Minister. I would be obliged, Minister, if you allowed the mover of the motion three minutes to sum up at the end. Eight Members are seeking to catch my eye, so I will impose a time limit of five minutes and the clock will act as a helpful guide to those making speeches.
Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on securing the debate, and he has done so at an opportune time, just under three weeks before the Chancellor delivers his Budget. He has also provided us with the opportunity to highlight the vital importance of the industry to the UK: it is essential for the UK’s security of energy supply, it has contributed billions of pounds to the Exchequer over the past 50 years, and it provides hundreds of thousands of highly skilled and well-paid jobs.
The industry has been through a great deal in recent years. As a result of the collapse in the price of Brent crude, tens of thousands of jobs have been lost and the industry has had to restructure. In many respects, it has emerged fitter and leaner, but significant challenges remain, and it is vital that the tripartite approach of industry, regulator—the Oil & Gas Authority—and Government working together continues. The oil price has bounced back, but that is almost certainly for short-term global geopolitical reasons, and it would be complacent to assume that the higher price will be sustained into the longer term. Production is up significantly, and by the end of the year could be 20% higher than over the past five years. Significant cost reductions have been made, though it is important that they are sustained if the industry is to remain globally competitive. However, warning lights remain on amber, with exploratory drilling activity at a record low and the revenues of supply chain businesses continuing to fall. It is vital that exploration and production companies work collaboratively with their supply chains, as their respective futures are very much intertwined.
I will briefly highlight three factors that need to be centre stage for the industry to continue to play its lead role. The first is the need for a stable fiscal regime. One of the key reasons why the UK continental shelf is an attractive investment proposition is that it is fiscally competitive. That reputation has been hard won and must not be thrown away because of an increase in tax rates. That would be short-termism, and it would cause lasting damage. In the Budget, the Chancellor should re-emphasise the Government’s commitment to the “Driving investment” plan. The proposals for transferable tax history, to be included in the forthcoming Finance Bill, are extremely welcome and will drive investment in late-life assets and maximise economic recovery. It is also vital that the Treasury urgently clarifies its plans for ship end-use relief and introduces proposals that are in line with the “Driving investment” plan.
Secondly, it is vital never to forget those who work in the industry. As the hon. Member for Falkirk said, 167 people lost their lives in the Piper Alpha disaster 30 years ago. The drive for business efficiency, which is very important for the industry’s future, must never compromise safety. It is also important to provide attractive career paths to encourage people into the industry. OPITO estimates that there is a need to recruit 40,000 people into the industry over the next 20 years, 10,000 of them into roles that currently do not exist. The “Workforce Dynamics” review has been taking place this year, and skills demand maps are being worked up. The Government should encourage and support that initiative, which will enable the industry to employ safe and well-trained people who will maximise its contribution to the UK economy.
Lastly, the industry must provide a bridge to a low-carbon future, which means setting out a clear and deliverable deployment pathway for carbon capture, utilisation and storage. The Government should consider carefully the conclusions of the cost challenge taskforce and work with the industry to develop regional clusters that will bring significant economic benefits to both the north-east and Scotland.
Off the East Anglian coast, in my part of the world, an enormous development of offshore wind farms is taking place. The two industries—oil and gas and offshore wind—need to work together. There are encouraging signs that that is beginning to take place, as evidenced by the Oil & Gas Authority’s promotion of “Gas to Wire”, which involves the gas produced from gasfields being generated into electricity offshore, and then transmitted to shore via spare capacity in the subsea cables used for wind farms. The industry has a great future—it is important we do not squander it.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. As time is pressing, I will try to keep my contribution relatively brief. I want to make two points. First, I want to remind Members of the historical context as it applies to oil and gas and the north of Scotland.
When I was at Tain Royal Academy in the north of Scotland, many of the brightest and best in my class left to go south—perhaps a rather sad facet of life in the highlands. Despite the best efforts, people left and sought employment further south; indeed, my own father said to me, “Go south, young man. That’s where your future lies.” However, in the 1970s, as we all know, the music changed completely and utterly, and the oil came.
Where I come from, the arrival of the Nigg oil fabrication yard was a crucial turning point, seeing the building, first of all, of the two giant BP rigs. Suddenly there was really high-quality employment available locally. Welders were trained, and other skills were trained up. The point is that the depopulation trend was halted and actually reversed, so we cannot underestimate the social importance of Nigg’s contribution to the highland economy. I would not have married and brought up children locally if I had not been employed in the Nigg yard. The fact that my children were born locally and went to the local school is entirely down to the fact that that was where I was employed and had the income to live and to grow my family. In succeeding generations, we saw increasing evidence of a reversal of the population decline, as top-quality jobs supported local infrastructure and the local economy, so we should not forget how important that contribution was for the highland economy and how, structurally, it was very much to the good.
My second point brings us to today. Very good contributions have already been made, and the potential of offshore wind was mentioned. In my constituency, we have the Beatrice wind farm nearing completion—an example of technology that is cutting edge for the future, but that is in many ways based on technology that went before, in terms of fabrication and working in very inclement conditions in the North sea. As I see that technology approach completion, I take considerable pride in the fact that, not long from now, it will be making a major national contribution to our grid and will literally keep the lights on.
West of Shetland, as I am sure Members will also mention, we still have great potential for the future. Discoveries continue to be made. It is deep water with incredibly inclement conditions, but the technology has moved forward. There is much more subsea work, but there is the new oil.
My point is this: I wish I knew what was going to happen with Brexit. I do not know, and I am sure many Members will tease me and say, “Would a Lib Dem know anyway?” However, I am damn sure that the contribution that the oil industry has made in the past, makes today and can make in the future to my constituency, to the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and to the remotest parts of Scotland is absolutely huge. So my final point is a plea to the Minister, Her Majesty’s Government and future Governments. I want them to remember the goose that laid the golden egg: the oil and gas industry. Please preserve it, enhance it and protect it for the generations to come.
David Duguid (Banff and Buchan) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on securing this important debate. As many colleagues know, before I was elected to this place, I spent 25 years working in the oil and gas industry, as many of my constituents still do. The industry is still a major employer in my constituency, as is the supply chain that supports it.
Almost half the UK’s oil and gas makes landfall by pipeline in my constituency. The Forties pipeline system, which has been mentioned, comes ashore just outside the coastal village of Cruden Bay and carries about 30% of the UK’s oil. St Fergus, a few miles up the coast, is the location of the St Fergus gas terminal, through which 25% of the UK’s gas is imported through three different pipelines. St Fergus is also the site of a new project currently being developed for carbon capture and storage—a technology that has already been mentioned.
A little further south is the slightly lesser known city of Aberdeen, which many know as the oil capital of Europe, and rightly so. Many people from my constituency and from all around the north-east of Scotland commute to Aberdeen, heading not only to the worksites and offices in and around Aberdeen, in the constituencies of my hon. Friends the Members for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) and for Gordon (Colin Clark), who I am sure we will hear from, but offshore, to and from the world’s busiest commercial heliport at Dyce.
At the start of the downturn in 2014, more than 460,000 jobs in the UK depended on the oil and gas sector. Throughout 2015 and 2016, the number fell steadily, reaching 280,000 in 2017, with about 40% in Scotland and 60% in the rest of the UK. As we approach the end of 2018, the sector is seeing a cautious increase in employment for the first time since the start of the downturn. I say “cautious” because we have been in this situation before, going through the cycle of a high oil price followed by a crash in revenue and knee-jerk cost-cutting measures, followed by an equally impulsive return to wasteful spending when oil prices recover. I am encouraged by conversations I have had with oil companies in Aberdeen and with Oil & Gas UK and the Oil & Gas Authority, based in Aberdeen, because it feels as though lessons have been learned from the past. However, time will tell. Will the Minister take that into account in his response?
Even before the downturn in 2014, it was long realised that many of the wasteful and inefficient practices were not sustainable. The report by Sir Ian Wood in 2014 made a range of recommendations, including a joint Government and industry strategy for maximising economic recovery, or MER, and the creation of a new arm’s length body charged with the effective stewardship and regulation of UK continental shelf hydrocarbon recovery and with maximising collaboration across the industry. The new arm’s length body, the Oil & Gas Authority, working with industry, developed the MER UK strategy. Under the strategy, a range of taskforces have already delivered huge value: an additional 2.8 billion barrels of oil equivalent to be produced by 2050, in comparison with pre-Wood report baseline forecasts; average unit lifting costs reduced from £19 per barrel to £12 per barrel in 2017; and production efficiency increased from 65% in 2014 to 73% two years later. There is still a lot of upside there to be had.
Through Oil & Gas UK’s “Vision 2035”, it is estimated that the industry could generate £920 billion of revenue to the UK economy. By 2035, two thirds of the UK’s primary energy is predicted to still be produced from oil and gas, with 60% coming from our own UK resources. Renewable sources of energy will and must continue to grow over that time, but they will not be able to meet the full demand.
MER is a strategy that can co-exist with a low-carbon agenda. As efficiencies improve, fossil fuels are burned more cleanly, CO2 can be captured, stored and used to help enhance oil recovery, and the full transition away from oil and gas may actually be extended while still meeting climate change targets.
In summary, the future of the oil and gas industry is positive, but there needs to be flexibility and openness to change. We have seen support for this from the Government, which is very welcome. Transferable tax history was a great good news story from last year’s Budget and shows how important it is that Members of Parliament, especially those representing constituencies in the north-east of Scotland, speak up for the oil and gas industry. According to Oil & Gas UK, TTH is one of a range of policies that can help the industry realise up to £30 billion of future investment opportunities.
I will conclude by asking the Minister to provide, if possible, an update on the decision on the sector deal that has been mentioned. That would be most welcome.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) for securing this debate. As often happens during debates in Westminster Hall, although the issue might not directly concern Northern Ireland—our seas do not contain any oil or gas fields, at least at the moment—a number of my constituents work on oil rigs and travel over and return each week or fortnight, depending on their shifts. The debate is important for those constituents, but also because, although the gas and oil is found in the seas off Scotland, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland benefits from it. The debate therefore affects every person, every family and every household in the entire United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, which is why it is so important.
We all know the importance of the gas and oil industry and how big it is, and the stats are clear: according to 2018 figures, 37,000 people are employed directly by the industry, and 127,000 are in the relevant supply chains. Most of those roles are in the offshore industry, which is also important to Northern Ireland. Some of the repairs done to the oil rigs and the apparatus that brings the oil and gas ashore take place at Harland and Wolff in Belfast, and it is important to note our input into the process. Statistics from 2017 indicated that 40,000 people were employed directly in the industry, and it is important to record the importance of the oil and gas sector to Northern Ireland. Oil and gas provided 72% of the UK’s total primary energy, and net imports of natural gas were around 45% of UK supply. The majority of oil—almost 80% of final consumption—is refined for use in transport. Those figures indicate how important the industry is to everyone in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
The debate is also pertinent as we look towards the Budget. In 2016, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced commendable reductions in taxation for North sea oil and gas fields to maximise the economic recovery of the North sea. The Budget also included commitments effectively to abolish petroleum revenue tax by permanently reducing the rate from 35% to 0%, to simplify the regime for investors and level the playing field between investment opportunities in older fields and infrastructure and new developments, and to reduce the supplementary charge from 20% to 10% to send a strong signal that the UK is open for business—we need the message to go out from this debate that we are open for business and working positively towards that. In recognition of the exceptionally challenging conditions that currently face the sector, those changes were introduced in the Finance Act 2016.
As has been said, although oil prices fluctuate between massive highs and lows, they are currently high. We want all regions to benefit from the oil and gas sector, so perhaps when he responds to the debate the Minister will indicate how we in Northern Ireland can continue to benefit from the oil and gas that we in the whole United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland own, as individuals and as regions.
In the 2017 autumn Budget, the Government focused on decommissioning costs and announced that they would bring forward legislation to introduce a mechanism for transferable tax history. Tax relief on decommissioning costs is linked to tax payment history, so the new mechanism would allow tax history to be transferred along with the asset. The Government also announced that they would consult on reducing tax for decommission- ing costs incurred by the previous licence holder.
It is clear, however, that we must do more to address prices for consumers. The Minister may not be directly responsible, but my biggest plea to him is that, because energy prices fluctuate, people consuming oil and gas think they are saving money when they come to pay for it, but actually they are not. Back home in Northern Ireland, a number of constituents who changed between oil and gas six months ago have found themselves in a difficult place in the past few weeks. That is yet another squeeze on so many families who cannot afford it, and we must address that issue at the highest level.
I look to the Minister for advice on how we can and will secure the future of this industry, and on our ability to provide our own sustainable energy source for heating in this great nation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Bill Grant (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I thank the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) for securing this important debate.
I welcome the stated aim of the Oil & Gas UK trade association, which is
“to strengthen the long-term health of the offshore oil and gas industry in the United Kingdom by working closely with companies across the sector, governments and all other stakeholders”.
In late 2014, Her Majesty’s Treasury developed a plan to reform the oil and gas fiscal regime. Over the last 50 years the oil and gas industry has contributed more than £350 billion to the UK Exchequer in production tax revenue alone—not an insignificant sum.
In 2017 the UK Government’s industrial strategy stated:
“We can also reduce costs for the UK as a whole by making intelligent use of our oil and gas assets and expertise. While the move towards clean growth is clear, oil and gas remains one of the most productive sectors of the UK economy, supporting 200,000 jobs directly and in the supply chain, and generating £24 billion in annual exports. The emerging shale gas industry offers the prospect of creating jobs, enhancing the competitiveness of downstream sectors and building up supply chains.”
It seems likely that shale gas will be extracted only south of the border, as the Scottish Government appear—I emphasise the word “appear”—to have placed a moratorium on that source of energy. I understand, however, that imported shale gas from the US is helpful when securing the future of the important Grangemouth plant.
I read with interest a recent post note in the journal of the all-party group for energy studies, which considered decarbonising or reducing the carbon content of UK gas supplies as an option for reducing emissions from heating, potentially substituting natural gas with hydrogen or biomethane. I am pleased that such welcome research is continuing in that field. Indeed, some businesses in my constituency are already utilising biomethane, although not necessarily to the exclusion of natural gas.
The opening in February 2017 of Aberdeen’s Oil & Gas Technology Centre clearly illustrates both the UK and Scottish Governments’ commitment to the future of the oil and gas sector. The £180 million investment aims to unlock the full potential of the UK North sea for future generations, which is vital given that future energy demand, not just in the UK but globally, is predicted to increase as global living standards and population levels rise.
Another important aspect for the future is securing for the UK work associated with the decommissioning of platforms and subsea facilities where a cost-benefit analysis proves that to be prudent. The Oil & Gas Authority has stated that such work may create a globally competitive market for the UK. The aim of the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is to maximise the economic recovery in relation to the UK’s continental shelf, and it endeavours to secure maximum value for economically recoverable hydrocarbons.
Although the oil market is volatile—post 2014 the price of a barrel of Brent crude plummeted—it is clear that oil and gas have a positive future. That future may not be a mirror image of the past, but rather a new vision, as scientific research and innovation define and constantly refine it for our children and grandchildren. Oil and gas may not have the same exclusivity they once experienced, but in my view they will remain part of an inclusive package of energy options for some time to come.
Let me turn to a fuel from the past—coal. These days, open-cast or imported coal is used mostly as an integral part of the UK manufacturing sector, especially in the chemical process to make steel and cement. Many Members present, however, will recall when coal was king. Collieries in Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, such as Littlemill, Killoch, Barony, Knockshinnoch and Beoch, to name but a few, fuelled the industrial revolution and kept the home fires burning. Sadly, there are no longer any deep mines in the United Kingdom, and coal is outlawed as a polluting fuel. With the recent alarming UN report on global warming, we must be aware that the same fate may befall oil and gas in the rush to embrace clean renewables and to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. In closing, therefore, I ask the Minister to comment briefly on that recent UN report on rising global temperatures.
Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on introducing what is clearly a timely debate, given that the Budget is forthcoming. As he rightly said, that Tory Budget cannot undermine the future of the oil and gas industry by once again using the North sea as a cash cow—terminology that was effectively recognised even by the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant), who acknowledged the £350 billion that the UK Treasury has accrued over the lifetime of the oil industry. That money has simply been frittered away.
Alan Brown
No, because I have limited time.
Where is the legacy from the UK Government? Where is the onshore infrastructure investment to support Aberdeen? It has been left to the Scottish National party Government to pick up the pieces, including the Aberdeen bypass and rail improvements. Where is the oil fund we have called for? Norway’s oil fund, started in 1990, has now topped $1 trillion in assets, and last year returned a profit of $131 billion. That alone gives lie to the myth that Scotland relies on the broad shoulders of the UK to deal with any price volatility. Careful stewardship would have taken care of that.
Let us look at the measures the UK Government have taken recently. In the spring 2016 Budget, they reduced the supplementary charge back to 10%. That was very welcome, but the predicted cost to the Treasury of £l billion was only a third of the inheritance tax giveaway to millionaires—such were their priorities. In the November 2017 Budget, the transferable tax history was a welcome measure, but given that it was predicted to bring an additional £70 million in revenue to the Treasury, that was not a difficult decision. The UK Government need to close out the process going forward. Over the same period, we have had the £1 billion carbon capture and storage betrayal. That project would have facilitated diversification from the wider oil and gas industry.
As others have recognised, the offshore oil industry has clearly been a great success story and has turned Aberdeen into a global city. Despite the predictions of when oil will run out, there is still a bright future. Just last month, Total announced a major gas discovery off Shetland, with an estimated 1 trillion cubic feet of gas that can be extracted. Rosebank, off the west of Shetland, is estimated to contain around 300 million barrels of oil. Equinor has called it
“one of the biggest undeveloped finds on the UK Continental Shelf.”
Overall, the North sea holds significant potential, with the equivalent of up to 20 billion barrels of oil remaining. That could sustain production for the next 20 years. I repeat that the UK Government cannot do another cash grab on the industry. Production statistics show that the sales value of oil and gas has gone up, and we know that production of oil and gas remains 23% higher than the level recorded in 2014-15. Even so, the UK Government must introduce measures to improve the exploration and attract fresh investment. They need to support the industry in its ambitions to increase the total economic value of the North sea.
With the publication of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, we have to recognise the wider climate change issues and that the world is not on track to meet the temperature goals of the Paris agreement. The UK Government will have to take action in that regard, but that does not mean that we need to pull out of the North sea any time soon. Even if we did, we would then be reliant on imports.
Scotland’s energy strategy recognises that a strong domestic oil and gas industry can play a positive role in supporting the low carbon transition. What would help that transition, while we are still extracting oil and gas, is carbon capture and storage, greater investment in renewables, and allowing onshore wind developments in Scotland. The UK Government must also back away from the nuclear folly, and invest that money in offshore renewables, grid upgrades and directly in energy efficiency measures in homes.
We must recognise that the North sea industry is highly regulated, with some of the most advanced and comparatively least polluting production methods in the world. The industry is focused on reducing its carbon footprint and average emissions have fallen year on year since 2013. An oil and gas sector deal could help that process. Where is it? We really need one, and we need to hear about that from the Minister. The future of the oil and gas industry is bright, but it needs better leadership from the UK Government.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on securing this important and timely debate.
Hailing from the north-east of Scotland, having grown up surrounded by the oil and gas industry, having worked for an incredibly brief time in the sector, and now representing a constituency to which its continued success is vital, I know all too well the importance of the industry to not just the north-east of Scotland but the wider UK economy. Looking around the Chamber, contributing to debates about the industry’s future seems to be the preserve of Members who represent such constituencies as mine, which is unfortunate. Yes, the industry is based proudly in the north-east of Scotland, but it is a UK-wide industry that has contributed more than £330 billion to the British economy, supports more than 330,000 jobs across the UK and has a supply chain worth nearly £30 billion stretching into every nation, region and community across our islands—as demonstrated by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)— both servicing domestic activities and exporting almost £12 billion of goods and services to other basins across the world.
The success of the North sea oil and gas industry is, of course, a story born in the north-east of Scotland—all good things are—but it is a whole-UK success. It depressed me beyond belief to hear, not that long ago, a colleague exclaim, when he heard about the recent discovery west of Shetland on the Glendronach field of around 1 trillion cubic feet of extractable gas—the largest discovery of conventional gas in the UK since 2008, with a productive life of 10 to 15 years—that that was remarkable. He did not know that any exploration was going on anymore. He thought it was all decommissioning and closing up shop for the North sea oil and gas industry.
Sadly, that is a common misconception. Of course decommissioning is taking place in the North sea at the moment, and the rate of decom activity will increase in the years ahead, but that is only one small part of the story. Anyone who takes a stroll around the Oil & Gas Technology Centre in Aberdeen or visits the Oil & Gas Innovation Centre in Bridge of Don, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), will be blown away by the great advances in technology being made. There is exciting, explorative work being done on the smaller fields in the North sea, led by enterprising smaller companies growing in the sector, such as ROVOP in my constituency. There is also the sustained commitment to the area of big companies, such as BP, which recently announced its two North sea developments, which are expected to produce 30,000 barrels gross of oil equivalent per day at peak production.
This is not an industry in decline; this is an industry with a positive future, but it remains in recovery. We are still emerging from the deepest and most sustained downturn in the sector’s history. Many jobs were lost, some companies disappeared completely and others had to radically change how they did business. However, through shared learning and experiences, through economising and doing much more with much less, and with the support of the Scottish Government and the UK Government, which has supported the sector to the tune of £2.3 billion, the industry is confident about the future.
However, as many Members have said, what the industry needs more than anything else is fiscal stability. The North sea is one of the most attractive mature basins in the world in which to invest today, because of the long-term and fiscally sensible approach taken by Her Majesty’s Treasury since 2014. It was evident a couple of months ago, however, when there was just a hint of a change in policy or an increase in tax, that that would upset the recovery and put off investment, which could have damaging consequences.
Let the call go out from the Chamber today, from every Member and from every party represented, that we wholeheartedly support our oil and gas industry, that we recognise the huge value that it brings to the entire United Kingdom and that now is not the time to consider changing the fiscal situation, increasing tax or putting off further investment. Let us work with the sector and both of Scotland’s Governments to ensure a positive, long-term and productive future for this world-leading industry.
Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on securing the debate, only a few months after my own debate on the industry.
Oil and gas is a massive part of the UK economy and an enormous part of my constituency of Gordon, with 233 service companies operating from Gordon alone. I routinely claim that I have the largest oil and gas footprint, but other Members may try to argue the point. Thanks to this Government, and the transferable tax history that will come into effect in November, billions of pounds of investment will be released into the industry. I am disappointed that voices from the Opposition Benches have said that transferable tax history is the wrong thing to do.
The industry continues to develop efficiencies in decommissioning, supported by Her Majesty’s Treasury. It contributes £1 billion a year to HM Treasury—somewhere short of the estimated £11 billion that the Scottish National party, during the independence referendum, claimed would be contributed. Fifty-nine UK constituencies have a major oil and gas footprint and, as my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) said, the same Members seem to turn up for such debates. Many other areas should realise what a significant industry oil and gas is. It is truly national and international, and it is not a dying industry. It has shrunk from 4.5 million barrels a day to 1.5 million. It is still of great importance, and it has tremendous longevity.
Why is that industry so important to the north-east? The north-east has 8% of the population of Scotland, but 18% of its economy. Even during the downturn, unemployment only got to 1.2%, because the people of the north-east believe in getting out and working, even if it is in another part of the world. The north-east is the engine room of the Scottish economy. The cost of living is higher and house prices were driven up by the boom years, but we have the highest council tax bills. It is the most expensive place to live in Scotland, because the Scottish Government chose to put council tax bills up. Employers feel penalised by higher business rates, to the extent that buildings are being knocked down in the north-east of Scotland. I recently drove past the Baker Hughes GE building in the constituency neighbouring mine, and I am told it will have to be knocked down because the business rates are so punitive.
The UK Government have delivered, with transferable tax history, a massive incentive for oil and gas estimated at £30 billion. The fiscal policy that is making the UK continental shelf the place to produce oil and gas is that of the UK Government, and there is low corporation tax for the whole sector, UK-wide, because of the UK Government. In the north-east there is the highest concentration of technicians and engineers in the UK. We have an incredibly strong and robust economy. The industry puts safety first, absolutely, and I pay tribute to Step Change in Safety, which has brought together producers, the service sector and offshore workers in a collaborative effort.
As for any downturn in activity, the Oil and Gas Authority estimates that £400 billion is still to come from the North sea through collaborative action. Chrysaor, a private equity-backed organisation, invested £3.8 billion to buy Shell assets. Wood Group bought Amec, to be a FTSE 100 company. General Electric and Baker Hughes have merged their oil and gas, which is going to float on the New York stock exchange. There is not a lack of activity because of Brexit—far from it. The size and type of mergers and acquisitions deals last year signalled confidence in the UK continental shelf. The sector needs fiscal stability and I agree with other Members that that is a message we are sending, loud and clear, to HM Treasury. Businesses are not seeking to exit the UK continental shelf, which is still seen as a strategically important basin. SNP claims of a Brexit downturn simply do not ring true. They should look at the money and where it is being invested. In the past couple of days, I and colleagues visited Wood Group, an £11 billion organisation only 6% of whose business is in the North sea, because it is a dynamic company investing further afield. As to oil and gas being something of the past, let us remember that it is our throwaway culture, not the hydrocarbons, polluting the sea.
Oil and gas have been pivotal in transforming the carbon intensity of the power sector, as has been mentioned. Let us get to the nub of things. Higher taxes in Scotland will encourage companies to register and operate from outwith Scotland, damaging its tax base. Punitive business rates in the north-east are costing jobs. Having visited 90 north-east firms related to oil and gas, I have not heard anyone speak about Brexit. Every single one has mentioned business rates. Both Scotland’s Governments need to get their shoulder to the wheel and drive the industry forward.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) for obtaining the debate. The timing is good, as other Members have mentioned, given that we are in the run-up to the Budget.
I want to talk first about Brexit, which several colleagues from throughout the House have mentioned. The economic report put out by Oil & Gas UK makes the point that 7% of the offshore workforce are from EU countries and refers to the fact that before Bulgaria joined the EU it took four days for goods to come from there to Aberdeen to be used in the oil and gas industry, but that they were routinely held up for an additional week because of customs controls. If we do not have a customs union deal that allows for those goods to come through the border without being held up for a week, it will cause problems for our supply chain companies and for the wider industry. A fifth of people living in Aberdeen were not born in the UK. We have done immensely well at attracting immigration, which has been good for our industry. It is a huge concern that that might be less easy after Brexit, particularly if the immigration plans mentioned at the Conservative party conference go through and we end up in a situation where very few immigrants are allowed to come to the UK. That would cause a real problem for my city and for the oil and gas industry as a whole.
The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) set out particularly clearly the requirement for a stable taxation regime for the oil and gas industry. One of the points most often raised with me is that if there is a story in the Financial Times about the possibility of the Treasury increasing, or massively changing, tax in relation to oil and gas, that story alone causes a problem for the industry—it makes a dent. We need a clear commitment from the Chancellor in the Budget to stability and predictability in the taxation regime.
Colin Clark
We were both at the same meeting when the Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury came up. I think it was the myth being peddled that did the damage—he clarified it from the Treasury. Does the hon. Lady agree?
Kirsty Blackman
I do not disagree at all. I understood that that was a private meeting, so I did not want to talk about what that Minister said during it, but it would be good if the Chancellor could make a clear statement in the Budget. I agree that it was the myth, rather than any statement by the Treasury, that caused the problem. I am sorry; I thought I had been clear on that point.
There are other asks for the Budget. I have not heard anyone on the Opposition Benches being negative about transferable tax history. I apologise to the hon. Member for Gordon (Colin Clark), but I was calling for that in March 2016, which was more than a year before he was elected. We have consistently called for changes in the taxation regime for late-life assets. I have made the case for that on many occasions, and I am pleased that it may be coming through—we hope it will. It is a good example of the industry working together. Things have happened a bit more slowly than I would have liked, but the industry worked well with Government, and the conversation went well about trying to make the tax regime work from the point of view of both the Government and the industry.
The importance of transferable tax history is because of what happens when assets at the end of their life are transferred to another company. Something that belongs to a big company with many different onshore installations will probably not be its No. 1 priority, but if it belongs to a new entrant and is all that it is concentrating on, it will be a priority. That is why transferable tax history is so important for maximising economic recovery.
The point about end-use relief is a good one. My hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk and the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) both mentioned it. Whatever happens, it is vital that the Government should speak to the industry about the best way to make the change work, if there is to be a change, and that as much notice as possible should be given of changes to end-use relief. We nearly had a big disaster in July, with the pulling of end-use relief. It is clear that that cannot happen. The industry and the Government need to continue to speak to each other to make it work better.
The final Budget matter I want to speak about is the sector deal. If the Chancellor could announce progress on that it would be phenomenal—excellent. I would be really pleased. If not, it would be good to know when a commitment is likely. My impression from speaking to those in the industry who worked on the deal is that they feel they worked together incredibly well on it. They feel that the proposal that has been put forward to the Government reflects the industry’s needs and requirements, so it would be positive if the Government brought it forward sooner rather than later.
I want to talk about “Vision 2035” and focus on the subject of the debate—the future of the oil and gas industry. I will not talk much about the industry downstream—I apologise to anyone involved in it—because I represent Aberdeen and because my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk, who represents Grangemouth, and the hon. Member for Waveney have spoken about that important aspect of the industry. “Vision 2035” is the Oil & Gas Authority’s vision for securing the supply chain and the oil and gas industry in the north-east of Scotland to ensure that, in 2035, it still makes money for the Treasury, supports our local economy and provides jobs in the local area. That will happen only if the Government provide support now, including the stable fiscal regime that we spoke about earlier and support for the supply chain. They must talk positively about the industry, consider its asks, and make changes if need be.
The North sea field is a late-life asset—it is incredibly mature. It was one of the first fields in the world to reach that level of maturity, so our engineers who go out there are doing incredibly innovative things. They are working on enhanced oil recovery, bringing in tech in the supply chain, and using longer tiebacks so that small pools can be exploited. It is groundbreaking, world-leading stuff; this is the first time some of it has been done. If we get the technology right, we will be able to export it around the world even when there is no oil and gas in the North sea, but we must ensure that those companies stay anchored in the north-east of Scotland and the wider area.
The hon. Member for Gordon mentioned how many oil and gas companies he has in his constituency. I am sure he has more than I do, but I have the services that support those companies—two local authorities, the hospital and all the other vital things that the industry requires. As the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine said, it is hon. Members from the north-east of Scotland and those who represent constituencies with oil and gas industries who come to speak in debates like this. I have taken part in many such debates in my time as a parliamentarian, and it is interesting that we and Conservative Members are largely asking for the same things: transferable tax history, the sector deal and support for the Oil & Gas Technology Centre, which is doing absolutely phenomenal work. Previously, we were asking for the Aberdeen city deal. We are calling for the same things because we all go out there and speak to people who work in the oil and gas industry, and the companies involved in it. We ask them what they need, and they say pretty consistently that the most important things are stability and predictability.
Support for exploration is also hugely important just now. Anything that can be done to encourage exploration and help big projects be signed off will be incredibly important. More big projects have been signed off in the past year than in the previous couple of years, which is hugely welcome news, but we need them to keep coming through the pipeline so that we can secure the future economic benefit.
Hon. Members in the Chamber largely speak with one voice and have the same asks for the oil and gas industry, but I sometimes feel like we do not make as much headway with Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy and the Treasury as we could. I hope that the Minister hears everything we are asking for. We are all calling for the same things, because we are reflecting the voice of the industry. I would very much appreciate it if he would ask the Chancellor to make a clear commitment to a stable fiscal regime in the Budget.
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab)
We have had an excellent debate, with informed contributions all round, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on securing it. As hon. Members have said, this is a very important debate because the Budget is so close and because there are wider issues relating to the role that the oil and gas industry will play in a substantially decarbonised future. There are a number of assumptions about how oil and gas will be used in the future. As hon. Members have said, the debate is taking place literally the day after the IPCC published its report on global warming and its effects, and discussion about that report is just beginning. That must be the context for our discussions about the future of oil and gas.
As hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown), have said, although the oil and gas industry in the North sea has recovered substantially from the miserable predictions and prognostications of 2014-15—it is estimated that production will be up 5% over the coming year, exploration is picking up, and various other indicators show that the industry is in a better shape than it has been in for quite a while—we must nevertheless be extremely wary of assuming that happy days are here again, and that the industry can be the cash cow for the Budget that it has been perceived to be in years gone by. The industry’s long-term future is of a different order from anything that has happened in the past, so we should strike those thoughts from our minds. Although it will make a good return for the Exchequer in years to come, it should not be seen as a cash cow in the future.
I say that because we face a period in which the lessons of the downturn, up to the recent upturn, must be put in place to ensure the long-term future, prosperity and health of the industry as a whole. There has been a recent efficiency trend: development drilling has fallen substantially, but the costs of drilling have reduced substantially, and the average unit operating costs have halved from about $30 a barrel in 2014 to $15 a barrel now. Those tremendous efficiency gains will stand the sector in good stead for the challenges that lie ahead. We can use them to exploit small pools, which will be one of the staples of exploitation and development in the future.
It is unlikely that any new Brent fields will be discovered. In that context, we need to understand, as hon. Members said, that the North sea is not just a mature field but a very mature field: 43 billion barrels have been extracted, and there are perhaps about 10 billion to 20 billion barrels left to extract. Its future therefore needs to be in the best possible hands.
I commend the creation and operation of the Oil & Gas Authority and—hon. Members have mentioned it—“Vision 2035”, which the OGA is putting forward for the future of the industry. In that vision, it does not just talk about continuing business as usual, but looks at the much longer-term future, even beyond the point at which the very last reserves have been produced. One of the OGA’s missions is to create a sustainable energy service and technology centre long after the final economic reserves have been produced. We need to look not just at business as usual, but at a range of other things that the industry can start to develop, and is developing, as the North sea field becomes even more mature. Of course, one of the things it can do is develop decommissioning skills on a worldwide basis, so that we can ensure not just that the decommissioning in the North sea is done in the best possible way, but that those skills can be exported across the world.
We also need to contemplate a future of carbon capture and storage in the North sea and the use of decommissioning as a possible way forward to a position in which the North sea is not only producing oil and gas, but storing the carbon that comes from those processes and creating an industry so to do.
We need to be mindful of the fact that, as I mentioned at the beginning of my contribution, the IPCC report on global warming and the future of the world has just come out. It is pertinent to our discussions today, because it underpins what kind of long-term future there is for oil and gas. I consider that the long-term future involves looking at how oil and gas can be used in a range of ways that are not entirely familiar to us today but will be essential for the sinews of British industry. Oil and gas will have a substantial role to play, for a very long time, in those areas of activity. I am thinking of chemical products for which oil is irreplaceable and of alternative vectors such as hydrogen, if the CCS implications of the formation of hydrogen can be managed. All those things imply that there is a substantial future for oil and gas from the North sea.
We know—I am not talking off the top of my head here, I am referring to BEIS’s updated energy and emissions projections—that the demand for oil and gas in the UK economy is likely to go down substantially. Indeed, we can see that from looking at the 1990 figures, when there was a primary demand for oil of 87 megatonnes of oil equivalent and for natural gas of 97 megatonnes of oil equivalent. In the year when “Vision 2035” comes to fruition, the demand is projected to be something like 70 megatonnes of oil equivalent for oil and only 28 megatonnes of oil equivalent for gas.
There will be a substantial decline in demand, but that means, it seems to me, that the North sea can provide a secure UK supply for the declining demand over that period. It is surely best, for energy security purposes and many other reasons, to ensure that our supplies for the future come from the UK. That is the future that I want to see for the North sea oil and gas industry, by means of efficiency and by means of the innovative techniques mentioned this morning—the ways of managing a mature field so that it works in the best way possible in the national interest and in the interests of having very different future for oil and gas from what we have seen hitherto. We must ensure that it works for the UK and that it has a secure future. I hope that the Government will be able to join in that vision and provide support where necessary to underpin that innovation and those new methods of doing things, so that the oil and gas industry can be in the best shape possible to face that very different future.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. Indeed, I congratulate you on the discipline that you have brought to these proceedings, although curtailing the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead), to 10 minutes is a clear infringement of his human rights and of the normal way he behaves. In fact, some would say that it is a crime against humanity that his erudition, which is never known to be brief, was curtailed. I look forward to hearing him, as I did today, on many other occasions.
I genuinely congratulate the hon. Member for Falkirk (John Mc Nally) on not just securing the debate, but the thoughtful way in which he made his contribution. That sums up today’s debate. There is general consensus, and I hope hon. Members do not think I am saying this out of complacency, but the fact is that, as the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said, most things to do with oil and gas are done on the basis of consensus. I wish there was the same attitude towards other debates in which I have the pleasure of speaking.
When I became Energy Minister, one of my first visits, in August of last year, was to Aberdeen—several hon. Members were with me that day—where I met industry leaders and visited Robert Gordon University to see the dynamic advanced response training simulator. That is relevant today because of the comments from the hon. Member for Falkirk about Piper Alpha. I saw a lot of the virtual reality equipment there, and I felt that I was actually on a rig. Everything was about health and safety and preventing the kind of incidents that happened at Piper Alpha. It is a tribute to the area that academia, industry and Government work together. I was most impressed by what I saw.
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s constituency interest because of the Grangemouth industrial site, which I visited as an A-level economics student in 1975—many hon. Members here were not born then, and some of their parents were probably only just born. However, I do remember the industrial site; I remember the scale of it. I think of it when I hear figures such as 8% of Scotland’s manufacturing base and 4% of GDP; I will never forget that visit, so I do understand the issue, and so do the Government.
In a very thoughtful speech, the shadow Minister expressed how important oil and gas are for the UK economy. I am not paid to promote the shadow Minister; I just cannot help but compliment him at various times. He talked about the mutual vision for the future. In fact, I kept looking up at him and seeing him reading from a document with blue print, which I thought was a Conservative party document, as the colour appeared to be the same, but which I then realised was, of course, “Vision 2035”, the authors of which at least had a good idea of which colour it should be in. But it does show no complacency; the serious point is that it does show a vision for the future, from what many people, out of ignorance, believe is a clapped-out former industry—they think that because they remember the boom days. One has only to visit it to realise that that is far from the case.
The upstream industry alone supports more than 250,000 jobs. Then there is the supply chain, supported by the sector, in key clusters all over the country. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who has been at every single Westminster Hall debate I have ever spoken in, contributed extremely well. He mentioned the importance for Northern Ireland of the supply chain. I am very pleased to say that it is a United Kingdom supply chain and is not restricted to the specific area that many hon. Members have spoken about today.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen North mentioned Brexit, which came up in a few of the contributions. I do not take it lightly, I assure you, Mr Hollobone—none of us does. Many of the good things that have happened in the past couple of years have happened in a time when things have been written off because of Brexit, but I want to say to the hon. Lady and others that the Government fully understand the need for frictionless trade, on which the oil and gas industry has long depended, whether in the movement of goods, services or people. I assure her and other interested Members that my Department has made that matter very clear to other parts of Government—it is our job to do that, and we have. We are fully aware that the sector has paid more than £330 billion in revenue to the Treasury, which is phenomenal. I know of no other single sector that has been as beneficial to the Government over the past half-century.
The end-use facility mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous) and by the hon. Member for Falkirk relates to customs procedures. I assure Members that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs continues to discuss with the sector the possibility of future mitigations being available, and which ones. The issue is complex, and I cannot claim to understand the full detail.
Since 2014, it is fair to say that the industry has had a torrid time as a result of the collapse in the price of oil. From that point of view, I am pleased that the price has gone up, but what I realised on my visit to Aberdeen was that, despite the decimation of the industry and its contraction—a statement of fact about the number of employees and so on, as was explained to me—good things resulted as well, such as some new technologies.
I remain optimistic for the future. I feel that the tripartite approach between the OGA, industry and Government, which hon. Members mentioned, is particularly important. I am pleased that, since its establishment, an extra 3.7 billion barrels have been forecast, and production has risen by 16% since 2014 figures, with a reduction in the production costs. The issue was forced by what happened to the price, but those cost reductions will remain and be improved on.
Optimism is returning to the North sea. My hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Colin Clark) mentioned the amount of mergers and acquisition activity over the past couple of years—about $8 billion-worth last year—with some significant investment involving new players to the basin. Divestment by some of the supermajors does not mean that they are losing interest; it is part of the natural order of a mature basin, with newer, smaller companies coming in. Shell is investing in new frontier areas, and BP’s development is moving well. There is huge potential.
To determine the industry’s potential, we obviously need responsibly regulated exploration, and the Government support that. There are a lot of challenges, and we understand that. The Government all realise that exploring and drilling for the upper reaches of the remaining resources is more difficult than doing so for the original resources—that is a statement of fact—and the measures that we have put in place since 2014 will contribute significantly towards that.
The focus of the debate is on the future. My hon. Friend the Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Bill Grant) asked me to comment on the IPCC report, and our clean growth strategy is clear. We are focused on meeting our Paris agreement climate change targets, and we have asked the Committee on Climate Change for advice on our targets in the light of the new evidence.
Whatever happens, oil and gas will be part of the energy mix for decades to come. We know that we have to reduce demand to meet our climate targets, but this industry has a lot going for it. Gas can play an important role, and so can oil. My Department’s main interest will be to continue the security of the energy supply, which means that we have not seen the end of hydrocarbons.
I am running out of time, and I will do my best to talk briefly about the sector deals mentioned by several hon. Members. One of my responsibilities is the implementation of sector deals. We have had a lot of discussion with the industry, and I am confident that these will proceed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (David Duguid) pointed out, this is an ambitious sector deal to support the industry’s “Vision 2035”. We have not yet reached the final stage of the process, we will do so quite soon. It is a question of assessing the value for money of the amount of contribution expected in the deal from Government, which takes more time than people think.
This is a complex industry with a great future. My hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan said that it is an industry with a lot going on, and we know that the Government, the industry and the Members who have spoken today will be an important part of its future.
Dr Whitehead
On a point of order, Mr Hollobone. I may have misled the Chamber inadvertently by quoting a statistic erroneously. On the estimates for natural gas usage in 2035, the figure should be 59 megatonnes of oil equivalent and not 29, as I believe I said in my speech.
John Mc Nally
I thank the Minister for his kind and generous comments. All Members have been supportive of the debate. Many points were made about how vital this industry is to the economy in the transition to renewable and sustainable energy in the future. We are all agreed that we need a stable regime in place so that we are all aware of what will happen for the future of the industry. The points made about short-termism were excellent. We seem to have been practising short-termism for decade after decade, and that has to stop.
I particularly liked the emphasis on safety in the North sea and on how important it is to retain skilled, clever and well-trained workers. I was not actually around at the time of the Piper Alpha disaster—I was running businesses at the time the news started to come out. I was terrified, as everyone else was, and I read the papers and listened to the news to find out whose friend or relative had been killed and who had been injured. The long-term consequences of that disaster, such as post-traumatic stress, are still going on today. That should never be allowed to happen as long as we are in charge of safety, so the emphasis on safety is appreciated.
The need for a collaborative approach has been well versed. We are all singing from the same hymn sheet. We might want to get there in different ways, but I think we are all trying to get to exactly the same place. I am very appreciative of that.
Good and interesting observations were made during the debate, which showed a good understanding of local and global issues and of the importance of the sector, in particular to our constituents and the businesses in our constituencies, including all the support industries. The basic thing that most people like in their life is stability and an understanding of where the future is going. I hope the Chancellor and the Government have listened to the points made today. We need certainty of policy and of investment—everyone present agrees that that is what needs to happen. I am extremely happy with the debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the future of the oil and gas industry.
Antisocial Behaviour: Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered anti-social behaviour in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. It was with a mixture of relief and disbelief to the point of amusement that I heard that austerity is over. Perhaps the Prime Minister could let us know when to expect to feel or see any difference, because many of my constituents feel only anger and upset that their lives are blighted by antisocial behaviour. I blame austerity for the unacceptable rise in antisocial behaviour. As always, those who deserve it the very least are expected to pay the highest price. Surely, it is not too much to say that in our modern society, everyone has the right to feel safe and secure at home.
I represent everyone in my constituency whose life has been made a misery by antisocial behaviour. My constituents and I have clear demands and expectations for the Minister that I hope will be listened to carefully and addressed. I want the Government to reverse the 31% funding cuts they have made to Humberside police since 2010. Will the Government follow Labour’s lead by committing to a fully funded statutory youth service, change the school accountability system and increase funding for schools to stop an increasing number of children being off-rolled and excluded? Will they increase funding for social workers and early intervention programmes by increasing the children’s services budget and support community groups with grassroots solutions to antisocial behaviour?
Some people dismiss antisocial behaviour as a mere nuisance, but not me. Crime and antisocial behaviour affect people of all incomes and backgrounds, but unfortunately it seems that the poorest and the most vulnerable are always disproportionately affected. Although antisocial behaviour may be a different category of crime from those that capture the headlines in our national newspapers, it still has a huge impact on the lives of my constituents. One, whose property was vandalised, told me that she worries
“what the next level is, for the perpetrators. What will they do next, where and to whom? Whilst I realise, it’s just to property and not to humans, it’s what it represents, in our society.”
One young man was subjected to daily shouting and swearing from a neighbour and her friend. They damaged his car and personal belongings, constantly banged on his door at all hours of the days, and intimidated him by approaching him when he was outside and looking into his flat’s window when he was inside. That young man had severe mental health problems and was attempting independent living for the first time. This antisocial behaviour caused a huge setback for him. My constituent Chris from Hessle contacted me today to share the frustration and anger of the biker community at the high number of motorbike thefts. The police used to run an operation called Yellowfin, but everything has had to be reduced because of funding cuts.
The first reaction of most people to antisocial behaviour would be to call the police. Before the summer recess, I spent a morning with Humberside police. Whenever I spend time with our public servants, be they nurses, doctors, firefighters or others, I am always amazed by how dedicated they are to their vocation and to helping people. The police were no exception. I hope hon. Members join me in giving special thanks to Inspector Kirsty Tock, who is in my thoughts at this particularly difficult time for her. If it was up to them, all police officers would work every case until they were solved to the victims’ satisfaction, but unfortunately we live in a world of limited resources. Because of the decisions made by this Government, those resources are getting more limited.
Since 2010, Humberside police’s budget has been cut by 31%. In reality, that means 392 fewer officers and 54 fewer police community support officers. In order to service 999 calls, officers and resources are being diverted away from neighbourhood policing because there are simply not enough police officers to do it all. We understand that high-quality, well-resourced neighbourhood policing is vital to deal with antisocial behaviour. Officers who know the area and who know the children and families who need support are crucial to identify when intervention is needed and to gather evidence so that there are consequences for antisocial behaviour. That policing model is broken, because of the cuts. The police have to divert their neighbourhood policing team to deal with 999 emergencies. We need enough police to do both.
The visible police presence in our communities has shrunk and police stations have disappeared. A notable example in my constituency is the complete lack of a police station in Hessle. The Labour group of councillors in Hessle and I completely opposed that move, and we are working with Humberside police to try to ensure that some kind of police presence is brought back.
I do not hold any police officer or PCSO responsible for the rise in antisocial behaviour; I blame the Government and their deliberate choice to cut our public sector—a policy that they have pursued with relish since 2010. In fact, I wholly support our police services; I am as disgusted as they are with the pathetic pay increase that they have just been given. I support an increased police presence, but I do not believe that increasing police numbers will magically solve all the problems associated with antisocial behaviour. In west Hull and Hessle, when the police deal with an antisocial behaviour problem, that problem just moves somewhere else in the constituency. A holistic approach is needed to tackle the problem.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on bringing forward the debate. I am interested in the issue of antisocial behaviour and I want to suggest some possible solutions. In my constituency, there were high levels of antisocial misbehaviour over a period of time. We took an initiative from the churches, which came together in concern for their community to work alongside a faith-based group called Street Pastors. In conjunction with the council, the police and social services, they have endeavoured to bring antisocial misbehaviour levels down, and they have succeeded. I suggest the Street Pastors initiative to the hon. Lady as something that is outside the normal sphere of what is on offer, and I would be happy to send her the details. I think that initiatives that come from people within the community can achieve change.
Emma Hardy
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I will certainly look into that initiative.
One of the most striking things about the antisocial behaviour in my constituency, especially in Hessle, is the number of constituents who report young people as the cause. Although this issue is not exclusively about young people, antisocial behaviour tends to be carried out by younger people. Earlier this year, I co-sponsored a Bill brought forward by my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) to make youth services provision statutory. In his speech to bring in the Bill, my hon. Friend quoted a 2016 survey that found
“600 youth centres had closed around the country, 3,500 youth workers had lost their jobs, and 140,000 places for young people had been lost… In 2010 we spent £1.2 billion on youth work, youth services and related youth activity; last year we spent £358 million…a 68% cash-terms cut.”—[Official Report, 6 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 314.]
A parent of a child who has been involved in some antisocial behaviour contacted me to ask me for help. She asked,
“Where can my child go? What services are out there? What support can I have?”
Youth services provide a vital role in supporting young people across the country. They are described by Anna Barker, chair of the British Youth Council, as
“a supportive place for young people to become a force for good in society”.
When I look at incredible youth services like The Warren and Hessle youth club, I completely agree. Our youth services have been targeted for budget cuts, which have created the conditions in which crime can thrive, leaving young people vulnerable to violence and denied the opportunity to build a positive future. I am glad that Labour has promised to consult on making those services statutory. I plead with the Minister to look at doing the same.
The Minister will be pleased to know that I am not just asking for more money, but for a change in attitude through a change in policy. As a member of the Education Committee, I am deeply concerned about the increasing number of children being excluded and off-rolled from our schools. A recent study proved that dozens of schools exclude more than one in five children. Those children are not leaving school for a high-quality education somewhere else, but are often found wandering around public spaces in our cities. They have been written off by society at a young age. Is it really a shock that their anger is felt as antisocial behaviour?
The double whammy of this Government’s school accountability system and school funding cuts of £2.8 billion since 2015 have the unintended consequence of driving perverse behaviour by schools to try to remove children who are less likely to achieve and more expensive to educate. A report by the Education Policy Institute found that one in four children referred to children and adolescent mental health services in England is rejected, and that school staff are required to respond to children who self-harm, despite cuts to support services. How effectively does the Minister think schools will be able to support pupils with the staffing cuts they face? What does the Minister think will happen to our children who do not get the support they need in their formative years? We need a new accountability system that values all children, and schools need the funding to support every child.
Good social work can transform people’s lives, protect them from harm and help stop the increase in antisocial behaviour. Helping children and young people to fulfil their potential is a key ambition of all councils, but our children’s services are under increasing pressure. They face a funding gap of around £2 billion by 2020, yet demand for their services has never been higher. Councils seek to support children to live with their families where possible through family-based support and early intervention.
Early intervention is crucial, but how can councils provide it when Government funding for the early intervention grant has been cut by almost £500 million since 2013 and is projected to drop by a further £183 million by 2020? Our councils need more money for early intervention. We can never prove statistically that early intervention prevented someone from engaging in antisocial behaviour, but we can certainly feel what happens in our communities when those services are cut—problems with antisocial behaviour increase.
The Government should follow Labour’s lead and make it easier for tenants and residents associations to come together to deal with antisocial behaviour in their own streets. DARTS in my constituency—each letter represents a different street off Hessle Road—is the perfect example of a tenants and residents association. DARTS is led by Peter and Trevor, who are brilliant, properly no-nonsense people who came together to tackle antisocial behaviour in their area. They get amazing results. I would love there to be a DARTS group in every area of Hull, but Hull City Council has lost one pound in every three since 2010, which has meant cuts to services. It is harder for councils to offer the support that is needed to get such groups up and running—and I am yet to work out how to clone Peter and Trevor.
The Government’s short-sighted and narrow-minded obsession with austerity has created the perfect climate for antisocial behaviour to thrive. Undoing the damage that has been done to communities such as west Hull and Hessle will take time and investment—there is no quick fix. However, if the Minister truly believes austerity is over, she should properly fund and equip our police force and reverse the 31% cut to the Humberside police budget; make youth services statutory, fund them and train youth workers; fund our schools and CAMHS; change the accountability system to stop the unintended consequences of increased exclusions and off-rolling; increase funding for social workers and investment in early intervention; and properly fund councils to support local residents groups to solve problems in their own communities.
I hope the Minister does not insult me or my constituents by claiming that Humberside police have all the money they need, because that simply is not true. I also hope she does not claim that antisocial behaviour is not on the rise. I am sure she is as aware as I am of the number of dropped calls to the 101 service and the number of incidents that actually get reported. If she goes out and talks to people in the community, she will find that most of them never even bother ringing 101 to report antisocial behaviour, because they know they may be on hold for more than 40 minutes.
My constituents and I have had enough. Antisocial behaviour causes problems for nearly everyone in my constituency. We expect action and serious investment. I repeat that we need a holistic approach to dealing with this problem—its causes as well as its consequences. I am afraid we will hold the Government to account if they fail to do anything.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on securing this debate about a matter that I know is of huge importance to her and her constituents—particularly those who are suffering in the way she so eloquently described. She made a wide-ranging speech, and I will try to respond to as many of her points as I can. I hope she understands that I do not have the details of those that concern other Departments immediately to hand, but I will ask the relevant Minister to write to her about any points to which I do not manage to respond.
Anyone who represents a constituency knows just how terrible antisocial behaviour can be. The hon. Lady will never hear me diminish its impact. Individual incidents sometimes have the most extraordinary effect on communities. So-called low-level behaviour may not seem that significant, but if it develops into a pattern of behaviour it becomes incredibly wearing for those who have to live with it day in, day out. Antisocial behaviour can be anything from people running amok, swearing at people or frightening residents to drunken and drug-related harassment, intimidating behaviour, and noisy and abusive neighbours. All those things can have a profound and debilitating effect on the people we were elected to serve.
That is why the Government gave the police, local authorities and local agencies a range of flexible powers to keep the public safe through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. We fully agree that antisocial behaviour is not just a policing issue, important though policing is in this context. Solutions must often be part of a holistic approach that draws in local authorities and other agencies. We expect those agencies to respond and use those powers flexibly to protect their communities from all types of antisocial behaviour. However, where antisocial behaviour tips over into far more serious offending that is clearly criminal—the hon. Lady will know that serious violence and other forms of criminal behaviour fall within my portfolio—we expect the police and others to use the full force of the law to bring people to justice through the criminal justice system.
The 2014 Act provides six flexible powers, which are designed to enable the police and local authorities to respond quickly to antisocial behaviour in their communities and stop it reoccurring. Those powers include court orders to stop the behaviour of the most antisocial people, powers to close premises that are a magnet for trouble, and powers to stop antisocial behaviour in public places. They also include measures such as civil injunctions, which are interesting because they do not just prohibit people from engaging in certain behaviour but can place positive requirements on perpetrators to address the underlying causes of their antisocial behaviour.
Sadly, there are themes that run through the backgrounds of many of the young people who fall into my portfolio. Domestic abuse is a particularly strong theme, and I am concentrating on protecting direct victims of domestic abuse and on the ramifications for young people who are vulnerable to being ensnared by criminal gangs of witnessing domestic abuse in the home and being desensitised to violence outside the home. The Government and I are looking at many themes to address the background factors that feature in the lives of many young people who behave in an antisocial or indeed criminal way.
Other types of order, such as community protection notices and criminal behaviour orders, are directed at the most harmful behaviour. Local authorities also have the power to impose public spaces protection orders to protect public spaces from antisocial behaviour and nuisance, and the police can use their dispersal power to direct any individual who engages in antisocial behaviour away from a particular place.
Emma Hardy
Those powers have been used effectively in Hull, but the Minister will recall—I have spoken about this previously—that they just move the problem somewhere else in the city. We can use only so many of those orders, and they just seem to make the problem appear somewhere else. It is like a game of whack-a-mole—we do not seem to be able to whack them all down at the same time. I was heartened to hear her mention looking at the causes of domestic violence. I wonder whether she will say a little about what we are doing to prevent antisocial behaviour from happening in the first place—not just to deal with it when we see it through criminal convictions, but to look at its causes and how we can stop them.
Victoria Atkins
I was about to come to that, so I apologise for incorporating my answer into my speech. We want to give people on the ground the ability to use those powers as they feel is appropriate in their local community. The hon. Lady will understand that the challenges in her inner-city area are very different from those in my area of Lincolnshire, which is just down the road from her area but is very rural. Although we have antisocial behaviour, I suspect it takes a different form from that in a city centre, given the local geography and so on.
The Government want to give local people the powers to respond in the most effective way in their local area. Indeed, in December last year we published refreshed guidance on the use of those powers by councils, police officers and so on—we understood that some councils were using PSPOs in particular in a way that was perhaps not intended by Parliament, so we refreshed the guidance to help local councillors. A couple of months ago I spoke to local councillors at the Local Government Association to help them with that.
The hon. Lady asked me about a community response. She will know that as part of the serious violence strategy we are pulling together across all Government Departments, along with local government colleagues, the Mayor of London, police and crime commissioners and Mayors across the country, to try to have a more joined-up approach to serious violence. That will have a beneficial effect on lower-level offending behaviour as well, because if we can help young people with issues at home, mental health issues and so on, as she described, that will have an impact on their behaviour generally. That is why I am delighted that not only are we helping the Vulcan Learning Centre, a local charity in Hull, through the knife crime community fund, which will help local children who are perhaps falling into crime. There is also a bigger, national effort through the early intervention fund for young people announced in the serious violence strategy as well as the endowment fund that the Home Secretary announced last week—£200 million that will be invested in long-term projects to help young people across the county. A great deal of work is going on.
The hon. Lady rightly mentioned concerns about children who are not in full-time education but are perhaps in alternative provision. The Government have commissioned a review by Edward Timpson, the former Care Minister, who has a great understanding on a personal and professional level of the issues facing looked-after children or those in alternative provision. He is looking at alternative provision through the schooling system to see what is working, what is not and what we need to improve. Again, through my work in other areas, I know that that can have an enormous impact on children’s behaviour and their ability to lead productive lives.
If I may, I will let the hon. Lady know about the ability of victims of antisocial behaviour, or someone acting on their behalf, including a Member of Parliament, to request a formal antisocial behaviour case review—I do not know whether she is aware of this—which is called a “community trigger.” I like talking about it, because colleagues should be aware of it and they can use it if requested by their constituents. It enables victims of antisocial behaviour to ensure that their voice is heard when they believe they have not had a satisfactory response to repeated complaints of antisocial behaviour, and it forces agencies to act. The relevant bodies in a local area must agree on and publish their case review procedures. Therefore, if she believes that the relevant agencies in her constituency have not acted on reports of antisocial behaviour in Hull and the East Riding, that is a possible solution for her constituents. I note that her police and crime commissioner cited tackling antisocial behaviour as a priority in his policing plan, so perhaps she can ask him what he is doing to fulfil that pledge to the electorate.
The hon. Lady mentioned the police station in Hessle. Again, that is a decision taken by the PCC, so I hope she will forgive me if I do not comment on it. She also mentioned funding, and I think she said that we “relish” austerity. We really do not. I am always careful not to revisit history in too much detail because, apart from anything else, we should be forward-looking, but the situation in 2010 was that as a country we had run out of money and we had to start to live within our means. That meant we had to take very serious, tough decisions on funding. She will know that the then Home Secretary—now the Prime Minister—insisted that police funding be protected from 2015 onwards, and that last year, as part of the preparations for the police funding formula exercise that happens at the end of every year, the Minister for Policing and the Fire Service spoke to every constabulary in the country to ask them what they needed. Through that process, with the help of PCCs, we are able to put a further £460 million into policing this year. I am pleased that that means an increase of £4 million for Humberside constabulary, and it has managed to add 153 officers to its cadre since March last year.
Emma Hardy
I am sure the Minister recognises, as everyone out there does, that the number of criminal incidents is increasing, and the cuts have not stopped yet. She talks about the Government giving with one hand, but they are surely taking with the other, because there is still another £14 million to £17 million of savings to be found in the next few years. That will result in job losses for our PCSOs, which will have an impact on antisocial behaviour. I am sure she recognises that.
Victoria Atkins
I invite the hon. Lady to speak to her PCC—she is not just entitled to do that; it is part of all our duties to hold our PCCs to account. As of March last year—the last figures I have available—her police and crime commissioner had reserves of £34.3 million. To put that in context, the reserves as a percentage of total cash funding for 2017-18 were 20%, which is 5% higher than the average for England and Wales. She could ask her PCC what he is doing with that money.
Emma Hardy
The Minister has been generous in giving way. In fact, I meet with the PCC regularly and talked to him about the reserves only last week. They are currently being used to try to increase the number of police officers we have, to mitigate the cuts seen since 2010. I am sure by next year the reserves will not be there any longer.
Victoria Atkins
That is a matter for the police and crime commissioner. We brought in police and crime commissioners in 2012 precisely to give a local person the power to hold the police and chief constable to account and to spend the police budget in ways they feel are priorities for their local electorate.
As I say, we are injecting more money into policing this year. The Home Secretary has very much listened to the chiefs and police and crime commissioners across the country. We know that policing is changing and that pressures on the police through different crime types are developing. Ten years ago, online child sexual exploitation did not feature, but now, sadly, as the Home Secretary laid out in his recent speech, it is an incredible pressure on policing.
I am conscious of the time, Mr Hollobone, and I do not know whether the hon. Lady wishes to sum up. If she does, I will sit down in a moment. Again, I invite her and colleagues around the House to speak to their local councils about innovative ideas on how to engage young people and help young people who are at risk of falling into trouble.
Yesterday, we had the first of the Home Office’s national programme of engagement events on the serious violence strategy here in London. We had a fantastic turn-out from councils across the capital, including the deputy Mayor for policing in London. I listened carefully to the chief executive of Islington Council, who gave some really interesting ideas on what it has done to protect youth services—what it is doing is really innovative. I urge all colleagues to engage in that conversation with their local councils, because there are some really innovative ideas.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. I am afraid that the Minister has been badly advised by her officials. In a half-hour debate, I am afraid the Member in charge does not have the right of reply. This is now the second time I have been in this Chamber when the Minister has been badly advised. We are going to have to get some advice to Whitehall Departments that in a half-hour debate the Member in charge does not have the right of reply.
Victoria Atkins
Mr Hollobone, I feel honour-bound to say that it is my mistake. Please direct your understandable consternation towards me, not the officials. That is my fault, and I apologise profusely.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered anti-social behaviour in Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Business Banking Fraud
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)
Before I call Mr Wragg to move the motion, I say to Members that I will ask Back Benchers following him to take just five minutes each initially. That is not a time limit imposed from the Chair, but I ask for self-restraint, and we will see how we go so that we can get everyone in.
Mr William Wragg (Hazel Grove) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the investigation of business banking fraud.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. We have had many debates in both Westminster Hall and the Chamber that have focused on the mistreatment of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises at the hands of financial institutions which, in the wake of the financial crisis, sought to shore up their balance sheets as they plundered those of their business customers.
The subject is becoming an all too familiar one for debate. Indeed, this is the fourth such debate in which I have spoken. Looking around at my distinguished colleagues from across the House I see many familiar faces who have taken part in previous debates. Many Members will be familiar with the cases of hard-working businessmen and women who have had their businesses broken up and livelihoods destroyed by acts of deliberate deception and fraud, systemic asset stripping and inflated charges and fees, all at the hands of their banks.
Mr Alister Jack (Dumfries and Galloway) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. It is sad and disappointing that this is the fourth time he has had to speak on the subject. Does he agree that it is an indictment of the Financial Conduct Authority that proper, independent redress schemes have not been set up and that, 10 years on, no one has been brought to justice for destroying many people’s lives?
Mr Wragg
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. In his remarks in previous debates he has shown his personal experience, and he speaks for many on the issue. With the passage of time, the issues that are exposed only multiply rather than diminish. I have spoken before at length about my constituent Mr Eric Topping, who lost hundreds of thousands of pounds, including his home and retirement savings, when his profitable building company was forced into liquidation by the Royal Bank of Scotland. For every constituent like him, there are a thousand more SME owners across the country who were similarly victims of the widespread malpractice across the entire banking sector, and today we speak for them collectively.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that what makes it even more difficult for people is that those banks have been financed by taxpayers? They are using taxpayers’ money to fight these legal cases when they know that they have done wrong but that their victims do not have the resources to take them all the way through the courts.
Mr Wragg
The right hon. Gentleman is correct. The actions of the banks are entirely indefensible. It is, I hope, for the Government to seek appropriate redress.
While the Hansard column inches increase, meaningful actions to properly investigate business banking fraud and seek redress for its victims have been woefully insufficient so far. I would like to turn attention to the investigation of allegations of fraud by our crime prevention agencies and regulators, to the role of financial institutions, and to the role the Government play.
As a nation, we pride ourselves on the rule of law. Above the Old Bailey stands the gilded statue of Lady Justice. She carries the sword of justice in one hand and the scales of justice in the other. She wears a blindfold to symbolise that justice is blind and does not distinguish between the powerful and the weak. Yet for those who have been the victims of the systematic fraud practised by UK banks and financial institutions, such sentiment is nonsense. The statue representing their experience of justice would be heavily rusted rather than gilded. It would wear a blindfold to avoid having to see the activities of the financial institutions whose wrongdoing has ruined individuals and families, and its arms would be firmly tied behind its back to symbolise the lack of activity by both the police and the regulators.
It is 10 years this week since the taxpayer bailed out the financial services sector, and the state continues to control a significant stake in certain institutions. Ten years on, confidence in the sector is low, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises. The nation has yet to fully recover from a decade that saw the destruction of viable businesses, jobs and thousands of individual lives as banks frantically rebuilt their balance sheets following the crash, at the expense of their customers’ financial wellbeing and their own reputations. We need to be clear: the process of shoring up a balance sheet is a zero-sum game. For every winner there is a loser. The losers here were small and medium-sized enterprises, the backbone of our economy. They lost because they did not have the resource or the legal firepower they needed, or a system to support them.
We are not saying that every SME business that folded over the last decade was viable, nor that every business was the victim of fraud. But we have seen clear evidence of tampering with documents, false witness statements and the leveraging of a position of power and clout to drive many thousands of good businesses into insolvency. In a free economy there will always be legitimate failures alongside legitimate successes. Many businesses may not have been viable and may not have survived, but that did not make them fair game for mistreatment or, even worse, fraud. It just made them easy targets.
Mr Wragg
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about the role of GRG.
Following the cases of, at times, blatant mistreatment and fraud, which we saw consistently and across the board, there is either a lack of willingness or lack of capability from our investigative bodies, both civil and criminal, to pursue complaints. Instead, the victims of mistreatment and fraud are left to go round in circles making a series of fruitless complaints. The complaints are either made directly to the institutions that defrauded them in the first place, which have a vested interest not to investigate properly—as was the case with my constituent and the Royal Bank of Scotland—or referred to a series of industry-led trade bodies or the Financial Conduct Authority, which does not take on individual cases. It is simply not good enough.
The only successful prosecution for fraud thus far has been that of HBOS in Reading. That was not down to the actions of our regulator or the Serious Fraud Office relentlessly pursuing the truth to bring the perpetrators to justice. Indeed, the bank—first as HBOS and then as Lloyds, after the takeover—insisted there was no fraud, despite there being a victim with losses in the hundreds of millions of pounds.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I want to put on record my personal admiration for the police and crime commissioner for Thames Valley, Anthony Stansfeld, who personally saw to it that the fraud was prosecuted.
I hope that my hon. Friend will agree that the current situation is not good enough. If the state is to fulfil its duty to protect the public from fraud, it will be necessary for the Government to find the money to equip the authorities to prosecute fraud cases without funds coming out of individual PCCs’ budgets.
Mr Wragg
My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. I pay tribute to the police and crime commissioner, but I also wish to pay tribute to a couple of people who I believe are here in the Gallery today. Instead of the authorities investigating, it was left to a couple of music producers from Cambridge, Paul and Nikki Turner, to crack the case. I hope they are here in Parliament. They are still fighting for compensation for other victims of the crime.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
I endorse what has been said about Anthony Stansfeld.
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is not just about RBS, as some people seem to think? My constituent, Mike McGrath, went out of business because of his treatment by Lloyds bank.
Mr Wragg
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct: it was systemic across the whole business lending sector. He is right to put that on the record.
The Turners’ reward for bringing the case to the bank’s attention back in 2007 was to be branded conspiracy theorists. The bank—first as HBOS, then as Lloyds—tried to evict them from their home 22 times, spending more on legal action than the value of the home itself. It sent a top partner from one of the country’s best regarded law firms to Cambridge county court to watch the hearings. The Turnbull report, which details a comprehensive cover-up of the fraud from within the bank, notes lawyers as saying that, once the Turners were out of their home, they would have to accept their fate. This was not the pursuit of justice but a witch hunt to silence whistleblowers.
The Turners approached the Financial Standards Authority, the Serious Fraud Office and the Treasury. Indeed, there was a debate in this very room in June 2009, during which Members urged the authorities to investigate. However, all they encountered was denials and deflection. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) pointed out, the case was eventually taken seriously only after Thames Valley police recognised that a crime had been committed. The investigation took seven years to complete and the resource of 151 officers and staff, and it cost £7 million, with only £2 million eventually recovered from the Home Office. Thames Valley police stated that they could have done it in half the time and for half the money, if only the bank had co-operated fully. Unfortunately, the scale and difficulty of investigating the fraud only serves as a warning to other cash-strapped police forces: “Investigate at your peril”.
The reality is that white-collar crimes such as this are expensive and difficult to prosecute, and the agencies responsible for fighting economic crime simply do not have the necessary resources to tackle complex, mid-tier banking fraud. The SFO takes on only a small number of very large cases and has a budget of £53 million. The National Crime Agency’s economic crime command has a budget of £10 million, and the newly established National Economic Crime Centre has a budget of just £6 million. Compared with the sheer scale of fraud in the United Kingdom, which is estimated at more than £190 billion a year, and given the potential for consequential losses, these investigative budgets are, frankly, insignificant.
For those who may think that this is a one-off, it is important to note that the processes employed by HBOS in this case—turnaround units, business valuations and the use of insolvency—are exactly the same tactics seen in the case of other complaints that the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking has investigated. Such complaints were found to be commonplace, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) alluded to, across most financial institutions. The system is ripe for abuse, and we have serious concerns about it.
At this point, I pay tribute to the incredible dedication of the co-chairs of the all-party group, my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb). In addition, I thank the group’s officers and members for their significant work in running a thorough inquiry into how so many SMEs were abused by their banks, exposing the scale of the issue and the mechanisms by which the frauds were conducted. The APPG has produced an important report that identifies the shortcomings in the current investigative tools and bodies and makes vital recommendations as to how we might start to unpick this sorry mess.
I reiterate the APPG’s calls for a full public inquiry into the treatment of businesses by financial institutions. There are currently more than 10 different inquiries looking at different, isolated issues. It is time that we had a holistic approach and investigated the system as a whole.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for his work in this area. Two of my constituents have been affected—one through a mis-selling of swaps by RBS and the other through the dreadful situation at HBOS that my hon. Friend has mentioned. Does he agree that the tragedy of this case is partly the lack of transparency and independence, and that people feel that they cannot get fair redress? A decade later they are still not being treated fairly by those institutions.
Mr Wragg
My hon. Friend is spot on. The level of obfuscation by these institutions would be quite suspicious if one were to suspect them of any wrongdoing. I am sure that we can deduce our own conclusions from their behaviour.
On a civil level, the APPG’s proposal for a financial services tribunal has been well received, and we look forward to the Government’s response. That may at least provide a civil remedy for those who have been wronged. However, we have been asked what will happen when civil mistreatment tips over into the criminal abuse of power. Where is there to go? At this point, there is no satisfactory answer. The Thames Valley police and crime commissioner believes that we should have regional fraud squads akin to our counter-terrorism squads, funded by the Treasury via FCA fines and funds recovered from criminal gangs. We wholeheartedly support those proposals. Whatever action is taken, it requires the utmost degree of urgency, so that more and more cases do not—as has already started to happen—run into statutes of limitations, lose documents and evidence to the sands of time or see responsible and culpable individuals leave the industry and witnesses become unavailable.
I look forward to Members’ contributions and the Minister’s response. As I mentioned at the start, this is becoming an all too familiar debate, and I rather hope that we are not all back here in six months reliving it again. I also hope that we can resolve to agree a path of action that will see the tarnish start to be scrubbed off Lady Justice and allow her to start to uncross her arms.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for securing the debate. It is a pleasure to speak after him. I have raised the plight of my constituent, Mr Kashif Shabir, for many years. His case is about corporate collusion between Lloyds bank and a firm of receivers in Bristol, Alder King, which was embedded in the bank’s recovery department and effectively destroyed businesses to pick up work for itself.
I led a debate here in September 2016 concerning the role of the SFO, and there was a second debate here in April 2017 about the role of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors as an adequate regulator. Both debates followed a March 2014 Select Committee inquiry into the regulation and policies of the insolvency sector. There have also been many other debates, as has been referenced. The HBOS six have been jailed, the Turnbull report has been released and many victims of quite appalling practices have come forward. My question to the Minister, therefore, is why are the owners of SMEs that were destroyed by the actions of Lloyds bank and RBS still suffering 10 years on?
My constituent’s experience is a case study in the cynicism and arrogance with which Lloyds refuses to right the effects of its wrongdoing, and of the ineffectiveness of organisations such as the FCA, the police and the regulators that are supposed to oversee and enforce the integrity and honesty of businesses in this country. Mr Shabir has been fighting Lloyds bank for 10 years. As far back as 2011, Lloyds acknowledged fault by making an offer of settlement—the bank would not pursue him for the balance of losses, which it had itself created, in return for a gagging order. Mr Shabir quite rightly refused to sign up to that.
Subsequent approaches by Mr Shabir, myself and many people working on his behalf to both Lloyds and Alder King have either been ignored or met with deliberate stonewalling tactics, because those organisations know that they hold the power in this relationship. Their actions have impoverished hundreds of businesspeople, who cannot sue, because they cannot afford to litigate. The banks and others know that and are taking advantage of it.
At the same time, Lloyds has openly stated that it will co-operate and work with the APPG on fair business banking, but we know that, in reality, the opposite is true. If the bank cannot settle with a victim to whom it has already made an offer, even if that offer is derisory, it is clear that that stance is completely disingenuous. In such instances one would expect the regulators to redress those shortcomings, and investigators and prosecutors to look at them. As we have heard, however, they have not done so far.
In the September 2016 debate, I asked the Solicitor General to look at this and explain the threshold for prosecution. He outlined the criteria and the threshold for prosecuting, and said that these cases would not reach that threshold. We know, however, that while individually none of these cases will reach the FCA’s prosecution threshold, collectively they will.
My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) summed up the matter well in the debate in the main Chamber in January:
“We do know that 90% of GRG-administered businesses never made it back to mainstream banking…The cost is immeasurable, but we believe it to be in the tens of billions…If it is indeed that big, it may be the largest theft anywhere, ever.”—[Official Report, 18 January 2018; Vol. 634, c. 1086.]
If that does not meet the criteria for an SFO investigation, I do not know what does. Why is it not investigating? We have heard many times that hundreds of victims of this fraud have lost large sums individually and collectively.
Mr Shabir tells me that there has never been a rejection of his complaint on the evidential merits; it has been purely on the basis of the threshold. The Avon and Somerset police economic crime team refused to investigate the case, because it said it had already been investigated by other bodies. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors turned it down. The Financial Conduct Authority and the banking ombudsman said they had no locus to investigate it. The police have refused to properly investigate this fraud. Mr Stansfeld has had to write to that constabulary to ask it to look into the case based on the evidence that he has seen.
Mr Shabir will not go away, and nor will the other victims. Whatever the shortcomings of the regulators, investigators and prosecutors, they must not detract from the main issue, which is the fraudulent actions of the banks and the question of where the responsibility for such actions ultimately lies. It lies with Lloyds bank and RBS. It is time for the people in charge of those organisations to take responsibility for their actions.
Paul Masterton (East Renfrewshire) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on raising this important issue. It is a shame that he continues to have to do so.
Several of my constituents have been adversely affected by the unscrupulous behaviour of the banks mentioned today. I want to bring attention to the despicable actions of Clydesdale bank, which has not been mentioned, under the tutelage of its parent company National Australia bank.
The NAB Customer Support Group was set up by a small group of SMEs that were crippled by long-term, fixed-rate loans made via tailored business loans issued by the Clydesdale and Yorkshire banks. Many of the businesses have closed down, but most are struggling to survive, burdened by unmanageable interest rates and unable to break from the fixed rate due to extortionate breakage penalties of up to 40% of the loan, arising from the bank’s alleged signing of interest rate swap agreements with third parties.
The bank charges costs arising from exiting embedded interest rate swaps via the small print in the terms and conditions. However, with the passing of time, the bank admitted that there were no such micro-hedges, or match hedges, in place and that all interest rate risk was dealt with by the parent company, National Australia bank. The uncontrolled promotion of these products—driven, as always, by generous commissions—has caused enormous damage to the SME sector and the wider economy, especially in Scotland, including the west of Scotland.
Members of the support group are here today, including my constituent Ian Lightbody, and their objective is to bring the bank to account for the damage it has caused and to persuade or force it to apply satisfactory redress to all affected SMEs. Over the past few years, the FCA has been shown to be impotent. That must change, particularly now that some of these cases are so serious that even Police Scotland feels they merit investigation.
In June 2014, representatives of Clydesdale bank appeared before the Treasury Committee. The bank’s evidence was weak and, to be frank, misleading—apparently, with the benefit of hindsight, deliberately so. It said it would investigate fixed-rate tailored business loans, but it investigated only cases where a complaint was already live or had previously been made. That meant that around 7,500 people were not contacted or given the opportunity to have their loan investigated. The bank’s chief executive officer confirmed to the Treasury Committee that he did not believe that his bank’s tailored business loans were deliberately designed to avoid FCA regulation. However the Committee’s subsequent report, “Conduct and Competition in SME Lending”, concluded:
“The lack of public oversight, minimal transparency and limited coverage of the scheme mean that the Committee cannot be confident that Clydesdale’s separate internal review will deliver outcomes equivalent to the FCA review upon which it is intended to be based.”
The report went on to state:
“To protect themselves against the risk of providing a TBL’s hedging function, banks need to hedge the risk themselves. The FCA said that ‘the bank will have entered into a separate IRHP’”—
interest rate hedging product—
“‘with a third party in order to manage its financial risk of entering into the loan’.”
The Bank’s CEO, Mr Thorburn,
“confirmed that this was the case for Clydesdale Bank.”
Clydesdale bank subsequently confirmed that there was actually no third party and that, in effect, all the loans were self-funded. Despite that, and despite it charging and receiving substantial break costs from customers, it refused to address the devastation it caused to businesses and lives across Scotland. It charged for long-term interest rate hedges that, it can be proved, it and its parent company never matched.
Ian Lightbody’s firm was informed in 2012 that to break its loan it would have to pay a 22% break cost on a loan of hundreds of thousands of pounds. It had cashed in personal pension funds and arranged alternative funding to secure the future of its companies and, in particular, of long-standing employees. Naturally, that became untenable, and it had to close several companies.
Another of my constituents, Craig Brock, had long-standing companies with loans amounting to substantial millions of pounds with Clydesdale bank. In 2012 it gave him just 30 days to refinance. It appointed BDO as administrators, and the companies were sold on to Paradigm Ltd, allegedly at arm’s length. It turned out, of course, that Paradigm was another Clydesdale-funded company. The FCA confirmed to the 2015 Treasury Committee inquiry that it wanted more power to investigate Clydesdale’s tailored business loans:
“The FCA has written twice to the Treasury to raise concerns about the sale of loans with embedded interest rate hedging features and the FCA’s inability to address the problem under the current perimeter of regulation. However, the Treasury appears not to have responded formally to the FCA on the matter”.
There can be no doubt that these products were, at best, mis-sold and, at worst, fraudulently pitched and designed to fall outside the FCA rules. The bank and these products should be investigated by the FCA without delay. Thousands of SMEs and businesspeople across the UK took these products with no proper explanation of either the conditions or costs associated. They deserve our support, and they deserve justice.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing this debate. I have to say, however, that this is the fifth debate I have taken part in on this matter in my two and half years in the House. It is disappointing that we are here again. We are not making the progress that we should be making and that our constituents deserve.
As we have heard, many colleagues have experience of many examples of serious malpractice within the banking sector. Indeed, from discussing my experiences of this issue with colleagues from across the House, it seems that the majority of cases remain unresolved. I wholeheartedly agree with my colleagues from the all-party parliamentary group that it is now time the Government provided adequate resources for these cases to be reviewed, to ensure that those who have been treated poorly receive the justice they deserve.
I would like to raise the case of my constituent Mr Alun Richards, which I have raised many times since I was first elected. This case has been going on so long that my predecessor, Huw Irranca-Davies, raised it nine or 10 years ago. Until around a decade ago, Alun Richards was one of Wales’s most successful businessmen. By the early noughties, Mr Richards’s farming and property enterprises had received award recognition and his efforts soon attracted—at the time, welcome—attention from Lloyds Banking Group. Lloyds offered Mr Richards a gold star account and an interest rate of 1% over base. After weighing this up against other offers, Mr Richards accepted the Lloyds offer, and his business continued to thrive.
The financial crash in 2008 was a global turning point. Mr Richards believes that his relationship with Lloyds acutely deteriorated at that point. Suddenly, with little notice, Alun’s bank managers in Carmarthen, Gwilym Francis and Ian Richards, transferred his accounts to a larger branch based in Bristol. After a short period, Alun approached his new branch and was alarmed to discover that his new bank manager, Max Meredith, was from the business support unit, which focuses on recoveries. Alun was deeply worried about this change as, prior to that, he had considered his business to be booming. Mr Meredith agreed with Alun that his circumstances were not typical for such a transfer and agreed to transfer his account back to Carmarthen. To Alun’s dismay, Gwilym Francis and Ian Richards refused to accept the account back in Carmarthen.
Alun soon received a visit from Mr John Holiday and Mr Jonathan Miles from the business support unit in Bristol. During this meeting, one of Alun’s accountants questioned Mr Miles’s behaviour and background. Mr Miles claimed that he worked for Lloyds Banking Group, and repeated that claim for the following two and a half years. Mr Richards has since discovered that Mr Miles was a chartered surveyor, a member of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors and a partner of Alder King. It appears that no official secondment was in place. Mr Miles even appointed partners from Alder King—Julian Smith and Andrew Hughes—as the Law of Property Act 1925 receivers. When that initially surfaced, Mr Hughes temporarily resigned. RICS has refused to take any action and, following complaints against Bristol-based lawyers TLT, so have the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Insolvency Practitioners Association.
Alun Richards’s decade-long struggle has involved Lloyds Banking Group, Alder King and the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors. Surely it cannot be right that Mr Richards, whose enterprise was worth about £5 million, has been left with nothing as the direct result of the actions of Lloyds bank and the others I have listed, as he believes.
Mr Richards and many others across the country feel that their cases have not been investigated properly, despite my appeals and those of other hon. Members from across the House to many different bodies. Most recently, we wrote to the Chair of the Treasury Committee, the right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), asking her to open an inquiry into these alleged malpractices. Disappointingly, she was unable to give us that inquiry, but I sincerely call on the Minister to take action to ensure that these unresolved cases are comprehensively reviewed to ensure that those individuals who have been wronged receive the justice they deserve.
There is a real need to give the Serious Fraud Office extra funds to investigate the ever-increasing list of actions by Lloyds and those other organisations. The FCA’s line—that the alleged fraud does not reach the limits to investigate—simply will not wash any longer. There are too many cases involving large sums of money—millions and millions of pounds—for the FCA to simply say that the figure is not high enough to investigate.
Ten long years on from the crash, it can only be right that the Government provide adequate resources for these cases to be reviewed. It is their duty to investigate these malpractices to ensure that they never happen again and that constituents such as Mr Richards, and those of all hon. Members from across the House, get the justice that they rightly deserve.
Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate. He is a great advocate on behalf of victims.
I will start with a few words in support of banks and bankers. I have been in business for 25 years, and I could not have achieved anywhere near as much as I achieved without the support of bankers, the vast majority of whom do a good job of supporting the UK economy by offering vital support to businesses. I am sure that most people in the banking world are as shocked as we are by some of the scandals of the last 10 years.
It is critical for us all to play on a level playing field—that is the free-market economy principle. We need to adhere to some basic rules, which must be the same whether someone is a businessperson or a banker. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove said, the key principles that we must all adhere to are that justice is blind, no one is above the law, and justice must be done and be seen to be done. Where we are is a mile away from that, because there is so much evidence not just of malpractice and mistreatment, but of fraud throughout the banking sector, particularly in RBS and in Lloyds and HBOS.
For a while, the accusation was that the people who were bringing forward these claims, such as the Turners, were conspiracy theorists—they had failed businesses that could not survive anyway, so it was something that we did not need to look into properly. Then along came the section 166 report into RBS, which clearly identified that RBS had mistreated thousands of businesses. Of course, that report nearly never came out, but when it did it was a critical moment.
It is the same with Lloyds and HBOS: but for the persistence of one or two individuals, the case would never have come to trial and those people would never have been convicted. They are not isolated cases; there was widespread abuse.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I am quite concerned, because I have looked through the banking code of conduct and it seems to mention only banks. Is there any personal responsibility in it, so that the people who make the decisions can be brought to account for them?
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend makes a good point, which I will come to. Interestingly, our campaign, which is supported by so many of the hon. Members present, is also supported by some interesting people. Gordon Brown, the former Prime Minister, has said that he fears another crash because the bankers have no fear of imprisonment—the personal accountability that my hon. Friend referred to. Andrew Bailey of the Financial Conduct Authority expressed real concern in a recent newspaper article that no one
“has been banned as a consequence of the financial crisis.”
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, because the problem goes beyond mistreatment. We have seen evidence of forged signatures, manipulated valuations, manufactured covenant defaults, asset acquisition opportunities being sought out, and conflicts of interest almost everywhere we look. That includes the case of Julia Davey, who is present today.
Julia Davey is one of the most successful businesspeople in the UK, but Lloyds and KPMG forced her into the business support unit. David Crawshaw of KPMG was the independent reviewer of the business, the consultant advising the business and the administrator to the business. How can that be right? That multimillion-pound business was taken down by a £100,000 utility bill, when there were ample moneys in the bank. That money was used to pay the advisers, not the debt. It is outrageous.
The banks’ default position has been denial all the way. When Lawrence Tomlinson first established that there was abuse, they tried to withdraw the funding for his business to keep him quiet, which is a disgrace. Throughout the section 166 report, there is clear evidence of malpractice that goes beyond simple mistreatment and into fraud. The same is true for Lloyds and HBOS. The regulators’ attention was drawn to the fact that the abuse was going on thousands of times, but there has still been no action.
The FCA still says that the banks must be trusted to run their own internal redress schemes for the abuses. At Lloyds, the Griggs review is an internal scheme with no independent verification of the settlement that is made. At RBS, the situation with Sir William Blackburne’s review is similar. I do not dispute the fact that they are honourable people, but how can justice be seen to be done if these matters are decided internally? It cannot be right. What if those people, who are working internally for those banks, find evidence of fraud in their investigations? Would they put it in the shredder or would they hand it to the police? I will leave that for those in the Chamber to decide.
We need action. We need regional fraud squads and a twin-track approach, so that the Serious Fraud Office works with the Financial Conduct Authority, as happens in the US. There has to be criminal liability for the failure to prevent economic crime, as we have for the failure to prevent bribery and tax evasion. We need to introduce conduct of business rules to SME banking, so that regulators have a basis on which to judge a claim. We need our financial services tribunal and a public inquiry. There are 12 separate inquiries and counting into various parts of the banking system—a piecemeal approach to a systemic problem. We need cultural change. We need to restore faith in the system. Justice must be blind. No one is above the law. Justice must be done, and justice must be seen to be done.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate. He is right that we have discussed the subject many times, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) also mentioned. We look to the Minister, who understands the issues that we bring forward very well, for a substantial response. I am grateful to other right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions to the debate about the mis-selling of interest rate hedging products since 2001.
It is important to say, as the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton did, that my relationship with the banks has been good. My mother and father’s relationship with the banks was also good, because in those days banks were easier to get on with. The borrowing of money was probably very simple. To be fair, the sums involved then were not the large sums that are involved today. Nevertheless, as elected representatives, issues and complaints come forward to us, and in the Gallery behind us there are many constituents who have been wronged, abused and disenfranchised by the banks, and we are here to put their cases forward.
Some of my constituents have been appallingly and despicably treated. I will mention a couple of them, without giving too much detail, just to put their cases on the record. As Members will know, the Democratic Unionist party has consistently said that there is a role for a financial services tribunal and a competent ombudsman service for banking complaints, which would follow the parliamentary intent that such cases should be treated fairly and reasonably, and with timeliness.
In Northern Ireland, we use the terminology of “keeping people’s feet to the fire”; we do not want them to get burnt, but we want people to feel the heat of what we are saying in this Chamber. So I look to the Minister to ensure that the people involved feel the heat, and will thereby respond and look after the people in the Gallery today, as well as my constituents who have been disenfranchised despicably.
The small and medium-sized enterprises are the ones feeling the pain. I will name two in particular in my constituency: the Armstrongs and the Semples. Their cases have been recorded in Hansard before and in the short time that I have today I could not do either of them justice, but Hansard will record the fact that I have put their cases in the main Chamber on two occasions in the past.
The Semples are large dairy farmers who had borrowed a lot of money. They were then squeezed to the point where they had to pay back almost a million pounds. The Armstrongs had made some land acquisitions, but the banks involved squeezed them. They offered them the money and then squeezed them to a considerable extent. The effect on these people’s health, their families and their relationships has been absolutely enormous—we cannot begin to understand that. Without mentioning the person specifically, one of the people I have referred to has serious health issues. Family relationships become strained or break down; they do at the best of times.
Very quickly, I just want to say that we believe that in the discussions about this issue a broad consensus has emerged, similar to that concerning the Financial Conduct Authority consultation.
I will refer to the issue of compensation, because it is very important that the Minister takes it on board. An upper level of £600,000 is appropriate where the complainant is still trading and has a choice of which route they wish to pursue. Latterly, a few people sought the view of the DUP and that of a few other parties on the idea that there should be lower and upper limits of compensation. After much research and reflection, we now believe that Her Majesty’s Government should consider that claims of less than £25,000 should only be eligible for an ombudsman-type service and that the upper limit should be £600,000, which is the figure I mentioned earlier. For those affected businesses that are still trading, the lower limit for a financial services tribunal should be £25,000 and the upper limit should be £5 million. Those are the changes we ask the Minister for in respect of compensation.
For those businesses that are now insolvent as a result of alleged bank conduct and behaviour, the upper claim limit should be £10 million and of course such cases can only be dealt with by a financial services tribunal. In all cases where there are claims above that sum, it should be a matter for the commercial courts.
We have met the Minister who is here today, and tomorrow the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton will meet the Chair of the Treasury Committee. I met a former Chair of the Treasury Committee some time back, and we have met the FCA and the Financial Ombudsman Service as well. We have done all the door-knocking that we can possibly do and what we need, with respect to all those people we have met, is not to hear words; we need to see action and that action has to come from the Minister who is here today.
Once again, I will just reiterate our view in the DUP that all legacy complaints should be the subject of a voluntary review in the first instance by the bank concerned, with priority given to those complaints that Members of Parliament have already brought to the attention of the House—every Member in this Chamber today has done just that—or to the attention of the FCA or the FOS, as set out in early-day motion 1162 in April 2017.
We need accountability in this process; we need those who have been guilty of criminal acts, as has been alleged, to feel the punishment for their wrongdoings; and I believe that the responsibility that I have as the Member of Parliament for Strangford is to speak up for the Armstrongs, the Semples and for many others in my constituency. There are at least half a dozen others who I cannot mention because they are embarrassed; they are in business and they do not want to have their names mentioned. People should be sure that when we mention names, it is like an iceberg, with nine tenths of the people affected not being mentioned, and they are not being mentioned because of the embarrassment. The enormity of this issue must not be underestimated. However, I have already spoken for too long, Mr Robertson.
Stephen Kerr (Stirling) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who secured this debate, for an excellent and powerful speech.
I will refer straight away to the speech made by Andrew Bailey of the Financial Conduct Authority at its annual public meeting just a month ago, in which he said the following, which I find quite shocking:
“Given the serious concerns that were identified in the independent review it was only right that we launched a…investigation to see if there was any action that could be taken against senior management or RBS.”
He was talking about the Global Restructuring Group, or GRG. He went on to say:
“It is important to recognise that the business of GRG was largely unregulated”—
what a telling statement—
“and the FCA’s powers to take action in such circumstances…are very limited.”
Surely that is where we have gone wrong—commercial lending to businesses was “unregulated” to the extent that those businesses were vulnerable to the indiscriminate action of the banks. I will leave the rest of that statement unread.
I also thank my hon. Friend for his fitting use of the metaphor of Lady Justice to represent the dire situation that so many business owners face. Indeed, I suggest that Lady Justice is not only blind and has her arms tied firmly behind her back but is gagged and silenced. Onerous gagging clauses were incorporated into confidentiality agreements, with the effect of silencing witnesses and ensuring that justice is never done. The use of those gagging clauses ensures that organisations responsible for wrongdoing can not only conduct an operation of denial and obstruction of justice but use the clauses as a tool of abuse, to suppress any evidence of criminal behaviour. We are aware of several instances of gagging clauses that specifically state that an individual is unable to voluntarily approach the police or regulators with concerns about potential criminal activity. Let us be clear: that is unacceptable.
At this point we need to turn to the solicitors who are, quite frankly, aiding and abetting concealment of potential criminal activity by writing contracts that contain such onerous gagging clauses. In essence, they are bullying victims into silence and preventing them from discussing their case with those who are there to protect them: the police, Members of Parliament and regulators. That is a deeply troubling fact.
One pertinent example of such practice, cited on numerous occasions by the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), is a constituent of hers who accused Lloyds Banking Group plc and the Law of Property Act receivers, Alder King LLP, of a fraud that robbed them of their business and their livelihood. Once the allegations were made by the individual to the bank, Lloyds Banking Group plc proposed to forgive the constituent’s indebtedness, which had ultimately been caused by the actions of the bank and Alder King LLP, in exchange for the signing of a confidentiality agreement that would have prevented any further discussion of the case. Thankfully, the constituent declined the offer, making it possible to discuss their case here today. It will be clear to everyone in attendance today that that tactic was used by the banks and their solicitors to hide abuse and allegedly criminal activity.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority, which is the regulatory body for solicitors in England and Wales, has a duty to society, and I encourage it to issue very firm guidance to prevent solicitors from contractually silencing allegations of criminal conduct.
Jo Stevens
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and for his reference to my constituent, Mr Shabir. In Mr Shabir’s case, not only was a gagging order presented to him, but he also has a legal opinion from Queen’s counsel saying that a criminal fraud has been committed against him. That is exactly the sort of circumstance that the hon. Gentleman is talking about.
Stephen Kerr
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She made the point that I was just about to make, namely that it is not possible to contract out of criminal behaviour, and it may be that these gagging clauses are in fact unenforceable. However, that is not the point. Such clauses serve the purpose of instilling fear and effectively silence concerns, and potentially suppress valuable evidence. The all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking and finance has found dozens of cases like that one, and people are scared.
Time and time again in this House, we call for transparency and we hear a lot of lip service about the industry’s commitment to it, but there can be neither transparency nor fairness if people are being subjected to onerous confidentiality agreements that prevent the investigation of allegations of criminal activity and obstruct justice, stopping it being served.
This issue should be deeply troubling for all Members of the House. Greater scrutiny must be applied to the use gagging agreements and the role they play in the concealment of criminal activity.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for raising this issue, which is very important, particularly for our small and medium-sized enterprises, which work extremely hard to build their businesses, and which want to move forward and contribute to their local communities, employing people in the process.
One of my constituency cases is to do with HSBC. The director of a company that was not failing—it had a huge number of assets—was asked to sign over to a new loan agreement, but he was attending his dad’s funeral in India so the agreement was signed on his behalf by someone in the bank. Someone faked his signature on the document. On his return, he was told he had no choice but to proceed. The loan was offered to the company without its asking for it, to invest further in the capital assets into which it wanted to expand its business. It was forced into the position of having an additional loan and, because of the terms and conditions of that loan, the company was offered restructuring. So a company that was fluid in its assets and able to function normally was forced into restructuring. The personnel initially involved in the restructuring—those who were forcing the company into that corner—then turned into the recovery personnel, so there were people in the bank with the dual role of restructuring and recovery.
The company has fought the case for more than 10 years. It has fought extremely hard, despite the main director having lost his father and the huge stress caused throughout the family. There has been continuous suffering. The company was bound into a non-disclosure agreement and was stuck for many years. Through a lot of hard work and pain, with my office and one of my senior advisers dealing with the case, we have managed at least to get to the stage where the NDA has been removed. Yet the company cannot get any recourse for the losses incurred, let alone the initial debt problems that the bank caused, which put the company in such a predicament. Those are the problems we have; that is what these banks do.
There are two of my constituents in that position with HSBC, and two in that position with Lloyds. Both banks operate in exactly the same way. Another constituent who is involved with Lloyds bank had the bank decide to call in the receivers on a Friday at 5 pm, so it was not possible to have recourse through lawyers or anyone else to stop the injunction. That was someone rich in assets being closed down and locked into this process. The modus operandi of these banks is clear. All four of my constituents who have been dealt with in this way were fluid in their asset base—they were not struggling for money—yet, at the moment, one of them is unable to go to another high street bank because of what the people in HSBC have put them through. That is where the real issues are.
I have another constituent, Mr Elliott, who is here today. He has a significant number of companies that are doing well. He fought his case and managed to get to the court stage. Two weeks before the trial, he got an order from Lloyds saying that it would sue him for £1 million a day for every day the trial took place. Having taken that huge step, it was fundamentally difficult to tolerate that sort of pressure.
The individuals involved must be held criminally responsible for their actions. It is high time that the Government took charge and that all such businesses, which bring huge benefits to our local communities, were protected from the sharks and the way in which they operate.
Andrew Jones (Harrogate and Knaresborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) on securing the debate and commend him for his tenacity in maintaining the focus on this issue.
I want to raise the issue of the resources and expertise of those investigating the usually very complex cases of business banking fraud. We are seeing a huge increase in financial crime in our country. Some of it is well known—most of us will have residents who have been scammed out of money by transferring huge sums. That straightforward fraud is hard enough to pursue, but much harder again is complex business fraud.
One such case that has been raised with me has been discussed in this place twice before, in 2013 and 2015: that of the successful, growing and profitable business, Premier Motor Auctions. The detail of the case and the role of the various players was highlighted by the former Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby, Austin Mitchell, and can be read in Hansard. He did an excellent job highlighting the extreme closeness of the working relationship between Lloyds bank and PricewaterhouseCoopers. I do not intend to go over the details of the case in the time allowed; I simply refer Members to that debate, which was clearly feisty and shows just how long Members have been concerned about banking practice.
I have now taken up the case, and my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) and I wrote to West Yorkshire police asking it to commence a criminal investigation. It has decided not to do that, citing the scale of the resources required and the fact that the victim pursued civil recourse—though in fact that was a case taken by the liquidator, which was dropped under extreme pressure from Lloyds bank and PWC. I understand that that pressure was the threat of being sued for £1 million a day—real David and Goliath territory, though with a less satisfactory outcome. The other point the police made was that the case would be more suitably investigated by another body. I am a strong supporter of our police services and I can see their point of view—resources are under pressure. The case referred to here today, which has been investigated by Thames Valley police, took 150 dedicated officers and cost £7 million.
West Yorkshire police has a point when it says that other bodies could be better placed to carry out the investigations, which leads to the underlying question I would like to ask the Minister: do we, in the UK, have the right people investigating the right cases, and are they working as closely as they could be with regulators? That is the two-track approach that my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton highlighted. Do our regulators have enough teeth and are they using them? Who is looking at the relationship between banks and accountants? Are local police services the right bodies to be tackling complex corporate cases? Such cases are difficult and require specialist knowledge. If the decision is taken that the local police service is the right body, can more specialised resource or extra funding be provided to help it undertake the work?
It is not at all clear to me that we have this right. I think we need to reconsider it. I can see the challenges the police service faces, but I also see cases, such as that of Premier Motor Auctions, where questions need clear answers and victims need and deserve those answers. It is the underlying national issue, brought into perspective by the local cases, that needs consideration, and I ask the Minister to consider that as he reviews whether our financial system serves our country as well as it could and whether it has addressed the wrongs of the past.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I think I have spoken in all four debates on this subject, and I am beginning to feel like my colleagues: we are voices crying in the blooming wilderness. We have asked for something to happen, and nothing is happening. It is wrong. It is scandalous that decent people have been so incredibly robbed by banks. I cannot understand why we have not been able to get a grip on this matter and sort it out. It is wrong, and we are meant to be the people who sort these sorts of problems out.
One part of National Westminster is particularly to blame. One of my constituents, Dean D’Eye, started an association with that bank’s Romford lending branch in 2000. For eight years, it was all great. That association worked well, and both the bank and the business were profiting, but just after the banking crisis 10 years ago, the destruction of Mr D’Eye’s investment and property development business began. At that time, his company was worth about £11 million and had a debt of about £5.8 million. All his interest payments for debts were on time, and he had a gearing ratio of 60%, which was pretty good.
However, in September 2008, Mr D’Eye began to be inundated with requests for information, which took up a great deal of his team’s time and stopped them doing business. Then, in December, the National Westminster bank suddenly robbed £139,000 from the company’s business accounts, without any reference to Mr D’Eye and despite letters from the bank saying that money could be used by the company. In early 2009, the demands for more information continued, and Mr D’Eye’s group was placed under the watch of that wonderful organisation called the Global Restructuring Group. The situation then grew rapidly worse: suddenly, in April 2009, the bank appointed administrators, who appeared to investigate the business. On 28 May 2009, NatWest formally cancelled Dean D’Eye’s overdraft. Considering the size of the businesses, that overdraft was pretty small, at £40,000.
Within a week, on 1 June, all Dean D’Eye’s loans were called in. By 10.17 am on 5 June, administrators had full control of his companies and were effectively running those businesses from his offices. That decision meant the group lost its cash flow, which in turn created a default with the Dunbar bank, owned by the Zurich insurance group. Dunbar bank has a pretty bad reputation, and is often more ruthless than anyone else.
My constituents, the D’Eye family, have lost their family home, and Mr D’Eye has lost his father’s house as well. Mr D’Eye continues to hope that he can get litigation funding to take NatWest to court for the way it has ruined his business. Who can blame him? A generation ago, banks usually encouraged and supported their customers, giving them a fair shake. How tragic is it that that is no longer the case for so many people?
Kevin Hollinrake
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. He said earlier in his remarks that Mr D’Eye was not behind on his payments when the bank first took action. My hon. Friend may be aware that Australia has brought forward a royal commission because of similar abuses there, and one of the changes that has come out of that process is that a bank cannot take action against a business if that business is not behind on its payments. Does that not underline the need for a full public inquiry?
Bob Stewart
I thank my hon. Friend for that very good point. Of course it does. We need to get on and sort this matter out.
In the 18th century, highwaymen used to stop coaches, get people outside them and say, “Stand and deliver. Your money or your life.” Those guys had a choice. Now, the 21st century equivalent of highwaymen—some in the banks—shout, “Your money or your lifestyles”, and they take both. Thank you, Mr Robertson.
Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)
I am grateful to hon. Members for their self-restraint and to Opposition Front Benchers for offering to make slightly shorter speeches.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for being here. I am not going to say it is a pleasure to take part in this debate, because I do not think we should still be having these debates. The hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) is absolutely correct: this subject has been discussed in the House so often, because so many of us have been approached by constituents, that we should not still be at this stage.
A number of hon. Members have raised issues that their constituents have brought to them and that, to me, scream of illegality. People have had things signed against their will, bank accounts opened in their name, or money taken from their bank accounts. Companies have been gone after because they are asset-rich; in Scotland, that particularly affected agricultural businesses, for example, because they had large assets that the bank could chase after. It baffles me that there have not been convictions in relation to those things, because I do not understand how they are not illegal.
Given the number of Members who have come forward about this matter, not all of our constituents can possibly be coming to us with falsehoods. So many people have been affected by this that it absolutely must be true. That was one of the most difficult things for individuals to come to terms with: I heard people talking about the fact that they were going through a total nightmare, and they did not understand how this could possibly be happening to them. In fact, they believed it could not be happening to them and that something must have gone horribly wrong. That has not helped to make sure that many people can come forward.
I will raise a few issues that the Scottish National party is asking to be addressed. I will focus a little on GRG, because that is the organisation that the majority of Scottish constituents have been hit by, but we have also had constituents hit by HSBC, Lloyds and Clydesdale. We believe that the UK Government need to pick up where the FCA has failed in relation to the comprehensive review of banking culture. The FCA produced a discussion document, but that is not enough. If the FCA cannot do these things comprehensively, the UK Government can step in, take action and make sure that positive changes are made to banking culture, because it is not the case that banks are now perfect.
The SNP will continue to call for the UK Government to create a permanent commercial financial dispute resolution platform to alleviate the suffering of victims of mis-selling. Given the issues that have been raised today, we will continue to say that asking victims of mis-selling to take the banks to court is totally inappropriate, and financially unworkable in the vast majority of cases. If the Government could step in and create that commercial financial dispute resolution platform, individuals would welcome that.
The UK Government have had a significant stake in RBS, and could have done more to highlight the issues there have been in that organisation and to ensure that RBS has told the truth. The internal resolution mechanisms that RBS has put in place could have been stronger and easier for individuals to navigate—particularly given the consequential loss issues involved, it has been very hard for constituents to access justice.
As the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) said, it is vital that banks lend to small businesses, both for our economy and for those small businesses. These issues have had an economic impact on growth, because businesses have not been able to grow and be successful. There has been a huge impact on individuals’ lives. There has been homelessness, there have been marriage breakdowns and there have been suicides. I have spoken previously about my cousin and her family. She, her husband and their four children were made homeless as a result of what RBS GRG did to them, because they had an agricultural farm, and that farm was an asset that could be taken from them. A constituent also came to me who had suffered huge personal tragedy, as well as financial tragedy, as a result of what happened specifically with RBS GRG.
I have already said that people do not come forward. That is because of the confidentiality clauses that they have had to sign, because they are embarrassed, as has been mentioned, or because they are suffering from financial ruin and have enough to worry about without trying to take on a massive financial institution as an individual. More could be done so that those individuals get justice.
To conclude, we should have a comprehensive review of banking culture and a permanent commercial financial dispute resolution platform. The Government need to take action now so that this can never happen again.
Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I, too, thank the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) for securing today’s debate. Colleagues will know that he and I are constituency neighbours. The powerful case study that he gave on behalf of his constituent could quite easily have been on behalf of one of mine. I first became aware of the scale of the issues through constituency examples. Every Member who has spoken in today’s debate has presented those testimonies extremely well. I also thank the all-party parliamentary group on fair business banking and finance, especially for the efforts of its chair, the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who gave an authoritative and powerful account of some of the problems that have come to the group’s attention.
Many of us have participated in similar debates before, but as we mark the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis it is a good time to consider the relationship between businesses and their banks. All of us in the Chamber, even though we have come today with powerful case studies of inappropriate behaviour, want to see a strong relationship between businesses and banks. Having a good relationship between banks and businesses is critical to our economic growth, prosperity, employment and much more.
Unfortunately, research shows that frighteningly low numbers of small businesses trust their bank to do the right thing for them. That is unsurprising given some of what we have heard today. We have to improve that. We have to look at why that is, and how we can change it. We have to restore confidence that the regulatory system is fair, and crucially that there will be a level playing field for businesses when they find themselves in conflict with their bank, especially if their bank is suspected of having committed fraud, as we are discussing today.
The central premise of today’s debate and of all the speeches has been that there are insufficient resources available to tackle business banking fraud. Colleagues will be aware that I agree with that premise. The National Crime Agency, the Serious Fraud Office, local police forces and the Financial Conduct Authority do not have sufficient capacity, either individually or collectively, to look into the matter with the attention that it deserves. I am sure that the Minister will refer to the new National Economic Crime Centre—the NECC—a new unit of the National Crime Agency. An initial budget of £6 million does not seem sufficient when compared with, as I think the hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Andrew Jones) mentioned, the £7 million cost of the Thames Valley police investigation into HBOS in Reading, and given the scale of the issues raised today.
I want to say quite a bit more, because I do not think that we can simply say, “This issue requires more resources and that will solve the problem.” It is about how we can change the culture that has led to such outrages happening time and again. I will talk about three different ways in which I believe we could contribute to achieving that. First, we could launch a full public inquiry into recent business banking scandals. Secondly, we could introduce an independent tribunal system for small and medium-sized enterprises to resolve disputes. Lastly, we could put in place a more robust system to better protect and enable whistleblowing.
The first step has to be securing proper redress for SMEs that have been mistreated by their banks. Scandals such as GRG and HBOS mis-selling have been outrages, and have seriously dented business and customer confidence. The shadow Treasury team has consistently called for a judge-led independent inquiry into RBS GRG and other small business banking scandals, so that victims can get proper redress. I know that several colleagues in the Chamber have argued strongly for the same measure. There is clearly cross-party support for that to take place.
Such an inquiry would not just get to the bottom of the case studies that have been raised today; it would establish whether there is further criminal liability to be addressed, and examine the wider systemic issues that have allowed such events to take place. We are talking about people’s livelihoods, homes and relationships. Some people have simply been ruined. These issues are too important for us to sweep under the carpet, with the risk that such events could happen again. We have to be able to go out from a debate such as today’s and promise constituents that this will not happen again. In my view, a full public inquiry is required to do that.
Secondly, in terms of disputes, part of the problem is that it is well recognised that the gap between the financial ombudsman for individuals and the full legal process for very big firms is just too great. I support the all-party parliamentary group’s proposal to establish an independent tribunal to help create a level playing field between businesses and the banks in order to fill that gap.
We all await with interest the outcome of the UK Finance independent review, chaired by Mr Simon Walker, into complaints handling and alternative dispute resolution for SMEs. I have met Mr Walker and I understand that he will report very soon. The review will examine dispute resolution processes in different sectors and countries, and provide some evidence-based conclusions on how we can meet the needs of businesses for larger or more complex disputes.
Other initiatives are under way that will hopefully progress the situation. In July 2017, 20 banks signed up to the new standards of lending practice for business customers, which outlined what businesses should expect from their bank when in financial difficulty. Although such moves are welcome, my view is that ultimately we cannot rely on the industry to self-regulate. Look at the RBS GRG complaints resolution process as evidence. Concerns are being raised about how the goalposts have been moved regarding compensation, and how the process has been subject to quite a lot of individual discretion. That is why an independent tribunal system is necessary.
Lastly, an answer could lie in exploring a change in our approach to whistleblowing in financial services in this country. Whistleblowing will never be a substitute for effective action by regulators, but it can play a part. That is especially important in a time of scarcer resources as a result of public spending cuts. The Dodd-Frank Act in the US, which was introduced as a central piece of post-financial crisis legislation in 2010, is a demonstration of how much more robust the whistleblower protection framework could be. Whistleblowers in the US are entitled to awards where their information leads to enforcement action. The framework is structured in such a way as to disincentivise false reports, but to provide protection in the event of dismissal.
The UK legislation, on the other hand, is much weaker. Although the Financial Conduct Authority can assist whistleblowers under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998, it has not been enshrined in regulation in the way the Dodd-Frank Act has been used in the US. There is a case for examining how we could introduce specific financial services whistleblower protection in order to seriously improve conduct in banking. I have encountered significant support for that within the sector itself. I think the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton mentioned that many good people are working in the sector who want to see such issues improved so that today’s debate does not have to happen again.
Having a banking system that we can trust is essential to our economy. Entrepreneurs who have taken the risk of setting up their own businesses deserve to know that there will be proper redress if they have been the victim of unscrupulous practices. SMEs are the backbone of the British economy. If they cannot trust the financial institutions that are meant to serve them, we will all pay a price.
If we are to begin to restore trust to UK business banking, there are two outcomes we have to achieve. The first is to ensure that the victims of the GRG and HBOS banking scandals get proper redress for the damage done to their businesses and livelihoods, and individuals, as well as the institutions they worked for, must face sanctions for their actions. The second outcome is that we must create a framework in which such a flagrant abuse of the bank and business relationship can never happen again.
With the combination of a full public inquiry, the establishment of an alternative dispute resolution mechanism and a radical rethink of how we treat whistleblowers, we could begin that process. These businesspeople, many of whom are in Parliament today, were badly let down. We must all commit to less talk and more action to get them the redress that they deserve.
Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)
I would like Mr Wragg to be left a minute to wind up at the end. I call the Minister.
The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. This has been the fourth such debate since I was appointed on 9 January. In each of those debates we have had a number of passionate contributions from Members across the Chamber. Today has been the same. We have had 10 speeches, each of which has contained compelling evidence of a situation where banks have failed small businesses. We must be honest and true to the reality of the experiences of the many people who have come to the House today to challenge me, as the Government’s representative in this area, over what can be done to achieve proper redress.
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for his campaigning on the matter and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg), who set out powerfully the case that justice needs to be blind, that it needs to be done and that it needs to be seen to be done.
My deliberations will reach a conclusion imminently; I have not been putting the matter off. As has been discussed, a series of pieces of work are being undertaken, two of which will report in the next few weeks, and I will then make a judgment about the best way forward. Financial sector fraud has had a severe impact on SMEs—we heard today about several individual cases in which lives have been destroyed and families ruined. This is not a subject that I treat lightly; I have been very focused on it over the past nine months.
Bob Stewart
The Minister is a decent and honourable man. Will he please, please concentrate very hard on getting redress for the people who have lost so much money and so much of their lifestyle?
John Glen
I am very grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend for his contributions, which I shall address in a moment. I will also set out some of the changes that have taken place, but let me say from the outset that the cases that have been raised today all demonstrate that, whatever mechanisms we have implemented—from the tripartite regulation of banks and the financial system to the redress schemes of recent years—the banks need to deal with the very real legacy of this issue. Simon Walker’s review for UK Finance must listen to what has been said today about that legacy, which will not go away unless the banks face up to and take responsibility for what happened in the past.
Tackling fraud is a Government priority. I want to reflect on a new theme raised today: access to justice and the mechanisms by which it is delivered. The decision to investigate a crime rests solely with law enforcement; I cannot make it myself. Like any Member of Parliament, I can refer a crime to the relevant chief constable, but they will take account of available resources and the likely eventual outcome. It is the chief officer of the local force who is ultimately responsible for such operational decisions, and it is the responsibility of police and crime commissioners to set the budget for local forces, which the chief officer must take into account. Forces can apply for special grant funding to help meet the cost of unexpected events, but I know from conversations with my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton that there is sometimes a gap between the costs covered and the actual costs accrued. These are real matters that need to be addressed.
Mr Khalid Mahmood
The point is not whether the funds can be squeezed out of current budgets—police budgets are under huge stress at the moment. This is not a one-off; it is a long-standing issue about criminal activity by the banks, and resources need to be available to deal specifically with it.
Kevin Hollinrake
The Minister rightly mentions resources, which are always tight, but does he see a potential opportunity here? HBOS has not yet been fined for its scandalous abuses of 2007 and 2008, which tore apart many businesses. Would it be appropriate to use that fine to pump-prime a crime agency to deal with these issues? That agency could then be self-funding, because it would constantly be levying fines for abuses.
John Glen
We clearly need to find an effective mechanism to deal appropriately with the scale of the unaddressed challenges, and I will look at all options for that.
The City of London police have secured funding from the Home Office police reform and transformation fund to provide training for 600 investigators across police forces. There is also now a national register of fraud specialists; I acknowledge that the sentiment in this Chamber is that that is insufficient, but I should point out that it exists.
The regulatory framework has changed considerably since the events of the crash 10 years ago. I will not go through the whole history, but we have now established a network of robust and specialised financial regulatory bodies, each with a clear mandate and a set of responsibilities. However, I understand the concern about the reach of those bodies to deal with outstanding historical matters that our constituents are still raising with us. As part of that network, the Financial Conduct Authority is focused on ensuring that the conduct of firms and the interests of consumers are placed at the heart of the regulatory system and given the priority they deserve. That statutory objective will continue to guide the FCA’s work as it ensures that the highest possible standards are applied to the sector.
On SME lending, I am acutely aware that concerns remain about past cases of misconduct, the effects of which are still being felt today. There has been a great deal of justified anger within Parliament and beyond about cases such as those of the RBS Global Restructuring Group, HBOS Reading and the mis-selling of interest rate hedging products. I have been clear that the inappropriate treatment of SMEs by RBS GRG was unacceptable; I have made that point personally to the chief executive of RBS. The issues surrounding RBS GRG are firmly on my radar in the Treasury and I continue to work on the matter. The case of HBOS involved criminal activity, and it was right that those responsible were brought to justice. RBS and Lloyds, which now owns HBOS, have rightly set up compensation schemes for businesses affected by GRG and HBOS Reading.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stirling (Stephen Kerr) and other Members raised gagging clauses and the need for transparency. I am very sensitive to the pattern of settlements being offered that are effectively gagging clauses, such as in the case of Mr Shabir that the hon. Member for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens) raised. That does not seem an honourable way of dealing with legitimate complaints, so I will examine the matter carefully before I report back.
I am glad that to say that in response to direct loss claims relating to the GRG scheme, 978 outcome letters have been sent to customers and £15 million has so far been paid out in redress, on top of £115 million in complex fees. Offers have been also made to more than 90% of customers within the scope of the HBOS Reading review, and more than 85% of customers have accepted.
I am acutely conscious of time, but I think that it is important that I give a succinct update of what I will be doing over the next few weeks. I firmly believe that by increasing the emphasis on individual accountability, the senior managers and certification regime will prove hugely important in improving conduct standards in the financial services sector and allowing regulators to deal effectively with cases such as that of RBS GRG. The regime will be extended to the insurance sector in December and solo-regulated businesses will come in next year.
I look forward to Simon Walker’s review because it will allow me to reach a conclusion about what needs to happen. The Government have done a lot of work, but I accept that more is required. I have spoken to Andrew Bailey, to the retired High Court judge Sir William Blackburne, to Ross McEwan, to the chief executive of Lloyds, to the chief executive of the Financial Ombudsman Service and to UK Finance, and I have met members of the all-party group. I am keen to give my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove the opportunity to reply, but let me confirm that there will be action and that I will come back in a matter of weeks.
Mr Wragg
Thank you for chairing the debate, Mr Robertson. [Interruption.] I can hear the crowds outside protesting at the thought that I will be back in six months’ time to make the same speech—I hope that I will not be.
I thank the many members of the public who are watching from the Gallery. They are the people we are fighting for across the country, so it was good to hear contributions from all four nations of the United Kingdom today.
My hon. Friend the Minister said that action would come “imminently”, at least from the Treasury—a drastic improvement on the “very soon” that he promised before. That action cannot come soon enough.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the investigation of business banking fraud.
Cost of School Uniforms
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the cost of school uniforms.
Ms McDonagh, this is the first time I have spoken under your chairmanship, so not only is today’s debate really important, but it gives me real pleasure to serve under you. I am sure that view is going to be shared by everybody, including the Minister, for whom I have some really good news. I am hoping to enlist him in a twofold campaign. One part of it is that all of us who want to intervene should approach the Chancellor and ask him to lift VAT on school clothing—full stop. We should also ask him to give a direction to school governors in a way I think is going to emerge during the debate, and I will touch on that as well.
We are facing an open goal, because the year that the Minister came into the House of Commons, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) introduced a Bill saying how absurd it was that there was a 14-year cut-off—a point some of us may come back to. He pointed out that, for an average-sized 14-year-old, it means that VAT is applied where their collar size is over 14½ inches and where they wear jumpers with a 34-inch chest and upwards, trousers with waists of 28 inches and upwards or skirts with a 26-inch waist and upwards.
The key person supporting my hon. Friend—I will call him my hon. Friend because I agree very much with his views—was the Prime Minister. She was not then the Prime Minister; she was a Back Bencher. This was a topic dear to her heart, so I hope, when all of us together make an approach to the Prime Minister, and through her to the Chancellor, that we are going to get a massive amount of support for my hon. Friend and a constructive response.
I am hoping for a twofold response. The first part is that we scrap VAT on school clothing. If people can provide evidence that it is for a child at school, that will exempt the actual product, just as people with disability get some VAT exemptions when they can prove the status of their disability. Secondly, we want the Minister of State who drives schools policy to give a commitment that he will write to school heads and governors and ask them to do several things. First, school governors should undertake a pricing each year in local stores or wherever they request parents to shop on the cost of the school uniform. Secondly, there should be standard items from many suppliers rather than just one or, if lucky, two. Thirdly, if the school wants to distinguish itself from others, it should do it by standard colours that can be bought in many shops, not by specific blazers that are only to be bought in certain places.
I think other Members may want to come in on the actual costs of games kits, and I will quickly touch on all those issues. However, I also want to thank people from Birkenhead and beyond, because we had the most extraordinary response from there and from around the country about today—I did not know people wanted to follow a Facebook link to Birkenhead—and those people wrote in with their comments about the horrors.
Gloria De Piero (Ashfield) (Lab)
I know how well this debate will be received in my constituency, where one parent contacted me to tell me about the extortionate £135 cost of their children’s school uniforms. The fact is that parents should be allowed to go to the high street, the supermarket or anywhere to get a school uniform. That is what happened under the last Labour Government—it was stated in the guidance, and it should be reintroduced.
Frank Field
That is a suggestion for the Minister. It could be guidance; I would love it to made be stronger than guidance—that schools must do this. I will come back to that.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing this debate. I raised this issue when I was first elected last year, because a constituent had similarly come to me with the cost of uniforms. I was surprised that the Government committed to legislate to ensure schools did the right thing back in 2015. I received a letter from the Minister last month saying they are not going to do this until the next Session, which means at least five years since the first commitment was made. Does my right hon. Friend agree that, given the increasing costs of living that parents have to bear, a five-year delay to do something that the Government committed to do back in 2015 would be a pretty poor show?
Frank Field
It is a very poor show. There is a myth going around that we have no time to legislate because of Brexit. Ms McDonagh, I am sure you would think that the rubbish we debate in the Chamber would not be suitable for Westminster Hall and would just be filling up time. The Prime Minister believes we are all very busy with important legislation; we are simply not. I am really grateful to my hon. Friend. Why can the Cabinet Legislative Committee not give us time to introduce a Bill?
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am really grateful to my right hon. Friend for securing the debate. Millthorpe School introduced a new school uniform this summer and it has meant that children have been excluded from class. When the Minister is writing to heads, perhaps saying that no child should be excluded—this is doubly stigmatising a child because they are poor and because they cannot afford the right uniform—will he also instruct all schools that they must recycle uniforms, not just on cost grounds but on environmental grounds, to ensure that a school uniform is affordable for absolutely everyone?
Frank Field
It is very good giving way, because these are points that I would have made otherwise. I merely underscore the point my hon. Friend has just made about how it may not be a one-off set of costs but an increasing set of costs through the year. Of course, if someone has young lads, who are all too often separated from their uniform and their games kit, the costs mount tremendously.
In preparing for this debate, we had a Feeding Birkenhead meeting a couple of weeks ago, and we talked about this debate. There were 22 mothers in the room who support Feeding Birkenhead. Practically all of them were either grandparents or parents. They all said, “We can actually give you examples,” and all of them have given me examples. There have been examples on Facebook—the House of Commons Facebook for these matters has got a huge number of responses from parents. I said that, during this debate, I would do what Ernest Bevin did when he appeared before the wages committee for dockers, where he laid out how much food the dockers would get from their wages and asked the independent panel if it thought that was adequate. One mother listed the cost of the uniform—I will hold the document up so the camera can see it. I will give it to the Minister afterwards—I do not expect him to read it now, but I jolly well hope it is going into the camera.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way, and I congratulate him on securing this important debate. I, too, have had a number of examples from across my constituency. A school uniform often costs in excess of £120 in Barnsley East. Does he agree—I know he does—that that is totally unacceptable? We need to look at ways to bring down the costs. Perhaps one way to do so is for governing bodies and local authorities to use their power to bulk buy.
Frank Field
All these ideas are here for the Minister to pick up and run with, particularly given that he has the Prime Minister’s support on this issue.
Some of the parents who wrote to me from Birkenhead and beyond have bills that are £300-plus for a school uniform, and they also face the devastating cost of games kits. I hold up another document from a mother, listing a games kit. When my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) saw it, she jumped and said, “Look at that—emblems are being put on the items, which adds enormously to the cost.” That parent—a young woman—has a child in school who has to have two different games kit cases to bring the stuff to school.
Rachael Maskell
I was absolutely horrified about that. I met the staff of one school and asked why they put labels on trousers and skirts. They said that, previously, they tested girls’ trousers by pulling them away from the leg. Clearly, that is completely inappropriate. We need to set guidance to ensure that uniforms can be bought from standard retailers, so that badges are not put on trousers, skirts and other bits of kit.
Frank Field
Again, I see the Minister busily rewriting his speech—[Laughter.] We are laughing, but I know that nobody outside will mistake that: our comments are dead serious. I have heard horror stories about parents going without food to provide uniforms. They do not want their children to look different from other children, and they wake up at night worrying about it. This is an incredibly serious debate, but we are making some of our points as humorously as possible because we know we have got the Minister on our side.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way, and I congratulate him on securing this really important debate. The points he has been making are really serious. Buying school uniforms potentially plunges parents into poverty, but it also forces them to pick certain schools over others because of the expense of the uniforms. The previous Labour Government introduced a statutory school admissions code that explicitly required schools to prevent the cost of school uniforms from getting in the way of admission. Perhaps the Minister will consider reintroducing it.
Frank Field
It is really great that all my best points are being taken. The Government say they are concerned about social mobility, but school uniform costs affect parents’ choices about which school they send their children to, irrespective of where they come not in the 11-plus selection but in the selection of schools. I thank my hon. Friend for that immensely important point.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
I am a Welsh MP, and these issues are devolved to the Welsh Government. There is a different way of doing it. I urge my hon. Friend the shadow Minister and the Minister to look at what the Welsh Government are doing on school uniform grants. In Wales, a £1.7 million fund is available for children on free school meals. Parents can apply for a £125 grant, which can be spent not just on school uniforms but on sports kits, school trips and technologies. There are better ways of delivering, particularly for the least well-off children. If they are on free school meals, their parents can apply for that grant, which is worth up to £125. It is for reception children and children aged 11 who are going into year 7, so it is across the age range. I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree that there are better and different ways of supporting the least well off.
Frank Field
That is a particularly good one, isn’t it, Minister? The Prime Minister has told us that austerity is coming to an end, so she will want ideas about how to bring it to an end. Copying a proven model—we are not making up something that may not work—seems an admirable way to advance.
I am going to conclude, because the spokesman on our side—if I can still refer to him like that—has quite a bit to say, and we all wish to quiz the Minister. We have heard about the huge cost and about how arbitrary the 14-year cut-off point is. Will the Minister tell us when it was last reviewed? One person wrote on Facebook:
“Our son is 14, going into year 10, 6ft 4, size 12 feet, 48 inch chest!”
He has to have men’s shirts with very long arms so he can feel part of his school. It is very important that we get promises about improving the situation, not just for some but for all. There is a really important issue behind many of our contributions: we should be able to buy uniforms in many shops. For the many, not the few shops—that is what the policy should be.
The Minister should think about how he will lead us in approaching the Prime Minister. I say that in all seriousness, because we actually want to help him with this deadly serious topic. We want to help him with the instructions he will give to schools about, for example, costing their uniforms every year, getting supplies from standard suppliers, and the absurdity of the price for a games kit. If people want a uniform to be distinct, they should pick a colour that is commonly available and different from other school uniforms, rather than one that is available only from a single supplier.
I am really grateful to the Members who have turned up to the debate. We have been surprised by the number of letters, emails and phone calls that we have received. We have clearly just been through a horrendous period for parents, and I hope that they will not have to face that for another year.
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. I was going to call the shadow Minister, but I have been corrected by the Clerk. The Opposition spokesperson cannot make a speech in a half-hour debate.
Frank Field
What I might do, if you are tolerant, Ms McDonagh, is take a few interventions from the shadow Minister so he can make a few points.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. This is my error, and I apologise, but I understand that you cannot make a speech.
Frank Field
Can I just rewind? I had spoken with the Opposition spokesman, and we were under the impression that he could speak. I would have allowed him to intervene before I sat down. Could I say that I had not sat down, Ms McDonagh?
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I would like to do anything I can to facilitate the right hon. Gentleman, but the guidance I have been handed states that during a half-hour debate, neither speeches nor interventions from Opposition Front Benchers are permitted, as is the rule in the House. I apologise.
Frank Field
I hope my hon. Friend will be able to intervene in the debate from the Back Benches.
Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for my quick shuffle to the Back Benches. The previous occupant of the shadow Minister’s seat was my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds). I remember attending his constituency event in 2010 at St Anselm’s, with the former Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, who was the guest speaker. I point out to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), in his current state of exile, that St Anselm was exiled twice by William II and Henry I, so I suspect that whatever happens in his political career in the weeks, months and years ahead, he will be a champion for people in poverty.
The debate is really about eight years of austerity and Government policy. Universal credit is failing and driving people into debt, hunger and even destitution. Over 4 million children are growing up in poverty and a million people are forced to go to food banks. The Government should be hanging their heads in shame that families cannot afford to buy school uniforms for their children. A number of hon. Members have pointed out that we have a system in which children are sent home from school because their parents cannot afford to meet the dress codes.
I think my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead will agree that we need to know what the Minister is doing to ensure that children do not lose time in school because their parents cannot afford to meet unrealistic school uniform demands. When will the Minister ensure that the Government pledge to make school uniform guidance legally binding, and what are the Minister and the Government doing to address the ever-increasing challenge faced by parents to pay for the basics to enable their children to attend and participate in school? As my right hon. Friend rightly said, people are putting off buying food because they have to buy uniforms.
Finally, will the Minister pledge to end, once and for all, the perverse situation in which poverty acts as a barrier to children attending school because of uniforms?
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh, and to hear the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) speaking from the Back Benches, which is where all the best people in the Labour party sit. It is also a real pleasure to hear the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) lead this important debate on the cost of school uniforms. I pay tribute to him for his work with the all-party parliamentary group on hunger, and for his local work with Feeding Birkenhead, which has benefited thousands of children with meals and activities during the school holidays, as well as school breakfasts during term time.
The Department strongly encourages schools to have a uniform as it can play an important role in contributing to the ethos of a school and setting an appropriate tone. It is common for a school to have a dress code, and the overwhelming majority of schools require pupils to wear a uniform. For pupils, uniforms can remove competition to keep up with the latest fashion trends. For teachers, uniform can support discipline and motivation among pupils as part of a wider behaviour policy. For parents, uniform means they do not need to worry about what their children are wearing or the costs associated with buying the latest fashions or brands. A school uniform can also help foster equality among pupils and support the development of a whole school ethos.
One of the primary purposes of a uniform is to remove differences between pupils. With a standard uniform in place, it is harder to discern a pupil’s background; instead, what is important is their character and personality. In these ways, uniforms can play an important part in helping pupils feel safe at school. While decisions about school uniform are made by headteachers and governors—it is right that they continue to make these decisions—we always encourage schools to have uniform policies for those reasons.
In 2015, the Department commissioned a survey on the cost of school uniform, which provides the most recent information the Department holds on the matter. It indicated that the average cost of most items, except the school bag, decreased between 2007 and 2015, once adjusted for inflation. Moreover, most parents were pleased with the overall cost and quality of their child’s uniform. Over two-thirds of parents were happy with the cost of uniform and PE kit.
As was expressed in the debate, it is important that we are not complacent. While school uniform can have a hugely positive impact on a school in terms of providing cohesion and community, it may present—as we have heard—a financial burden on some, particularly lower-income families. In the same survey on the cost of school uniform, nearly one-fifth of parents reported that they had suffered financial hardship as a result of purchasing their child’s school uniform. The cost of uniform should not act as a barrier to obtaining a good school place. We want all children to be able to attend a school of their parents’ choice wherever possible.
Nick Gibb
I will not because of the time; I am sorry.
No school uniform should be so expensive as to leave pupils or their families feeling unable to apply to or attend a school. One hon. Member raised the issue of the admissions code, which explicitly sets out that,
“Admission authorities must ensure that…policies around school uniform or school trips do not discourage parents from applying for a place for their child.”
It is for the governing body of a school to decide whether there should be a school uniform policy, and if so, what it should be. It is also for the governing body to decide how the uniform should be sourced. However, governing bodies should give cost considerations the highest priority when making decisions about their school’s uniform.
The Department publishes best practice guidance on school uniform, the latest version of which was published in September 2013. That guidance makes it clear that when schools set their policy on school uniform, they should
“consider the cost, the available supply sources and year round availability of the proposed uniform to ensure it is providing best value for money for parents”,
and on the important issue of games or PE kits, that schools should
“ensure that the PE uniform is practical, comfortable and appropriate to the activity involved, and that consideration is given to the cost of compulsory PE clothing”.
That is non-statutory guidance for schools.
The right hon. Member for Birkenhead is right to draw attention to the issue of school uniforms and VAT. EU law allows the UK to have a zero rate of VAT on clothing and footwear designed for young children which is not suitable for older people. Therefore, clothing designed for children under 14 years old has no VAT on it. Over time, as children grow, their clothing becomes indistinguishable from that of adults. HM Revenue and Customs needs to operate size limits for the VAT relief to comply with EU law. The limits are based on the average size of 13-year-old children, using data provided by the British Standards Institution. It is inevitable that some children within the intended age range—such as the child cited by the right hon. Gentleman—will require larger articles of clothing or footwear that do not qualify for the relief. The Government are unable, under EU law, to extend the relief to encompass children beyond the average size. That is one of the reasons that our guidance is so firm in saying that schools should ensure their school uniform is affordable. I know the right hon. Gentleman has strong views on the EU and he may well get his way on this issue in due course.
Our existing best practice guidance emphasises the need for uniforms to be affordable. In fact, we advise school governing bodies to give the highest priority to cost considerations when making decisions about their school uniform. Most schools already ensure that their uniforms are affordable. However, for the minority of schools that may not, the Government have announced their plan to legislate to put the school uniform guidance on a statutory footing to send a clear signal that we expect schools to ensure uniform costs are reasonable.
The hon. Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) raised the issue of financial help and school funding grants. In England, some local authorities provide discretionary grants to help with buying school uniforms. Local authorities that offer such grants set their own criteria for eligibility, and schools may offer clothing schemes, such as second-hand uniforms at reduced prices. Schools may also choose to use their pupil premium funding to offer subsidies or grants for school uniforms.
The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) raised the issue of recycling, of games kits in particular. I remember that I wore a second-hand rugby kit in some of the years at my school, and that was significantly cheaper than buying the kit brand new—I was not a particularly good rugby player, so it would not have been money well spent.
To conclude, I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Birkenhead for raising this issue and to other right hon. and hon. Members for contributing to the debate. Important issues have been raised. I hope that he is content to some extent that the Government echo his concern and content about the steps that we have taken to underline the importance of the cost of school uniform in helping the most disadvantaged members of society to access to a good school place and a good education. We want to ensure that the cost of uniform does not act as a barrier to getting a good education and a good school place.
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
I apologise to Members for my mistakes in chairing the sitting. The faults were entirely mine.
Modern-day Slavery
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered tackling modern-day slavery.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McDonagh. Before I progress with my short speech, I need to place on the record my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), who cannot be present this evening because he is away at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. His chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery does so much to ensure that this issue is always at the top of the political agenda.
I also briefly place on the record my thanks to the Co-operative party for pursuing the matter so vociferously. The Co-operative party has ensured that modern slavery is now taken exceptionally seriously both inside this place and outside. As a result of its vociferous campaigning, 30 local authorities have signed up voluntarily to a modern slavery charter that takes them above and beyond the requirements of the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which I shall talk about later. Clearly, a concerted political effort can ensure that we get safety for people fleeing horrible circumstances.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman so early on, but I wanted to put something on the record as well: the great contribution made in the other place by Alastair Redfern, the Bishop of Derby, as we took the Bill through both Houses to become the Act. Without his dogged determination, we would probably not be sat in this Chamber today having this debate. He has actually just retired as Bishop of Derby, at the end of August. I am sure that putting that on the record will be well received by him and the people who worked with him.
Gareth Snell
It is true that where we are today is the result of a collective effort and political will across not only this House but Parliament as a whole. That is demonstrated not only by the number of Members present today but by how the matter has been pursued through APPGs, private Members’ legislation and amendments to various other Bills.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
Before my hon. Friend moves on, may I add another name to the list of the illustrious? Home for Good, a Christian charity, has been working so hard to raise the profile of the real dangers of certain institutions that look as though they are orphanages but are actually involved in the trade. Separation of children from parents—even from one parent—is a dangerous activity. Will he look at the Home for Good report and study it carefully? He will find it very helpful?
Gareth Snell
Indeed, he is my friend, but he is now only the second most famous person from Huddersfield following the debut of the new Dr Who. I do not know whether he has a sonic screwdriver, but we can sort one out for him.
My hon. Friend is right. A number of organisations and charities sent me briefing notes, and what I found interesting as all that information came into my office was the sheer volume of work being done quietly and diligently to ensure that this issue of our young people and others being abused and exploited is tackled. If we look at the work and try to quantify it, we can see that in addition to the efforts of Government and Parliament, civil society is once again demonstrating that it is a force for good.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
This is a timely debate. Has my hon. Friend’s all-party group looked at the legislation that was passed some years ago after the tragedy in Morecombe bay and the problems with gangmasters? Has he any comments on that? I am surprised that we still experience modern-day exploitation— for want of a better term—in all age groups.
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend must be somewhat prescient, because he has read ahead in my speech before I have managed to get to that point. I shall touch on it later.
I welcome the announcement by the Government of the review of the Modern Slavery Act, which will be ably chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), as well as the noble Lady Butler-Sloss. That is a triumvirate of expertise if ever there were one. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for being present this afternoon.
I want to talk about the processes in the Modern Slavery Act. It was a step forward in properly attacking and dealing with some of the horrible situations people find themselves in, but it also contained important preventive measures that helped to reduce modern slavery in all forms, whether sexual exploitation, domestic servitude, forced labour or criminal exploitation.
For me, one of the most important parts of the Act is section 54, which requires large companies with a turnover of £36 million or more to place on record transparency in their supply chains. Such modern slavery statements are a welcome process to deal with these problems but, if we are honest and up front, the implementation is simply not working properly. At a meeting of the Public Accounts Committee, on which I sit, the Home Office confirmed that it does not compile a list of companies that may be required to make a declaration, does not have a list of those that have done so and, importantly, does not maintain the database. Any further analysis of the information in the declarations is made by non-governmental organisations.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
On that point, will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating TISCreport, which was developed and is based in Bristol? It has looked at the 18,000 companies with revenue of more than £36 million, and it is the only organisation that maintains a database of the companies that comply with section 54. The database is now searchable via a zoomable map. Will he encourage the Minister to engage with TISCreport and to allow it to help the Home Office in its endeavours?
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. NGOs are doing some excellent work but, fundamentally, I believe that such work should be done by the Home Office and by Government—because we are talking about something set out in statute—rather than relying on the benevolence of third-party organisations.
Despite the work of the organisation in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and even though the matter has been progressed, I know that the Minister is aware of concerns about how section 54 is being implemented. Back in April I asked a question in the Chamber of a Department for International Development Minister, who confirmed that a hub was being set up. Will the Minister present today confirm what progress has been made on that hub?
What is really worrying, however, is that an investigation by The Guardian demonstrated that of the companies that had made a modern slavery statement, more than two thirds had failed to refer specifically to the risk of modern slavery. They had made a declaration, but it did not comply with the requirements of the Act. More worryingly, only 19% of all agricultural businesses that should be making a statement have done so, and that is an area in which exploitation could be rife.
Unfortunately, because everything is being done by third-party NGOs, the ability to compel necessary information simply does not exist. Until the Government introduce something on a formal statutory basis, more and more organisations will seek to put aside their responsibilities. The Co-operative Group, which I shall talk about later, has estimated that it is cheaper and easier for organisations simply to ignore the requirements than it is for them to produce the statements and submit them. There is no validation and so no penalty for failing to make a declaration.
The section 54 requirement also applies only to commercial organisations. The public sector, however, is a huge spender of money—billions and billions of pounds are spent in procurement—yet no public authority is required to make declarations to demonstrate their actions to reduce modern slavery. Were we to extend section 54 to cover public bodies and authorities, that might not stop certain aspects of modern slavery happening, but we would be able to have oversight of where the billions of pounds in public procurement are ultimately being spent, and Members could look for the impact on modern slavery.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that smaller businesses ought to be included in the overall remit of the Act? After all, they include nail bars and people working on tips. If we had a system whereby when a licence was granted by local authorities, businesses had to tick a box on their compliance with modern-day slavery rules, that would be a real step forward.
Gareth Snell
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The current scope of section 54 is well meaning, and in some ways if it was implemented correctly it would have a huge impact on large organisations. But if we are being honest and up front, most of the places where modern slavery is perpetrated in the UK are small businesses that are not properly regulated. It is tied employment, with people living in a room above a shop and being told that their rent and board is all paid for as part of their salary but, “By the way, you can’t ever leave us.” Local authorities having a remit would be a way of tackling that. However, we must be clear that if we are to give local authorities new responsibilities, new funding must come with that, because simply asking local authorities to do more with their depleted amounts of money simply will not do.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend accept that modern slavery sometimes happens at an individual level? I have a case where someone was brought to this country for work, to look after someone’s care needs. Yet when the care was no longer needed, they got rid of them and refused to pay the money they owed, and that person is now completely rootless and needs support in this country. Does he see that as a particular problem?
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; I will touch on individual cases later on, where there should be greater support and strength for victims of modern slavery.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for making the important point about the contribution of local authorities. Local authorities are under incredible financial pressure, as he rightly outlined, but 40 local authorities have still signed up to the charter, one of which is my council, Liverpool City Council. In the spirit of the cross-party attendance at this debate, does he agree that it is vital that councils, no matter their political make-up, debate and adopt that charter as quickly as possible?
Gareth Snell
I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. It is sad that the council that I used to lead, which is now not run by our political party, decided not to adopt the charter because it is worried about being too political. I am not sure how we can be too unpolitical in tackling modern slavery, but unfortunately there are still some organisations and local authorities that see the issue as partisan. If only they looked at Parliament, where partisan issues have been put aside and everyone looks at this issue collectively to find ways of dealing with it across both Houses and across parties, they could learn some valuable lessons from us. My hon. Friend is right that where local authorities are going above and beyond they are making a real difference to individuals whose existence would otherwise be one of daily toil and exploitation. The more we can do to tackle that, locally or nationally, the better.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that for victims of modern-day slavery, rebuilding their lives is a challenge in itself? I pay tribute to the Co-operative Group and other businesses that are offering paid work placements for victims of modern-day slavery.
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend is right; the Bright Future project, which the Co-op Group runs, is a demonstration of the tangible activities that ethically minded organisations can carry out to give people fleeing modern slavery a real opportunity.
John Spellar
My hon. Friend mentioned the role of local authorities in providing a lead. The role of my own council, Sandwell, has been recognised with a public award, precisely for working with other agencies to tackle this menace. Councils and public bodies also have to be receptive to information; many people who live next to the places involved and sometimes go in and work in them provide information. The authorities—whether the police, the Home Office or the local authorities—have powers, but they need to be receptive to the information and use the powers they have, even though they need more.
Gareth Snell
As always, my right hon. Friend is absolutely spot on. I would add that local authorities have struggled with their existing requirements. If we are to give them more things to do, and I think we can, that has to come with the required funding. This is too important to do half a job badly; I would rather we did all the job properly. Once again, Sandwell Council in the west midlands demonstrates how that can be done. Having heard my right hon. Friend’s intervention, I am sure that other councils will look to Sandwell as a model to follow in future.
I will move on to one of the things that the Government could do to actively address all the points being raised. Baroness Young’s Modern Slavery (Transparent Supply Chains) Bill would extend the section 54 clauses to cover almost everything that has been discussed. The Bill would allow for local authorities, public bodies and smaller organisations, including commercial organisations, to be covered by the requirement to make declarations. The more information we have, the easier it will be to tackle this scourge. I ask the Government to do slightly more. They can no longer rely on non-governmental organisations and charities to enforce the will of Parliament as expressed through the Modern Slavery Act. There has to be direct Government responsibility for the collection and analysis of the data that they have asked to be produced.
I ask the Minister to update the House on the process for appointing the new Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner. That role has been empty since May. According to the Home Office documentation, a meeting should take place this week to shortlist candidates. I wonder whether we are still on track for that. Given the comments of Kevin Hyland about his independence as he left that post, I ask the Minister to reassure us that those comments have been taken on board and that the new Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner, whoever that may be, will have the powers, responsibilities and independence they need to do the work that we all know and agree is needed.
To move on from the processes, behind every statistic, case and referral there is an individual whose life has been turned upside down and torn apart because of modern slavery. The Walk Free Foundation estimates that there are 136,000 victims of modern slavery in the UK alone. To put that into context, that figure is equivalent to the population of West Bromwich, Gloucester or Worcester being enslaved in the UK. We should all be worried about that, because unless we tackle this root and branch, we cannot hold ourselves up as a compassionate society.
There is also an international element to the issue: £14 billion of goods are imported into the UK. We can all be pretty much guaranteed that some of those products will be made by slaves or people in servitude. Everyone here and watching at home—I am sure there are millions of them—can be almost certain that something in their home, wardrobe or car will have been made by a slave. Statistically, it is likely that at some point, every single one of us will have an item of clothing made by a slave, if we do not already. We must take that very seriously, because our obligations do not rest domestically; we should set the standard around the world. As our post-Brexit trade negotiations take place, we should ensure that an ethical trade policy that tackles modern slavery here and overseas forms part of our trade policy. If we can use our purchasing power to make the world a better place, we have a duty to do so.
The National Crime Agency statistics from the national referral mechanism suggest that roughly 1,600 referrals are made each quarter. In the first quarter of this year and the second quarter of last year combined, just over 3,200 referrals were made. Although the victims predominantly came from the United Kingdom, they spanned 87 different countries. In the UK, people of 87 nationalities made a referral to the national referral mechanism. What is good about the Modern Slavery Act is that the perpetrators are being prosecuted. Only last week, Zakaria Mohammed was prosecuted under the Act for drug dealing using children and county lines. Although the act of drug dealing itself should be punished—I do not think anyone would object to that—the fact that the use of exploited children in a servitude role was prosecuted sends a message that we are taking this seriously.
Mr Sheerman
My hon. Friend has put his finger on the fact that some very wicked people organise this trade, and they are clever. People up and down the country—this is true even in the case of my pet subject of orphanages that are not really orphanages—are gulling ordinary, good people in this country into donating money for things that will be used for an evil purpose.
Gareth Snell
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The people who perpetrate these crimes do not do so in a cack-handed way. They are organised individuals who exploit the most vulnerable people in our society purely out of greed. The more we do to prosecute and make examples of them, the more we will do to demonstrate that we take the issue seriously and to put people off.
Another recent case is that of Josephine Iyamu, who sex-trafficked workers from Nigeria to Germany. Because she was a UK national, we prosecuted her in this country under the Modern Slavery Act. Again, as internationalists—as a country that looks out to the world—our responsibilities do not rest at our doorstep. We have a responsibility for people around the world. In Leeds, the Cisar family were caught trafficking people for work and exploitation. Thirty-seven people were found in an enslaved situation, working on building sites for £5 a day. Some of the families had to spend their evenings begging for food because they simply were not able to provide food for their children. One of those 37 people was a one-year-old. If we are serious about tackling this issue, we should start with situations like that.
Another problem, which I am sure the Minister will be able to help us with, is what happens once someone has been identified as a victim of modern slavery. The national referral mechanism is non-statutory. Someone who gets a positive conclusive grounds decision has no legal status. They are simply someone we have almost taken pity on—we support them out of benevolence, not because there is a requirement in law for us to do so.
The Government promised last October to increase the duration of support for people who receive a positive conclusive grounds decision from 14 days to 45 days. I understand that that is still in the process of being worked up—it is not actually being implemented. Again, if the Government wished to demonstrate that they take that promise seriously, they could easily announce that they will bring it forward as soon as possible.
Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Ind)
As I have told my hon. Friend, I will have to leave the debate to talk about sanctions in a moment. When we—Members of Parliament and Members of the House of Lords—scoped the original Modern Slavery Bill, the most stunning and terrible evidence we took was from people who had been enslaved. The idea that people get over such bondage easily was knocked sideways by all that. We were in tears listening to the evidence of people who had been broken by modern slavery, but the Government have only just begun to think about that issue.
Gareth Snell
We can see from that thoughtful intervention why my right hon. Friend is absolutely the right person to co-chair the review of the Modern Slavery Act. As I said, every statistic is a person whose life has been turned upside down. At the moment, an individual who is found to have been through modern slavery gets 14 days’ support. I do not know about anyone else in the Chamber, but that does not seem sufficient to me. In fact, 45 days really is not enough. The Government made that commitment last October and they should implement it now, but I ask that they do so as an interim step. As my right hon. Friend the Chair of the Work and Pensions Committee says, that would be a step forward, but it would not be enough to establish a pathway for recovery.
There is something the Government could do today to give some semblance of an impression that they want to do something about this issue. They could announce that they will support Lord McColl’s Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, which has been through the House of Lords and has its support. If they guaranteed Government support for that Bill so that it could proceed in Government time sooner rather than later, I am sure that it would get cross-party support and be one of the fastest pieces of legislation to pass the House of Commons.
That Bill would extend support to 12 months—it would give people who have been through horrendous situations a year’s support. Someone who comes out of modern slavery and needs help should receive it because the state and the people want to give it to them, not because of benevolence and charity. Charity is a cold thing—it is self-selecting. The state should be there to provide help and support. I am sure the Minister will be able to indicate one way or the other whether the Government have any interest in supporting Lord McColl’s Bill. I am sure Opposition Members would be happy to vote with the Government if they did support it.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon) pointed out, there are organisations doing work in this area. I am going to talk again about the Co-op Group’s Bright Future partnership. That organisation has brought together charities, providers and first responders to give people who have been through modern slavery a way into paid employment—a route back to dignity without waiting for charity. By 2020, more than 300 victims of modern slavery will have been given their lives back through that project. We should commend the Co-op Group for leading the way with that work. I know many other companies are looking at the Co-op Group’s work. All I can say to them is, “Go and ask, and help. They will help you become part of this life-changing partnership.”
We need to prevent people from falling back into slavery. The 45-day period does not give those who are entitled to be in the UK enough time to apply for the required benefits, and it does not give those who are not entitled to be in the UK time to apply for leave to remain. It simply sets them up to fail on day 46. As a society, we simply must not allow that.
I am conscious of the time, so I will wrap up with some very quick points. I am aware that the Minister has a file of information to inform her reply, but I ask her to focus on six very simple areas.
Gareth Snell
Just the six, yes. I have written them down, so it is very easy. Will the Government consider expanding section 54 to cover public bodies and smaller corporates? That would be a good step. Will the Minister update us on the Government’s role in creating a database to properly enforce and actively police modern slavery declarations? Will she update us on where the Government are with the Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner post and guarantee that person’s independence? Will she, as an interim measure, implement the 45-day support that her Government promised in October 2017? Most importantly, if she confirmed that the Government were willing to support Lord McColl’s Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill, we could all leave this place very happy people.
Several hon. Members rose—
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. As you are aware, there are many Members here and there is not much time left. I will call first those who informed the Chair that they wanted to speak, and you will have just over two minutes each. I call Fiona Bruce.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
I will focus chiefly on the support that is available to victims of trafficking to help prevent them from being left homeless, destitute and at risk of being re-trafficked. I support the proposal that the Government should adopt the Modern Slavery (Victim Support) Bill.
Mention was made of the proposal to extend the move-on period from 14 days to 45 days. At the moment, that period is inadequate. It does not give people time to establish stable building blocks for their future. It is not long enough for non-UK nationals to apply for and be granted discretionary leave to remain, which gives victims access to housing benefit and other services. Extending that period to 12 months and offering victims accommodation and financial and other support, according to their needs, would enable victims to establish much more secure futures.
I know that the Government are concerned that that might prevent the removal of foreign criminals, but the Bill makes an exception for sexual or violent offenders who pose a genuine, present and serious risk to members of the public. The Government may also be concerned about cost, but the number of eligible victims each year would be very low. In 2016, just 1,133 people were confirmed as victims of trafficking with a positive conclusive grounds decision, so that proposal is unlikely to have a great impact on immigration.
Another concern is that people may self-identify as enslaved, but it is accepted that the opposite is ordinarily the case. Victims are often reluctant to come forward, for fear of retribution by their traffickers or fear of the authorities, or due to a perceived lack of long-term protection, which the Bill would address. In addition, victims cannot refer themselves to the NRM—that can be done only by a designated first responder organisation.
Finally, the proposal that the Government should offer six-month drop-in support, although positive, is inadequate. That period needs to be longer so that people can establish their futures.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on securing this important debate. I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce).
It is only right that those who have experienced the appalling practice of modern slavery are provided with the support, tools and skills they need to get on in life. That is why I will focus my brief comments on Northern College in Barnsley and its “Free Thinking” programme, which is the first course of its kind. Earlier this year, it supported 14 survivors on a 10-week course, helping them to adapt to their freedom with tutoring in subjects such as English, maths and IT, and helping to restore qualities such as self-confidence and trust in humanity.
It was a privilege to visit the course and moving and inspiring to meet the survivors and hear their stories. Their own words speak of its success. One said:
“I’ve got more confidence… I can notice myself getting better and better every week that I come here.”
Another said:
“I feel that I have really achieved something and that when I leave Northern College, I will feel able to apply for more…education. I am trying to move on from my past. This is a big step.”
Others have spoken of its impact on their families. There is an on-site crèche that allows parents to take part in the course, which has a positive impact on the children too.
Northern College has pioneered the course, but not without facing obstacles. Some survivors may meet the requirements for funding but struggle with complex rules. Others have no access to transport. The Home Office’s immigration bail regulations had been prohibitive for many survivors but, following my question in the House earlier this year, I am pleased that the guidance has been changed. I thank the Secretary of State for meeting me.
The “Free Thinking” course provides a blueprint for how we can make progress in addressing the terrible injustice of modern slavery here in the UK. I will end with the words of another survivor on the impact of the course:
“Sometimes I get down, but I’m very lucky to still be here. If I wasn’t here, my story would just be in the past tense.”
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
Centuries after Wilberforce abolished the slave trade, it is a disgrace that around the world today some 27 million people are in modern slavery. I have had three big instances of it in my constituency on Traveller sites. In the first, 24 people were released from slavery. Some of them had been there for a decade or more, and 19 of them were British citizens. It is horrendous.
The NHS in particular can do a lot more—it is not as good as it should be at spotting victims of modern slavery. The all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and modern slavery met the parents of a young, English learning-disabled man who was taken to a Welsh hospital to have his leg reset after he had fallen off a horse while being held captive. He was taken back again, and no one thought to ask any questions about why he was brought in with a group of Irish people who were not speaking with the same accent as him.
Good work is going on in some Welsh academic institutions to ensure that training on modern slavery becomes compulsory in undergraduate and postgraduate settings and for all healthcare staff. It should have the same priority as child protection training within the NHS. That would make a huge difference, because the “Provider Responses Treatment and Care for Trafficked People” report by King’s College London showed that one in five victims of modern slavery comes into contact with healthcare professionals.
Last month, the Australian House of Representatives passed a modern slavery Bill that recognised orphanage trafficking, which has been defined as
“the active recruitment of children from families and communities into residential care institutions in overseas countries for the purposes of foreign funding and voluntourism.”
The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) is right to raise this point. We need to be world-leading and to take on what the Australians have demonstrated.
Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)
Thank you for calling me in this important debate, Ms McDonagh. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) on his brilliant presentation. This debate is timely, with Anti-slavery Day coming up on the 18th of this month.
The tragedy of slavery is that it is a condition of human making, driven by greed and a pernicious desire to profit from excessively cheap labour, happening in plain sight. Sadly, my constituency has not been immune. In 2015, we had our first—I hope it is our last—conviction for modern-day slavery. Hungarian workers were promised good jobs and somewhere to stay, working in bed manufacturing, but on arrival they were shoved into dilapidated houses, some with up to 42 men living in two-bedroom properties, forced to work 10 to 16 hours a day, five to seven days a week, sometimes for as little as £10 a day, making beds for John Lewis and Next. It is a vile, disgusting crime, preying on workers desperate to forge a better life for themselves and their families. Thankfully, after excellent investigation work by local police, the owner was rightly convicted and sent to prison.
I am proud that the parent company of my local biscuit manufacturer, Fox’s Biscuits—I worked there in my teens—2 Sisters, has signed up to the Co-op’s Bright Future anti-slavery campaign. That scheme has worked with more than 30 victims of modern-day slavery who are now in employment and able to rebuild their lives.
Of course, we all have a part to play. As consumers, we have a duty to prevent exploitation by realising that if something looks like a ridiculous bargain, somewhere around the world someone has been exploited. We must step up and be accountable, empower those vulnerable to slavery, promote access to decent work and support trade unions. I also encourage anyone watching who feels they have seen or heard something to use the modern-day slavery helpline if needs be. The most vulnerable are relying on us.
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I take a particular interest in this topic because the police lead of the modern slavery taskforce is based in Exmouth in Devon, paid for from the police transformation fund. I commend the work it is doing, which I have been to see, to try to gather data and best practice and to share that. All credit to the Government for setting it up.
I have a couple of broader points. Modern-day slavery is very different from the old days of individuals in chains. It is less visible and tends to be psychology first—break the spirit and then the body. However, while everyone would say that slavery is a bad thing, people do not believe that it is happening in this country. There is a big challenge in getting the Great British public to accept that it is here; they cannot keep saying that it is not. Perhaps we need a Jamie Oliver to champion this cause.
The public have no idea what to look for. We have police guidance about looking for drawn curtains, but frankly if I were to knock on the door of every house in my constituency with drawn curtains, that would be quite a number. We need to do better. The reporting mechanisms do not include how charities and others, who are often more likely to come into contact with such individuals, can have a voice. That is an area to look at.
To get this right, we need clarity on what the Modern Slavery Act covers, because some economic crimes are better dealt with under employment and tax legislation, and other things are better dealt with under domestic legislation.
Businesses must recognise that there is a brand issue. Philips has been phenomenal in what it has done to unearth modern-day slavery issues. There are many programmes to help, but only the willing come forward, so more must be done to ensure that that changes.
We must move towards a victim-focused and less crime-focused approach, with not just the police and immigration authorities but others getting involved. Good job so far, Government, but there is more work to be done.
Darren Jones (Bristol North West) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing this important debate and for introducing another six tests to remember. I support every single one of them.
I will make a very short speech—not least because I have only two minutes—about the unintended priority that this became as a consequence of being the new MP for Bristol North West. I grew up and have lived in my constituency for most of my life, but I never knew that modern slavery was taking place on my doorstep; it was not until I was elected that I came face to face with it, both through constituents in my surgeries and as a result of raids in Bristol thanks to the excellent work of Avon and Somerset police. I now understand about Bristol’s excellent history with Unseen, which provides the national modern slavery helpline, which was established and is based in Bristol.
TISCreport, which I have already mentioned, is looking at supply chains’ compliance with the Modern Slavery Act. I should add that even though I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central that the Home Office should have a statutory responsibility to ensure that data is used properly, that does not mean that it cannot work with non-governmental bodies to ensure it is done in the best possible way.
In my final minute, let me say that this is not just a domestic issue but an international one. We in the United Kingdom have something to be proud of in our work at home as well as abroad. I had the pleasure of being in Nairobi for 36 hours with the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association during the summer recess, where I saw at first hand the impact that British money is having on the ground in Kenya not only in aid but in security. British police officers were working with Kenyan police officers to massively increase the enforcement potential in investigation on the ground, although interestingly there was a lack of resourcing for victim support—something that was pledged to change as a consequence of the CPA organising meetings between non-governmental organisations and Kenyan politicians.
My one question for the Minister—I am sorry to be the one to introduce the Brexit word—is whether the projects on the ground in Kenya and other countries that are co-funded by the European Union and the United Kingdom will continue to be funded in a no-deal scenario.
Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing this debate. I am extremely grateful to take part in it.
I was present in the 2015 Parliament, and I can attest to the Modern Slavery Act being a great leap forward, but it was an Act with a hole at the centre. I understand why Ministers at that time made the judgment they did, but achieving the Government’s ambition will be impossible unless we tackle the demand driving sex trafficking in our country, a form of modern slavery that almost exclusively targets women. As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) and I can attest, in Bedfordshire alone 53% of modern-day slavery cases over the past four years have been about sexual exploitation. The majority of women who are put through the national referral mechanism are trafficked into this country for sex.
I chair the all-party parliamentary group on prostitution and the global sex trade. In our most recent report we demonstrated just how prolifically and how often women, mostly from eastern Europe, are trafficked around the UK, in a network of properties, in a revolving door of sexual exploitation organised by gangs to evade police detection. We talked about that in a previous debate. In that context, it is really difficult to understand why the review does not specifically target that point—perhaps the Minister can say something about that.
We know what we need to do: we need to support victims properly; criminal sanctions for soliciting on the street should be removed, to support women subject to street-based sexual exploitation in seeking help and exiting it; and demand needs to be tackled by making paying for sex a criminal offence in England and Wales. We should also target businesses that are profiting from the trade. Many countries around Europe have taken that approach, and we have seen the benefit. I hope that the Government will reflect on that as the review goes forward.
Anneliese Dodds (Oxford East) (Lab/Co-op)
I would like to endorse pretty much everything that everyone has said, but particularly the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I will not repeat anything he said, but I will make three quick points.
First, we need to be aware that investigating modern slavery is enormously resource-intensive for police forces. We have heard reference to the entirely appropriate use of resources in relation to the disgusting county lines phenomenon, which sadly affects my city of Oxford, as well as many other places. We had a large trial associated with modern slavery in Oxford, Operation Rague, but the processes needed to build up the right evidence for trials involve intensive and expensive use of police resources. We need to acknowledge that, particularly in the context of such significant cuts to policing. In that regard, we also need sustainable funding for innovations such as the independent trauma advisory service, commissioned by Thames Valley police and operating in Oxford and Reading. It is working well but needs to put on a sustainable footing.
Second, we need to spread examples of good practice more widely. Sadly, my city had to learn about some of the problems the hard way. After Operation Bullfinch we learned quickly that agencies had not worked together in the way that they should have done to protect vulnerable people. That has led to the hotel watch scheme in Oxford and extensive training for city council officers. Other places should not have to go through that in order to learn from the experience.
Lastly, we need to acknowledge that private sector reporting is good for the companies that engage in it. The Business and Human Rights Resource Centre has shown that investors want this information and companies such as Marks & Spencer have shown that reporting is good for them and their customer base—people want to know about it. We need to make sure that the public sector is complying too, for example in its uniform suppliers.
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Order. We have managed to get all the Back Benchers in. I have put a squeeze on the Front Benchers’ contributions, so I would be grateful if they were all mindful of that.
Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) for securing the debate. It is a timely opportunity to start contributing to the welcome review that the Government have announced. I congratulate all hon. Members for covering so much ground in so little time—I will try to do a little bit of justice to the debate.
I pay tribute to the work of the all-party parliamentary group. It is not just the chairs who have incredible expertise and commitment. At the few meetings that I have attended all the members have contributed fantastically, as has been illustrated by hon. Members’ speeches. It is also good to see that the Minister and officials are engaging. I think everyone is genuinely committed to doing their best to try to tackle this horrendous issue. Hon. Members have, quite rightly, paid tribute to the huge range of individuals and institutions that are doing tremendous work on this issue. We are dealing with horrible offences, as the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) eloquently and powerfully set out.
The question we have tried to cover is how we can improve some of our response. The first issue raised was support for victims. There have been calls to put support on a statutory footing, as has happened in equivalent legislation in Northern Ireland and Scotland. The Government here may now want to do that. We have also talked about extending of the period for which support is in place to 45 days. After consultation with victims and NGOs in Scotland, the Government there have extended the period from 45 days to 90 days. We have to be evidence-led, and it may well be in due course that that is shown to be insufficient—the Government here may want to look at that as well.
That brings us on to the immigration rules. I used to be an immigration solicitor. I have to say, I find it incredibly difficult to understand what the status of victims is after they have been through the national referral mechanism. There is definitely a need for clarity and simplicity. I agree with the recommendation of the Work and Pensions Committee of an automatic period of leave, which could be for up to a year.
A number of hon. Members raised issues about training and the resourcing of frontline staff who will encounter victims of modern slavery. We heard about the police, and we have had reports from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary as well as the Haughey review. There is a lot of work to do around sharing best practice from forces that do a very good job, such as Greater Manchester police. Some forces are doing it well, but can we expand that work? Other hon. Members mentioned local authorities and the health service as well.
Finally, there are a couple of issues that I will just mention in passing. We need to look again at the stage at which victims of modern slavery are entitled to legal aid, because they have big decisions to make before they have access to important legal advice. Finally, one or two hon. Members touched on Brexit. We could have a whole separate debate on the implications of Brexit for ethical trade, justice and home affairs co-operation and all sorts of other things, but I will leave it to the two other Front Benchers to expand on some of those points.
Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)
I will be really brief. I apologise to my staff, who spent hours writing my speech. I would rather the Minister actually responded to some of the issues.
I congratulate everyone who has spoken today. All I would say to the Minister is that we have heard the passion and concerns throughout the debate from right across the House, and the numerous briefings that we have all received are testament to the gravity of this dreadful situation. I urge the Minister to reflect on today’s debate, consider the depth of feelings and the emotions, listen to the concerns, make the appropriate safety net, and offer support for those who are not a commodity to be bought, sold and traded, but are human beings. We owe them the respect and dignity of ensuring that we provide for them.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms McDonagh. Perhaps this is the new model for how we should do business in this House—we have had incisive and effective speeches in two minutes.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I thank him and all the members of the all-party parliamentary group who are here today, as well as those who are not with us but are dedicated in their wish to help us all tackle this terrible crime. I also pay tribute to the Bishop of Derby, who retired in the summer, as mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), and thank him very much for all the work that he has done on this important cause, not just in recent years but when the Bill was taken through the House. I am told that there is an application for a Backbench Business Committee debate on this subject. The Committee has not yet confirmed that there will be a debate, but I suspect after today that there will be. I do not want to prejudge the Committee, but I think the House has shown how important it views this issue as being.
I hope the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central and other colleagues will forgive me if I do not manage to answer every point in the time I have, because I want to leave time at the end for him to sum up. If I have not responded to some points, I will of course write to him and place a copy in the Library.
We have heard today the cross-party understanding in the House of the horrors presented by modern slavery. This terrible crime can be committed in various ways, yet every time we are told of another case of slavery I am surprised by the range of offences and the ability of human beings to be evil to one another. We saw the case this week of the gentleman who was found in Cumbria. It is beyond my comprehension, and everyone else’s, I am sure, how that person could have been treated in that way.
The Government are really proud of our introducing the Modern Slavery Act 2015, with the consent of Parliament. We are determined to ensure that that legislation remains world-leading in the face of the evolving threat, which is why we have commissioned an independent review of the Act to examine what is working well and what more can be done to improve its implementation. I am extremely grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and Baroness Butler-Sloss for leading that work.
On the support that we give victims, I hope hon. Members will forgive me for taking this opportunity to announce that the independent child trafficking advocate service will be extended to children in the west midlands next week, on Anti-slavery Day. These advocates provide invaluable specialist support to child victims of modern slavery, and new regional co-ordinators will help local areas to identify and support UK victims. That will be followed by a further roll-out in the east midlands in January and in the London borough of Croydon in April, meaning that advocates will be available in one third of all local authorities in England and Wales.
Next week, I will launch the UK’s day of action for the AMINA project, which aims to safeguard children from being trafficked across European borders. The project, in partnership with End Child Prostitution and Trafficking UK and Missing Children Europe, is a joint initiative between law enforcement, civil society and Government, and brings together agencies from across six countries to keep safe children on the move.
We continue to make significant progress in reforming the national referral mechanism, about which colleagues have expressed concerns today and in the past. The reforms will make a tangible difference to the experience of victims. We are already working with six local authorities to test ways to improve the pathways from central support into local communities, increasing victims’ resilience to future exploitation.
Victims get a minimum of 45 days of assistance before a conclusive grounds decision. The extended move-on period after a conclusive grounds decision—from 14 days to 45 days—will begin in early 2019. By April 2019, the new expert caseworking unit will manage all NRM cases, with independent multi-agency assurance panels reviewing its negative conclusive grounds decisions, and a new digital referral and caseworking system will underpin the improved decision-making process to make it easier for those who work on the frontline.
Andrew Selous
I welcome the fact that child advocates are coming to some areas of the country, but I find it curious that the Government seem to roll out a range of public services in only some areas of the country. We should evaluate the roll-out and, if it is worth doing, we should do it everywhere.
Victoria Atkins
My hon. Friend knows the Government’s commitment to this issue. The new advocates will focus on UK victims because, as we have tested the ground with these schemes, we have discovered that the needs of children trafficked into the UK—from Vietnam, for example—are different from those of children trafficked within the UK and who are already UK citizens. The pilots in those three areas are aimed at seeing whether we can improve the system for children who are not from the United Kingdom while also helping children who are. That is particularly relevant with the development of county lines and children being used within those gangs, which has been referred to today.
Finally on the NRM, the new victim care contract will come into effect in April 2020. It will include additional support, such as places of safety in advance of entering the NRM for those removed directly from situations of exploitation by law enforcement, as well as drop-in centres for victims for up to six months after they have left the NRM, because we understand that people need time to make the important decisions on how they want to be treated.
The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central rightly raised transparency in supply chains, on which we have world-leading legislation. I recently chaired a meeting of the business against slavery forum, which draws together chief executives of some of the world’s largest employers and organisations. We discussed what they are doing, what more can be done across business and how the Government can help with that. The forum includes organisations such as the Co-op, HSBC, Sky, Unilever, Vodafone, WPP, Barclays, BT, Associated British Foods and others, and there is real enthusiasm and energy in that group to help the UK tackle modern slavery.
However, too many businesses still fail to meet their basic legal obligation to publish transparency statements, or have shown that they are not taking serious action to tackle modern slavery. The Home Office will therefore over the next month write directly to the chief executives of 18,000 businesses considered to be in scope of the obligation. Those that persist in flouting their obligations can expect to face tougher consequences. The Government are also committed to tackling modern slavery in our own procurement. We are developing tools and guidance for contracting authorities in the public sector to help buyers mitigate risks of modern slavery and to take action where modern slavery is identified.
Law enforcement is a vital part of this picture. We want to successfully investigate and prosecute those who ensnare human beings in their gangs or slavery networks. We have invested £8.5 million to transform the police response through the modern slavery police transformation unit. That unit has established the intelligence base to target perpetrators and has developed bespoke training for frontline and senior detectives.
We are seeing encouraging results, with more than 950 live investigations currently under way, which, to put it into context, is up from 188 in 2016. There have been some very good convictions recently, as has been referred to, including last week the first conviction under modern slavery legislation of a county lines exploitation gang involving children. We want the message to be loud and clear: if a criminal gang leader exploits children in that way, they are guilty of grooming and should suffer the social stigma that that conveys.
Anne Marie Morris
Will the Minister consider extending the transformation funding to the Exmouth unit, which does such excellent work but which I suspect will not have finished doing what is needed by the end of its current grant?
Victoria Atkins
I will write to my hon. Friend on that. She will appreciate that the workings of the police transformation fund certainly cannot be explained in just two minutes.
I will move on to the international picture. The Prime Minister launched the global call to action to end modern slavery at last year’s UN General Assembly, with more than 80 countries now endorsing that pledge. It is an extraordinary, worldwide commitment that shows that those countries are determined to join us in tackling this terrible crime. We are supporting our international efforts with more than £200 million of UK aid, and we work closely with the countries from which the highest number of victims are trafficked to the UK. Later this week I will meet the Albanian Minister for human trafficking to build on our co-operation and to agree how we can continue to work together to tackle this abhorrent crime.
To answers the questions asked of me, first, Mr Hyland always struck me as being very independent as our Independent Anti-slavery Commissioner; I am always amused when it is suggested that he was not. Our recruitment of his successor is ongoing, and we are obviously keen to get the right person for the job as quickly as possible.
I am conscious of time, so if the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central will forgive me, I will write to him on the other points. I thank him for securing this important debate, and I very much hope that we will have the chance to debate this issue again soon in another Chamber.
Siobhain McDonagh (in the Chair)
Gareth Snell has about 30 seconds to wind up the debate.
Gareth Snell
I am good at winding up, Ms McDonagh. I thank the Minister for announcing that she will write to those 18,000 people. That is a good development, so far as I am concerned. I will write to her to try to pin her down slightly more on the early 2019 date; as we know, this Government think that autumn goes up to Christmas eve.
The appetite is there and the need is clear. The only thing holding us back is our political will. By our collective efforts, we can make a real difference in tackling modern slavery, particularly during this month.
Written Statements
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Business Update
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
Last week I published a Call for Evidence seeking views on the extent and impact of late payment and measures to go further in tackling the issue. This follows the commitment made by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in his 2018 spring statement that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy would lead on a call for evidence to ‘eliminate the continuing scourge of late payments’.
Since 2012, the overall level of late payment debt owed to SMEs has fallen substantially, to £14.2 billion last year, down from £30.3 billion five years ago according to BACS, the payment service provider. While the halving of late payment debt is welcome, I am determined to see this reduce still further.
Alongside this publication, I announced that the Government would take immediate action to tackle late payment, by introducing the following measures:
A new, tough and transparent compliance regime to underpin the prompt payment Code. The Small Business Commissioner will join the code’s compliance board to provide independence from industry and the board will report on all cases of signatories being removed from the Code. Further reform to the Code will be considered through the call for evidence, including whether the Small Business Commissioner should have a greater role in its Administration.
The Call for Evidence will also consider the best way to ensure all companies have responsible payment practices in their supply chains, including whether all company boards should give one of their non-executive directors responsibilities for prompt payment.
The Call for Evidence will be open until 29 November and I encourage businesses of all sizes to respond; I want to understand the impacts, experiences and reasoning’s for particular payment practices and views on what more can be done to enhance the payments process.
I will be depositing copies of the Call for Evidence document in the Libraries of both Houses.
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Labour Market Update
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Greg Clark)
I am writing to inform the House that over conference recess I announced the Government’s intention to: legislate to ban employers from retaining tips earned by their staff; consider creating a duty for employers to advertise all jobs as flexible unless there is a good business reason not to; and to consult on whether large employers (those with 250 or more employees) should be required to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
Tipping
The Government will introduce legislation to ban employers from making deductions from tips, ensuring tips go to the workers providing the service. While most employers act in good faith, in some sectors evidence points towards poor tipping practices, including excessive deductions being made from tips left in good faith by customers.
This legislation will give consumers reassurance that the tips they leave are going to the staff, as they intended. It follows a consultation which found a majority of respondents in favour of preventing any employer deductions from discretionary payments, except those required under tax law.
The Government will announce further details in due course, including measures to ensure employers are able to continue to distribute tips via independent and staff-run “tronc” systems.
Flexible working
The ability to work flexibly enables people—both men and women—to balance their work and home lives more effectively. Moreover, flexible working gives employers access to a wider talent pool and enables better matching of applicants and jobs. Employee engagement, performance and productivity are also improved.
However, flexible working is still relatively uncommon, which sometimes holds people back from requesting it. The Government would like it to be clearer from the outset whether flexible working is an option. Research indicates only 9.8% of quality job vacancies are advertised as open some kind of flexible working, yet many more are likely to be.
The Government want employers to consider whether a job can be done flexibly, and to make that clear when advertising. There are many good reasons why a job might not be suitable for flexible working, but where it is, signalling this at the outset will encourage interest from a wider range of candidates and enable both sides to take full advantage of the flexibility.
Transparency on parental leave and pay
Statutory entitlements to parental leave and pay enable mothers who want to return to work earlier to do so and enable more fathers and partners to be their child’s main carer where this is best for the family. Statutory entitlements are also important in closing the gender pay gap, by providing parents with more opportunities to remain in work and to progress their careers.
Many employers offer enhancements to the statutory entitlements, but surprisingly few publicise these policies. This means that job applicants have to ask specifically about these policies—which some may be reluctant to do.
Mandatory gender pay gap reporting, introduced in April 2017, already provides a clear incentive to large employers to review their policies and recruitment procedures and to publicise those that enable them to recruit and retain female talent. The Government want to accelerate that improvement by encouraging large employers to publish their parental leave and pay policies, and will consult on a proposal to require large employers to publish their parental leave and pay policies.
[HCWS977]
GOV.UK Verify Programme
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Oliver Dowden)
I want to update the House on the GOV.UK Verify programme, on the creation of a digital identity market, and the provision of a digital identity service to Government.
Since its inception, GOV.UK Verify has sought to create an effective standards based digital identity market in the UK. International examples point to the challenges in successfully creating a secure digital identity framework for the public and private sector. I am proud that the UK is regarded as a global leader in this space, and that the innovative assets and standards created by the GOV.UK Verify programme have been utilised by numerous international Governments.
GOV.UK Verify is now sufficiently mature to move to the next phase of its development. The private sector will take responsibility for broadening the usage and application of digital identity in the UK.
I can confirm that contracts have been signed with a number of private sector identity providers, for an 18 month period, and with capped expenditure. These commercial arrangements formalise the transition to a private sector led model.
The Government have an immediate and growing need for digital identity. As such, I am pleased to confirm that the GOV.UK Verify programme will continue providing a digital identity service to the public sector.
Poorly secured services are vulnerable to attack from cyber crime and other hostile activity. GOV.UK Verify enables citizens to securely prove that they are who they say they are to a high degree of confidence when transacting with Government online. It is a major enabler and a critical dependency for Government’s digital transformation.
The Government will continue to provide state backed assurance and standards to ensure there is trust and confidence in the emergent digital identity market. The Government expect that commercial organisations will create and reuse digital identities, and accelerate the creation of an interoperable digital identity market. This is therefore the last investment that the Government will provide to directly support the GOV.UK Verify programme. It will be the responsibility of the private sector to invest to ensure the delivery of this product beyond the above period.
The approach announced today ensures that GOV.UK Verify will continue to protect public sector digital services from cyber threats, including identity fraud, and other malicious activity. In addition, the contracts enable the private sector to develop affordable identity assurance services that will meet future private and public sector needs.
I am pleased that the Government can continue to support the creation of a digital identity market, and the work of the GOV.UK Verify programme.
[HCWS978]
Airborne Warning and Control System
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Stuart Andrew)
I am pleased to inform the House today that the Ministry of Defence (MOD) has begun discussions with Boeing about the potential for the E-7 Advanced Early Warning and Control “Wedgetail” aircraft to replace the current Sentry fleet.
Since the 2015 strategic defence and security review, the MOD has undertaken significant work to understand the best way to invest in and improve the RAF’s airborne warning and control capability. As part of that work, we have considered the defence requirement and rapidly evolving threat environment, conducted market analysis, and held discussions with our close allies, so we could fully understand the options available to us.
It has become increasingly apparent that an upgrade to the existing UK E-3 Sentry aircraft will not offer best value in meeting the UK’s capability requirement. As such, the E-7 Wedgetail, which has been proven on operations and is already in use by the Royal Australian Air Force, is likely to be the best option to provide “eyes in the sky” surveillance for UK forces.
The MOD is now taking forward single source discussions with Boeing. This does not, however, represent a final decision; any purchase will be subject to the MOD’S usual acquisition approval processes.
As discussions are still at a very early stage, it would not be appropriate to provide detailed information on the industrial and economic impact that a final procurement decision could have. The MOD understands, however, that Boeing is in discussions with a number of UK suppliers and is expecting to make significant use of the UK supply chain to undertake the conversion and through-life support of these UK aircraft.
The decision to begin single source engagement with Boeing has only been taken after a full consideration of potential options in the market, balanced with a pressing capability need. While the UK remains committed to the principle of open competition to fulfil defence requirements, in this instance, the potential procurement of E-7 represents the lowest risk and is likely to offer best value for money for the UK. It will also provide our armed forces with a highly-effective, world-leading capability.
[HCWS974]
Type 26 Frigates Base-Porting
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Defence (Gavin Williamson)
Today I am confirming our plans to base-port the Royal Navy’s Type 26 Frigates at HM Naval Base Devonport in Plymouth. This decision is judged to be in the best interests of the Service and to provide greater stability for Service Personnel and their families.
Navy Command and the Defence Equipment and Support organisation will continue to work closely with our industrial partners to ensure that the transition from the current anti-submarine Warfare Type 23 Frigates to the new class is effectively managed.
There has been much interest in this subject from hon. Members representing both Plymouth and Portsmouth who have spoken passionately in support of their respective bases becoming the home of the Type 26 Frigates. This decision should in no way be seen as a reduced commitment to Portsmouth; both naval bases will continue to support the Royal Navy, allowing the Service to continue to meet the tasks we ask in countering the threats we face and protecting the nation’s security.
[HCWS975]
EU Exit
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Dominic Raab)
As announced by the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union on 18 July 2018, the Government are publishing a series of technical notices during August and September. On Thursday 23 August, we published 25 of these notices, and on Thursday 13 September, we published a further 28. During parliamentary recess on Monday 24 September, we published a further 24 technical notices. These notices are designed to inform people, businesses and stakeholders about steps they may need to take in the event of a no-deal scenario.
Notices were published on the following areas:
Registration of veterinary medicines
Regulation of veterinary medicines
Accessing animal medicine IT systems
Exporting animals and animal products
Importing animals and animal products
Flights to and from the UK
Aviation safety
Aviation security
Trade marks and designs
Patents
Copyright
Exhaustion of intellectual property rights
European Territorial Cooperation funding
Generating low-carbon electricity
Regulating chemicals (REACH)
Manufacturing and marketing fertilisers
Producing and labelling food
Importing and exporting plants
Taking your pet abroad
Operating bus or coach services abroad
Commercial road haulage in the EU
Buying and selling timber
Vehicle insurance
Geographical Indicators
Notices are being published on gov.uk. These can be found at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/how-to-prepare-if-the-uk-leaves-the-eu-with-no-deal.
Copies of notices have also been placed in the Libraries of both Houses to ensure all Members have access, and we will continue to ensure that technical notices are made available to Members.
[HCWS970]
General Affairs Council, 18 September 2018
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union (Mr Robin Walker)
Lord Callanan, Minister of State for Exiting the European Union, has made the following statement:
I represented the UK at the General Affairs Council (GAC) meeting on 18 September in Brussels. A provisional report of the meeting and the conclusions adopted can be found on the Council of the European Union’s website at:
http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/meetings/gac/2018/09/18.
Multiannual financial framework (MFF) 2021-27
The presidency provided Ministers with an update on the Commission’s proposal on the MFF. Ministers discussed the extent to which EU policy priorities and the allocation of funds to different policy areas were reflected in the MFF proposal. The Commission reiterated its intention to reach consensus on the proposals ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections. I did not intervene in the discussion on the basis that, while the UK had an interest in participation in some programmes, it was for other member states to discuss and agree the overall priorities and funds allocations for the next MFF.
Presentation of the priorities of the Austrian presidency
The presidency indicated that it intended to prioritise managing migration, removing overregulation in the digital single market and creating stability in the western Balkans.
Legislative programming
The Council discussed the letter of intent issued by the Commission on 12 September which set out its legislative priorities for 2019. The Commission will consider member states’ views on the proposals as it finalises its work programme. The programme is expected to be published in October and will be discussed by Ministers at the General Affairs Council meeting on 12 November. The presidency also highlighted the need to complete important legislative files before the end of the current Commission President’s term in 2019. Ministers continued their discussion on legislative programming over a working lunch where I intervened to reiterate the UK’s support for policy areas, such as the digital single market, trade and external security, in which the UK is looking to build a new relationship with the EU following our exit.
Preparation of the October European Council on 18 October 2018
Ministers considered the annotated draft agenda for the October European Council. Leaders are expected to discuss migration and internal security. There were no interventions from member states on this agenda item.
Rule of law in Poland/article 7(1) TEU reasoned proposal
The Council held a second hearing under article 7(1) TEU on the rule of law in Poland. The Commission reiterated its concerns in this matter and presented the reasons behind its decision in July to start infringement proceedings against Poland in response to the lowering of the retirement age of Supreme Court judges from 70 to 65. In reply, Poland delivered a presentation on the evolution of its judicial reforms and argued its right to make changes which were consistent with the Polish constitution. The UK was among 16 member states which did not intervene in the hearing. The presidency indicated that Ministers would return to this matter at future Council meetings.
[HCWS973]
Clinical Waste Update
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
This statement is to update the House on an issue concerning clinical waste collection and disposal for hospitals and other public services.
On 31 July, the Environment Agency notified central Government of an issue concerning clinical waste collection and disposal for hospitals and other public services provided by the company, Healthcare Environmental Services (HES). In this instance, the primary concern was that too much waste was being held in a number of waste storage and treatment sites by a contractor, Healthcare Environment Services (HES). While the waste was stored securely, it was not being processed and disposed of within the correct regulatory timescales. At no point has there been an impact on public health or any delay to the ability of the NHS to carry out operations.
The Department of Health and Social Care, DEFRA, the Cabinet Office, NHS England, NHS Improvement and the Environment Agency have worked together to resolve these issues. From the outset, the Government’s priority have been to ensure measures were put in place so that trusts could continue operating as normal should there be any disruption to waste collection and disposal. This objective has been achieved. The Department of Health and Social Care has worked with the NHS to help trusts put these contingency plans in place. A major part of these contingency plans concerned contractual discussions with HES and other providers which were commercially sensitive.
Following the Environment Agency’s issuing of a partial closure to HES’s Normanton site, on 3 October the regulator, NHS Improvement, issued a letter to HES to advise them that they had concerns in respect of services provided to trusts. To give HES an opportunity to set out how it was complying with its legal and contractual obligations, NHSI gave HES 48 hours to provide evidence that they were operating within legal and contractual parameters and set out a number of threshold levels. NHSI concluded that HES failed to demonstrate that they were operating within their contractual limits. Consequently, 15 NHS trusts served termination notices to HES formally to terminate their contracts at 4 pm on Sunday 7 October. In parallel, the Department of Health and Social Care, the Cabinet Office, NHS Improvement and the affected trusts have negotiated a new contract with Mitie to step in and replace this service. This contract was enacted, following the termination of the contract with HES, and Mitie have been fully operational across all affected trust sites from Monday morning.
Throughout, the Government’s priority have been to ensure measures were put in in place so that NHS trusts can continue operating as normal. No gap in service provision has been reported and we are working to ensure that this remains the case.
The Environment Agency are taking enforcement action against HES to clear the excess waste from their sites and bring the company back into compliance with their permits. As part of this enforcement activity, the Environment Agency have partially suspended the company’s permit at their Normanton site. This will prevent HES from accepting any more incinerator-only waste, as the company focuses on clearing the backlog of waste on-site. The Environment Agency are also progressing with enforcement action at the other non-compliant sites. This includes following up the first enforcement notice for the HES Newcastle site. If the site does not become compliant, the likely next stage is a partial suspension to prevent the acceptance of incinerator-only waste at Newcastle. It is the company’s responsibility to clear its sites and operate legally.
I am updating the House on this situation now, given that new contracts have been signed following the conclusion of the commercially sensitive process. I can confirm that NHS services continue to operate as normal. We are ensuring that there are contingency plans in place in case of any disruption, and that there is absolutely no risk to the health of patients or the wider public. The Government are working with the Environment Agency and NHS to ensure lessons are learnt, and we are reviewing how contracts will be awarded in the future.
[HCWS972]
Building Safety Update
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)
My Department published a consultation earlier this year on a proposal to introduce a ban on the use of combustible materials in the external walls of high-rise residential buildings.
I would like to update the House to confirm that the Government will take forward this ban for all new buildings over 18 metres that contain flats, as well as new hospitals, residential care premises, residential schools and student accommodation above 18 metres.
This ban will be delivered through changes to building regulations and will limit materials available to products achieving a European classification of Class A1 or A2. The Government will publish the consultation outcome and ensure the regulations are brought forward as soon as possible later this autumn.
[HCWS976]
House of Lords
PC Palmer Inquest
The Lord Speaker (Lord Fowler)
My Lords, I would like to offer a few words following the recent inquest hearing for PC Keith Palmer after the terrorist attack on Parliament in March last year. PC Palmer died ensuring the safety of Members of both Houses, the staff who work here and the members of the public on the estate at the time. He ran towards danger to keep each of us safe. The events of that day shocked and saddened the whole country. Our thoughts and prayers are with the family, friends and colleagues of PC Palmer and those who lost their lives on Westminster Bridge.
We need to take all possible action to prevent a similar tragedy in future. Carriage Gates are now kept closed, and opened only to allow vehicles in or out. The Parliamentary Security Department and the Metropolitan Police will continue to work hard to protect us from danger, but our co-operation is required. In that light, I encourage all Members to wear their security pass when on the estate. We should remember that security in Westminster is everyone’s responsibility.
National Accident Prevention Strategy
Lord Jordan
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to implement the forthcoming National Accident Prevention Strategy.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, the Government look forward to the publication of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ National Accident Prevention Strategy and will consider the report carefully when it is published. We are pleased that RoSPA has worked with a range of experts in developing the strategy, including Public Health England on the evidence. The Government remain committed to promoting action to reduce accidents and are pleased to see that the report recognises the progress that has been made.
Lord Jordan (Lab)
I declare an interest as deputy president of RoSPA and thank the Minister for his reply. Deaths from accidents, overwhelmingly in the home, are at an unacceptable level and rising. There has been a 16% increase in such deaths between 2013 and 2017 in England and Wales, with an average of over 13,000 each year. Does the Minister agree that it is imperative that the National Accident Prevention Strategy being launched tomorrow is linked to the NHS 10-year plan? Does he also agree that to ensure the strategy’s success, it is vital that accident-related data collected by hospital emergency departments are made accessible to monitor trends and set priorities for preventive action?
The Earl of Courtown
I congratulate the noble Lord and RoSPA on all their good work in this important field. I will start where the noble Lord finished and refer to emergency unit data. Public Health England is working with NHS England and RoSPA to look at how we use the data from emergency datasets. This is a terribly important issue; we know where there are problems and we can act accordingly. Regarding the 10-year plan, no decisions have been made on how the additional funding recently announced by the Government will be distributed across the NHS. That important issue costs the taxpayer an incredible amount of money, which will be taken into account.
Baroness Jolly (LD)
My Lords, through their public health function, local authorities have responsibility for accident prevention, and any accidents should show in their annual joint strategic needs assessments. How much money does Public Health England earmark annually for accident prevention and how much of that money reaches local authorities?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, I cannot answer the noble Baroness in detail, but as far as the funding of Public Health England, which drives this policy, is concerned, local authorities will receive more than £16 billion for public health over the spending review period to invest in public health services to improve the health of the local population, as the noble Baroness is aware. One must not forget the world-leading national immunisation screening programmes, ring-fenced funding of more than £1.2 billion, as well as the world’s first national diabetes prevention programme. I will write to the noble Baroness with any further information I can give her.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, following on from the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, now that the Prime Minister has announced the end of austerity, would the noble Earl care to inform the House when the cuts to the public health budget will be restored—and more than restored—so that the preventive work required to cut the number of deaths and injuries from accidents can take place?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, as I told the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, the targeting of the additional funding for the NHS is under review. This will continue and it will be announced in due course where this money will be spent.
Lord McKenzie of Luton (Lab)
My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. We know that the most vulnerable to accidental injury are the youngest in society, the oldest and the poorest. Although we have seen significant reductions in injury in workplaces and on the roads, that has not been mirrored in leisure activity and in the home. How does the Minister account for that difference in outcomes?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, as the noble Lord said, there are areas where there have been improvements in the figures. Road traffic incidents where people have been severely injured or have, sadly, died have reduced over the years. In addition, for the over-65s, there has been a marked reduction in hip replacements, which are often a result of falls. The whole point of Public Health England in this area of data accumulation is to find out where there are variations in injuries and where work can be targeted at the areas where it is needed.
Lord Turnberg (Lab)
My Lords, may I express a personal interest? Last week I tripped on a raised paving stone, breaking my radius and smashing my face. I am sorry to bring that to your Lordships’ attention, but it struck me that raised paving stones are not uncommon and that people trip every day. Local public services need to get on with repairing the roads.
The Earl of Courtown
I sympathise with the noble Lord: four years ago I fell off a ladder while cutting my hedge and ended up in resus with rather a nasty headache. He is quite right—if you look at the pavements around towns and villages there are many trip hazards. Work should be done to improve them.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)
My Lords, I take the noble Earl back to his comment that the Government were now considering how to allocate the additional funds for the NHS in light of the announcement this summer. Will he confirm that public health funding through local government has been expressly excluded from that increase in funding, along with education programmes? Can he tell me why?
The Earl of Courtown
The noble Lord knows a great deal more about this subject than I do: I will have to write to him with that information.
UN: Global Goals for Sustainable Development
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will publish their plans for the United Kingdom Voluntary National Review on the United Nations Global Goals for Sustainable Development, due to be presented to the United Nations in September 2019.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, the UK will present its voluntary national review of progress towards the global goals at the UN in July 2019. Preparations are under way. The Government are committed to an inclusive process, to produce a strong voluntary national review. Yesterday, the Government launched a website, www.gov.uk/sustainabledevelopmentgoals, setting out our plans and asking for input from people and organisations across the UK.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that Answer and look forward to contributing to that consultation. One key element of the sustainable development goals, which was missing from the millennium development goals, is the commitment to take more action on disaster resilience. In the last two weeks we have seen the impact that a natural disaster, such as an extreme weather event, can have on development in Indonesia, with the recent tsunami and earthquake. Will the Government ensure that, while it is important that we send aid to Indonesia, we are also acting internationally on disaster resilience to ensure that countries such as Indonesia, which face these extreme weather events regularly, are better able to prepare for, and therefore pre-empt, some of the impacts?
Lord Bates
I can certainly do that and I pay tribute to the work the noble Lord has done over many years in this area, as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sustainable Development Goals. He is right that we have responded generously, as is usual with the UK, via the Disasters Emergency Committee appeal, to the situation in Indonesia. The resilience element is something we have been very much aware of, not least because of the effect of the hurricanes in the Caribbean last year. Those led us to work very much on resilience and building back better in that area. I will certainly ensure that that remains a very strong part of our response in terms of the sustainable development goals.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
Of the countries that have already published their voluntary national reviews, there are some that stand out. Japan has established a new cabinet body, the SDGs Promotion Headquarters, headed by the Prime Minister and composed of all Ministers. In Germany, the Federal Chancellery is the lead agency for the national sustainable development strategy. Will the Minister confirm that delivery of the universal SDGs in the UK will have a similar high-level, cross-cutting commitment?
Lord Bates
I will, of course. David Cameron, when Prime Minister, was a member of the high-level panel that set up the sustainable development goals. The report will be presented to a high-level panel in July by the Secretary of State for International Development. Indeed, further to that, the Prime Minister will take part next September in the first stocktake of sustainable development goals at the UN General Assembly. That shows that commitment to the SDGs comes from right at the top of this Government and will continue to do so.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My noble friend referred to Hurricane Irma and our response, which was not quite up to scratch. In light of the review that was undertaken, I ask him to look again at the request that I and others, particularly in the Caribbean, have made that that review’s findings, even with people’s names removed, should now be published.
Lord Bates
I take issue a little with my noble friend. As he knows, we do not quite see the response that way. I think the response of the UK to those unprecedented two category 5 hurricanes in the Caribbean last year was incredibly effective, with the delivery of support, advice and resilience building. We have done a lot in that area and continue to keep it under review. My noble friend Lord Ahmad and I, and the Ministry of Defence, have put in a substantial amount of work to prepare for this year’s hurricane season, which I think will ensure that that resilience continues.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, the universal nature of the SDGs is obviously vital. It is about co-ordination in this country to ensure that we respond positively to them. I have a specific question about the consultation. The Government need to be more proactive about the involvement of civil society. The last time DfID undertook a review, there was no mention of trade unions, although they are critical for sustainability and keeping pressure on Governments. Will the Minister undertake that there will not just be a website inviting participation but that the Government will go out and actively seek involvement in the process?
Lord Bates
The noble Lord has raised this before. He is absolutely right that if the SDGs are to be met, they will not be met by Governments alone; they have to be met by civil society. That means business getting involved, as well as church groups, trade unions and charities. It is impossible to assess our progress towards the SDGs by looking simply at government entities in this country. Therefore, the trade unions will be a very important element in that. Individual departments will be reaching out to trade unions to ensure that their voices are heard. Proactively, however, there is also the opportunity through the website launched yesterday for trade unions and other parts of civil society to make sure that their contribution to meeting those goals is recognised in our voluntary national review.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, in view of all the bad news about climate change that we have been reading, are the Government making more effort and looking harder at sustainable development goal 13, which is about climate change? What action will they take?
Lord Bates
We have taken a number of pieces of action. Some of the action required of us is under the Climate Change Act, which was introduced in 2008 under the previous Labour Government. Of course, a major step forward was the Paris agreement. There will be a follow-up to that agreement. We have introduced international climate finance as a way of scaling up the amount of investment available for that very important area. The IPCC made those announcements in Seoul, South Korea, just a couple of days ago, which grabbed the headlines. They will be followed up at a special meeting in Katowice in Poland in December and we will play a full and leading part in that.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I am sure the Minister knows that yesterday’s UN report said that we would have to be carbon-neutral by 2040 to survive a lot of catastrophes, and something like $2.4 trillion would have to be spent on future-proofing ourselves. Do the Government really think that their plans are ambitious enough?
Lord Bates
The point with all the sustainable development goals is that they are absolutely essential but they are long-term strategic goals. That is why the Government have a 25-year environmental plan. They also require huge amounts of capital. The noble Baroness mentioned $2.4 trillion. The global aid packages which go around the world amount to $150 billion—and we are looking for $2.4 trillion. These are huge amounts. We cannot do that without scaling up investment from the private sector; individual Governments need to step up as well. We will continue to urge that course of action.
Recycling
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Neville-Rolfe
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of goods sorted for recycling by households in England eventually ends up in landfill.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, English local authorities collected 11.1 million tonnes of waste for recycling in 2016-17, the most recent year for which figures are available. Around 90% of this was from households. An estimated 1.3% of the 11.1 million tonnes ended up in landfill in this country. We will publish plans to increase recycling and boost the UK recycling industry in our resources and waste strategy later this year.
Baroness Neville-Rolfe (Con)
My Lords, I certainly welcome the second part of my noble friend’s reply. We must examine how we can progress these issues. I hope he agrees that we need to draw on expertise from all sources and provide greater consistency and clearer labelling to avoid recycling chaos. I find the figure he gave me encouraging—it is low—but does he agree that we should also be concerned about UK recycling ending up in landfill overseas, as recently reported in Poland and previously in China?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend that our ambition is to handle much more of our waste. We will set out proposals in precisely that area in our resources and waste strategy. Of course, across the European Union we and all other member states are working on the circular economy package. The aim is to have a 65% recycling rate by 2035. We in this country are ambitious and wish to meet or exceed those environmental benefits.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, is it not time that the Government introduced a national system for recycling? There is a huge problem with recycling bins being contaminated with items that are not appropriate to be recycled. A recent BBC report found that 97% of rejected recycling that had got mixed up was then sent to landfill. We know that part of the problem is that people do not understand what is appropriate to be put in the bins in their area. Surely the time has come to have a national scheme for this. It happens in other countries; if they manage to do it, why are the Government so slow to act on this? We have debated this issue time and time again. The solution seems clear and the Government just need to act.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, that is exactly what we wish to do. We wish to accelerate the consistency of what is recycled across England. Of course, we want to learn lessons from other countries where it has gone well, but we are clear that, for our environment and the world environment, we need to reuse and recycle very much more. Some local authorities have very high recycling rates while others have very low ones. We need to work on that because consistency is precisely what will be so important, along with increasing food waste collection.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, while I welcome very much the Government reminding us that landfill has gone down substantially, the real risk in waste disposal is that energy from waste will very soon exceed recycling. When we build energy-from-waste units, should we not make it mandatory to have recycling centres at the front end of that process so that we burn less and recycle more?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
The noble Lord hits upon the waste hierarchy and the importance of reuse and recycling before considering incineration as an energy source—and of course landfill is a very last resort. That is why our ambition is to have zero waste in landfill, and why we all need to work on the circular economy and getting recycling rates much higher across the piece.
Baroness Gardner of Parkes (Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware—I doubt that he will be—that many years ago when we were in opposition, I put this point to the Labour Minister at the time? I asked why we could not have a national scheme and the reply from the Labour Government, which I am sure noble Lords can check in Hansard, was “No—why would we want a nanny state?”. So could the Opposition now explain how and why they have come around to thinking the other way—which I tried to convince them of many years ago?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, on this side of the House we believe in localism; we believe that local communities and local authorities are the best people to look after these matters. But we think that there should be consistency, precisely to ensure that as much as possible can be recycled and that there is clarity for residents and businesses about what can be recycled. It is in all our interests that we reuse and recycle more; I do not believe that that symbolises the nanny state.
The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, there is a serious problem with the recycling or disposal of larger household items, such as carpets and furniture that have had flame-retardant chemicals put on them. Many of these chemicals have now been banned, but the furniture is still in use or needs to be disposed of. The current flame retardants contain organophosphates, and I know quite a lot about them. What advice is given to people who own these items of furniture and carpets about disposing safely—I repeat, safely—of their materials?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I think that I had better write to the noble Countess with the absolute requirements. Clearly, any hazardous waste of that sort needs to be disposed of responsibly. Bearing in mind the examples that she raises, I will write to her and put a copy in the Library.
Lord Boateng (Lab)
My Lords, is it not a fact that nanny is sometimes right? The gentle exhortations of the Minister are, I am sure, appreciated by local authorities—but when was the last time that his department issued a directive on this issue and what did it say?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, we are working in collaboration with local authorities because we think that that is the civilised way in which we will get the results that we are expecting. Indeed, that is why there are local authorities recycling 65%, which is a very high figure, and others that are not, and why we are working with local authorities, particularly in inner cities and towns, where this is proving a problem. We need to address that, which is why the resources and waste strategy, the clean growth strategy and the industrial strategy will all be engaged on getting a better situation.
Lord Bird (CB)
My Lords, is it possible to bring back the totter? Could we not have all those little microconsumers going around picking up goods that have some value, such as bottles and cans? Could we not get manufacturers to put a value on them so that we could bring that stuff back into the community and use it?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, what the noble Lord said is important. That is precisely why, subject to consultation, we will be introducing, for instance, a deposit return scheme in England which will be an important part of our collaboration with business to ensure that we reuse and recycle more.
NHS: Diabetes
Lord Morris of Aberavon
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that the National Health Service receives adequate funding to provide treatment to those with type 2 diabetes and to manage their increased risk of developing cancer.
The Earl of Courtown (Con)
My Lords, it is for local organisations to commission services to meet the healthcare needs of their populations, taking account of local and national priorities, including for diabetes and cancer. Funding has been made available through to 2020-21, and we expect it to be spent in line with the priorities set out in NHS England’s mandate, including for diabetes.
Lord Morris of Aberavon (Lab)
My Lords, I repeat my previous declaration of interest. Since diabetes has doubled in 20 years, making it the fastest growing modern health crisis, should not one Minister be put in charge and report annually to Parliament, coupled with a new fund to support greater adoption of new technologies? The Prime Minister proudly wore her flash monitoring device at the Mansion House; regrettably, the device is available on the NHS in only 63% of areas—others have to pay about £100 a month for the device. The hold-up of universal access is not with the clinicians but with the clinical commissioning groups. Will the Secretary of State take a personal interest in the development of this problem?
The Earl of Courtown
I thank the noble and learned Lord for that question. In particular he raised the issue of flash monitoring units. As the noble and learned Lord is aware, they are a very useful tool in the management and control of the problems people have with diabetes. Many CCGs perform very well, but some do not provide this service. They are being encouraged to do so.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, as the grandmother of six extremely greedy grandchildren, I know how difficult it sometimes is to get children to eat healthily, but surely it is best if no weight is gained in the first place. What advice is being given to young children and those who look after them about what is good healthy food and bad food?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very valid point. One in three children are now overweight or obese by the time they leave primary school. Early intervention is very important whether we are talking about cancer or about diabetes. At the moment, we are reviewing how to encourage children to be more active and are consulting on proposals to limit further the advertising of unhealthy food to children, to change the way unhealthy products are sold, to improve the information provided in restaurants and to ban the sale of energy drinks to children.
Baroness Symons of Vernham Dean (Lab)
My Lords, does the Minister recognise that some people suffer from forms of cancers that do not allow them to eat orally so they have to be intubated and the food with which they are intubated very often causes type 2 diabetes? Could more research not be done into forms of nourishment for people suffering from cancer who cannot eat orally?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, the noble Baroness makes a very good point. Diabetes UK has reported that if you have diabetes you can be more at risk of developing certain types of cancer, while some cancer treatments can affect diabetes and make it harder to control. In partnership with Macmillan, Diabetes UK has produced an information booklet for anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer and is living with diabetes. I am glad the noble Baroness raised this point and I will ensure that my noble friend the Minister is aware of it.
Lord Rennard (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister accept that funding for the kind of structured educational programmes that are necessary to support people with diabetes is actually threatened by the reductions in provision for public health, and that a survey by GPonline showed that 30% of practices are reducing provision for weight management courses? Is this not counterproductive to a strategy that should be based on prevention?
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, I agree with the noble Lord when he mentions prevention. He is right that, as I said earlier, early intervention prevents further problems later on in life. I should also add that we are spending another £5 million that will produce a number of specialist nurses in around 70 different hospitals throughout the country. As the noble Lord will also be aware, we have rolled out the national diabetes treatment and care programme, a countrywide programme that is the only one in the world.
Lord Robathan (Con)
My Lords, is this not a case where people in this country must take responsibility for their own health? The huge majority of type 2 diabetes cases, though not all, are caused by eating the wrong food, eating too much food, drinking too much and not taking exercise. Surely we must send out the message that each individual must take responsibility for him or herself.
The Earl of Courtown
My Lords, my noble friend makes a very good point. This is why I go back to the childhood obesity plan and reiterate that we have to intervene early to stop this problem gathering apace and introducing more people in the population suffering from diabetes. The plan is to educate children and their families on how they should eat. We have to look at what children are eating and discourage them from eating things that are harmful to them.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, the evidence coming from the DevOS study in Singapore shows that the incidence of gestational diabetes—diabetes during pregnancy—is about twice as common as is generally recognised in maternity units across the world. Can the Government do something better about screening for diabetes during pregnancy? That is a clear and important point. It may not be cancer but other diseases that follow later on as a result of that in the children.
The Earl of Courtown
I speak from family experience of gestational diabetes: my wife had gestational diabetes with our third child, and I might add that all three children’s blood sugar was in double figures when they were born. She had diabetes then and she is also being screened on a regular basis by the local practice—the sugar level in her blood is being measured on a regular basis. I take on board what the noble Lord says; he makes a very good point.
Jamal Khashoggi
Baroness Northover
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of media reports of the disappearance and possible murder of the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, we are very concerned by reports of the disappearance of Jamal Khashoggi. The Permanent Under-Secretary to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office conveyed this message to the ambassador yesterday, as did the Foreign Secretary earlier today. We are working urgently to establish the facts and co-operating with our international partners. We call on the Government of Saudi Arabia to support a thorough investigation into Mr Khashoggi’s disappearance and to share the outcome of that investigation.
Baroness Northover (LD)
I thank the Minister for her reply. The Government have rightly responded very strongly to Russia’s recent actions. Does she agree that the disappearance and possible murder of the Saudi journalist within the Saudi consulate in Turkey raises equally important issues? What assurances on critics’ freedom of expression and on the use of diplomatic premises are now being sought from the Saudis? What action will be taken if no satisfactory assurances are received?
Baroness Goldie
An attempt is still being made to ascertain the facts, and I would not want either to speculate or hypothesise without knowing those facts. Let me make it clear that we would be very concerned if the allegations were to be substantiated. I believe that violence against journalists worldwide is rising, and that is a grave threat to freedom of expression. If the media reports prove correct, we will certainly treat the incident seriously. I make it clear that friendships—we have an established friendship with Saudi Arabia—depend on shared values and respect for those values.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
It is a fact that it has taken four days for the Foreign Secretary to respond to this incident—unlike the other examples that the noble Baroness cited. We have seen action in Yemen from the Saudis, the roughing up and forced resignation of the Lebanese Prime Minister, the increased use of capital punishment and more laws repressing people in Saudi Arabia. It is precisely that repression and open interference in other countries’ affairs that makes this incident seem more likely. The Opposition condemn it absolutely, and I hope that the Minister will today, on behalf of the Government, condemn this outrageous act.
Baroness Goldie
I respect the passion exhibited by the noble Lord, but I repeat what I said to the noble Baroness: there is an investigation. We do not know the facts. We are anxious to establish them, and we are working with Turkey and the United States to try to ascertain them. We need to establish the facts and then determine how we should respond to the situation, whatever it may be.
Lord Green of Deddington (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Does the Minister agree that the changing nature of the Saudi regime is a matter of regret? Does she further agree that, given the economic, political and strategic importance of Saudi Arabia, we should tread gently in public and speak firmly in private?
Baroness Goldie
The noble Lord gives wise counsel. Saudi Arabia is the United Kingdom’s second largest trading partner in the Middle East. Indeed, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates together are the UK’s second biggest export market outside Europe, after the United States. Let me make it clear that it is that strong bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia which means that we can—and do—discuss a wide range of issues frankly and openly with it. I share the noble Lord’s view: these conversations are most effective when they are held privately.
Baroness Hussein-Ece (LD)
My Lords, the Minister said that there have been some discussions. Has there been any explanation why a man, Jamal Khashoggi, who had already expressed fear for his life and had been critical of the Saudi regime walked into an embassy and never came out? There is footage of him going in; no footage has been produced of him coming out. In fact, there are now reports that he went to the embassy in Washington for the papers he required because he wanted to get married, and he was directed to the embassy in Istanbul. Obviously, we do not have proof yet, but it seems that he was lured there. What robust discussion is taking place to say that it is simply unacceptable for a journalist to walk into an embassy and just not come out again?
Baroness Goldie
I repeat what I said: at the meeting this morning, the message was conveyed to the Saudi Arabian ambassador that we are very concerned about the reports—essentially, media reports—that we have heard. We have called on Saudi Arabia to support a thorough investigation. We need to find out what has happened. Saudi Arabia is obviously well placed to contribute to that investigation. We have also made it clear to Saudi Arabia not only that we want that investigation to be undertaken and that it must be robust and thorough, but that we want it to share the outcome. People understandably wish to know what has happened.
Lord Lamont of Lerwick (Con)
My Lords, is my noble friend aware that in addition to this case, a recent BBC documentary listed several possible examples of illegal rendition of people from Europe to Saudi Arabia by Saudi forces or elements? In addition to this case being investigated, as the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, has requested, could the allegations made in this BBC programme be considered? They too were extremely serious.
Baroness Goldie
The Government would be concerned about allegations of illegal renditions, and I have noted what my noble friend has said. I am sure the department will pay close attention to his remarks.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
My Lords, is the case building to question the whole issue of conveyance either through pouches or vehicles by diplomatic means, for whatever reason? Is there any suggestion that any state might be abusing the system whereby this whole regime might be looked at more carefully?
Baroness Goldie
The protocols and conventions surrounding the status of diplomatic presences in different countries are well established, and I think the noble Lord will be as well aware as anyone of what these conventions are. Clearly, if there were any suggestion that these conventions were being abused, that would be a very serious issue indeed. But I repeat: in relation to this case—the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover—we do need to ascertain the facts.
Act of Union Bill [HL]
Tuesday 9th October 2018
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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Rural Economy Committee
The Senior Deputy Speaker
That Baroness Hodgson of Abinger be appointed a member of the Select Committee in place of Baroness O’Cathain, resigned.
The Principal Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Boswell of Aynho) (Non-Afl)
My Lords, on behalf of the Senior Deputy Speaker, I beg to move the Motion standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill
Tuesday 9th October 2018
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, no Government take any pleasure in having to put before your Lordships’ House another counterterrorism Bill. Like its predecessors, this Bill is borne out of necessity. Regrettably, the threat to this country from terrorism is ever present. Indeed, the threat level has been at severe or higher for over four years, meaning that a terrorist attack is highly likely. The police and security services now assess that over the last two years we have seen an enduring shift in the threat, rather than simply a spike.
It is easy to reel off statistics. Seventeen Islamist or far-right terrorist plots have been thwarted since March 2017; as of June, there were some 3,000 subjects of interest known to the police and intelligence agencies, and 412 arrests for terrorism-related offences in 2017. But dry statistics can never bring home the pain and sorrow suffered by individual victims of terrorism. Over recent weeks, we have heard the harrowing testimony at the inquest into the deaths of the five victims of last year’s terrorist attack on Westminster Bridge and at the gates of this very building. In this and the four subsequent attacks in 2017, in Manchester, London Bridge, Finsbury Park and Parsons Green, a further 31 innocent victims lost their lives, and in total over 200 others were injured. The family and friends of those who lost their lives will have to live with this painful loss for the rest of their lives, while the victims who survive have to deal with the ongoing mental anguish and, in some cases, life-changing physical injuries.
As a Government, we must do all we can to prevent such tragedies happening again, although regrettably there can be no guarantee that every plot will be foiled. One way we can do this is to make sure that our counterterrorism legislation remains fit for purpose. Much of the current legislation dates back to Acts passed in 2000 or 2006. In the intervening years, the nature of the threat has evolved. We have seen new patterns of radicalisation, the widespread use of social media to spread hateful ideology, and the draw of the so-called caliphate in Syria. We have also seen more rapidly evolving plots using everyday items such as vehicles and knives as weapons, which although still deadly are less sophisticated and complex than the plots of previous years. This has led to a lowering of the barriers to entry and a decrease in the time taken to plan and prepare by those with murderous intent.
Against this evolving threat, it is only right that we should bring our counterterrorism legislation up to date so that our law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the necessary, but proportionate, powers to help counter the threat as it manifests itself today, and not the one they had to contend with nearly 20 years ago. The provisions in Part 1 are directed to this end. In reviewing existing legislation, we have listened carefully to our operational partners: the police, prosecutors and the intelligence services, but also the current and former Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation—I am pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, in his place. We have also listened and responded to the debates on these provisions during the passage of the Bill in the House of Commons.
The Bill closes a number of gaps in existing terrorism offences. Under Section 12 of the Terrorism Act 2000 it is already an offence deliberately to invite support for a proscribed terrorist organisation, whether expressly or by implication. However, there are demagogues who, without intending to encourage others to support such groups, or at least without the prosecution being able to prove such an intention, nevertheless recklessly choose to voice their own support, knowing full well that the effect of their words will be to do just that. It is right that the criminal law should bite in such cases.
The Bill also updates Section 13 of the 2000 Act which criminalises the display, in public places, of a flag or other emblem of a proscribed organisation in such a way, or in such circumstances, as to arouse a reasonable suspicion that the person is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation. The provision in Clause 2 makes it clear that the publication of an image of such a flag or emblem online, in circumstances which arouse that reasonable suspicion, comes within the ambit of Section 13. So, for example, a person would commit the offence if he or she posted on social media a picture of themselves taken in their bedroom and displaying a Daesh flag in the background, thereby making the image available to the public, and, if taking all the surrounding circumstances into account, such a display aroused a reasonable suspicion that he or she was a member or supporter of Daesh.
We are also strengthening the existing offence, in Section 58 of the 2000 Act, of collecting or possessing information likely to be of use to a terrorist. Here again, we need to ensure that the criminal law reflects how people now make use of the internet. If someone were to download a document containing information likely to be useful to a terrorist, it would be in their possession and they would therefore be committing the Section 58 offence. If, instead of downloading the document, they were to view it online or to stream a video or audio recording containing the information, without any record being made on their device, the offence would not apply. This cannot be right. This loophole is a clear illustration of how criminal law has not kept pace with the digital age. Clause 3 therefore provides that a person who views or otherwise accesses terrorist material online is within the ambit of the Section 58 offence. But it is not the intention here to criminalise a person who unintentionally views such material, so the clause provides that it is a defence for a person to show that they did not know, or had no reason to believe, that the material is likely to be useful to a person preparing or committing an act of terrorism.
This part of the Bill also helps us to respond more effectively to the threat posed by foreign terrorist fighters—an issue which I know is of great interest to my noble friend Lord Marlesford. We already have a number of powers to disrupt travel to conflict zones overseas but here, as elsewhere, we need to ensure that the coverage is as comprehensive as it should be. Accordingly, the Bill provides for a new offence of entering or remaining in a designated area overseas. The Home Secretary may make such a designation where he or she is satisfied that it is necessary to restrict UK nationals and residents from travelling to, or remaining in, the area for the purpose of protecting the public from risk of terrorism. Any regulations designating an area will be subject to the affirmative procedure; consequently, after they have been made and come into force, they will need to be debated and approved by both Houses if the designation is to remain in effect.
The designated area offence will be subject to a reasonable excuse defence. We are clear, for example, that the defence would apply to a person travelling to a designated area for the purpose of providing humanitarian aid or to carry out work as a journalist. This defence will operate in the same way as the existing reasonable excuse defences in the Terrorism Act 2000. Accordingly, once a defendant has raised the defence, the onus will be on the prosecution to disprove the defence to the criminal standard.
The Bill also seeks to tackle the phenomenon of foreign terrorist fighters by extending the reach of the UK courts. It is not for the law enforcement agencies in this country to police the world but, when someone has travelled from the UK and committed a terrorist offence abroad, it is right that they should be brought to justice if they return here. Many terrorist offences are already subject to extraterritorial jurisdiction. We are now extending the jurisdiction of the UK courts to cover further terrorism offences committed abroad, including activity that we have seen conducted by those who have joined Daesh, such as the dissemination of terrorist publications to individuals back in the UK and the possession of explosives for the purposes of an act of terrorism.
It is not enough that we prosecute and convict those who commit terrorist offences; we also need to ensure that the punishment properly reflects the seriousness of the crime and that our communities are protected by the courts having the scope to hand down appropriately lengthy sentences. New sentencing guidelines which came into force in April will go some way in this direction, but the Sentencing Council and the courts necessarily have to operate within the current maximum penalties set out by Parliament.
Having reviewed the maximum penalties for some terrorism offences, we are satisfied that they no longer adequately reflect the seriousness of the offending behaviour and the high level of harm that can be caused. Accordingly, the Bill increases to 15 years’ imprisonment the maximum penalty for four offences, namely: collecting terrorist information; eliciting, communicating or publishing information likely to be useful to a terrorist about a member of the Armed Forces; encouragement of terrorism; and dissemination of terrorist publications. In response to representations from Max Hill QC, the outgoing Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, we are also increasing to 10 years’ imprisonment the maximum penalty for the offence of failure to disclose information about acts of terrorism. As now, it will be for the courts to determine the appropriate sentence in each individual case.
In addition, we are bringing preparatory terrorism offences within the scope of the extended sentence regimes in England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Where an extended sentence is imposed by the court, the offender is not released automatically at the halfway point of the custodial term, and is instead only released ahead of the end of the custodial term when the independent Parole Board considers it safe to do so. They are then subject to an extended period on licence.
These changes to the sentencing regime will be further reinforced by a strengthening of the notification requirements, which can apply for up to 30 years following conviction. Registered terrorist offenders will be required to notify the police of a wider range of information, including banking and passport details and details of any vehicle they have use of, to enable the police to better manage the risk of reoffending.
As I said, the Government greatly value the work of the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, and we are fortunate to have in this House two former occupants of that office. I look forward to hearing the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and I hope that we will also be able to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Carlile, during the course of the Bill.
I am pleased that this part of the Bill gives effect to two recommendations made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, when he was the independent reviewer. First, it introduces a statutory bar on the admissibility in criminal trials of verbal admissions made during an examination at a port under Schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000. Secondly, it provides for the “detention clock” to be paused where a person arrested or detained under the Terrorism Act 2000 is taken to hospital for treatment. This brings the 2000 Act into line with the long-standing provisions in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act. It is right that the police should have the full time allowed under the law to question a suspect before they are released or charged.
Clause 19 is further evidence that this Government are receptive to reasoned arguments for changes to counterterrorism legislation. Noble Lords will recall that what is now the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 put the Prevent duty and Channel panels on to a statutory footing. I have no doubt that we will hear more about the Prevent programme during the debate today and subsequently, but for now I just pay tribute to the prescience of the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who argued back in 2015 that local authorities, as well as the police, should be able to refer to a Channel panel a person at risk of being drawn into terrorism. It might have taken us three years to take on board that suggestion but I hope that she can take some satisfaction from the fact that her proposal is now being given effect.
Finally on this part of the Bill, I want to mention the amendment to the Reinsurance (Acts of Terrorism) Act 1993 made by Clause 20. That Act enables the Government to extend an unlimited guarantee to the terrorism reinsurer, Pool Re. This in turn enables the insurance market to provide insurance to businesses for loss caused by damage to commercial property from terrorist attacks. The Bill will amend the 1993 Act to enable Pool Re to extend its business interruption cover to include losses from terrorist attacks that are not contingent on damage to commercial property.
The threats to our national security are not confined to terrorism; they also come from hostile state activity, and we have seen recent devastating evidence of this threat in our communities. In March, we saw the poisoning in Salisbury of Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey using a military-grade nerve agent. The Crown Prosecution Service has now charged two men for this attack, and the Government have concluded that they are officers in the Russian military intelligence service, the GRU. This was not a rogue operation. It was almost certainly approved outside the GRU at a senior level in the Russian state. The same two men are now the prime suspects in the case of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley.
The events in Salisbury are part of a pattern of behaviour by the Russian Government, and they are not alone in engaging in hostile activity that threatens the United Kingdom. Given this, the time has come to harden our defences against hostile state activity. As a first step, Part 2 of the Bill provides for a new power to stop, question, search and detain persons at ports, airports and the Northern Ireland border area to determine whether they are, or have been, engaged in hostile activity by or on behalf of a foreign state.
These provisions will serve to address a current gap in our ability to tackle the threat posed by hostile state actors and will mirror in many respects the existing powers to stop and question persons at the border for counterterrorism purposes. Indeed, this is another area where the Bill reflects a proposal made by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, in his previous role as independent reviewer. In his report on the terrorism Acts in 2015 and subsequently in evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, he argued for a power to determine whether a port user is engaged in national security threats such as espionage or proliferation.
No one wants their travel plans disrupted, or to be subjected to intrusive questioning as they enter or leave the country. As with existing border powers in the Terrorism Act, those afforded by Schedule 3 to the Bill will be subject to a number of checks and balances to ensure that they are not used in an arbitrary fashion, but are subject to rigorous independent oversight—in this case by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. The important safeguards on the face of the Bill will be augmented in a statutory code of practice, and I can give an undertaking to the House today to publish a draft of the Schedule 3 code of practice before we reach Part 2 of the Bill in Committee.
It is incumbent on the Government of the day to keep the people of this country safe and secure from the threats posed by terrorism and hostile state activity. As part of this, it is inevitable that from time to time we need to refresh our laws to ensure they remain up to date for present-day threats. Faced with the horrors of the five terrorist attacks last year, it is inevitable that such events can act as a catalyst for change. It is right, however, that your Lordships’ House should consider the provisions in this Bill dispassionately. Such individual tragedies should not cloud our judgment, but we must remain alive to the fact that the decisions we make as legislators have real world consequences. This Bill will help reduce the risk of tragedies similar to the ones we saw in London, Manchester, Salisbury and Amesbury from happening again, and on that basis, I commend this Bill to the House.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her explanation of the content and purpose of the Bill, and of the thinking behind the Government’s proposals. We too would like to take this opportunity to express our thanks to our security agencies and the police for the work undertaken to protect us from acts of terrorism. We are aware of the significant number of major acts of terrorism—potential and intended—that have been prevented. We also express our thanks to the staff of the emergency services, including hospital staff, who are called into action when incidents—perhaps one should say atrocities—occur. Our thoughts remain with the victims of those atrocities and their families. We accept the need for the Government to update counterterrorism legislation to reflect changing situations and circumstances as well as technological changes and developments.
We expressed our broad support for the Bill in the House of Commons, did not divide on it at Second Reading and supported it at Third Reading. We did, however, table substantial amendments, some of which led to alterations in the Government’s position and government amendments to the Bill, to address concerns we had raised, including those in respect of human rights, which cannot simply be brushed aside.
One feature of the passage of the Bill to date has been the Government laying down amendments of some import just prior to Report stage and Third Reading in the House of Commons. That did not suggest that counterterrorism and security legislation is always being considered and evaluated by the Government in quite the calm and measured way they would like us to believe, but in some areas is being rushed to meet deadlines—even though the events that have weighed most heavily on the Government’s mind in formulating the Bill have not all occurred within the last few weeks or months.
We have no objection to late amendments when the case for their wording and intent is clear. However, it is hardly satisfactory if such amendments are to a Bill that has been through the Commons without there having been time for proper consideration and debate in the other place about the necessity and—equally significantly—appropriateness of the wording of those late amendments. That is the situation we are in with the Bill. A new clause was laid by the Government, with a number of consequential amendments, just prior to Report. It provides for an offence under the Terrorism Act 2000 of entering or remaining in an area outside the United Kingdom that has been designated in regulations made by the Secretary of State. There was an exchange of views in the Commons about where the burden of proof lay in the light of the wording of that new clause, which states:
“It is a defence for a person charged with an offence under this section to prove that the person had a reasonable excuse for entering, or remaining in, the designated area”.
The Minister for Security and Economic Crime stated in the debate, on behalf of the Government, that,
“we have provided for a reasonable excuse defence. Once such a defence has been raised, the burden of proof, to the criminal standard, will rest with the prosecution to disprove the defence”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/18; col. 656.]
The Minister has, in effect, repeated that statement in her opening speech today. However, the wording of the Bill and the Minister’s statement appear to be in conflict. I say that not as a legal authority but as someone whose legal career began and ended with the apparently now steadily diminishing lay magistracy.
Will the Minister indicate why the Bill does not appear to say the same on burden of proof as was said by the Commons Minister when moving the new clause on Report in the Commons and again by the Minister here today? Will she also tell us, assuming that the Commons Minister’s statement is correct on burden of proof under the new clause, whether it will be sufficient for the prosecution to prove that the individual was not in reality engaged in a claimed valid activity for a reasonable excuse defence or whether the prosecution will also have to prove that the individual was also involved in a terrorist or terrorist-related activity, which I thought was something that the prosecution could already seek to prove under the existing law to secure a conviction?
I raise this point in the context of a further statement made on Report by the Minister for Security in the Commons that,
“breaching a travel ban and triggering the offence will provide the police and the Crown Prosecution Service with a further tool to investigate and prosecute those who return to the United Kingdom from designated areas, thereby protecting the public from wider harm”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/18; col. 656.]
Can the police and the Crown Prosecution Service not already investigate an individual returning to the UK from a potential future designated area if they have reasonable doubts as to the true reasons for their being in those areas or countries, or will it, under this Bill, be sufficient for imposing up to 10 years’ imprisonment to show that the individual concerned was not there for a claimed reasonable excuse defence activity or purpose?
The Government appear to have some reservations of their own about this late new clause, which they expect will lead to only a “few people” being prosecuted. In the Commons on Report, the Minister for Security said that,
“I recognise that we have introduced this measure into the Bill late, and I apologise for that. However, we are in the Commons, and the Bill will no doubt go to the other place, and I am happy to discuss further how we can clarify it and safeguard it and make sure that it is not abused as a system, and that the reasonable excuse issue is further explored. I think that is appropriate”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/18; col. 658.]
We will indeed need to look at the process, procedures and criteria against which the Government seek, by affirmative statutory instrument, to designate these areas, and consider the adequacy or otherwise of the safeguards for those with legitimate business in these designated areas, such as aid workers and journalists or those who went there without appreciating what they were getting involved in and came back disillusioned.
In the Commons, the Government were asked by John Woodcock MP if they had,
“an estimate of how many of those 800 Brits who we know went over to Raqqa during the recent conflict could have been prosecuted under this legislation, had it been on the statute book at the time”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/18; col. 658.]
The Minister for Security said that he would write to the Member with a specific number—will the Minister tell us what that figure is? I assume that the figure will also, by definition, be for those who could not be prosecuted under existing legislation. Will the Government also indicate how many designated areas or countries they anticipate there will be under the new clause? It looks as though there will be quite a few, since the Commons Minister, during his opening speech on Report, referred to Turkey, Syria, Iraq, “parts of Africa”, “parts of the Philippines” and,
“areas of conflict where there is a risk of terrorism”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/9/18; col. 656.]
A further government amendment on Report relates to the seizure of flags or other activities associated with a proscribed organisation, and would give the police the option of seizing such items on suspicion of an offence being committed under the Terrorism Act 2000 without having to make an arrest, subject to that course of action being needed to prevent the evidence for a potential subsequent prosecution being concealed, lost, altered or destroyed. Such a course of action could still have the effect of raising the temperature at a march or demonstration, even though that is what the provision is designed to avoid, and not least in Northern Ireland. We will need to consider how the proposed course of action might work out in practice.
Further government amendments on Report changed the Bill’s original provisions on the viewing of terrorist material online so that the provision applies to information that is accessed online rather than covering only information that is downloaded first. We will need to consider that issue further since the Bill now provides, instead of the much-criticised three clicks test, for a reasonable excuse defence if the person does not know and has no reason to believe that the information they are accessing is likely to be useful in connection with terrorism or terrorist-related activities. We will need to probe the position of those who might look at such material for legitimate and non-terrorist or terrorist-related intent, such as journalists or academics, or those who look at it inadvertently. The issue of proportionality has to be considered.
A further government amendment on Report increased from five to 10 years, as the Minister said, the maximum penalty for failing to disclose information about acts of terrorism. It would be helpful if the Minister could expand on the reasons that led the Government to believe that the original maximum penalty of five years should be increased to 10 years, apart from it being also the view of Max Hill QC.
Apart from legislation, a further aspect of the Government’s approach to addressing the threat of terrorism is the Prevent programme. It has been in operation for some time now and has been the subject of both positive and negative comments. On the latter point, there is some doubt about whether all sections of the community have confidence in the programme and whether its aims and objectives, which include diverting people from involvement in terrorism and terrorist activity and strengthening community cohesion are always being achieved. Some appear to regard Prevent as primarily an intelligence-gathering exercise.
There is also an issue about the impact on the Prevent programme and its ability to deliver its stated aims and objectives of the cuts in local government services, including those for younger people. As part of the counterterrorism strategy, there should be provision in the Bill for an independent statutory review of the Prevent programme to look at and evaluate the extent to which it is or is not achieving its objectives and the support that it has or does not have across the community, with a view to making changes and improvements to the programme where deemed necessary to enhance our ability to counter the threat and reality of terrorism. Counterterrorism, after all, is not just about creating new offences and fixing maximum penalties.
We will wish to pursue other matters during the passage of the Bill. The European arrest warrant is an important weapon in countering terrorism. Following the attacks in Salisbury and the identification of the two suspects, we have recently obtained a European arrest warrant and either already have or are about to issue an Interpol red notice. Yet the Government opposed an amendment on Report in the Commons that simply required them to adopt the continued participation of the UK in the European arrest warrant in relation to people suspected of terrorist offences as a negotiating objective in the withdrawal negotiations with the European Union.
On Report in the Commons, the Government, in response to the shadow Minister’s concerns in relation to border stops where there is no reasonable suspicion in relation to an individual said that they would look at the situation in Northern Ireland and accountability for the number of stops. That border represents 3% of the passenger numbers for the whole of the UK, but 18% of the stops. There has to be transparency in how the stop power is used—a power to stop, question and detain without reasonable suspicion exercised by officials. We do not want to create a situation that looks like something akin to a hard border on this aspect between the north and south. When do the Government intend to come back with the results of their further consideration on this point? Perhaps the Minister will say.
A further issue raised on Report by the shadow Minister concerned legal professional privacy and the provision in the Bill for an officer not only to watch someone receiving legal advice, which is not new, but to hear that legal advice being given. The shadow Minister suggested that to overcome the government concerns that have led to this provision, there should be a panel of lawyers regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society. The Minister for Security said that he would look at the proposal before the Bill’s introduction into this House. It would be helpful if the Minister could say what the Government’s position now is on this issue.
While we supported the Bill at Third Reading in the Commons, there are a number of outstanding issues that we flagged up on Report, many of which I have referred to, including the need to look in more detail in this House at the significant late amendments tabled by the Government just prior to Report, which could not receive the consideration they should have done in the Commons. We will wish to pursue these points during the passage of the Bill through this House; nevertheless, it would be helpful if the Minister could respond to the specific points and questions I have raised. Surely we all have an interest in ensuring that the Bill is balanced and proportionate, that its provisions are all necessary, and that it strengthens our hand in countering terrorism and terrorist activity while safeguarding human rights.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for the clear and helpful way in which she opened the debate on this very difficult subject—and indeed I agree with much of what the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, said, and I join with him and the noble Baroness in paying tribute to the work of the police and security services in combating terrorism. I also look forward to the maiden speeches of my long-standing friend the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and of the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie.
On these Benches we agree with the Government in acknowledging the need for strong legislation to counter terrorism and to protect the public, so we accept the principles underlying many of the measures in the Bill. However, the approach we take to this legislation, as to all counterterrorist legislation, is that we must balance the security imperatives to protect the public and to combat terrorism against the liberal imperative to safeguard our freedoms as citizens in a democratic society. We assess each of the measures proposed with the following questions in mind. First, what is the purpose of the measure and what is the mischief it seeks to address? Secondly, is the measure necessary to achieve that purpose? Thirdly, is the measure a proportionate response to the mischief, having regard to the restrictions on liberty that it entails, and in particular would a more limited response achieve the purpose in a more proportionate way? Fourthly, will the measure be effective in achieving its purpose?
I also suggest that we should approach these new powers having in mind that we may in the future have not a Government with genuine respect for liberty and democratic values but a Government who are prepared to ride roughshod over our freedoms as citizens. If the tests I set out are not met in the context of such a Government, the powers proposed should be opposed or limited by Parliament. In a number of areas we believe that these tests are not met in this Bill. Some measures may be capable of amendment while others, we believe, are irredeemably bad.
Clause 1, creating a broad offence of expressing support for terrorist organisations, is drawn in very wide terms. We share the concerns of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that the offence must be restricted so as not to criminalise legitimate freedom of expression. As presently drafted the clause is demonstrably not proportionate or sufficiently limited. I would add at this stage that Parliament has every reason to be extremely grateful to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for its careful work on this Bill. Its existence and thoroughness help us to ensure that human rights are respected when we consider legislation and its reports deserve our closest attention.
Clause 2 would criminalise the publication of images of clothing or articles arousing reasonable suspicion of membership of a proscribed organisation. Again, this is insufficiently restricted and disproportionate. It could catch honest and fair reporting, cultural work and international and political study, and stifle genuine discussion. Clause 3, relating to use of the internet, is targeted at the legitimate objective of preventing the internet being used for terrorist purposes. But again, it is insufficiently limited. In spite of the reasonable excuse defence, there is a risk that the clause will operate to restrict innocent and harmless research and journalism.
As was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, Clause 4 was added late by an amendment in the House of Commons. It gives the Government power to designate areas outside the UK and prohibit travel to such areas by UK citizens—a radical restriction of individual liberty. Outside wartime, such a curtailment of citizens’ rights is very difficult to justify. I do not believe that the availability of a reasonable excuse defence adequately mitigates the violence that the creation of this offence would do to our liberties.
The provisions in Clause 6 on extraterritorial jurisdiction seem to risk injustice to both UK citizens returning to this country and foreign nationals travelling here. Much more thought needs to be given to the proper limits on the ability to prosecute here for offences committed abroad.
I turn next to the sentencing provisions, starting with Clause 7. I and many others in this House, in the senior judiciary and throughout the criminal justice system have pointed out many times the dangers of sentence inflation, yet elements of the populist press still urge their readers and politicians to push for longer sentences. No one would argue that prison is not the proper punishment for terrorist offences, but longer and longer sentences are not the answer. Our prisons are overcrowded, understaffed and violent. They do not function as places of reform and rehabilitation. Educational facilities are limited or non-existent. It is a fact that our prisons tend to radicalise their inmates. Sending those guilty of terrorist offences there for ever-longer terms is more likely to encourage others to commit such offences than to reduce the threat to the public. The Government will need to produce a stronger case before I will be prepared to support these provisions. We will look at the numerous other powers and requirements proposed in the Bill in the same spirit, seeking to ensure that any new powers meet the tests I outlined earlier. Where they do not, we will oppose or seek to amend them.
Finally, it is one of the ultimate contradictions of this extremely difficult period that while our Government struggle to improve domestic counterterrorist legislation, they nevertheless risk through Brexit abandoning most of the UK’s international work in this area over decades. With our active participation, the EU has painstakingly constructed the most comprehensive and effective international network ever devised, certainly in a democratic context, to combat terrorism and safeguard public security. It has achieved this with great sensitivity to protecting democratic freedoms, supported by the requirements that EU legislation have regard to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and that its implementation be monitored by the Court of Justice of the European Union.
The Government prepared Part 2 of the Bill in response to the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, as the Minister pointed out. We should remember the co-operation of our friends and neighbours across Europe in resisting Russian aggression in the wake of the Salisbury poisoning. Is it not ironic that on 5 September the Prime Minister pointed out in the House of Commons that although Russia resisted any extradition, we obtained a European arrest warrant to ensure that, if the two suspects ever travelled to Europe, we would be able to secure their arrest and bring them swiftly to justice in the United Kingdom?
We hope that the Government will get a deal to retain the European arrest warrant system, but they are also planning for no deal. In those circumstances, it is not just the European arrest warrant system that is at risk. Access to the Prüm database, which was secured in 2016 just before the referendum, would also be at risk. An Interpol DNA search takes 143 days on average. Through Prüm, it takes 15 minutes, a fingerprint match comes back within 24 hours and car registration numbers are searched in just 10 seconds.
Europol, the European law enforcement agency, which was led until May by an energetic and effective British director, Rob Wainwright, and into which we opted back in December 2016, is also at risk. So is Eurojust, the network for co-operation between judges and prosecutors across the EU to combat serious cross-border crime. Then there is the Schengen Information System, which enables enforcement agencies to exchange information about risks presented by serious criminals and suspected terrorists. Although the UK is not part of the Schengen agreement, under the treaty of Amsterdam it has access to the Schengen Information System for law enforcement purposes.
By this Bill the Government seek to introduce new measures to protect the security of the UK public. Yet by risking our co-operation with the EU on terrorism and cross-border security through the imposition of arbitrary and indefensible red lines—for example, on the role of the European Court of Justice—the Government threaten to undermine the very security they seek to protect.
Baroness Manningham-Buller (CB)
My Lords, as the Minister said in her introduction, it is sad in a way that we are here again dealing with counterterrorism legislation. In the 10 years that I have been in your Lordships’ House, I have lost count of how many times we have come back to this subject. Indeed, in my maiden speech 10 years ago, I spoke against detention without charge for 90 days for terrorist suspects, then a government proposal. I very much look forward to hearing the maiden speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, on this subject. The need for this legislation is well argued and, during the course of the Bill’s passage through this House, we will certainly want to pick up on a number of the details of it.
In the wake of last year’s attacks there was serious scrutiny of my former organisation and, indeed, of the police and their performance in responding to those attacks. A number of lessons were learned and changes were made. Scrutiny of my former service was overseen by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson. This legislation attempts to fill various gaps arising from some of that scrutiny. It covers a pretty wide range of things, from detection, sentencing, management of offenders, borders, territorial scope, DNA retention and others. What is different is that, for the first time that I can recall, there is specific information about the rise of extreme right-wing terrorism, which I am sure we will come back to in the course of our discussions, and of course—I have some familiarity with this from my past, which I thought was over—Russian activity and criminality in this country. I spent a year of my life interviewing a defector from the GRU 30 years ago; I did not expect that that information would still be current.
The issues that will give rise to scrutiny in this House are very familiar to us. The noble Lord, Lord Marks, mentioned some of them. I do not always acknowledge a balance between security and liberty. I think that there is no liberty without security—I would say that, of course—and the right to life in the first section of the European convention argues that we should look very carefully at the suggestions being made to try to improve that. We will think about what the threats are—as I said, they are not just terrorism, but the affairs of state—what is necessary and what is proportionate, and where our state should draw the line. These are important issues.
I could go on. During the course of our discussions, I will certainly pick up on the points from the noble Lord, Lord Marks, on our relationship with our European friends on these subjects, which was of critical importance throughout my former career and which I am sure people are working hard to ensure is not damaged.
At this early stage, I will touch on what the Home Office calls the contemporary pattern of radicalisation. We know that the terrorist threat from Islamist terrorism is severe. We also know that the pace of radicalisation is quite different from what it was a decade ago. It is very rapid indeed. It can be between breakfast and lunch. When I was in charge of a number of operations with my noble friend Lord Blair of Boughton, the colleague on my right, we often had plenty of time to consult the Crown Prosecution Service, to decide who was chargeable, to develop operations over weeks and indeed months. That is now rare, as I understand it, and that makes the life of those trying to detect these attacks in advance much more difficult. So the pace has changed and the scale has changed.
I have said in this House before that I can scarcely imagine the figures: 3,000 people of security interest is way beyond the capacity of any security service or police force to monitor on a regular basis, and there are at least 500 active investigations into terrorist plots. It is also worth remembering—some of the questions already raised are key—that a great deal is stopped that we do not hear about. Unless we are paying attention to when cases come up in the courts, we do not know how many are stopped, but it is substantially more than occur. One question has to be: will the provisions of the Bill increase the opportunities of preventing more of them? I think that is what we will be focusing on later in the debates.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, first I too want to say how much I am looking forward to the maiden speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, will be well acquainted with these Benches, having worked closely with my most reverend brother the Archbishop of Canterbury on the Parliamentary Commission on Banking Standards, which the noble Lord so ably chaired.
In opening this debate, the Minister spoke powerfully and movingly about the terrible consequences of terror, the effect on people’s lives, the suffering that is lifelong for people. It is in this context that I broadly welcome the Bill. I certainly recognise the difficulty of drafting and steering this kind of legislation. It is to walk something of a tightrope, as described by the noble Lord, Lord Marks. The current national security situation is complex, as is seen so sharply in our news headlines this morning. At Second Reading, I would like us to stay alert to that tightrope we walk, to proportionality and, perhaps especially, to the danger of unintended consequences.
For example, I echo the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, that in implementing Clause 1 we may end up criminalising the mere expression of a thought or a belief, as opposed to action. Freedom of thought and expression is a treasured value in this country. As a Bishop in the Church of England, it is perhaps not surprising that I hold dear Elizabeth I’s assurance in relation to religious freedom that,
“I would not open windows into men’s souls”.
We need to keep a watchful eye so as not to imperil something that is so precious to us.
On Clause 3, as well as the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, I ask a genuine question: are these powers responsive enough to keep pace with technology and communication channels, or are we giving powers to the Secretary of State and judges that are designed to fight the last, rather than the current, battle?
Finally, I raise a wider concern. As we work to ensure that we are safe from something, are we thinking enough about what we want to be safe for? As we work to ensure that we are safe from terror, we need to check that we put an equal emphasis on being safe for a compassionate society. Safety from terrorism is of absolute importance and, when we get this wrong, the consequences are disastrous. However, it is equally important that we foster a society in which all our citizens are able to feel safe and secure and can be free to flourish.
Just last week, I met with Tyne & Wear Citizens. We met in Newcastle Central Mosque and what we heard was distressing. We heard from some women in the mosque that, over the last period, there has been a sharp rise in the instances of women wearing hijabs being abused on public transport in Newcastle and the surrounding area. They are having to gather up a lot of courage to travel on the Metro. This abuse is unacceptable in our society. Our desire to keep our borders secure should never jeopardise the safety of any of our citizens as they go about their day-to-day lives. In all the complexities of the Bill—and I do not underestimate the complexity of the issues—it is important that we carefully nuance our discussions to avoid any religious or ethnic group being associated with those who wish to do our country and its citizens harm.
My prayers continue to be for those who draft our legislation and those who will administer justice in the light of it for years to come. I also pray for those who keep this nation secure. It is my hope that we will continue to build a country which will allow all our citizens to feel safe and in which kindness, respect and courtesy abound.
Lord King of Bridgwater (Con)
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the right reverend Prelate. In her relatively brief remarks I think she impressed the whole House with the quality of her contribution. I wonder whether any of her predecessors as Bishop of Newcastle would have dreamed of standing up in your Lordships’ House and saying, “I have just had a meeting in Newcastle Central Mosque”. That drew attention to the challenges and differences that we now face in our country and in the world. I am grateful to her for carrying on what has been an extremely impressive start to this important debate.
I support my noble friend the Minister, who took exactly the right approach in her introduction to this complicated and difficult issue. I will make only one criticism. The paperwork that has come out has been outstanding, explaining all the issues involved, but there is one thing there which I do not believe for a minute: the impact assessment. Some bright gentleman has said that it will cost £49.8 million over 10 years. Who came up with that wonderful figure? If the Minister cannot answer that today, will she write and tell me who worked out this calculation and what it is meant to mean?
I was struck by the debates in the other place, in which a tribute was paid to Ben Wallace, the Minister, for the consensual approach that the Government took to this legislation. I pay tribute to the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Marks, for the approaches they took in recognising that there are issues. I agree with every one of the tasks that the noble Lord, Lord Marks, set out. We will not necessarily agree on the answers, but he is absolutely right that these tasks have to be addressed. We are very lucky to have my noble friend the Minister, who I think will carry on the tradition of Mr Wallace and take a consensual approach to these difficult issues, which are very important to our country.
When the House of Commons at Third Reading said—rather cheekily, I thought—that it had adopted a consensual approach and hoped the other place would as well, I thought that we were rather more likely to do that than the Commons in normal circumstances—and to bring it forward. The quality of the contributions in this House can be exceptional. We have already had the viewpoint of the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who is uniquely qualified. We are going to have maiden speeches from two very distinguished former Members of the other place: my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. It is also a great pleasure to see the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, who knows more about some of this legislation than any of us will ever know. So this House is uniquely placed to carry it through.
Looking through the legislation, I have learned a lot. Having had some years in Northern Ireland and some in defence—and having chaired the ISC for seven years—I am very conscious of how much the situation has changed. The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, referred to the pace and scale of what is happening. That absolutely sums it up. I also noted the phrase that my noble friend used at the start: this is an enduring shift in the challenges of terrorism, not a spike. I think we would all agree with that.
At the end of its Third Reading, the other place said that it had done quite a bit of work but there was still quite a bit to do. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, spelled out the things that were not dealt with in the other place and which we now have to take on. The advantage is that we at least start from a common understanding of the threat that we face. Take the threat assessment with which we live all the time: noble Lords will know that it is at “severe”. What does “severe” mean? It means that an attack is “highly likely” and we have no excuse for not knowing that, having been through what happened tragically on Westminster Bridge and in our own Parliament. We went right on to the tragedies in Manchester, at London Bridge and in Finsbury Park. What happened at Parsons Green could have been very bad indeed, in my understanding, if the bomb had been put together correctly; we were extremely lucky in that respect. Since then, I understand that 12 serious Islamic threats have been thwarted and, I think, four right-wing threats as well. If I have the right figures, we have had 441 terrorism-related arrests and 72 people were convicted of terrorism last year. There are 228 people in prison at this stage for terrorist-connected offences.
Against that, we now have the challenge of the pace to which the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, referred. Undoubtedly, the impact of social media is quite enormous. Some of us sat through part of the debate on the Investigatory Powers Bill, when I quickly realised that ISIS knew a lot more about WhatsApp than I ever did and was using it to great effect. The speed with which extremist propaganda and intelligence, along with the knowledge and instructions on how to make weapons and bombs, can turn up on social media is a major threat for us at this time.
Taking it on further, I see the scale of the challenge and some new complications. I understand that 74 groups are currently proscribed in this country. I have also tried to understand the phrases that turned up in the Explanatory Notes. Everybody will now know that an RTO is a “registered terrorism offender”. That is somebody at large in our community who is guilty of a terrorism offence and has to report in under certain regulations. The term SOPC means “sentences for offenders of particular concern”. The other interesting phrase is ATTROs, which refers to “antiterrorism traffic regulation orders”. We know what that means: it means putting barriers up on bridges to stop cars running into them and killing a lot of people. At the same time, there is the completely new dimension which we live with at the moment of state-sponsored terrorism. Whatever happened at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or in Salisbury, those are threats that we have faced in only the last week. I understand that the Islam Channel—a major UK-based TV channel—has been subjected to Russian hacking, causing considerable difficulty. So we have these occurrences weekly.
I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, said that she had lost track of all the Bills and Acts of Parliament that there have been. I have written them down. We have had Acts trying to address the problems of terrorism in 2000, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2015. We are now heading for one in 2018. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, knows much more about some of those than I do. We know there is a need for effective action to counter terrorism. We cannot allow the protection of the public to fail for lack of effective legal power, but at the same time a challenge for this House is to ensure that when this legislation comes out we have the balance right on the proper protection of individual rights and freedom of speech. This House is uniquely placed to achieve that.
I will add two further points. One interesting suggestion has been promoted by Policy Exchange to meet the challenge of those who are betraying our country and are going out to fight and kill our forces. Australia and New Zealand have already taken action against people who are aiding the enemy by adapting the ancient law of treason to give a penalty of life imprisonment for people in that situation. I imagine that during the course of our discussions this may come up. I do not expect that I am the only person to whom Policy Exchange made this suggestion.
Although I do not agree that there should be amendments on this in the Bill, I agree about Europol and the European arrest warrant. It would be a travesty if in the negotiations between us and European Union we do not come out with a satisfactory continuing arrangement for the European arrest warrant. The figures are absolutely enormous. I think that I saw 12,000 arrests. We receive eight times as many requests to find criminals who have committed offences of one sort or another in the European Union as we make. It is almost compulsory to say something about Brexit, so I will say that whatever comes out of the Brexit negotiations must include some continuing arrangement for the European arrest warrant in the interests of all the countries around that table who have benefited from the present arrangement.
This is an important Bill, there are some very important discussions, and I hope that we can now go consensually forward.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her introduction. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord King, that the speeches we have heard so far have given us a thoughtful and helpful context for the Bill. I speak from the Liberal Democrat Benches, but also as a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. The two positions are not incompatible, as my noble friend Lord Marks has indicated; indeed, the reverse is true.
As background to some of my remarks, I shall quote two paragraphs from the report on the Bill that the committee published earlier this year. It stated:
“Our Committee recognises the need for the Government to have strong powers to defend our national security, prevent individuals from being drawn into terrorism and to punish those who prepare, commit or instigate acts of terrorism, or encourage or connive with others to do so. However, when these powers interfere with human rights, they must be clearly prescribed in law, necessary in the pursuit of a legitimate aim, and proportionate to that aim”.
It went on:
“We are concerned that some of these ‘updates’”—
that is, updates to existing offences—
“extend the reach of the criminal law into private spaces, and may criminalise curious minds and expressions of belief which do not carry any consequent harm or intent to cause harm. In doing so, some of these offences risk a disproportionate interference with the right to privacy, the right to freedom of thought and belief, and the right to freedom of expression”.
I think our Minister will understand that approach, but I am afraid I am not being consensual in this and I cannot let today pass without responding to comments made by the Security Minister, Mr Wallace. At Third Reading in the Commons he criticised the JCHR for not taking wider evidence. He said:
“It took evidence from Cage and other such groups”.
I do not know who he was referring to among the 13 who, in response to an open call, gave written evidence. They included such dodgy characters as the National Union of Students, the Muslim Council of Britain and Clive Walker, adviser to successive Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation. The committee took oral evidence from Max Hill, still—just—the current independent reviewer, and from Liberty, and invited oral evidence from the Metropolitan Police, the Commission for Countering Extremism and the Investigatory Powers Commissioner. There was a very tight timetable and, although they were invited, they were unable to attend.
Not only did Mr Wallace impugn our witnesses, he went on to say of the committee that,
“I think its duty was to be balanced”,—[Official Report, Commons, Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill Committee, 11/9/18; col. 717.]
and said in a letter to the committee that our report was not set in the context of current threats. I accept that liberty requires security, and I resent very much the suggestion that the committee was not balanced. I resent that too on behalf of our witnesses who, on the basis of their own experience and backgrounds, would have been irresponsible if they had not voiced their concerns. Max Hill went out of his way to give credit, as he put it, to the Government before his more negative comments. He said:
“There are some good, pragmatic solutions here for the modern world, but there are some aspects of the extension of existing offences that give me serious cause for concern”.
I also resent the suggestion that the committee ignored or was unaware of the threats, which have of course been referred to and described in this debate. I hope that by the end of the debate the Minister will have found a different formula to describe the committee’s work, including acknowledging that—like human rights, which are a matter of proportion and balance and are the scale against which we measure propositions—the committee’s approach has been balanced.
It is in the nature of scrutiny that we focus more on issues of concern in these debates. At this stage there is time only to give a flavour of these; we will have opportunities later. I say that particularly to those outside this place who have sent us briefings. Not referring to those briefings and organisations does not mean that they are ignored; on the contrary, they are very much appreciated.
I start with the new offence in Clause 1. We are troubled by the lack of clarity coupled with the low threshold of recklessness. I am also unclear whether expressing an opinion using social media—I might plagiarise the observation that ISIS knows more about it than I will ever do—and directing that opinion to someone when it is on social media, and open to whoever cares to look at it, comes within the offence. There is a lot of material for the lawyers who will help us on matters of construction. However, I will say now that arguments from the Government that we should be reassured by the prosecution’s sensible use of the public interest test are unlikely to convince me, because that is no substitute for getting the legislation right.
The new offence in Clause 2 also seems to have a low threshold. What if the suspicion is reasonable but wrong? We will no doubt spend time on the reasonable excuse defence to accessing material in Clause 3. The point was made in the Commons that in legislating for a reasonable excuse without including a lack of terrorist intent as an excuse, we could be thought to be intending that not to be an available excuse. Additionally, here and elsewhere we seem to be in the territory of reverse burdens, the burden being on the defendant—guilty until proved innocent.
One of the reasons given by the Minister in the Commons for Clause 4 was,
“to strengthen the Government’s … advice to British nationals … against all travel to areas of conflict where there is a risk of terrorism”.—[Official Report, Commons, Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill Committee, 11/9/18; col. 656.]
I am not sure that it is necessary to create an offence to make it clear that the advice is to be taken seriously. I also wonder whether there will be a correlation with what are regarded as safe places for the purposes of deportation.
Reasonable excuse is a defence. What thought have the Government given to getting their defence in first? I doubt that a comprehensive list could be assembled, but some situations are obviously relevant. If your objective is journalism or humanitarian work, the clauses provide for the designation of areas but there is no arrangement for licensing travel, if I can use that term rather broadly.
I have one specific example which I do not think has been mentioned: funerals. Certain faiths require funerals to take place very soon after a death, and families will be in some difficulty in that situation. This seems to be a provision which makes it an offence to think and to be, as distinct from doing.
My noble friend Lord Marks has been very persuasive about sentences and sentence inflation. Is there any evidence of a deterrent effect of such increases, which seems to be part of the rationale here? Conversely, should we not be aware of the potential for people to be presented as martyrs?
Border control provisions take up about half of the Bill’s length, although they may not take up half of our time in the Chamber. I look forward to hearing the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, of the restrictions on the use of what someone says when he is stopped at the border and the limits of those restrictions, both in the Bill and as applied to the continuing Schedule 7 procedures.
We shall need to be clear about how the Schedule 3 powers are expected to be operated. It seems that decisions to stop and search individuals will be informed—and known to be informed—by intelligence of travel patterns, which seems to me to weaken the argument for a no-suspicion power, which is inherently unchallengeable.
We will need very persuasive arguments about the extensive definition of a hostile act. The economic well-being of the UK in a wide sense will be discussed in other contexts at the same time as the passage of the Bill. I simply ask here whether that phrase is intended to address cybersecurity.
Serious crime is obviously not to be condoned, but is not the most serious if it attracts only a three-year sentence. As defined, it is crime which may be on behalf of another state. Are we now to have stops if there is suspicion—or no suspicion—of someone travelling while Russian or travelling while Asian?
This House has previously made clear its view of the importance of access to a lawyer and the confidentiality of the relationship between a client and his lawyer as to both advice and material. I am sure that we will do so again and ask why the existing protections against dodgy lawyers are insufficient.
I knew that the Minister would tease me about the role of local authorities on Prevent. I have looked at the exchange on my amendment during the passage of the 2015 legislation. I am very flattered that anyone recalled it and took the trouble to look it up and brief the Minister on it. I have to say that I do not understand why my amendments were resisted then but are now in the Bill. They put local authorities and the police on a similar footing. There are a lot of issues about the powers, duties and functions in what I would call a safeguarding as well as a security activity, as well as resources, of which local authorities have a good deal less than they did in 2015. That thread runs through everything.
In conclusion, it is not surprising that lawyers, academics, journalists and people generally concerned with free thought, free speech and human rights have raised issues about the Bill. These Benches and the Joint Committee on Human Rights on a cross-party basis look forward to a vigorous Committee aimed at achieving a balanced Bill.
Lord Janvrin (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and I look forward to her contribution to the detailed scrutiny of this Bill, which I am sure will be extremely important. I thank the Minister for her introduction, and apologise for being a couple of minutes late for the start of her speech. I welcome this debate and especially look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, both accomplished parliamentarians who I am sure will contribute a huge amount both to this debate and in the future.
I should begin by drawing attention to my membership of the Intelligence and Security Committee. That said, this Bill mainly concerns the work of the police and other criminal justice agencies, which are not directly scrutinised by the ISC. I am speaking for myself and not on behalf of the Committee.
I welcome the debate because I think it entirely right to look at the scope of our existing legislation covering counterterrorism and hostile state activity, particularly in the light of last year’s attacks and the Skripal attack earlier this year. I too would like to take this opportunity to express my heartfelt sympathy to those affected by these attacks. The human dimension is all too apparent.
I support the broad terms of the Bill, which is an important legislative response to recent developments in the threat both from terrorism and hostile state activity, and I look forward to detailed scrutiny of it. I would like to add my voice to those acknowledging the outstanding work of the intelligence agencies and the police at the present time. They face an unparalleled range of threats on three broad fronts: terrorism, particularly but not only in the name of radical Islamic extremism; hostile state activity, particularly but not only from Russia; and on the cyber front, this growing threat across a whole range of interests and spectra. I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the leadership of the intelligence agencies and the Metropolitan Police in ensuring unprecedented collaboration between their two organisations at every level—a collaboration I judge to be world class.
In scrutinising this draft legislation, I can see that much attention will necessarily be focused on some of the legal issues to which it gives rise. There are many people in this House more qualified than me to debate these issues, and I look forward to hearing their views. I will confine myself to one general point on what is proposed, and three specific points on the detail of the legislation. My general point is, in giving powers to the police and other agencies, are we confident that they have the additional resources to carry these powers out?
The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, rightly drew attention to the impact assessment. The figure of £5.3 million a year, which caught my eye, seems on the modest side. Even if modest, it needs to be seen against other competing priorities, particularly, for example, as determined by the internal reviews the intelligence agencies conducted after last year’s terrorist attacks. Could the Minister, in winding up, say something about the resources being made available against the many other competing priorities of the intelligence community?
My first specific point concerns the internet and the new offences around obtaining or viewing material. I do not have difficulty with the new offences as drafted following the debate in the other place, but I look forward to the comments of others on some of the issues raised. However, there is another side to the story, which concerns the responsibilities of the communications service providers. In the past these providers have been slow to recognise their responsibilities in taking down extremist material—a point to which the ISC report on the murder of Fusilier Lee Rigby drew attention as long ago as 2014. Could the Minister say something about recent discussions with the CSPs around these responsibilities?
My second point concerns radicalisation in prison. The Bill proposes increasing the maximum sentences for terrorist offences. I have no difficulty with what is proposed, but has there not been evidence in the past of a serious problem of radicalisation within our prison system? There are some very real issues concerning how we tackle this—other noble Lords are more qualified than me to comment on this—for example with the creation of separation units, and problems associated with prisoners not of a Muslim background who become drawn into this world of extremist ideology while in prison. If the intention of the Bill as proposed is to convict more terrorists and for longer sentences, have we the resources and techniques to ensure that we can prevent the creation of terrorist incubators in our prisons?
My third point concerns the new designated area offence, which has already been commented upon. I entirely understand that the aim is to deter some of those who will in future try to travel abroad to support terrorist movements which threaten this country. Both Denmark and Australia have similar offences on their statute books. But despite some 900 individuals travelling from the UK to Syria, we have hitherto not pursued this option. So there is an obvious question: why now? There are also questions of detail. What kind of criteria will be used to determine both the imposition of a designated area and the lifting of that designation? How will evidence that is useable in court be obtained? And, as other speakers have mentioned, will the introduction of this offence have a chilling effect, particularly on humanitarian work? In other words, will it discourage genuine and much needed humanitarian relief activities in designated areas, if there is a risk that those engaged in supporting terrorism increasingly try to claim some humanitarian cover in case they are detected?
In conclusion, these points in many cases concern clarification of what is proposed. As I have said, others better qualified than me will wish to comment on many of the legal points. I look forward to the debate on what I see as a modest, incremental but very necessary adjustment to our current legislation to take account of dynamic developments in the threat from both terrorism and hostile state activity. But even if it is modest and incremental, it deserves our closest scrutiny.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin. As he and other noble Lords were speaking, I began to have some sympathy for the Government on this issue. It is one of those areas where it is incredibly difficult to get the sort of balance that is needed to satisfy the whole of society. Although I have had dealings with the police in the past and I understand in some small way the problems of terrorism and the threat of terrorism, I speak as somebody who, like a lot of other people outside this place, might come out on the wrong end of this legislation through innocence and through no fault of their own, simply because the areas are just too broad.
Clause 1 is a classic example. We have to be very careful when we legislate about terrorism; we cannot throw out our values of freedom and democracy when trying to protect against those who attack them. There is a careful line to walk. We need only look at recent history to see how regularly Governments and security services have mislabelled people as terrorists—an example is the iconic image of Jeremy Corbyn being dragged away by police when carrying an “end apartheid” banner, at a time when the Government viewed Nelson Mandela as a terrorist and many on the Conservative Benches were calling for him to be hanged.
However, it is not just recent history that puts heroes up against the full force of the state; this is happening literally today, as 15 people—the Stansted 15—are in court, charged with terror offences for locking themselves to a plane to stop people being deported in the midst of the Windrush scandal. I am horrified that they are there on terrorist charges. It is totally wrong that peaceful protestors, who cannot in any way be thought of as terrorists, should be caught up in the net of terrorism legislation. It proves to me that the warnings and concerns voiced by so many of us in the activist world have come to pass. Terrorism laws are being used and abused by the state to suppress peaceful protest and political dissent.
Other laws too are being deployed against peaceful political activists and campaigners. The “Frack Free Four” have been sentenced to 16 months in prison for sitting on top of a fracking lorry. These brave activists have had their futures destroyed for taking a peaceful stand against the fracking dangers being forced on their community; these are live cases. It would be wrong if your Lordships’ House considered expanding the laws without bearing in mind the fact that these laws are being used and abused.
I believe that, if the suffragettes were to rise against patriarchy today and fight for women’s rights, they would face probably even greater violence and oppression than that levelled against them by the state 100 years ago—indeed the provisions of this Bill would be levelled against them. History celebrates the suffragettes as heroes but, at the time when they were active, they were thought of as dangerous heretics who wanted to destroy British society.
I am very concerned about Clause 1. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord Marks, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, talking about our rights and freedoms and the fact that we must not compromise them when we try to legislate against people who wish to take them away. This Bill will make it a crime to express an opinion or belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation. When the noble Lord, Lord King, spoke about ISIS knowing more about WhatsApp, or whatever, than he does, I thought to myself that that sort of comment could actually fall within the parameters of this legislation—you do not have to intend to support a particular organisation, or intend to support terrorism, you have only to be reckless.
Would anyone who tweeted or retweeted support for an independent Kurdistan be guilty of terrorism? It would amount to a belief supportive of the proscribed organisation PKK. What about someone who says they support the withdrawal of Israeli troops from occupied Palestine? We have already seen some of the vitriol levied against people who support peace in Palestine, who are repeatedly accused of supporting Hamas and Hezbollah—both proscribed organisations. This Bill opens the door for terrorism charges to be brought against peace activists for the simple crime of advocating peace in a war-torn country.
I was looking forward to hearing noble and learned Lords talk about the slight changes in Clause 1 between “supported” and “supportive”; I look forward to hearing them in subsequent debates. These parts of the Bill curtail legitimate political debate about major geopolitical issues and risk exposing anyone who expresses a view contrary to the UK Government’s foreign policy. It is not conspiracy theory to suggest that these types of provisions could be used in an undemocratic and oppressive way. It is a simple fact that the more powers we give to the Government, the more they are used to crack down on dissent and protest.
I want to be able to speak my mind, to protest and to debate the kind of future that we want to see; I want to be able to criticise British foreign policy if necessary; I want to fight for peace at home and abroad; and I want to protect our fundamental rights against a Government who seem hell-bent on taking away our freedoms and use the cover of terrorism to do so. If I want to overthrow this Government, I want to do it peacefully through the ballot box; nevertheless, I could be accused of being a terrorist, and of course I have been accused of being a domestic extremist. There are proscribed organisations which my beliefs could be argued to support and, in expressing those beliefs, I could be said to be reckless as to whether listeners could be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation.
I will not vote for a Bill that risks people being charged with terrorism simply for expressing criticisms of British foreign policies. Protest and dissent are essential components of a well functioning democracy. I will be tabling amendments to the Bill to protect those fundamental rights and to restore the balance between the state and its critics.
Lord Garnier (Con) (Maiden Speech)
My Lords, I made my maiden speech in the other place 26 years ago. I was not entirely sure whether I would make the right, the wrong or any impression, but I need not have worried. My turn came to speak well after midnight, and we were debating the Maastricht legislation. It seems that the relationship between the European Union and the United Kingdom has dogged my political life like two squabbling passengers at the back of a bus—no matter where you sit, you can still hear them. However, on that occasion the hour and the subject worked to my advantage because I addressed an almost empty Chamber.
The few people present were, with one exception, there only because they had to be: the Deputy Speaker; the Clerk at the Table; the Government and Opposition Whips, playing some demented game of chicken to see who would give up and go home first; the junior Minister from the Foreign Office, who sensibly was concentrating on his correspondence; and a handful of Back-Benchers, who were waiting to speak and certainly not listening to me. The exception was Douglas Hurd, my noble friend Lord Hurd of Westwell, then the Foreign Secretary, who kindly came from his room to sit on the Front Bench as I mumbled at the back. Sadly, he has retired from this House but, to me, he represents so much of what is good in our public life.
On this occasion, I find myself speaking to a fuller House at a much earlier hour than last time, following speeches of great quality and great depth. However, I do not want to try anyone’s patience, not least because of the list of speakers due to speak after me, who have far greater expertise than I do, and because I want to hear my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, make his maiden speech as well.
However, I want to record that in the very short time that I have been a Member of your Lordships’ House I have been struck by the kindness, not least during today’s debate, that I have received from noble Lords on all sides of the House and from members of staff in every department. Despite the fact that my peerage was announced on the evening before Prince Harry’s wedding, and therefore the Harborough Mail had other things to report, I was delighted to find that one or two people were expecting me when I got here. I particularly want to thank my noble friends Lord Goodlad and Lord Young of Cookham for supporting me at my introduction. They were friends in the Commons and they have stood fast to that friendship here.
I have taken my territorial designation, Harborough, from the constituency in south-east Leicestershire which I represented for 25 years. Although I come from Norfolk, my wife’s family have lived in Rutland, Leicestershire and Lincolnshire for many years, so I was delighted to be adopted by a constituency that covers most of south-east Leicestershire between the city of Leicester and Northamptonshire.
Despite my 25 years in the other place and my experience there as a Back and Front-Bencher, both in opposition and in government, there is much that is new to me here. The lines of communication between the two Houses are not always well maintained. This is a very different place, with its own characteristics, procedures and traditions, but we should celebrate these differences. Let it not be thought that because our parliamentary system is old, it must therefore be bad. Our system is old because it is good, not bad because it is old.
One of the defining features of our country is a general respect for the rule of law, and today’s debate demonstrates that justice and the rule of law remain in the forefront of our public discourse. Freedom of expression—political and otherwise—has been protected by the common law and the vigilance of Parliament every bit as much as by the European convention. Parliament and the law should be vigilant to ensure that our right to comment freely and honestly, and even offensively and idiotically, is never cut down. But terrorism—and the threat of terrorism—tests our freedoms and our tolerance of others’ opinions. The first four clauses of this Bill, with suitable safeguards, adjust the limits of acceptable conduct—where freedom of expression ends and where crime begins—just as the increased sentences in Clauses 6 to 10 make it plain how unacceptable we find these criminal acts to be.
There is no one answer to the questions posed by terrorism, by those who commit terrorism offences and by those who persuade others—or who are persuaded by others—to commit these hideous crimes. Ironically, at a time when electronic communications and information technology have allowed for the creation of highly sophisticated weapons and remote triggering systems, there is, as my noble friend the Minister indicated at the outset, a greater use of simple weapons such as vehicles and kitchen knives. The attacks are planned in days, not over months, and it is remarkably easy to buy bomb parts and chemicals, and to research targets online. This makes it harder to detect terrorist crime in advance, but with greater information sharing between those tasked with our protection, things could improve.
I understand—the Minister has indicated as much—that there are currently about 500 terrorist plots at various stages of development, and I think the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, made the same point. I further understand there are about 3,000 people of interest, as the noble Baroness mentioned. Further, there are about 20,000 people on the fringes called closed suspects—the 2017 offenders were, I gather, in that category. We therefore need to provide the security services and the police with the resources to allow them to review everyone in that group.
As the shadow Attorney-General when my noble friend Lord Hague and David Cameron were leaders of the Opposition, and as Solicitor-General in the coalition Government when Mr Cameron was Prime Minister, I spent a good deal of time on matters to do with terrorism and the sometimes conflicting rights under the European convention. There are a number in your Lordships’ House who, like me, are members of the former law officers’ club. Forty years ago, I was led by Lord Rawlinson of Ewell, a former Solicitor-General and Attorney-General, for the Daily Mail, in a libel action brought by the Moonies. He told me that when he was appointed Solicitor-General in 1962, the Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, gave him a learned seminar on the history and constitutional role of the law officers. It was made clear that as Solicitor-General, his first duty was to the rule of law, his second was to Parliament and only his third was to Macmillan’s Administration. Mr Cameron appointed me Solicitor-General in 2010 during a three-minute telephone call. Had he had the time to think about it, I am sure he would have agreed with Macmillan. I certainly tried to keep Harold Macmillan’s advice to Peter Rawlinson to the forefront of my mind when I was Solicitor-General.
To many Ministers, the law officers are—with the exception now of Geoffrey Cox— either mysterious, barely-known creatures, or an inconvenient reminder that the law of the land applies to them. Like lawyers in private practice, law officers cannot talk in detail about their work, which is confidential to their client: the Government. But nor should they only say “no”—they should try to be imaginative and help the Government navigate through their difficulties. Their power—if they have any at all—lies in speaking truth unto power and in resignation. The law officers are more like submarines than the ships of the line in the Cabinet: you know they are down there somewhere, unseen and unheard, quietly going about their business, but if they surface and their concerns or disagreements become known to the wider world, either the Government are in trouble or they are.
Shortly after my appointment in 2010, I was showing off to the then Lord Chief Justice, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge, that one of my ancestors, Sir William de Grey, had been successively Solicitor-General and Attorney-General from 1763 until 1771, under five Prime Ministers. After that, I told him, my ancestor became Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. The noble and learned Lord smiled engagingly and gently reminded me that some apparent precedents are easily distinguished upon their facts.
After reading history at Oxford, I went to the Bar. In 1976, I joined a set of chambers in the Temple that specialised in media and information law—it still does. Leon Brittan, a Member of Parliament and a shadow Minister, was then the junior silk in Chambers. My friend Lord Brittan is sadly now dead, but he taught me that it is possible to be a practising barrister and a conscientious Member of Parliament and that, although lawyers are not everyone’s favourite, we have our uses. In response to my persistent questions about politics he said, “Stop talking about it; just go and do it”. He also demonstrated that it is possible to maintain one’s dignity in adversity. In the last months of his life, he was cruelly assailed by baseless allegations that would have broken healthy men. It is sad that he did not live to witness his own exoneration, but I hope it is of some comfort to his widow, Diana, that his reputation has, without question, been restored to its rightful place.
Somehow, I have arrived here among you all. I am honoured to be here and I hope to play my part in shaping the legislation that comes before us. Now is not the time for me to say much more about this Bill. Although it amends and adds to criminal law—a prospect that usually makes me worry for the judges and the lawyers who will have to apply it—for a modern statute, it is mercifully short. Its intentions are properly confined and the policy behind it is clear. I am not a fan of creating new offences, renaming existing offences or increasing sentences to send a message, when those who are hell-bent on killing police officers, soldiers and ordinary citizens, or encouraging others to do so, will pay no attention, seeing themselves as warriors for their hideous cause. Nor do I forget that, if the prison sentences set out in the Bill come to be used, we will have failed to educate, influence, inhibit or prevent those who have committed terrorist acts. However, I believe that this Bill is more than a message. It is part of a practical approach to countering terrorism and to protecting our borders; problems that we, but more acutely those whose job it is to protect us, face daily. I wish it well and I look forward to considering it further in due course.
Lord Faulks (Con)
My Lords, my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier has given us a taste of things to come. I have had the privilege of knowing him since we were adolescents, so it is a particular pleasure for me to see him in his place today—yes, lawyers were children once.
It is a matter for celebration that so many of our current politicians are the sons and daughters of immigrants and that people come into politics from all sorts of backgrounds. My noble and learned friend, on the other hand, comes from a family with a long tradition of public service, and this country is richer for that tradition. He has managed to combine a quarter of a century as a Member of Parliament with a successful practice at the Bar, where he has been for some time one of the leaders in the field of defamation and media law. He was also instrumental in the introduction of deferred prosecution agreements to the prosecutorial armoury; a valuable weapon against corporate economic crime. Further, he has sat for some time as a recorder of the Crown Court.
Despite all these achievements, and a term as Solicitor-General, my noble and learned friend has a quality that is all too rare in barristers: modesty. I am confident that his contributions to debates in your Lordships’ House will be relevant and brief, and that, unlike some of us, he will not consider it necessary to give the House the benefit of his views on every subject. My noble and learned friend Lord Gamier is a most welcome addition to your Lordships’ House.
I now turn to the Bill. The scale of the terrorist threat to this country can hardly be overstated, whether from extremists claiming allegiance to the Muslim faith or from state-sponsored terrorism as we witnessed in Salisbury. We should pay tribute to the contribution that the police and the security services make to keep us as safe as they can in increasingly challenging circumstances.
One fact that I took away from the Home Secretary’s recent speech in Birmingham was that an estimated 800,000 people who currently live in this country do not speak English. I am not of course suggesting for a moment that if you do not speak English you are likely to be a terrorist. However, it is a considerable challenge for our security services simply to understand what is going on in communities where English is not spoken or not spoken much, and where there is little or no loyalty to British values or traditions.
In its report on the Bill, the Joint Committee on Human Rights was critical of it in a number of respects, identifying various potential violations of human rights. Of course, that is the remit of the committee, of which I was once a member, and I do not for a moment impugn the integrity of the process, as it was suggested the security Minister did in the other place. However, I wish us to bear in mind that, in this country, there was a long-established respect for free speech before Article 10 of the European Convention became part of our law through the medium of the Human Rights Act in 1996. If we must look at issues through the prism of the Human Rights Act, can we bear in mind Article 2, the right to life, and Article 8, the right to a family life, in the context of those affected by terrorism? The first duty of a Government is to keep their subjects safe. To do so, there must sometimes be restrictions on individual rights.
The primacy of individual rights is such that loyalty to one’s country seems in some quarters to be regarded as something of an option, coming below loyalty to one’s religion or even one’s football team. Many would agree with EM Forster, who wrote in 1938 that he hoped, given the choice, that he would have the guts to betray his country rather than his friends. But if you choose to live in this country, is it so unreasonable to expect you to show some loyalty to it and not to give assistance to our enemies?
The word “treason”, mentioned by my noble friend Lord King, has a dated feel about it, but may I also commend the recent Policy Exchange publication, Aiding the Enemy: How and Why to Restore the Law of Treason? Its authors include two Members of Parliament, one Labour and one Conservative, and it has a foreword by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. It provides a compelling case for the return to the statute book of a modern law of treason—the 1351 statute is plainly no longer fit for purpose.
The new offence of entering or remaining in a designated area may help but clearly needs further scrutiny. For British subjects who leave this country to serve with ISIS or the Taliban, for example, is a maximum sentence of 10 years really enough? What about Anjem Choudary, sentenced to five and a half years in prison and due out this month? Even though this Bill promises, rightly, to end in certain circumstances automatic release on serving half a sentence, that is too late for Choudary and others. Does the current statutory framework adequately capture the gravity of being a recruiting sergeant for ISIS at a time when it is engaged in combat with our forces and actively trying to attack the United Kingdom? The time may well have come to update the law on treason as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have done.
As the noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, pointed out, radicalisation in prison is a real threat. Government policy is to imprison those who pose a threat to national security in separate units to minimise the risk of other prisoners being radicalised. Very few have in fact been separated, apparently because of apprehension in the Prison Service about human rights litigation. Perhaps the Minister would care to comment on that.
This Bill deserves careful scrutiny, and it is clear that there is the expertise in this House to do just that. There are certainly improvements that can be made. For example, the Law Society has made some powerful points about the erosion of legal professional privilege at border interceptions, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. For my part, I need convincing that all those restrictions are currently justified. But, for the most part, I welcome the Bill and hope that it receives support across the House.
Lord Thomas of Gresford (LD)
My Lords, I join the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, in his welcome to the noble and learned Lord and former submariner, Lord Garnier. I have a wonderful picture of the two of them as adolescents together discussing football and human rights over a pint. I welcome the noble and learned Lord’s strong expression of his belief in the rule of law and of freedom of expression. I am sure that we shall hear a lot more from him about that.
There are many aspects of this Bill that we shall no doubt consider in Committee, but I will confine myself to three. First, I consider Clause 1 to be unnecessary and a disproportionate interference in the right to free speech. Secondly, I want to emphasise the importance of private consultations with legal advisers. Thirdly, I have some comments about the proposed designated areas offence.
Clause 1 penalises the expression of an opinion or a belief that is supportive of a proscribed organisation. The state of mind of the accused must be that, in expressing that opinion, he is reckless as to whether a person is encouraged to support that proscribed organisation. There is already an offence, under Section 12(1) of the Terrorism Act 2000, of inviting,
“support for a proscribed organisation”.
As for hate preachers, Section 12(3) of the 2000 Act reads:
“A person commits an offence if he addresses a meeting and the purpose of his address is to encourage support for a proscribed organisation or to further its activities”.
The same words in that legislation appear in the Bill before us, so what lacuna does this new offence fill? It adds “reckless” to “purpose”, but “reckless” is a word that has caused difficulties in the past in defining its meaning.
Back in 1981, I argued the case for a Mr Caldwell against the Metropolitan Police Commissioner before the Judicial Committee of this House. Caldwell had in a drunken moment broken a window and set fire to a hotel. The flames were quickly extinguished and no serious damage was caused, but he was charged with the aggravated criminal damage offence of being reckless as to whether life was endangered. His defence was that he had been so drunk that he had given no thought as to whether life would be endangered and was therefore not reckless. The issue was whether recklessness should be judged objectively or subjectively. The problem with the subjective test is that the prosecution has to prove the defendant’s state of mind—that he foresees the risk of harm. The problem with the objective test is that it criminalises those who genuinely did not foresee a risk of harm, including young children, people whose mental capacity is impaired and indeed drunks. Lord Diplock in the Judicial Committee, contrary to my argument in favour of a subjective test, held that the defendant was reckless if he had not given any thought to a risk which he should have appreciated. At that time, the committee plumped for the objective test. It was not until 2003, in the case of R v G and Another, that my argument succeeded and the Judicial Committee, in a rare exercise of its powers, overruled Caldwell and decided that the subjective test was appropriate. The case involved two 11 year-old boys who had set fire to a wheelie bin; the fire spread to the roof of a Co-op store and caused £1 million worth of damage. They had given no thought at all to the risk that might be involved by what they did.
So what does “reckless”, under its current definition, mean in the context of Clause 1? It means that the prosecution will have to prove that the defendant foresaw the risk that the person to whom his opinion or belief was directed would be encouraged to support a proscribed organisation but nevertheless went on to express it. What does that add to the current criminal acts of speaking or writing with the purpose of encouraging or inviting such support? The use of “reckless” does not catch a person who does not realise the effect of his words on the listener or reader of a column. The test of recklessness is no longer objective.
Simply expressing your opinion is not enough, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle’s apt quotation from Elizabeth I pointed out earlier. A person at Hyde Park Corner can say, “I believe in Scottish independence, and I think the best way to achieve this is through Scottish Dawn”, which is a proscribed organisation; perhaps that could also be said by someone from a Wee Free pulpit. That person would not be committing an offence under the proposed clause; he is merely opening the window into his soul, as Elizabeth I put it. If what he says is an invitation to join Scottish Dawn, he would commit an existing offence under Section 12(1) of the present Act. If his purpose in so speaking is to encourage listeners to join Scottish Dawn, it is already covered by Section 12(3) of the existing law.
My noble friend Lord Marks set out a number of tests, one of which asks, very appropriately, what mischief the clause is aimed at. In the Choudary case, the Court of Appeal considered whether Section 12 of the Terrorism Act offended against the European Convention on Human Rights. The court said:
“When considering the proportionality of the interference, it is important to emphasise that the section only prohibits inviting support for a proscribed organisation with the requisite intent. It does not prohibit the expression of views or opinions, no matter how offensive, but only the knowing invitation of support from others for the proscribed organisation. To the extent that section 12(1)(a) thereby interferes with the rights protected under article 10 of the Convention, we consider that interference to be fully justified”.
Clause 1 seeks to punish the expression of an opinion with up to 10 years’ imprisonment. I suggest to your Lordships, as I will argue in Committee, that it is a disproportionate interference in the right to free speech protected by Article 10.
I turn to legal professional privilege. Paragraph 26 of Schedule 3 mirrors Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act. Under paragraph 23(1) of Schedule 3, there is the right to consult a lawyer “privately … at any time”, but paragraph 26(1) states:
“A direction under this paragraph may provide that a detainee who wishes to exercise the right under paragraph 23”,
to consult a lawyer privately may, if the direction is made,
“consult a solicitor only in the sight and hearing of a qualified officer”—
that is, an eavesdropping officer. That direction may be made by a senior officer in certain circumstances, such as interference with evidence or the alerting of a person who is suspected of having committed an offence but has not been arrested for it. Maybe a tiny minority of legal professionals pass on illicit information—there are rogues in any profession. If caught, they will go to prison and be struck off or disbarred. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, talked about the suggestion made in the other place of an approved panel of lawyers being set up to advise people detained under the Bill. I fully support that. I look forward to hearing more about it.
If criminal lawyers want to make a successful living, they need to get the truth from their client. There must be a firm platform on which to base a defence. Initially, the client might not be open with his own lawyer. He might tell lies through consciousness of guilt, fear or a misplaced desire to cover up for somebody else. Perhaps he says he cannot remember. But when his own lawyer rubs his nose in the evidence, the story frequently changes. It should be remarked that, of the cases that appear in the Crown Court, between 60% and 70% plead guilty, very largely due to this activity carried out by the defendant’s own lawyer. It is obvious that this sometimes subtle, sometimes vigorous process cannot take place in the presence of someone listening in from the investigating authority. The provision that appears in this schedule, as it appears in Schedule 7 to the 2000 Act, is contrary to the public interest in the wider sense.
I remember being in the Court of Appeal when we lost an appeal in a murder case. Afterwards, my client turned to me and said, “Well, now I’ll tell you the true story”. He gave me an account entirely consistent with the prosecution case, which would have provided him with a defence, but he had not told me and there was nothing I could do about it. It is important for people to realise that defence solicitors and barristers need to have professional privilege to see their client privately to carry out the sometimes rough interrogation of their own client, which can lead only to the proper result.
Finally, on Clause 4 on designated areas and the reasonable excuse defence, your Lordships should remember that, although the Minister, Ben Wallace, now says that a reasonable excuse will,
“cover persons entering or remaining in the designated area … for the purpose of providing humanitarian aid; to carry out work for a foreign government … or the UN; to work as a journalist; or to attend a funeral of a close relative”,
he said:
“It would be for the defendant to demonstrate that the defence applied. Once a defendant has raised the defence the burden of proof (to the criminal standard) to disprove the defence would rest with the prosecution”.
That is right, but there has to be some evidence to support the defence. It cannot be raised simply by argument, so a burden is placed on the defendant in these circumstances to explain why he was in the designated area. I agree with Rowan Popplewell of Bond and with my noble friend Lady Hamwee that there should be a system of pre-visit authorisation of people who wish to visit designated areas for a particular purpose. Nothing could be simpler to arrange and it could avoid unnecessary prosecution of a person.
There is much further to discuss as the Bill goes through.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)
My Lords, I warmly congratulate the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, on his excellent maiden speech, and I look forward with equal enthusiasm to hearing that of the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, which I am sure will be of equal quality.
Clearly, as other noble Lords have said, it is only right, after the terrorist attacks of last year, that the Government should work hard to make sure that our anti-terrorism legislation is fit for purpose, so I welcome the fact that through the Bill they are seeking to discharge this important responsibility. The challenge that they face in doing so is a difficult one. On one hand, we must do all we can to keep our citizens safe. On the other hand, we do not want to introduce changes that fundamentally change the nature of our society. It would be the supreme irony if, in seeking to preserve our society, we end up changing what it means to be British. In particular, it is very important that, in developing legislation and attendant guidance, great care is taken to ensure that it does not jeopardise the enjoyment of human rights.
In July 2018 the Joint Committee on Human Rights published a report highlighting serious concerns over the new powers in the Bill. Among other things, the report raised concerns about the Prevent programme, which is engaged by Clause 19, on which I shall concentrate. Clause 19 amends Section 36 of the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act 2015 to impose a new duty on local authorities. In addition to being responsible for assessing individuals vulnerable to being drawn into terrorism, through panels mandated by Section 36, Clause 19 also gives local authorities the power to refer people to the panel. The discharging of this new duty will be informed by the relevant guidance pertaining to the Prevent duty, namely the Prevent duty guidance of 2015, the Counter-terrorism Strategy, the newest version of which was published in June 2018, and the Counter-Extremism Strategy of 2015. My difficulty with this arrangement is that while the statute is narrowly focused on terrorism, the Prevent duty guidance, the Counter-terrorism Strategy and the Counter-Extremism Strategy engage with extremism in all its forms, including non-violent extremism, which has no statutory definition.
The lack of a definition of non-violent extremism in law, and the lack of any sanction against non-violent extremism in law, is a very good thing. If someone espouses violence, they cross a very clear threshold. I find it hard to imagine that any Member of your Lordships’ House would have any difficulty in having very robust laws against such practice. The idea, however, that we should target people espousing non-violent views seems deeply problematic to me. The only content we are left with is that the view is “extreme”, but in whose opinion? What is extreme to one person is sensible to another. Unless we are to fundamentally change the nature of the society in which we live and start policing speech in a way that would be deeply inimical to the British tradition. I do not think that we should introduce sanctions against opinions that do not espouse violence.
I appreciate that the Bill does not ask us to endorse directly the Prevent duty guidance and the Counter-Extremism Strategy. We are, however, being asked to indirectly endorse these documents because they provide the guidance according to which local authorities will be required to take on the new responsibilities that we will ask them to assume in sanctioning Clause 19.
The difficulty that this presents is compounded further by a critical development in the courts. In July 2017, in his judgment in Salman Butt v Secretary of State for the Home Department, Mr Justice Ouseley stated very clearly that the Prevent duty does not refer to all forms of extremism as defined in the Prevent duty guidance of 2015 and the Counter-Extremism Strategy of 2015. Mr Justice Ouseley rightly said that extremism is,
“the active opposition to fundamental British values”,
which,
“must in some respect risk drawing others into terrorism before the guidance applies to it. If there is some non-violent extremism, however intrinsically undesirable, which does not create a risk that others will be drawn into terrorism, the guidance does not apply to it”.
Thus the Prevent duty does not apply to all forms of extremism, and specifically not to non-violent extremism if there is no risk of people being drawn into terrorism.
However, that is not what the Prevent duty guidance, the Counter-Extremism Strategy or the Counter-terrorism- Strategy say. Mindful of this, I very much hope that the Government will introduce an amendment in Committee to the effect that Clause 19 will not be implemented until the Prevent duty guidance, the Counter-Extremism Strategy and the Counter-terrorism Strategy have first been subjected to a review and updated in light of the judgment of Mr Justice Ouseley. Let us uphold the right to non-violent free speech and fight terrorism by preserving rather than compromising our own heritage.
Baroness Warsi (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Williams for introducing the Bill. I could not think of anybody better to do that and it will certainly make expressing any concerns that I have much more difficult. I am also grateful to my honourable friend the Security Minister, Ben Wallace. I consider them both to be not just political colleagues but friends. I congratulate my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier on his maiden speech and look forward to my noble friend Lord Tyrie’s maiden speech. Both are unfashionably expert and inspiringly principled and have the ability to be politely awkward. They will fit in well.
I wholeheartedly support measures designed to keep us safe. As someone who has been targeted by extremists throughout most of my public life, from being attacked by al-Muhajiroun and its supporters in Luton to numerous threats by email and on social networks—and who for the past two and a half years has been on a target list for ISIS—I, along with my family, have had to live in the shadow of some of those who seek to cause Britain harm. So although I support some of the Bill’s provisions—for example, the increase in the custodial sentence for those who were aware of and do not disclose information on terrorist offences—as a lawyer, I am also concerned that we should make more criminal law only if the current law and policy are simply incapable of being applied or, indeed, applied better.
Sadly, I have some concerns about the drafting of the Bill, both in the mischief it seeks to remedy, as outlined by the noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, and the way in which it seeks to do so. We must not become a country that polices thought, as was explored by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. As Liberty succinctly put it, the Bill,
“pushes the law even further away from actual terrorism, well into the realm of pure speech and opinion”.
We must not cite exceptional circumstances to justify a blanket law change.
Of course, we are just over a year on from a seven-month series of terror attacks on UK soil. Five attacks led to 36 deaths and dozens more injured. A further 17 both religiously inspired and far-right inspired attacks have been thwarted since. It is entirely right in these circumstances for the Government to look again at what more could be done to prevent such attacks in the future. Much commentary has taken place since the attacks and recommendations have been made, yet, interestingly, some of the most informed voices, including eminent academics such as Professor Clive Walker—who has been researching and writing about Britain’s counterterrorism laws since the 1980s, and who also happens to be my former university tutor—have argued that new laws are not the answer. Professor Walker has said:
“The failure to identify major legal gaps is further emphasised by the findings of the three weighty reports”—
post the attacks—
“none of which called for major legal changes”.
There is much to concern us in the individual clauses and I hope that we will have the opportunity to scrutinise these further as the Bill passes through the House. Concerns include the proposed three clicks offence, which has become the one click offence—an offence which reverses the burden of proof and, rather than focusing on the ill-intentioned creators and well-resourced publishers of material, seeks to criminalise end users, whether innocent or not. The proposed publication of images offence creates a new offence of the publication of an image,
“in such a way or in such circumstances as to arouse reasonable suspicion that the person is a member or supporter of a proscribed organisation”.
Apart from the obvious point, as stated by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, that what this offence seeks to cover is already covered by existing legislation, it risks criminalising a broad range of legitimate behaviour by academics, journalists and human rights activists—a concern voiced by the UN special rapporteur on human rights. A person risks imprisonment not for being a member or supporter, but for merely publishing an image that could be construed as arousing reasonable suspicion. This is in a space where images can have a historical context and meaning far broader than a relatively modern and often cynical adoption by a terrorist group; the Irish flag is one such example.
Today I want to focus in detail on one aspect: the lack of debate, engagement and consultation surrounding the Bill—an issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser. Taking the example of the late-introduced proposed designated area offence, there was a lack of engagement with those groups likely to be disproportionately impacted by the Bill, such as journalists, human rights activists, British citizens with family in areas of the world that could be so designated, aid workers working in areas of acute humanitarian crisis, a community I am a part of—British Muslims—and, of course, a community which most Members of your Lordships’ House are part of: the naturally curious. Alongside the potential for mistakes and the clumsy application of this proposed offence, the scope for abuse of the use of designated areas is real—as a carrot or a stick to pressurise or seek favour with foreign countries and to legitimise or deem illegitimate political disputes around the world. Selective use of this provision would leave people helpless even where there is no risk of harm to the United Kingdom and, for example, could deter the proper reporting of a conflict. The much simpler answer would be something I have advocated for many years: that in a globalised world with multiple identities, many of which overlap borders, rather than zoning no-go areas, make a simple “no fight” rule and criminalise any person who travels abroad to take up arms in any conflict for any foreign despot, group or even Government, so that if you are British you fight for and on behalf of the British Armed Forces and no one else.
Intervention at an earlier stage is one of the reasons cited for the Bill in the Government’s explanatory factsheet. This early-stage intervention is nothing new: it is the Prevent strand of the four pillars of the Contest strategy, alongside Prepare, Protect and Pursue. It is a policy which has been in play since 2003 and in the public domain since 2006. It is a policy which fundamentally was about communities leading the battle of ideas to challenge some of the views and behaviour that could become the basis for terrorism. It is a policy which has significantly shifted over the past decade. I agreed with all four strands of the original Contest strategy, including the early thinking behind Prevent. For me, the Prevent policy was—and still should and could be—a battle between violence and democracy, based on a belief that everyone has a right to their view, providing that it does not break the law or incite or encourage someone else to break the law. Democracy, if it works, should be able to temper unsavoury views—although the latest US presidential election has left many questioning that notion.
The battle of ideas about violence and the justification of it is one in which government need to be a player and quite rightly stand against groups that promote such. It is right that the battle of ideas and views on everything from tax to torture, from farming to family to foreign policy, and from welfare to wind farms is debated and accommodated through our parliamentary democracy. The battle of ideas was but one part of the Prevent work, alongside tackling discrimination, engaging communities and addressing grievances. The Prevent strategy, however, over time slowly started to shift its emphasis.
The process of understanding—not accepting, but understanding—why British Muslim communities themselves felt that people were being drawn into violent extremism became a less important issue for politicians and policymakers. The Muslim communities’ views, which themselves were varied and broad on the drivers of terrorism, were sidelined and we saw the start of a process of disengagement between government and British Muslims. Rather than doing counterterrorism with British Muslims to defeat the menace of terrorism collectively, we chose to do counterterrorism to Muslim communities. Through this approach we both created an obstacle to confronting and defeating terrorism and alienated a large community of law-abiding citizens. We “othered” them.
Putting Prevent on a statutory basis in the last months of a coalition Government, with both Labour and Liberal Democrat eyes being on an election rather than legislation, has been the subject of much criticism and mistrust. It is a policy which I as well as academics and senior police officers, along with many others including the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, as the ex-Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, have called to be independently reviewed. That policy is opaque and inconsistent—its flaws were outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe—while the published statistics on referrals which lead to action act as a net, which catches and has damaged as many lives as it has potentially saved. In this climate, with much respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I believe that it would be entirely inappropriate and counterproductive to expand its reach. If the Government are genuinely committed to early intervention then they must start by engaging openly, honestly and transparently. A cohesive country is a more secure country. Engaged communities are more cohesive.
Let me end on an issue that I have been arguing for while inside government and since, in private conversations with colleagues and in detail in a book. I now raise it on the Floor of your Lordships’ House. It is time for the Government to end their policy of disengagement with British Muslims, which started under the last Labour Government and the leadership of the then Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, in 2007. John Denham tried to restore sanity when he replaced Hazel Blears in 2009 but months later, when the coalition Government were formed in 2010, the policy returned. It continues to be applied today.
Successive Governments have adopted that policy of non-engagement with a wide range of Muslim community organisations and activists. More and more groups and individuals have, over time, simply been seen as beyond the pale, often for something they said or did in the past, or for what someone they were associated with said or did. Time and again the message from government is: if you are a British Muslim and have ever believed, thought, said or even flippantly commented on an issue in a way which could be seen as extremism today, then however historic your view there is no road to rehabilitation. There is no path to redemption, no meeting, no engagement. So if in your youth or your heady days of activism—or simply during your political journey—you have not believed and said exactly what we, the Government, say and believe right now on the issues of politics, faith, women, minorities or homosexuality, then you are persona non grata. Imagine if that approach was used against us politicians. Certainly, many in this House have moved on in their views on many issues: the rights of women and minorities and LGBT rights, to name a few. We have all made mistakes. I have made mistakes.
This policy is ludicrously impractical at a time when the need for engagement with and understanding of our Muslims is greater than ever before. It is also dangerously counterproductive. Over half of British Muslims are under the age of 25; a third are under the age of 15. They are in the media spotlight almost daily. They have access to more connections, information and travel than ever before. Last year, terrorist offences were either done by individuals who purported to belong to a faith that they follow, or aimed at the Muslim community itself. They are in the front line and have seen a 77% increase in attacks against them in 2017, and they are disengaged by government.
The issues around terrorism can be properly responded to only with a whole-community response. This includes the Government, the police and the communities of which British Muslims are an essential component. The policy was originally driven by a small number of politicians and commentators influenced by the now much-discredited and failed neo-conservative thinking from the United States, although the election of Donald Trump has planted this divisive thinking into the mainstream. There is real unease about it at the heart of the Civil Service, at senior police officer level and within local authorities, to name a few examples. Over a decade into this approach, I am yet to be convinced that not engaging with and not listening to a community is the best way to influence it.
I said at the outset that we should make criminal law only if the current law and policy is simply incapable of being applied, or applied better. Ending the policy of disengagement is a simple and necessary step that requires no legislation. It would be a start with immense security benefits, possibly even more so in the long term than the offences proposed in this Bill.
Lord Tyrie (Non-Afl) (Maiden Speech)
I have just heard the latest in a long line of extremely interesting and informative speeches. The enormous expertise in this House is clearly on view and I have learnt a great deal already. It is certainly an honour to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, who spoke from considerable personal experience. This is also an opportunity to say how impressed I was, if that is permitted from one maiden to another, by the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. I know him as a reliable and thoughtful person—one of the most reliable and thoughtful people in public life—but much more importantly he is also a very good friend.
For me, this House is a curious mixture of the familiar and the surprisingly new. On the latter, I have benefited a great deal from the guidance of the staff: doorkeepers, librarians and clerks among them. I would particularly like to thank my sponsors, one of whom is sitting next but one to my right: the noble Lords, Lord Luce and Lord Turnbull. They have been very kind to me and are two people who have made exceptional contributions to public life, and on whose advice I have been fortunate enough to call on a good number of occasions not only in recent weeks but over many years. They are two outstanding public servants.
I am making this speech from the Cross Benches because, as chairman of the Competition and Markets Authority, that is the right place for me to be. The CMA has some major challenges ahead, not least Brexit—I have to mention it somewhere—but those will be manageable because the CMA has, as I am now discovering, some exceptionally able and dedicated people aboard. Those challenges, and competition policy more widely, are not for now; they are for another day.
I have just completed an exhilarating 20 years in the other place and it was a great privilege to represent Chichester. More important than the beauty of the area, or even the fact that it returned me five times with increased majorities, has been the chance to make many deep friendships. I hope and intend to keep those for life. As I was clearing out my office at the other end of the building last year, I came across a letter from a resident of the parish of Tyrie in Aberdeenshire, which I received shortly after I was first elected. I have it here and it reads:
“If you ever went into the House of Lords … you could become Lord Tyrie of Tyrie. And, if you moved up here”,
the correspondent went on—I suppose there were perhaps some properties for sale up there—
“you would be Lord Tyrie of Tyrie, Tyrie”.
I am grateful to that citizen of Tyrie for his suggestion, but I hope he will understand that I would rather stick to Chichester, where I have put down deep roots and to which I owe a great deal.
About the same time that I got that letter 20 years ago, the Conservative Party, reduced to 165 MPs, was locked in a bitter row with itself about Europe, much as it was when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, arrived five years earlier. At about that time, I happened to hear a speech by the late Sir Denis Thatcher. He was asked from the floor how the Tory party was going to get out of that mess, to which he replied: “Well, it’s all very straightforward. All we have to do is stick to our values”. He then thought for a bit and said, “But don’t ask me what they are”.
In today’s debate, and particularly with respect to anti-terrorist legislation generally, it is the values not of a political party but of the country that are at stake. I have no particular expertise in that field, but it seems to me that legislation is certainly needed to respond to the digital age, so I shall not oppose the Bill and I welcome its intent. None the less, the noble Lord, Lord Marks, made a trenchant point with his four tests and I think the noble Lord, Lord King, acknowledged the same point. As both of them implied, the issue before us is to reconcile the requirements of a free society and the needs of those who work to protect us from terrorism. We should bear in mind that they do that work in an outstanding manner and in very difficult circumstances.
Rather than examine that issue in depth in relation to the Bill, I prefer to take advantage of the licence I am told is afforded to a maiden speech and the Long Title of the Bill, which is very broad, to raise one aspect of anti-terrorist policy where successive Governments have fallen short.
In the years following 9/11, Britain facilitated a US programme of extraordinary rendition. Just to be clear what we are talking about, in the 21st century Britain facilitated the kidnapping of people and having them taken to places where they could be maltreated and, in some cases, brutally tortured. I was shocked when I first heard those allegations, and I still am. That is why in 2005 I founded the All-Party Group on Extraordinary Rendition. My purpose was to find out the scope and limits of Britain’s complicity, to establish who authorised it and to do whatever was required to give us greater confidence that it would not happen again.
Since 2005, there have been three inquiries, all of them at least partly prompted by the group I founded. The first, by the ISC in 2007, completely erroneously concluded that Britain had not been involved at all. The second, a judge-led inquiry that I persuaded David Cameron to establish in the months before the 2010 election, was closed down before it had a chance to get very far. The third, another by the ISC, has just completed its work and has done its best but, by its own admission, has not been able to get to the bottom of the issue. That it failed to do so is scarcely surprising. The Prime Minister blocked the ISC’s access to almost all the relevant witnesses. It is clear from the report that in response to that the ISC closed down its inquiry. The ISC did not examine some of the toughest cases, such as Belhaj, who was rendered with UK assistance to Libya, nor detainee transfer in theatre.
How involved were Ministers in those decisions? We still do not know, and we still do not know what really happened. For much of the past 13 years, it has been an uphill struggle to elicit much information. Denials were frequent and often pretty comprehensive, if completely wrong. Here is Jack Straw’s in 2005, when he was Foreign Secretary, in response to a question I asked a colleague to ask at the Foreign Affairs Committee:
“Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying ... there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition full stop”.
Only a couple of years ago, I was assured by a very senior civil servant that there were only a handful of cases. Now the ISC has established that the UK was involved in more than 70. I do not think this issue can be left unaddressed. The question is how to address it. More than a decade ago I concluded that only a judge-led inquiry could hope to clear this up and enable us to move on. That inquiry is still needed, and I am very pleased that Ken Clarke, the former Justice Secretary who suspended the first judge-led inquiry, now agrees.
Freedom of information will not achieve much in the UK on rendition now that its effectiveness has been greatly curtailed by the Justice and Security Act, but in the US the group’s FOI requests are now eliciting significant further information which the group will put into the public domain. It could be that FOI in the US becomes the best remaining source on UK involvement, given that so many domestic avenues towards more information have been closed off. But best of all would be a judge-led inquiry, which would also be able independently to assess what can reasonably be put into the public domain and what must not be. Clearly, much of the information might carry operational risk for those in the security services today and should remain secret.
It is not just that kidnap and torture is deeply repugnant or even—which is the case—that it is probably ineffective as a means of gathering information. It is much worse than that. Complicity in kidnap and torture eats away at the moral authority of the perpetrators. To the extent that the UK has facilitated such practices, we have diminished ourselves and we have undermined the values that we seek to export. That is why getting to the truth about rendition is not some recondite backwater but goes to the heart of the kind of society that we aspire to be. In the age of Trump, Putin, fake news and the erosion of trust in the electorates of western democracies that is now taking place, it is all the more important that we stick to our values and on that issue, unlike Sir Denis perhaps, we know what those values are. That is why we now need to stick to those values and get to the truth on rendition.
Lord Stunell (LD)
My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. I congratulate him on it and welcome him to the House. I am sure the whole House will be looking forward to his future contributions. In the other place, he had a reputation for and record of original thinking, forensic inquiry, plain speaking and ruthless honesty, and we saw some of that in his maiden contribution in this House. Even his most severe critics would never describe him as a yes-man. Witnesses who sat in front of him in the Treasury Select Committee at the other end of this building would be ready to testify to that, even if they did not always wish to testify to his committee. His words today illustrate a thoughtful, analytical and fearless approach to the issues that come before your Lordships’ House, and I am sure his future contributions will continue that. It was also a pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier. His contribution was well up to the quality of this debate, which has, so far, been excellent and well informed.
Turning to the Bill, I associate myself with the words of my noble friends Lord Marks, Lady Hamwee and Lord Thomas and those of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi. In coalition days, she and I had many a quiet chat to see whether we could restore some sanity to the situation, but we did not always succeed as we wished. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said wise words about how extremism without violence must not be tangled up in our thinking about offences.
I want to focus on Clause 19. It is a very minor provision in the Bill; indeed, it appears under the subheading “Miscellaneous”. It deals with the granting of enabling powers to local authorities to nominate people who should go to Channel panels. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, commented on this to some extent. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill explain that, in 2016-17, 6,093 people were referred to Channel panels, and that 332 of those 6,093 were given support as a result of discussion in those Channel panels. Channel panels are established and run by local authorities, and up to now referrals to them have been exclusively in the hands of the police. The proposal in Clause 19 is to allow local authorities to have that right to refer people to the Channel panels that they themselves organise. It could be seen as just operational tidying up, but there is a little more to it than that. The Government’s impact assessment says of it that it is a magic provision; the word “magic” does not appear but it does say the provision will provide a saving to the police and no additional cost to anybody else. So what could possibly be wrong with it?
I suggest to your Lordships that there are some aspects that need to be looked at a bit more carefully than this entry under “Miscellaneous” currently grants: first, the reputation and effectiveness of Prevent itself—the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has said some powerful things about that; secondly, the workloads and competences of those running Channel panels; and, thirdly, something about their success rate and performance.
First, on reputation and effectiveness—this case has already been strongly made by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and apart from saying “Hear, hear” I cannot add much more—Prevent is counterproductive and its apparent impact is skewed. A careful reading of the report by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, especially page 24, sets out the case again.
Secondly, on workloads and competences, I make the point that those 6,093 referrals in a year mean 115 referrals a week to Channel panels. The outcome of those Channel panels is that six people a week receive support after referral. Let us just take those figures again: 115 cases come up each week, of which six are, on inspection, decided to be appropriate to receive Channel support. My first question is whether the Minister is satisfied that the 6,000 who are being referred in the first place are in fact an appropriate 6,000, and whether she is satisfied that only 6% of them subsequently being seen as requiring intervention by Channel panels suggests that the right people are coming forward and being selected.
My second question is: what analysis has the department done on which participating agencies are most likely to produce the false positives—the 109 people that week who are referred to a panel but for whom Channel support is not thought to be appropriate. Who are the people who are getting it wrong, and what can be done for them to get it right? What feedback and learning is there from the cases that do not get Channel support, and where evidently those nominations were inappropriate for one reason or another? What change is Clause 19 expected to produce to those outcomes? Is the clause’s intention that there will be more referrals as a consequence of local authorities having the right to refer, or is it supposed that in some way there will be more priorities for action by Channel panels as a consequence of those referrals? What is the driver for the change, something on which the Explanatory Notes are completely silent?
That brings me to the success and performance of Channel panels and the Prevent system as a whole. What happened to the 332 who received Channel support in 2016-17? Who was missed? The Explanatory Notes quite rightly point out that there were five terrorist incidents where deaths occurred, and seven terrorists were directly involved there. The noble Lord, Lord King, brought forward some other figures about the quite substantial number of attacks that were intercepted and where plots were foiled. Had any of those people come into the 6,093? Had any of them come into the 332 who were referred to Channel? In other words, is Prevent actually doing what the name suggests it should be doing, or is it simply a cosmetic overlay on a system that is widely seen as clumsy and counterproductive at best?
The Joint Committee on Human Rights wanted to see an independent inquiry. The Government’s rejection of that was really quite abrupt; they said such a claim was unfounded because there had been so many external and internal reviews that basically everything was fine and everything was known. I therefore hope that the questions that I have posed can be simply answered by the Minister today or, if not, that she is ready to answer them in Committee when we get there. It is necessary for the Government to justify the change that is proposed and the base from which that change is being made. What in fact is happening to the 94 out of every 100 people who are referred who have no further action taken regarding their case? I hope that when we get to Committee the Minister will be able to fill in some of those gaps. If not, I will certainly be returning to these matters at that time.
Food Labelling
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I shall repeat as a Statement an Answer given to an Urgent Question in the other place by my honourable friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Food and Animal Welfare on UK food labelling and allergy-related deaths. The Statement is as follows:
“First, Mr Speaker, I wanted to say how deeply upsetting the deaths of Celia Marsh and Natasha Ednan-Laperouse are and that my heart goes out to their families, friends and loved ones affected by those tragedies. This House will appreciate that investigations into Celia Marsh’s death are ongoing, and it would be inappropriate for Ministers to make further comment on that particular incident at this stage.
Honourable Members should be under no doubt how seriously we take these issues. It is essential that all UK consumers have complete trust in the food that they are eating. Current food labelling law is set out in the EU’s food information to consumers legislation. This legislation includes a list of 14 allergens, including milk and sesame, which are legally considered to be mandatory information that must be available to consumers. The regulations currently allow for some flexibility at a national level as to how this information is provided on food that is not pre-packed and on that which is pre-packed for direct sale. The former includes products such as loose cookies, or sandwiches that are prepared and wrapped directly for the customer. The latter category—pre-packed for direct sale—includes products such as freshly prepared sandwiches made on site, compared to packaged food such as a chocolate bar or ready meal that you find in a supermarket.
I must make absolutely clear that under the current regulations information must be made available to the consumer in all cases. However, whereas packaged food must include all allergens in bold in the ingredients list, information about non-pre-packed food, as well as pre-packed food for direct sale, can be made available by any means that the operator chooses. This includes the use of clear signs indicating that the customer should speak to a member of staff who will provide the information orally.
As the Secretary of State announced at the start of this year, we have been looking at developing new approaches to food labelling to ensure that consumers have the information they need. The death of Natasha has shone a harsh spotlight on the issue of allergen labelling in particular and whether the current framework is still suitable. Natasha’s parents have made a powerful case for change, and I am sure that the whole House will join me in paying tribute to the tremendous grace and strength that they have shown in these particularly challenging circumstances.
The Secretary of State has asked the department for urgent advice on how we can strengthen the current allergen labelling framework. That review is under way, and Defra is working closely with the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Health and Social Care. This morning we received the coroner’s report into Natasha’s death and we will study it very carefully as part of that review. Tomorrow Defra is holding talks with the devolved Administrations to see what approach they may wish to take, as this is a devolved matter.
We take this issue very seriously. I can assure honourable Members that we are working at pace to review the current rules and will set out our proposed way forward as soon as possible”.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for repeating that response and echo him in sending our deepest condolences to the friends and family of Natasha Ednan-Laperouse and Celia Marsh, who both died tragically following fatal allergic reactions.
In Natasha’s case, she had been reassured that the baguette she had purchased was safe for her to eat by the lack of specific allergen information on the packaging. Unbeknown to her, it contained sesame, to which she was allergic. Celia Marsh died after consuming food labelled as dairy-free which was found to contain dairy protein.
As these cases demonstrate, it is imperative that food labelling is both accurate and complete. At present, however, UK food regulations relating to allergen information appear to be seriously lacking, resulting in entirely avoidable deaths. It is clear that we need urgent change to the current legislation.
As the Minister explained, under the current rules, foods packaged on-site before sale do not require a specific allergen label attached. Natasha’s parents have been campaigning to change food labelling laws, which they describe as having played “Russian roulette” with their daughter’s life. Will the Minister commit to amending the regulations to require all produce to be individually labelled with allergen and ingredient information, and will he ensure that such information is meaningful? It is not enough to have a default warning placed on all products, such as the unhelpful “may contain nuts” warning, which appears to be more about protecting businesses from liability than assisting the consumer to make an informed assessment of whether an item is safe for them to consume. This is a public health issue which should have the protection of the welfare and lives of allergy sufferers at its heart.
Finally, I should also be grateful if the Minister could clarify the responsibility of suppliers involved in the manufacture and preparation of food in relation to allergy labelling. Celia Marsh died after consuming guaranteed dairy-free flatbread at Pret A Manger. Although the inquest has not yet been held, I am aware that CoYo, which manufactures the dairy-free coconut yoghurt used in the flatbread prepared by Pret, disputes that its produce was contaminated.
There is a danger of blame being passed up and down the line here, which raises important questions about checks in the supply chain. Can the Minister make clear who is ultimately responsible for the content and accuracy of labelling in such cases, where a number of suppliers and subcontractors are involved? I look forward to his response.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I echo a great deal of what the noble Baroness said. The urgency of this is imperative. The Secretary of State has been in touch with Natasha’s parents. Obviously, we want to ensure that what happened to Natasha, and her parents, wider family and loved ones, does not happen again. That is why the review will be urgent. We will be working closely with the Food Standards Agency and the Department for Health and Social Care and, as I said in the Statement, we will be communicating with the devolved Administrations tomorrow. We will look at the coroner’s report in Natasha’s case, which was received this morning. I should say that in the case of Celia Marsh, as the noble Baroness alluded to, not only is the coroner’s investigation in process but there is a legal dispute between Pret A Manger and CoYo. In those circumstances, I should not want to go any further on that case.
I assure your Lordships that, whether it is suppliers or retailers, the importance of this, as the noble Baroness outlined, is that it is a public health matter. People in this country, particularly those with allergies, should have the right information to know whether something is safe for them to eat. The FSA has campaigned on this over a considerable period. It is not only about raising awareness and issuing guidance for businesses but raising awareness among people with allergies that they must ask—because, as I said, the requirement is that all shops should be in a position to advise the consumer by signs and verbally. I assure your Lordships that we shall look at this with rigour and urgency.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for repeating the response to the Urgent Question this afternoon, and extend my sympathies to the families of Celia and Natasha. I declare my interest as a lifelong coeliac, so I understand completely the implications of inaccurate food labelling. All consumers must be able to trust that food labelling is comprehensive and correct. It is simply unacceptable, after taking the time to read through the list of ingredients, subsequently to find that an ingredient has been inaccurately recorded or omitted.
I highlight a slightly different aspect of this matter. As the Minister reiterated, the Statement refers to freshly prepared food and the need to check with members of staff before buying. I know from experience that staff are not always aware of exactly which foods contain allergens. Although training is much better than it was, cross-contamination can still occur in some cases.
I am really pleased that the Minister said that the Food Standards Agency is to be involved, but I should like him to reassure us that, following these tragic events, as well as food labelling being a top priority, the handling of food to prevent cross-contamination will be included in the review of advice currently taking place. This is now an urgent priority, before there is any more unnecessary suffering.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, that is imperative and, as I said, we are working with all those involved. I should say that the FSA has responsibility for allergen labelling; that is precisely why it is an essential part of the review. The noble Baroness rightly refers to training of staff. Again, businesses are in all circumstances under a duty. We must ensure—this is one of the key areas of enforcement—that all businesses are mindful of their responsibilities. All producers of food and food products should be mindful of cross-contamination. That concerns food safety more generally, but these are all areas which we take very seriously.
Baroness Byford (Con)
My Lords, I follow the two noble Baronesses in extending my condolences to the families, because this is a great tragedy that could have been avoided had the information been available. My sister suffers, although not to that degree, from a problem with nuts, and it is extremely difficult to find out whether nuts have been involved somewhere along the line in the production of any food.
Perhaps, when the review comes to a conclusion, it will set national standards so that we do not fall into the gap of when it was “best before” to sell food by or recommended by a date to be sold. It should be clearly set out what is or is not included in that food. My slight, perhaps personal, fear is that different manufacturers or food producers will put a different aspect on the labelling. We need clearly identifiable labelling that everybody will be able to understand.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, nuts are one of the 14 allergens; the labelling law as set out in the EU’s food information to consumers legislation includes nuts, and is therefore considered to be mandatory information that must be available to consumers. As one of the 14 allergens, nuts must be included in information.
Baroness Tonge (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I feel that I should know the answer to this question myself, but excuse me for asking it. Are the Government planning or funding any research into these food allergies that seem to be an epidemic nowadays? Certainly when I was in general practice, there were very rare cases—they hardly ever happened. Now we hear about them on a weekly basis. Are the Government tackling this at the source?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I thank the noble Baroness. I think I should discuss this with my noble friend in the Department of Health and Social Care, but clearly the noble Baroness is absolutely right. We are always hearing of those who have allergies, and indeed many friends and relations. This is a very important area, and I will write to the noble Baroness about what work is going on through government and through private and charitable sources. And, of course, as is normal, I will place a copy in the Library.
Overseas Development Aid
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House I will repeat the Answer to an Urgent Question given by my right honourable the Secretary of State for International Development in the other place earlier today.
“The combined global aid spend totals $150 billion dollars, leaving a funding gap of $2.5 trillion to deliver the global goals. We are adrift on the global goals— 80 years off nutrition, 100 years off education, 200 years off poverty. We must ask ourselves: do we want to deliver the global goals? If we want to, we have to let others help, including the private sector.
We have had good returns from investing in developing countries. CDC’s average annual investment return is 7%. The City of London manages over £8 trillion in assets, but little is invested in the poorest countries. Even a small increase could have a huge impact on these economies. For example, if we could redirect just 1% of the total assets to investment opportunities in Africa, that would generate an additional investment of around $110 billion. By contrast, global aid flows to Africa in 2016 were worth just $50 billion. I believe the public would be interested in their savings and pension funds being used to deliver the global goals. Why can British people not go to banks and invest their savings in pensions and products that will invest in the global goals, or open up an app on their phone and select which global goals they would most like to invest in?
We have lots of tools to do this. As we outlined today, the World Benchmarking Alliance, which I unveiled at the UN General Assembly will rank companies on their contributions to the global goals, so people can decide which companies they want to buy from, invest in or work for. We have the expertise to do this: the City of London in the financial services sector, in DFID and elsewhere in development and impact investment. Today I have announced that I want to start a national conversation with financial institutions, but also with savers, pensioners and the wider public. We will announce the findings of that conversation at the UK Africa investment conference next year. We will work with the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to make sure that the aid rules incentivise private sector investment where it is needed. This is the only way we will collectively deliver the financing necessary to meet the global goals. In future years, as the amount of funding coming back into our own development financial instruments increases, we should be open to using these profits to count towards 0.7%. I am exploring the scope to reinvest those funds with DAC—the Development Assistance Committee—to maximise the value of our investments.”
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
I thank the Minister for repeating the response to the Urgent Question. It is a pity this is an Urgent Question and not a Statement from the Government, because if it had been a Statement we could have had a little more time to probe exactly what the Secretary of State meant this morning when she spoke at the CDC. The Minister knows that I have repeatedly asked questions about the Government’s intention with the DAC definition of ODA, since immediately after the election and of course in November. The clear intentions were never really apparent, but in the debate we had on the CDC Bill in this House it was made perfectly clear that we supported it because we wanted the CDC to leverage more investment. Everyone knows we will not achieve the SDGs simply on ODA alone. For the Secretary of State to preach to the Opposition about how that can be achieved is nonsense. The fact is that we need greater additionality. There should never be a case where we are using CDC investment, getting a return and then counting the return as ODA-accountable. It is double counting. It is wrong. What we want to do is use the CDC to leverage more.
I want to ask the Minister a very specific question on how the Government intend to move forward. Will he give an assurance that we will not take unilateral action to change the definition of ODA, and that we will continue to work with our partners in the DAC and maintain a consensus? This country has led the way, and it would be a shame if we broke that consensus.
Lord Bates
The noble Lord is right to say that the development assistance community works by consensus. That is how it arrives at its conclusions. Regarding this debate, I feel that a few issues are being conflated. One is the SDGs, to which we are all committed and which we discussed earlier today. The second is the realisation—I readily accept that the noble Lord has regularly made a point of it—that that cannot be achieved by public flows alone. It has to be catalytic to leverage in private sector investment. Then there was the question about impact investing, and whether something else could be done in the future so that more private citizens could leverage in capital.
The final issue comes to the heart of the noble Lord’s question, about CDC funding. This is where we have had a lot of debate. If, for example, your £1 billion is put into CDC and over time the investments make a profit which is then returned into the fund—it is 100% UK-owned, so it is public sector in that sense—and then that profit is reinvested, should that reinvestment score? It is a debate that has to be had. We believe there is a case for doing that, but we have to do it by working with our partners and discussing it with them. This is one of a range of points on this issue. I hope that that has been helpful.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, I confess to being a little confused. In her speech to the CDC today, the Secretary of State says we should be open to using profits from UK development finance instruments,
“to count towards the 0.7%”,
and as we have heard, the current ODA rules do not allow this. However, earlier in her speech, the Secretary of State outlined why it was important to get private investment into developing countries, given that $150 billion of annual aid will never measure up to the $2.5 trillion needed to achieve the SDGs. Like the noble Lord, Lord Collins, I agree wholeheartedly with that. However, the fact is that unless profits from DFIs and any other development funds that may in future be raised in the City of London are powered back into developing countries we will lose the advantage of any leverage gained, as well as the opportunity to power back profits to help developing countries, and in the process compromise efforts to achieve the SDGs.
In my view, the Secretary of State is being disingenuous. This is an attempt to undermine the 0.7%, breaking the Conservative manifesto commitment. Does the Minister agree?
Lord Bates
The noble Baroness will not be surprised to hear that I do not agree, and neither do I agree with the suggestion that the Secretary of State is being disingenuous. Far from it—I think she was very clear, although how those remarks have been interpreted is clearly another matter. So this is a good opportunity for us to make it absolutely clear that we are committed to the SDGs and to 0.7%. The DAC element counts only public sector investment, so it cannot count private sector investment towards the 0.7% target to which we are committed. But, as the noble Baroness and the noble Lord said, we are at one in recognising that you will not provide the 18 million jobs that Africa needs every year between now and 2050 without the private sector engaging with this. You will not bridge the $2.5 trillion gap in meeting the SDGs without getting the private sector involved. That is why the Secretary of State was absolutely right to say that we need to do more to leverage and catalyse that investment which the UK has an expertise in.
Lord Campbell-Savours (Lab)
My Lords, DfID projects have historically been subject to post-project evaluations for economy, efficiency and effectiveness—in other words, to make sure that we are not wasting public money. In the event that private investment were to be levered in, in the way that is being suggested—as I understand it, it would be within the 0.7%—what post-project evaluations would take place, not because it is public sector project money but to ensure that that investment meets overseas development criteria, and that it is not simply being attributed to overseas development criteria as a way of spending the money?
Lord Bates
An example is impact funds, many of which already exist within the City of London; many civil society groups and organisations such as the UN Global Compact scrutinise how that is accounted for in accounts. With the CDC it is a different process. We were quite specific when we discussed the raising of the threshold—the capitalisation of the CDC—as the legislation went through this House, that no investments could be made under that without a business case being prepared, which then has to be signed off and reviewed at the end of it to ensure that the outputs it was envisaged would be delivered were achieved, and if not, why not? These are therefore all important elements in the exploration of these issues. More can be done, but again, it needs to be done transparently.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
My Lords, I concur very much with what the noble Lord, Lord Collins, was saying, and I well remember the CDC Bill and the criticisms that we made then. One can raise a slightly different issue about the CDC. Does the Minister recall the comments of ICAI—the Independent Commission for Aid Impact— about the impact of aid? You can put in the rubric that poverty alleviation is a purpose, but what about the measurement of that purpose, and where is the evidence of impact? We still have to wait for this to come from the CDC.
Lord Bates
The impact comes in three levels that we specifically target. One is the amount of money which catalyses money to come in from the private sector: if we invest £1, does it bring in £10 of private investment? We look at it in terms of the taxation it generates for revenue in the country where the investment is taking place, and we look at the number of jobs that are created by that. In alignment with the SDG requirement on this for aid, this is for decent work, so I accept all that. That is how we do it. The point which the noble Earl was right to highlight was addressed substantially by the change in the new investment strategy, which the CDC was required to have alongside the new investment. That has a much greater focus on the most fragile and most affected states, because we do not want it—not that it has ever done this in its illustrious, 70-year history—to cherry pick the investments. We want it to go where no private sector capital is going so that it can make the greatest impact. That impact and that change in the investment strategy will see results in the years to come.
Brexit: Negotiations
(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Exiting the European Union (Lord Callanan) (Con)
My Lords, with the leave of the House, I will now repeat a Statement made in the other place earlier today by my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the EU. The Statement is as follows:
“With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to update the House on the progress in negotiations to leave the EU and the Government’s planning for no deal. Since I last updated the House, our negotiations with the EU have continued and intensified. Over the recess break we have been engaging constructively with our EU counterparts. Let me take the main areas of the negotiations in turn.
On the withdrawal agreement, while there remain some differences, we are closing in on workable solutions to all the key outstanding issues, building on the progress we made during the summer on issues such as data and information, the treatment of ongoing police and judicial co-operation in criminal matters, and ongoing Union judicial and administrative procedures after exit. We have also been discussing proposals on the linkage needed between the withdrawal agreement and the future relationship, and the EU is engaging constructively.
On the Northern Ireland protocol, we remain committed to the undertakings we made in the joint report in December to agree a backstop in case there is a delay between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the treaty on our future relationship. That was agreed to avoid any risk of a return to a hard border in the intervening period. But we will not accept anything that threatens the constitutional or economic integrity of the United Kingdom. Creating any form of customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, which is what the EU had proposed, would put that at risk, and that is unacceptable. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister has said, it is not something that she, or any British Prime Minister, could conceivably agree to. We are engaging with the EU on our alternative proposals that preserve the integrity of the United Kingdom. They will be in line with the commitments we made back in December, including the commitment that no new regulatory barriers should be created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK unless the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree.
On the future relationship, we continue to make progress: for example, on both the internal and external security arrangements for future co-operation, although there is still some way to go. As the House will know, the Prime Minister presented our proposals on the economic partnership to EU leaders at the Salzburg summit. We understand that the EU has raised some concerns, particularly around the distinction between goods and services under the common rulebook, and with respect to the facilitated customs arrangement. We continue to engage constructively with the EU, and we continue to press our case. The UK’s White Paper proposals are the best way of ensuring there is continued frictionless trade in goods after Britain leaves the EU, while fulfilling the joint commitment to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland, and of course respecting the referendum.
These negotiations were always bound to be tough in the final stretch. That is all the more reason why we should hold our nerve and stay resolute and focused. I remain confident that we will reach a deal this autumn, because it is still in the best interests of the UK and the European Union. It is the best way of protecting trade between Britain and the EU—which underpins millions of jobs across Europe. It is the best way of making sure we continue to co-operate seamlessly on security matters to tackle crime and terrorism to keep UK and EU citizens safe. It is also the best way to avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and Ireland that would adversely affect communities living there, or separating Northern Ireland from Great Britain, which we will not countenance.
To achieve these aims, the UK has brought forward serious and credible proposals. We continue to engage with the EU to press our case and to better understand the nature of some of its concerns. Equally, it is time for the EU to match the ambition and pragmatism that we have shown.
While we intensify negotiations to secure the deal we want, and the deal we expect, we are also expediting preparations for no deal, in case the EU does not match the ambition and pragmatism we have demonstrated. As the Prime Minister stated on 21 September after Salzburg, the Government have made clear that we will unilaterally protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK in the event of no deal. To the 3 million here, we say: you are our friends, our neighbours, our colleagues; we want you to stay and we will be setting out the details as soon as possible. We also now urge the EU and all its member states to step up and give UK citizens on the continent the same reassurances. It is time, on both sides, to provide all our citizens with that comfort and confidence.
Since I last updated the House in September, we have published 52 more technical notices, in two further batches. They inform people, businesses and other key stakeholders of the steps they need to take if we do not reach a deal with the EU. They cover a wide range of sectors, building on other work that has taken place across Government over the past two years. They enable us to prepare the UK for Brexit irrespective of the outcome of negotiations. They acknowledge that there are risks to a no-deal scenario. But they also demonstrate the steps we will take to avoid, mitigate and manage any potential short-term risks and disruption.
Overall, we have now published 77 technical notices which form part of the sensible, proportionate steps we are taking to prepare the country for every eventuality. Our most recent batch was published on 24 September and is set out in a Written Ministerial Statement today. There are 24 and they range from aviation and the advice for airlines on the impact of no deal and actions for them to consider to maintain services on the day we leave the EU, through to car insurance and the arrangements to ensure green cards will be available free of charge from insurance companies to enable UK drivers to continue to drive on the continent.
The publication of the technical notices enables further engagement as part of our no-deal planning. For example, our earlier technical notice on VAT set out the VAT changes that companies will need to prepare for when importing or exporting goods from the EU, when supplying services to the EU, or interacting with EU VAT IT systems. It was welcomed by the British Chambers of Commerce, and we are grateful to it and all our stakeholders for their constructive, ongoing engagement on that necessary planning.
More broadly, I met the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI, the IoD, the EEF and the Federation of Small Businesses as part of the Government’s business advisory group on 17 September to make sure we are explaining our negotiating proposals and no-deal planning, and listening to UK businesses of all sizes, and across all sectors. We will keep providing people and businesses with the advice they need as we negotiate our exit from the European Union. We also keep working with the devolved Administrations on all aspects of our planning for exit.
I attended the Joint Ministerial Committee on 13 September. It has now met 12 times and our last meeting was a valuable opportunity to give the devolved Administrations a full update on the negotiations, as well as to discuss the necessary no-deal planning. We continue to listen very carefully to all their views. That is the way, with concerted effort on all fronts, that we have put ourselves in the best possible position to make the best of Brexit. I commend the Statement to the House”.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement but I wonder whether the Government actually own a calendar. After 18 months, and just 171 days before we are due to leave, we have more pages on no deal than on the deal, or indeed on the framework for our future relationship. Do the Government really want us to crash out despite the warm words we just heard in the Statement, or dare they not set out their plans given their fear of the Eurosceptics on their own party Benches?
The Government promised that the deal to be put to Parliament will include a “clear blueprint” for our future relationship with the EU. When will we see this blueprint? I had thought we would see a draft tomorrow but I gather it has now been delayed—perhaps because it is so vague that it is more a leap into the unknown than a blueprint for future policy. Or does the Minister think there is a third way—neither Chequers nor no deal—as David Davis set out today in his letter to MPs, albeit one he was not able to negotiate himself during two years as Secretary of State? Or perhaps the Minister thinks, along with Jacob Rees-Mogg, that we should have a “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Canada”—hardly a game for serious negotiators.
Given that the Government have effectively and finally retreated from their claim that a deal would be done by October, could the Minister be a little more specific than “autumn” as to when he anticipates it will be done and when the deal will be brought to this House, as required in legislation? What assurances can he give the House that the Government’s solemn commitment to a legally binding backstop in Northern Ireland “in all circumstances” will be honoured? Have the Government accepted the view of this House that the UK should be in a customs union with the EU to ensure frictionless trade? This is not only important in itself, but the only viable solution to the Irish border.
The Statement includes,
“the commitment that no new regulatory barriers should be created between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK unless the Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly agree”,
which leaves the door open. This possibility is, of course, what would lead to a border in the sea despite the assurances just given in the Commons and repeated. Different rules in two areas mean checks between the two. That possibility—mentioning only the Northern Ireland Executive and the Assembly—also raises questions about the role this Parliament would have in any such change, and it challenges earlier government undertakings of no diminution of standards or rights, since any regulatory boundaries between Belfast and London sounds like different standards between the two.
The Statement says:
“The UK’s White Paper proposals are the best way of ensuring there is continued frictionless trade in goods after Britain leaves the EU”.
It still sounds like “Chequers or no deal” despite, as we know, Chequers being acceptable to neither this Parliament nor our EU allies. The no-deal option is not acceptable to business, the public, our allies or, indeed, to Parliament, let alone to the people of Ireland and Northern Ireland, where there would have to be an immediate border.
The last time I asked the Minister whether he had been to the port of Dover, he said he had not. Has he now been, and has he discussed a no-deal option at the port? I was in Rotterdam yesterday, where thought, planning and preparation is in hand at its massive port to deal with a no-deal outcome—preparation to safeguard its economy and trade. Has the Minister any shame about how less prepared the UK—the country that filed for divorce—is for such an eventuality? Has he digested, as I have had to, these 77 technical notices, which alert us to green cards being reissued? Many in this House are old enough to remember those—down the other end, less so.
There is also the possibility of new driving licences being needed; the end of free movement of trade, with customs and tariff checks; the adoption of new classifications of goods, with a wonderful example given of how a grand piano would be classified if exported to the EU; the end of “goods on the market” rules; data exchange challenges; drastic changes to civil law enforcement; the end of mutual recognition of testing for safety of consumer goods; and uncertainty over travel to the EU. Are these all issues that the Minister feels it is reasonable to threaten at the end of March? As the CBI states, serious disruption will be caused to business and families. Is the Minister really serious that that is a realistic option for our country, and is it useful for the Government to threaten to refuse to pay the £39 billion divorce settlement if the EU fails to give Britain a precise future trade deal within weeks, when it is the UK that cannot get unity on its own Benches within its own Parliament on a future trade deal?
This House needs to know where the Government stand on the deal they want, and particularly on our future relationship. It needs to know whether they are with Steve Baker, who seems to prioritise a trade deal that leaves us independent over and above a trade deal that is good for the economy, or with Boris Johnson, who says that we should “chuck Chequers” and have a super-Canada FTA, spending money on,
“all the customs procedures … needed to ensure … frictionless trade, and to prepare … for a WTO deal”.
It seems he does not understand that frictionless trade comes from having the same regulations and rules rather than having a barrier of border agents checking for all the disparities in rules and regulations.
Regrettably, we are no clearer from this Statement than from what we have been reading in the press over the summer. Because I am a great optimist, I just hope that beneath everything that is going on there is serious negotiation taking place below the water level so that we can find a deal that is neither Chequers, as that is not acceptable, nor no deal, but a deal that is good for the whole economy across the whole country.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I start by remarking that I went to the Printed Paper Office to ask for a copy of the Written Ministerial Statement and technical notices that have been published today, but they were not available. I find that very regrettable, as we need to be informed about these things, and I hope that the Minister will ensure that on the next occasion the Written Statement is available.
I find this a profoundly worrying and in some ways surreal Statement. It talks about preparing the UK for Brexit, irrespective of the outcome of the negotiations—in other words, if necessary at the end of March to break all our relations with the European Union. Can the Minister assure us that the British Government are really prepared for that? As the noble Baroness has just said, Rotterdam is well in advance of the port of Dover in its preparations. We are beginning to train the extra customs officials that we would like and to reverse the cut in the number of Border Force officers that the Government have pushed through in the last three years, but there is no way that we can do that between now and March.
I find the confusion within the Government deeply worrying. For example, the Home Secretary has said that we will have the same visa regime for European exchanges as we have now for the rest of the world. In the last two weeks, I have been collecting a certain amount of evidence on how far universities are suffering from the refusal of the visa authorities to allow academic and scientific researchers from outside the EEA to attend conferences in Britain. If we start doing that to the EEA next April, we shall blow up half the networks for scientific research that we have in this country. I speak with particular passion because my son is involved in many of them.
There are elements here which one can really only be humorous about. I congratulate the Government on the element of irony in the Statement with the reference to their pragmatism and the suggestion that it is the European Union that is being rigid while the Conservative Party, which is so well represented on those Benches, is being entirely pragmatic.
On the Northern Ireland issue, I recognise that this is the Conservative and Unionist Party, which by its rigidity in dealing with the Irish problem over 100 years ago contributed to the division of Ireland. It seems to me that now its rigidity may well risk losing not only Northern Ireland but also potentially Scotland. I wonder whether the Government have considered taking more seriously Boris Johnson’s proposal to build a bridge across the Irish Sea. It would have a number of advantages. We could maintain the temporary customs arrangement until the bridge was completed and opened, which would certainly take us 20 or 30 years, and if one were to construct the bridge in such a way that there was room for customs arrangements to be conducted on the bridge, it could become a garden bridge in the event that those arrangements were not needed.
To move on, my wife has just been to a conference in Geneva to discuss as a model EU-Swiss relations, on which she has been an expert for some years, and the question of whether the Liechtenstein model should be taken more seriously. As some people will know, it has a customs union with both Switzerland and the European Union. That seems almost as attractive as the Jersey model, which has been talked about by various sources. The Government refer to their “ambition”, but ambition that would perhaps take us as far as being like Liechtenstein or Jersey is really beyond a joke.
On the question of how we get from here to April, I ask the Minister how far the Government will take the other parties into their confidence over the management of the business that is required. We do not know what has happened to the Trade Bill. When are we going to continue with its Committee stage? What other major pieces of legislation do we need to take through between now and March? The Institute for Government has just produced a report on the very large number of statutory instruments that we will need to consider between now and March. Can the Minister assure us that both Houses will be given time to consider these legislative instruments properly and that they will not be bulldozed through in a panic at the last minute?
I should like to move on to the subject of the future relationship. There was no reference to it in this Statement or to any sort of declaration about our future foreign policy and defence relationships. Again, the Government seem to be in great confusion on this. We have a new Foreign Secretary, who compares the European Union to the Soviet Union. Clearly, we would not wish to maintain foreign policy and defence relationships with an area that was naturally so hostile, yet for the last 40 years much of Britain’s foreign policy and security relationships externally have been conducted multilaterally in partnership with the European Union. When will the Government tell us a little more about what they consider to be important and what sort of pattern they intend the future relationship to have?
Perhaps most worrying is the reference in the Statement to a potential gap, in the case of a delay, between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the treaty on our future relationship. Do the Government consider that there may well be a hole whereby we have come to the end of the implementation period but have not yet negotiated a treaty on the future relationship and there is somehow a void, with no firm treaty foundation for the relationship between, say, 2021 and 2024 or 2025? If so, that is deeply worrying. I presume that that is the point at which we would go back to WTO terms, or perhaps that is another piece of loose wording in the Statement.
Lord Callanan
I thank the noble Baroness and the noble Lord for their comments. I shall deal first with the questions from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter. I reiterate that our blueprint is the White Paper and we continue to negotiate on that basis. We are convinced that it offers frictionless trade, which is what we want to achieve. We are taking forward discussions on that basis and are waiting for a formal response to those proposals from the EU.
On the timescale, as soon as we have an agreement we will bring forward a debate in this House and a vote in the other place on the so-called meaningful vote, and we will then introduce legislation as quickly as possible to implement the withdrawal agreement. We are mindful of the short timescale between then and our leaving date of 29 March to get that legislation through, but considerable planning is being carried out on that basis. Of course, we produced the White Paper before the summer to illustrate that.
With regard to the backstop, the Commission proposal was unacceptable. We will shortly produce our counterproposal, which will meet the requirements as set out in the joint statement in December.
I have not visited the port of Dover. I and ministerial colleagues have visited European capitals and considerable discussions are going on between officials to make sure that there is minimal disruption at Dover.
With regard to no-deal notices, to reiterate the point, we do not want or expect a no deal, but we think a responsible Government should plan for the possibility, and we will continue to publish the no-deal notices to take account of that unlikely possibility.
Lastly, I agree with the noble Baroness’s final point: that we are seriously negotiating at pace. Negotiations in Brussels are ongoing as we speak, and detailed discussions on all the outstanding issues are proceeding.
I can only apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, if he was not given an advance copy of the Statement—he should have been. I have already raised it with officials and I will ensure it does not happen again, but please accept my apologies for that. He referred to the no-deal notices. I do not know if there is some confusion; we are not publishing any additional no-deal notices today, but there was a Written Ministerial Statement accounting for the no-deal notices that were published a couple of weeks ago.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
They could not find the Written Ministerial Statement.
Lord Callanan
I apologise; you should have been given a copy of that.
Regarding the immigration system, the Home Secretary will be setting out our proposals for a future immigration system shortly.
There are no plans of which I am aware to build a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland; maybe other parts of the Government are working on it, but if they are, nobody has told me.
I am not quite sure of the noble Lord’s point on Liechtenstein. I have never heard anybody else talking about a Liechtenstein model, apart from himself. He will of course be aware that Liechtenstein is a member of the EEA, which was rejected a number of times as an option in House of Commons votes. The population of Liechtenstein is about 39,000—about 1/10th of the population of Bradford. I hope he is not seriously suggesting this could be a model we would wish to follow.
Regarding the Trade Bill, our position is that Parliament is likely to be asked to take decisions on amendments relating to the UK’s future relationship. We think it is in Parliament’s best interest to know the terms of the UK’s future relationship with the EU when being asked to take decisions on the Trade Bill, so there will be a pause before we resume progress on this Bill, to ensure we can operate our independent trade policy in all scenarios.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, naturally I wish my noble friend and his colleagues in government well; we all do. But could he give the House some indication of what he expects the timetable to be between now and the rising of the House for the Christmas Recess? Could he also have a gentle word with the Foreign Secretary and point out that, while it is humorous if he confuses Japan and China, it is serious if he confuses the European Union with the Soviet Union?
Lord Callanan
On my noble friend’s last point, I am not sure I am in a position to give the Foreign Secretary advice. But, to be fair, I looked at his comments, and he did not compare the EU to the Soviet Union; he was making a point about how difficult it is to leave various organisations. I think afterwards he withdrew the exact words he used.
Regarding timescales, it is difficult to be precise. We are still trying to target an agreement by the October summit. As I mentioned in my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, we are conscious of the need for proper parliamentary scrutiny of the withdrawal Act, and we are preparing for that, but we need appropriate time to get the legislation through both Houses before 29 March. We have made the EU aware of that timescale, but of course we want to ensure we get the right deal for the United Kingdom. As soon as I have more information on the timescale, the noble Lord will be the first to hear about it.
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
My Lords, a question has been raised regarding various studies going on in Whitehall about what happens from next year onwards. Can the Minister clarify the reason for some questions being part of the scope of Whitehall studies and apparently some not? For example, a point was made about a month ago concerning the European Economic Area and scenarios of us being part of it. I thank the Minister for his letter to me about it, in which he confirmed we would in any event continue to be part of the EEA for some time after next year. Is it not sensible to have full studies done by Whitehall on the perfectly possible scenarios of what might be dubbed EEA-plus, given some of the discussions swirling around in Europe about reform of the whole EEA? And would it not be sensible for the Minister to acknowledge the case for some flexibility in the way Whitehall operates in this very novel situation?
Lord Callanan
As I said in previous answers, the House of Commons has rejected the option of remaining in the EEA, and our legal position is that we will leave the EEA when we leave the EU. Seeking to remain in the EEA does not pass the test that the Prime Minister has set for our future partnership. It would not deliver control of our borders or our laws, and it would mean continuing to accept all EU single market rules, so I do not think that is the right future for Britain.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, the Minister has stressed once again that the Government are considering and planning for every possibility. In that case, will he confirm that the Government are planning for the possibility of a no-deal Brexit and in those circumstances for a vote in Parliament requesting a confirmatory vote by the people? Can he confirm how long it would take for a confirmatory vote of that sort to be properly organised and take place?
Lord Callanan
I said we are planning for a no-deal Brexit. I do not know what the noble lord means by a “confirmatory vote”. If he means a second referendum, then, no, we are not planning for a second referendum, because we have already had a referendum and the vote was clear.
Lord Kerr of Kinlochard (CB)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, drew attention to the possibility of a black hole between the end of the implementation period and the entry into force of the future relationship treaty. As I understand it, the present draft of the withdrawal treaty contains no extension provision. Would it not be as well to include in the treaty the possibility of its extension? I can see that might be controversial with some in this country and with some lawyers across the Channel, but building in the flexibility to be able to bridge that gap could be very valuable. The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, is certainly right that it will take several years to negotiate the agreement, but probably another year to ratify it, since it will be a mixed agreement. So the possibility of extending it being built into the draft—both parties would clearly have to agree—is surely desirable.
Lord Callanan
The terms of the implementation period are already agreed and both sides agreed with the proposal to end the implementation period co-terminous with the end of the current multiannual financial framework. There is no possibility of extending that built into the agreement.
Lord Pannick (CB)
My Lords, can I ask the Minister whether the Government will be participating in the forthcoming Court of Justice of the European Union proceedings on whether there is power unilaterally to revoke the Article 50 notification? If the Government are participating, will they be submitting that there is such power or there is not?
Lord Callanan
This is the subject of legal proceedings, as the noble Lord is well aware. I am not going to answer his question because I am not sure we have made a decision about how we are going to proceed on that yet, but as soon as I know more I will come back to him on it.
Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)
Will the Minister give me a little practical advice? I have been approached by a number of small and medium-sized enterprises that are rather confused by the technical notes. At what stage would the Minister say that these small and medium-sized enterprises should start in earnest to implement the suggestions made in those notes—now, in a couple of months or never? I would like some advice, please.
Lord Callanan
As with all these things, it is difficult to be precise. However, the noble Baroness will be as aware as I am of the necessary parliamentary timetables that will be involved in passing the appropriate legislation. If we do not have a withdrawal agreement in place in enough time to get it passed by Parliament then we will clearly be looking at a no-deal scenario, given the timescale. I do not want to be any more precise than that. The noble Baroness will probably want to push me on it, but I think she will now have some idea of where we are going.
Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill
Tuesday 9th October 2018
(5 years, 6 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 View all Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 11 September 2018 - (11 Sep 2018)
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, I thought the House might like to be reminded of just three of our parliamentary colleagues who were the victims of terrorism: Airey Neave, the Reverend Robert Bradford and Ian Gow. After all, in this debate today we have not heard much about the victims.
There has been a degree of consensus in the debate, but it is a consensus that I do not in any way share. Of course I agree that this is a complex Bill with an ambitious purpose. To quote from the Queen’s Speech of June 2017, that purpose is,
“to ensure that the police and security services have all the powers they need, and that the length of custodial sentences for terrorism-related offences are sufficient to keep the population safe”.
In other words, it is a contribution to the first and second of the key obligations of government. The first obligation is to maintain the borders of the kingdom securely and to bar entry to those who do not share our purposes in life in this kingdom. The second purpose is to maintain the Queen’s peace.
As we all know from our long experience of grappling with the terrorist movement of the Irish Republican Army and Sinn Féin, these are difficult tasks that have been costly in both treasure and blood. However, the threat today is unlike that from the Irish dimension. There was a simple logic to that threat. Unable to persuade the people of Northern Ireland to vote for a union of Ulster with the Irish Republic, Sinn Féin conducted a terrorist campaign of violence by its armed organisation, the IRA, towards that aim. Fortunately, the courage of the people of Ulster and the skill and bravery of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Armed Forces of the United Kingdom demonstrated that the ambition of the republican movement could not be attained by violence either. That task was made no easier by the support given to IRA/Sinn Féin by what was then the hard left in this country and is now the leadership of the Labour Party today.
The nature of the threat today is different, and it is made worse by the rise of so-called social media, which provides an open platform for—what shall we call them?—the proponents of terrorism. Some of the threat is directed to bringing about a worldwide caliphate. Much of it is largely directed from overseas, bringing a requirement for extraterritorial action—and I welcome that particularly in this Bill. Some of the threat arises from Islamist extremists resident or born in this country. But a great deal of it springs from a love of violence, and uses the language of Islam to justify inflicting violence in its name. That may well prompt others of unstable mind to inflict violence on peaceable followers of Islam.
The provisions of the Bill well deserve support. There may be ways in which it might be improved, but I hope we will not see nit-picking in the name of liberty by those who have sympathy with the aims of those who inflict terrorist violence, whether from political or religious conviction or because of mental illness.
There was talk today, and in the other place before the Recess, of the need to protect free speech, freedom of assembly and association, and all that. There was talk also of the effects on the meanderings of the European Court of Justice. I speak tonight, as nobody else seems to have done so far, for those who died at the hands of terrorists. I support the Bill, and others who have suffered at the hands of terrorists and survived will undoubtedly support it, too. There are many who will support this Bill from beyond the grave. I speak for them tonight.
Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)
My Lords, like others, I think that this has so far been an excellent debate, and I shall try not to spoil that record. It is an honour to follow the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit. His views and mine do not normally coalesce in any way whatever—except on terrorism.
As far as I can see, I welcome the Bill in its entirety. We all remember with sadness the lives lost and the lives horrifyingly changed by the attacks in Britain in 2017. This Bill is part of our nation’s response to those events. I thought that the decision by the Government, MI5 and the police to put in train the operational improvement review—carried out by the then David Anderson QC, now my noble friend Lord Anderson of Ipswich—was wise and proportionate, and this Bill reflects that position.
In the same way as the noble Lord, Lord King, said, I appreciate the bipartisan approach taken by both Houses to this matter. It has not always been thus. As a rather famous namesake of mine once said, I have “scars on my back” from the times in which there was not a bipartisan approach to terrorism.
The Bill recognises that terrorist behaviour and terrorist threats are changing, particularly, as my noble friend Lady Manningham-Buller said, in the way in which terrorists are using less sophisticated methods, radicalising more quickly and more often acting alone. The Bill takes account of the increasing number of ungoverned spaces in the world and of the evolving nature of the internet, from downloading to streaming. In addition, the background to the Bill is that not all the changes in circumstance represent the new. We are seeing old threats returning, particularly the rise of the far right, which we should not underestimate, and the presence on British soil of state agents with malign intent.
Perhaps the most important feature of the Bill, however, is its implicit recognition, as the present Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police and the noble Baroness both said, that what is happening in the UK is not a spike in terrorist criminality but a shift to what appears to be a long-term, higher intensity of activity, with more than one arrest a day for terrorism occurring in the year to March 2018. Even with all the passion and doubts expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, I welcome the way in which the Government, faced by this and by the speed with which individuals can move from being at risk of radicalisation to direct action, have continued to support the Prevent arm of the world-leading Contest strategy. I really look forward to the involvement of non-central parts of government in that endeavour. I thoroughly agree with that proposition and I will explain why.
I was involved at the very beginning of the discussions about what became Prevent. I passionately argued that it was inappropriate for the police to have fundamental responsibility outside government for making Prevent work. It seemed to me absurd that communities, especially at that time Muslim communities in the aftermath of 9/11 and 7/7, should be asked to report suspicious behaviour to an arm of the police when that might mean that another arm of the police—literally an armed unit of the police—might eventually respond to what they had said. I argued fiercely that local authorities and education authorities should be co-responsible for Prevent, and I am really glad to see that happening.
However, in addition to that, our past comes back to haunt us as previously convicted terrorists are now being released, having served prison sentences for which too short a maximum sentence had been prescribed in earlier legislation. I welcome the increasing length of sentences for preparatory behaviour short of actual action. I am not normally in favour of lengthening maximum sentences for anything, but I am when we talk about terrorism. Beyond that, I still believe that the terrorist prevention and investigation measures, TPIMs, remain of too short a duration, and I hope that the Government will look again at that issue during the passage of the Bill through the House.
I congratulate the Government on their decision to keep this important legislation coming through both Houses in the middle of the tensions of Brexit, and I hope that the Bill completes its full legislative passage as soon as possible. I also hope that, by the time its provisions come into effect, they do not do so in a Europe in which Britain has lost most of its ability to co-operate effectively with EU countries on security and policing, particularly on the European arrest warrant, Schengen and the Prüm arrangements—but that is probably for another day.
Lord Ahmed (Non-Afl)
My Lords, all of us share the same objective when it comes to the safety of our country and our citizens. Since the tragic acts of 9/11 and 7/7, the United Kingdom, like many countries around the world, has put in place many laws to ensure that the police and security services have all the powers and means to arrest terrorists and stop terrorist acts in our country and around the world. In rightfully making such provisions, it is critical that we do not allow legislative provision to go forward that fundamentally undermines who we are and what we stand for—our rights of freedom of speech and thought and our right to freedom of religious belief.
Britain has the most wide-ranging terrorism laws in Europe. Since 1998, a raft of terrorism laws has been passed in the UK. Despite these laws, the summer of 2017 saw major terrorist incidents, which were mentioned earlier. So, politically motivated violence remains a problem from which the state must safeguard its citizens. However, while the law needs to target criminals and their acts and plots, constantly widening laws and offences to bring more people within the definition of terrorism and treating them as a security threat will ultimately prove counterproductive, as that alienates the very people whose support is needed for an effective counterterrorism strategy. The Bill again widens the scope of terrorism, which will affect every citizen, and when we come to look at the details, we will see that innocent citizens could be caught by the proposed new laws.
My concerns are shared by many, including human rights organisations such as Amnesty International, which has voiced concerns over Clauses 1, 2 and 3 as well as Clause 20 and Schedule 3. The Government’s own inadequate impact assessment does not even refer to the fact that this major piece of legislation will have a differential impact on many citizens and communities. Legislation already on the statute book has already been widened by our courts. For example, the definition of terrorism in Section 1 of the Terrorism Act 2000 has already been criticised for being too wide, and its scope has been widened by the Supreme Court.
For a moment, I will highlight the impact on the Muslim community. This proposed legislation would place Imams, scholars and Muslim speakers in a difficult position when they are talking about overseas conflicts in which Muslim communities are suffering and local scholars have already declared resistance as legitimate. As a consequence of the definition of terrorism and the extra offences created in the Bill, speakers and comments may be deemed terrorist or seen to be encouraging terrorism when they are discussing matters overseas and pose no threat to the UK whatever. Clauses in the Bill make this even more likely.
The provisions covering expressions of support for a proscribed organisation extend the offence of inviting support for a proscribed—terrorist—organisation to cover expressions of support that are reckless regarding whether they will encourage others to support the organisation. Creating an offence that criminalises “expression of support” as opposed to “invitation to support” a terrorist group—this can also be “reckless”—will draw into criminal activity people who may be speaking, writing and discussing political affairs around the world. The law seems to be moving away from criminalising people for their acts to their thoughts and expressions.
There is also an underlying acceptance in this clause of the conveyor belt to violence theory—that there is a straight-line progression from expression of political ideas, leading to joining groups and/or violence. That theory has been rejected by a host of security and academic experts. Such a clause will have a chilling effect on freedom of expression and opinion. One can still hold an opinion, but if it cannot be expressed, then individual freedom has effectively been curtailed. This clause also appears to be in contradiction with Article 19 of the ICCPR and Article 10 of the ECHR, according to the UN Special Rapporteur for the Protection of Human Rights in her submission to consultation on the Bill.
New provisions covering the obtaining or viewing of material over the internet have been mentioned on many occasions. They update the offence of obtaining information likely to be useful to a terrorist to cover terrorist material that is just viewed or streamed over the internet, rather than downloaded to form a permanent record. The existing “reasonable excuse” defence will apply in circumstances where a person did not know that the documents would contain terrorist material. However, the clause now seeks to extend the current offence of downloading or distributing terrorist materials to capture people who may not download but view streamed materials online. This would mean that a person who clicks online rather than downloads may be committing a terrorist offence. The offence was meant to apply to three clicks, which has been mentioned, and even if someone did not click directly but was looking over someone else’s shoulder. In an interconnected world where social media provide the platform to meet people’s intense interest in what is going on, there is a real potential to criminalise them for their curiosity or legitimate interest in general research for journalism purposes. Innocent people may click on links sent on Messenger but may not actually view them. For example, my inability to understand IT means that I click everything that is sent to me on my mobile phone.
Terrorist materials are categorised as tier 1, tier 2 or tier 3 and can include literature, articles and lectures by prominent personalities. They can also include videos of conflict battle scenes. Without a definitive published list of terrorist materials and personalities, how do we know whose lectures and work should not be viewed? Many people, particularly children and young people, may not know what constitutes terrorist material and may be unaware that they are committing an offence. For example, in communities originating from conflict zones such as Syria and Libya, viewing and sharing conflict scenes from those areas is common as they have a legitimate interest in the conflict and want to keep up to date, or their families are affected by them. Some of these viewings and materials may be deemed terrorist in nature. Even if an investigation takes place and no prosecution is brought, the burden of proving “reasonable excuse” will cause much distress, especially to young people.
Between 2000 and 2015 Parliament passed six counterterrorism laws; this Bill will be the seventh. Many human rights groups have argued that there are enough laws to deal with the current threats posed to the UK. At some point there will need to be a new debate and thinking around how we tackle violence with political motives, which is essentially how the law defines acts of terrorism. We can continue to enact more legislation to tackle the challenges of terrorism, but the truth is that until we work with our communities to counter the evil of terrorism, we can have as many new laws as we want and spend as much public money as we want, but we will never rid ourselves of the scourge of terrorism. We will not be successful in meeting the challenges of terrorism until we work with all communities, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and our communities take on the challenge of fighting terrorism with our Government. Our police and security services may need more powers, but equally important is that those powers do not erode our fundamental freedoms. Urgent thought and action is required to engage with our communities and unite them behind our fight against terrorism.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, I am aware that my remarks stand between your Lordships and the much anticipated speech of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, so I will focus my comments on the proposed changes to the Prevent duty, as set out in Clause 19. As we have heard, they will allow local authorities as well as the police to make a referral to a Channel panel. Before I do so, I congratulate my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, who has moved, on their excellent maiden speeches. I am not sure what the collective noun is for maiden speeches, but I suggest that it should be “a brilliance”, based on what we have heard in the debate.
I also acknowledge the many community groups, head teachers, including one whose school overlooks Westminster Bridge, and Prevent leads from around the country who shared their practical experiences of Prevent and the Channel panels with me, both good and bad. It is fair to say that a majority value how Prevent is working in their communities, but all are worried that its reputation will limit its impact. The fears we have already heard expressed are about securitising our schools and communities, identifying the wrong people, stigmatising in particular Muslim communities, stifling debate and a general lack of transparency about the effectiveness of the approach. I will try to address some of those issues.
Allowing local authorities as well as the police to make a referral to a Channel panel should help to reduce the sense of securitising or criminalising those who are referred and will rather focus on the safeguarding aspects of the referral. That is not to say that safeguarding is without fear or stigma as well. Any of us who are parents will know that conversations with a professional about one of our children about abuse, neglect, sexual exploitation, drug use, criminal behaviour or violent extremism are not conversations that we are keen to have. However, we need to recognise the context: difficult conversations about safeguarding and referrals to children’s services happen more than 640,000 times a year, with Prevent referrals making up less than 1% of that figure. While they are important, we need to see them in that context. I hope that a conversation with a social worker rather than a police officer, with the greatest respect to the former police officers in this House, will feel more about safeguarding and less about criminalising. That was confirmed by the feedback from the Dovetail projects that have taken place over the past year. One of the key points that came out was that real care was taken over communication with families if a member of the family was being referred to a Channel panel. My main concern about this change is that where we are working in local authority areas that are already struggling with all their duties, this additional one will represent a real challenge. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will consider whether additional resources are required to fulfil those new duties.
I turn now to the second criticism, which is whether Prevent identifies the right people. Like any preventive programme, the short answer is that we do not know exactly, but from looking at the data, it is encouraging that Prevent appears to identify people with a real vulnerability to different forms of grooming, of which violent extremism is one. It is much less compelling when we look at the young people referred to by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, who apparently could be resilient but could be quickly radicalised. However, we still need to find those vulnerable people. I read the data rather differently from the noble Lord, Lord Stunell. Of those identified by Prevent, two-thirds were identified as needing support, 14% went to a Channel panel, 50% got some safeguarding support and just over a third were not in receipt of any support. That proportion of a third is identical to all other safeguarding referrals. Moreover, in relation to the noble Lord’s point about who gets screened in and who is screened out, the people we want to see being screened in are those who are being screened in. You are almost twice as likely to go from a referral to a Channel panel if the referral comes from educational or children’s services than if it comes from the police, again pointing to more of a safeguarding focus. We lack clarity, however, on what interventions happen at a panel. More data here would be extremely helpful.
Finally, and importantly, critics of Prevent rightly point to the risk of stigmatising Muslims, stifling debate and creating more divisions in our society—points picked up on by my noble friend Lady Warsi. Although the data may point to an increase in referrals of right-wing extremists, who now account for about 25% of the total referrals, the perception in too many communities remains that Prevent is, to quote a Muslim community worker I spoke to, “a stick to beat Muslims with”. The workers who gave me their time varied in their views: some were staunchly supportive of Prevent, some equivocal and some fiercely opposed to it. The key lies as much in the legislation as in the quality of the implementation.
Everybody I spoke to came up with the same recommendations on how to address that quality, whether they were supportive or sceptical and whether they came from the voluntary or the statutory sector. First, they all stressed that Prevent will succeed only if it is built on a foundation of community cohesion and tolerance in our schools and in our communities more widely. Secondly, they stressed the need for high-quality training. Many people mentioned how tired the training is; one former head teacher described it as “tired, boring and patronising”. For my sins, I did some of the online training, thinking that I ought to eat my own cooking, and I can only agree. They also suggested that the training needs to cover not only how to deliver Prevent but how to engage with hard-to-reach groups, and should be delivered by people from the most affected communities. I would be more than happy to share some of the great examples I heard.
Thirdly, there was a universal call for greater transparency. A number of noble Lords mentioned the call for an independent review. I am concerned about the delay this might create. I am also concerned that the answer it will find is that in areas where Prevent is implemented well, it works pretty well, and in areas where it is implemented badly, it does not. Instead, we need to build quickly on the data published last year by the Home Office and put ourselves in a position where we can be more confident in the effectiveness of both identification and intervention. That needs to be reinforced by the national Prevent oversight board.
Finally, the word that was used most frequently in relation to Prevent, as mentioned by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle, was a call for “compassion” in its implementation. There is currently a stark gap in the Prevent and Channel guidance. Nowhere does it mention the need to acknowledge the stigma and fear that will inevitably accompany being identified as needing support in relation to extremist or terrorist activity; nor does it guide agencies on how to respond to those fears in an empathetic and kinder way.
The changes set out in Clause 19 give a solid opportunity to move both the reality and the perception of Prevent from one of securitising to one of safeguarding. If implemented with compassion, I hope it will have a wider impact and help to rebuild trust in our communities. I hope the Minister will consider the points made to me about training, data and improved guidance when the materials for Prevent and Channel are updated.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the twin maidens on their enviably assured and elegant speeches. I thank the Minister, noble Lords and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for the overly kind comments they addressed to this near-maiden.
The noble Lord, Lord King, referred ruefully to the number of anti-terrorism laws that have come before this House in recent years. He can perhaps take comfort from the fact that he has not been sitting in the Australian federal Parliament, which last time I checked —on Thursday last week—had passed 74 counterterrorism statutes since 9/11. It was my privilege to assist MI5 and counterterrorism policing last year in drawing the necessary lessons from the atrocities perpetrated in London and Manchester. The most important of those lessons relate to the gathering and processing of intelligence, but it is right to ensure also that our laws are in the best possible shape.
In support of the Bill on the whole, I will make two comments. First, whatever its faults, it is based on the criminal justice approach to counterterrorism that has served this country so well. Our freedoms are better protected by the common sense of a jury than they are by an expansion in the range or volume of Executive commands such as control orders, and now TPIMs, which are imposed by Ministers and reviewed in court only months after the event and on the basis of evidence that cannot be shown to the subject.
Secondly, I welcome the conclusion, to which I was reluctantly driven when I was the Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, that the existing law may not deal sufficiently with radicalisers. Anjem Choudary has been mentioned, with good reason. As many as 25% of British jihadis convicted between 2001 and 2015 were associated with his organisations, outnumbering the 10% linked to al-Qaeda and the 5% linked to ISIS, or Daesh. His organisations also had great influence in northern Europe, yet although the police reported his activities to the Crown Prosecution Service 10 times between 2002 and 2015, no prosecution could be brought, whether for incitement to religious hatred, indirect encouragement to terrorism, inciting terrorism overseas, incitement to murder or proscription offences. In my mind, his eventual conviction in 2016 does not excuse us from seeking to improve the law in this area.
The Bill has some troubling features. I will refer to three of them which have so far been touched on only lightly or not at all. The first relates to proscription offences, which are supplemented or strengthened in Clauses 1, 2, 6 and 9 to 11. Whatever the merit in extending these offences, we should do so only if we can be sure that proscribed organisations are proscribed lawfully because they are, in the words of the Terrorism Act 2000, “concerned in terrorism”. Unfortunately, we have no such certainty; rather, the reverse. In 2013, the Home Office admitted to me that up to 14 proscribed international terrorist groups did not appear to be lawfully proscribed. It allowed me to publish the fact and commenced a programme of deproscription, but as I recorded in my report of December 2016, that initial honourable resolve on the part of the then Home Secretary soon foundered, I suspect under the influence of another great department of state. So it is likely that at least 14 international groups remain proscribed despite not meeting the statutory requirements for proscription.
We do not know how many of the 14 Northern Irish groups, every one of which has been proscribed continuously throughout this century, are in the same position. There, as the Committee on the Administration of Justice pointed out, the flags of proscribed organisations fly everywhere and their symbols cover memorials, appear on gable walls and decorate banners hanging from lamp posts. The law is applied to them only partially and occasionally, inadvertently injecting an unwanted political element into the exercise of police and prosecutorial discretions. It is true that proscribed organisations are eligible to seek deproscription, but this is a rarely invoked and extremely costly process, as was shown by the PMOI case—the only one in which such an application has ever gone to trial.
Then, to make it worse, the Government abandoned the regular reviews that they used to conduct until 2013, despite those reviews having been described by a High Court judge in the PMOI case as,
“certainly a practice that the Secretary of State should continue to adopt”.
As I wrote at the time, they seem to have discontinued these reviews out of embarrassment at their own inability to act on their conclusions.
It is surely unjust to expose a person to prosecution for a proscription-related offence when the organisation that he or she is said to support does not meet the statutory conditions for proscription. There are solutions to this, but would the Minister accept in the meantime that we are confronted with a tricky problem that is exacerbated rather than relieved by the Bill?
My second point, much more briefly, is on Clause 4, which would create the so-called designated area offence. I was quoted on Report in another place as a vigorous opponent of this idea, but, to set the record straight, the comments in question came from my former special adviser Professor Clive Walker and, despite their distinguished source, were never adopted by me. But some of his words at least ring true. I have spoken, as I know others have, to organisations and individuals engaged in humanitarian and peacebuilding activity in conflict zones who are not at all reassured by the discretions that Clause 4 would confer on the Secretary of State and prosecutors. The Government have cited Australian and Danish precedents for this law, so I hope that the Minister will consider adopting either some more precise conditions for designation and defences, as in Australia, or a pre-authorisation regime, as in Denmark, or both.
My third point is on the new Schedule 3 port power. When I was independent reviewer I noted that, over a five-year period, between 13% and 25% of all intelligence reports resulting from stops under the existing Schedule 7 were concerned not with terrorism, which is the object of Schedule 7, but with nuclear proliferation or espionage. Ports officers sometimes expressed to me their unease at being invited to stop people who could be described as possible terrorists only on the most elastic interpretation of that already broad definition. The case of David Miranda is a well-publicised example.
I am glad that the object of the Schedule 7 power is being extended to counterproliferation and counter- espionage, but the Schedule 3 powers do not stop there. It is proposed that they might be used to determine whether a person appears to have engaged in “hostile activity”, including acts that threaten the economic well-being of the country in the interests of a foreign state, whether or not those acts constitute criminal offences. That is far too broad a basis on which to allow these extremely extensive no-suspicion powers to be exercised. Then there are the additional powers exercisable at the Irish border under paragraph 2 of Schedule 3, which will also need to be elucidated.
Each of my three points echoes concerns expressed by the Supreme Court in the 2013 case of R v Gül about the very broad discretions already given in this area to prosecutors and to police. In particular, the court warned against Parliament delegating to the DPP or to the Attorney-General the power to decide whether an activity should be treated as criminal for the purpose of prosecution. That, as the Supreme Court puts it, leaves citizens unclear whether their actions or projected actions will be judged to be criminal and risks undermining the rule of law. I do not wish to embarrass the noble and learned Lord, Lord Hope, but he put his name to that judgment.
I will keep those comments in mind throughout our scrutiny of this important Bill. Flexibility is useful, but when behaviour is criminalised we all need to know where the line is drawn.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, in the same way that my noble friend Lady Barran indicated that she would be a form of warm-up act for the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I suppose I serve the function of offering an anticlimactic effect following his excellent speech. I too congratulate my noble friend Lord Tyrie and my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier on their excellent maiden speeches. They are old friends in many ways and they are still operating as effectively as they ever did at the other end of the Corridor. They are very welcome indeed. I declare an interest in this debate as a lawyer, a former spokesman for justice and home affairs for many years in the European Parliament and a former Home Office Minister here responsible for, among other things, immigration and control of our borders.
I make it clear that I agree that terrorism, without doubt, is an evil that must be met with determination by democracies and by all those who value freedom. It is a matter of the greatest priority that that should be the case. But when I look at the nature of the legislation—indeed, I was interested to hear remarks by the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, about the number of pieces of legislation; that was referred to by others, including by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, a moment ago—it is interesting to note that we are by no means a country without a continuing concern and interest in legislation to keep us up-to-date with the challenges we meet. As far as I am concerned, it is vital that we keep abreast and catch up, if you like, with the changes in the approach of terrorists and major criminals. Andrew Parker, the director-general of MI5, said about a year ago that the ongoing threat was,
“multidimensional, evolving rapidly, and operating at a scale and pace we have not seen”.
It is quite clear from that that the terrorist seems always to have an advantage over democracy, justice and the way in which we operate our laws.
Our response in recent times has of course been to have independent reviews under the control and leadership of the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, and, until recently, Max Hill QC. While those reviews are very valuable as an ongoing consideration, it is still difficult to keep our legislative programme up to date. That rapid evolution has to be met. I have always thought that we need to review how we legislate to keep up to date. I had previously described the need for what I call “smart legislation”, where either the law itself is required to be examined at a set point and that is written into the legislation, or we have a more flexible system where we can make changes not to the principles that we have already agreed but to some of the practical elements that run alongside them.
When the French state of emergency ended last November following the Paris attacks, President Macron introduced new counterterror laws that some might say were more draconian than the provisions of the Bill before us—but at least they included very clear understandings that the law had to be not only continually monitored but revised or reviewed by Parliament within two years after that monitoring. That is an important element that we see very much in other countries. I saw it in my work in the European Parliament. Now written into almost all legislation are these necessary reviews or, in some cases, sunset clauses, depending on what sort of legislation it might be.
At the same time, President Macron looked carefully at the co-ordination between the domestic and the foreign intelligence agencies and the police forces in France, because one of the elements of difficulty after the Paris attacks—certainly in Belgium, where I was located—was that there were issues regarding co-ordination between the police services and the intelligence agencies. There was an element of confusion and concern that these were not properly co-ordinated and that there were competitive elements between them that were not in the interests of detecting and dealing with terrorism. That is something we always ought to consider.
In the same way, we ought to consider the issue of scrutiny. I know that to some people the word “scrutiny” is not particularly attractive. Sometimes it looks as though they cannot do what they think they must do because someone is always going to be looking over their shoulder. But if you want to get a balance between the security of the state and its citizens and the civil rights of those suspected of threatening it, you have to allow for scrutiny—not only scrutiny of an official nature, organised by government, but an understanding that we are now, inevitably, in this modern world, scrutinised constantly, whether we like it or not, by the media, by NGOs and by international partners and players. We need to be sure that whatever we do measures up to the sort of scrutiny and the balance I have referred to.
I will mention the need for something that has been referred to by several speakers: the criterion of necessity and proportionality has got to apply not only in terms of what we do about terrorism but in how we consider it. Noble Lords would be surprised if I did not mention international relations briefly. We have not really got anything here, because of course our legislation on terrorism is a national matter. However, it is necessary to refer again to the ongoing partnerships that have allowed us to deal with what is a worldwide phenomenon in an effective manner. In fact, there is plenty of evidence that we have been able to deter and detect terrorists on the basis of information we have received from our neighbours.
Of course, we have a trusted position, currently, with our EU neighbours, but also, through the Five Eyes arrangement with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, we have been able to obtain information and intelligence which has assisted us to protect our citizens. As one of the authors, or rapporteurs, involved in developments in the EU such as SIS II—the Schengen Information System that has been referred to—Prüm and PNR, passenger name records, I feel very strongly that whatever the Brexit process brings, it must ensure that there is no gap or uncertainty, even for one hour, in the ongoing full exchange of intelligence. That includes intelligence exchanges in real time, because the whole point of terrorism is that terrorists get away with it if we delay taking action and using information that we have. This is important—indeed, it is more than important, it is vital.
I dare not quote, perhaps, Sir Bill Cash, the Member of Parliament and chair of the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee—not necessarily the greatest Europhile, I have to say—who said, when asking for clarity about the Government’s intentions in these measures:
“We can see no justification for this reticence. We expect the Government to be far more forthcoming about their intentions in relation to SIS II”—
and, I would add, all the other areas in which we have close co-operation with Europe.
My last area deals with legal issues. Very briefly, as a solicitor, as a lawyer, I have always believed in the right of an accused to have a lawyer to support them at the earliest possible opportunity. When we dealt with measures in a directive on access to lawyers in Europe, we made it clear that this access had to be without undue delay: I think it was quite clear what sort of thing that meant. I would like some reassurance on this because I think there is some confusion. It was referred to earlier. The confusion lies, of course, in our Schedule 3, where there is some contradiction. First, there is an issue regarding the privacy and confidentiality of lawyers with clients, where the presence of a “qualified officer” seems to be required even when a lawyer is present to take instructions. That is quite a serious matter. The Law Society and others are deeply concerned about it. Yet it is contradicted by Schedule 3(24)(2) which says, as has also been referred to:
“The examining officer may not question the detainee under paragraph 1 or 2 until the detainee has consulted a solicitor”.
So there is confusion—there is no certainty about this, and I think we need to clarify and make sure that the protection of the rights of the defendant are always in place.
Finally, on the issue of recklessness, I am a little curious. Other noble Lords here are far more distinguished lawyers than I am, and have been over many years—I concentrated on knowing Rylands v Fletcher and one or two other interesting cases—but it nevertheless seems to me rather odd that we have a new approach that makes recklessness in itself criminal in this context. In my understanding of what is required for a crime, there is mens rea, which is made up of intention or knowledge of wrongdoing. That is fairly clear, but it constitutes only part of the crime. The rest of it is action and conduct. Apart from strict liability, where no mens rea is required, I cannot find myself particularly sympathetic to the term “recklessness” as being conclusive in relation to somebody’s intention, and enough for criminal liability.
Having said all that, I support the Bill; I think it is important that we keep the legislation going. I would like to see it more mobile and more flexible. But, in the meantime, we rightly carry out our duties—the responsibilities we have to protect our citizens from crime and from terrorism at every opportunity.
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, I support the general purposes of the Bill and I thank the Minister for her introduction, in which she stressed that the focus is on the new terrorism. Matters have evolved, she said; things have changed since 2006 and we are not dealing with the same problems we dealt with in the latter part of the last century with respect to Irish terrorism. But she also expressed her concern about those who act with hostile intent on the Irish border and, of course, there is the question of the activity of dissident republican organisations. I would add the slightly surprising point that has come to me in preparing for this debate: there is another dimension to this question of people with hostile intent on the Irish border.
I have taken to reading intensely the Irish expert writers on matters of intelligence and security. They argue two things. One is that Ireland simply cannot have the intelligence infrastructure that the United Kingdom has—the incredible skills of our intelligence services, GCHQ and so on. These simply cannot operate in Ireland. The second is that people of extremist and Islamist views know this and therefore have in some ways made Ireland the backdrop for the unfortunate and tragic events that have happened in this country. Therefore, when the Minister talked about her fears of people with hostile intent on the border—the only land border between the United Kingdom and the European Union—she is entirely right to have a concern, and it might unfortunately be a little broader than I suspect was in her mind when she made the point.
In talking about the Bill, I must express a degree of surprise. The House is well aware of the intensity of the recent debate in this Chamber about a possible Brexit hard border. It was a deeply passionate event and I well remember the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, explaining that there were circumstances in which he would not be content with Liberty Hall on the Irish border; there were circumstances in which there would have to be checks, which he could envisage without too much stretching of his imagination. Yet the House chose to vote down the Government’s proposal on that day. I think the majority was 65. The general feeling was that any check of any sort on the Irish border was a hard border. Yet tonight, who is saying this?
I was very pleased by the tone of the debate in the other place, which was largely consensual. The points raised by the Opposition Front Bench were perfectly reasonable. Matters that it was suggested we should consider here included the concern about aspects of accountability for actions on the Irish border. But the intensity of the emotion, which the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, will recall, and the certainty of moral conviction about checks on the border seem to have disappeared entirely, and I do not quite know why. For the Irish Government, I might be able to offer a kind of answer but, believe me, within Ireland itself hackles have been raised by this proposed legislation.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned the Committee on the Administration of Justice. Its objections go far beyond the significant point to be discussed about proscribed organisations and how we handle them. That is a serious point, but its objections go far beyond that. The objection of the influential Committee on the Administration of Justice is that this is another hard border, which we all apparently promised that there would not be. That is its objection. Articles have appeared in Irish newspapers saying that we are establishing a double standard for citizenship between citizens who live on the border and who may be stopped and citizens who live in Ulster and are not likely to be stopped. The phrase “border area”, which appears in the legislation, also requires some comment. I am not referring to these points because I necessarily agree with them, I am saying simply that there is a debate and hackles have been raised.
On the Parliament website there is a description of the Bill:
“To make provision in relation to terrorism; to make provision enabling persons at ports and borders to be questioned for national security and other related purposes; and for connected purposes”.
That last phrase has been seized on in Ireland: “Ah, this is about smuggling”. Frequently, smuggling is a connected purpose with respect to Irish terrorism. It would not be a stretching of the language for an officer to interpret it in that way because it frequently is and the money is used for the purposes of terrorism. So there has been finger-wagging and the claim that this is indeed a hard border and, not only that, it is actually concerned with matters—well, to be honest, smuggling is a trade in Ireland. Paragraph 9 of Schedule 3 refers specifically to the apprehension of goods. There is no question that that is part of the intention of the Bill.
Personally, I support this but I wonder where all the other people are who were so indignant only a few weeks ago in this Chamber and are so indignant about it in general. I wonder where the Irish Foreign Minister is, who I recall saying on “The Andrew Marr Show” that there could be no checks of any sort on the island of Ireland. This was a moral and psychological blow that no decent Irish nationalist should be forced to live with even the contemplation of. There is a problem with that in that the Irish Government currently carry out checks on their side of the border on individuals they do not want entering their labour market, on quite an extensive scale. All right, perhaps he had temporarily forgotten that, but he was very indignant on this point. But the Irish Government have been silent about the Bill.
The Irish Government do have a difficulty and I will explain what it is. It is in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1373, passed shortly after 9/11, which I know some academic lawyers do not like because they think it is the United Nations Security Council making itself a legislator, but it has remained, with some modification and some further reflection, the byword for the international approach in this matter. Incidentally, just before the turn of the year, the European Union, whose standards on these questions have been invoked many times in the debate, issued a document on Resolution 1373, broadly expressing solidarity with its purposes. The purpose of the resolution was to have border security in the fight against terrorism. Clause 2(g) talks explicitly about the need for “effective border controls” and checks. The problem for the Irish Government is that Ireland was a non-permanent member of the Security Council that passed it—we, of course, are permanent members—and they are now trying to get on the Security Council again as a non-permanent member and it is not particularly good advertising for such a campaign to say, “The last time we were here, we thought this resolution was a fantastic idea. Now we want to get back on the Security Council, we did not mean a word of it”, so they are circumscribed to some degree.
I also hope that another reason the Irish Government have been so calm on this matter is that we are moving towards a compromise on these very difficult issues. There is so much writing by all the informed commentators, all the national and international think tanks, about the damage that will be done to the Irish economy by a hard Brexit that the need for a compromise is becoming painfully obvious. I am hoping that for these reasons we are moving away from the intense and angry mood in which these issues were discussed. But the dog has not barked in the night in the case of the Irish Government. I suspect that if we get a relatively benign resolution—that will be no perfect one—over the next few months, the dog will not bark in the night. But I warn the Minister that we are still in a difficult circumstance because the formal position of the European Union was, “You must stop our internal market being polluted by goods coming over the border from Northern Ireland but you are not allowed to have any checks to stop our internal market being polluted”. It is a brilliant Catch-22 and the only solution is to semi-detach Northern Ireland in a way that the Prime Minister has said is unsatisfactory.
Something has to give here. There has to be a compromise. I very much hope that there will be a compromise. I think there are some signs that there will be one. I end my remarks by saying to the Minister—unkindly, perhaps—that rough tides may be returning to the discussion of this issue; rough tides that we have seen and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, saw that night, have infected the way we talk about this issue in this House. I am glad we are in such calm waters and that there was such a significant degree of cross-party consensus in the other place.
Lord Marlesford (Con)
My Lords, I would like to say, first, what a wonderful brief the Library produced for this debate and, secondly, how excited I am that we now have my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my noble friend Lord Tyrie with us. They are a great addition. I have never been an MP, but I know them both and have huge admiration for them.
The Home Secretary said in the Commons Second Reading debate that,
“the wide-ranging Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill … is about keeping the people of this country safe”.—[Official Report, Commons, 11/6/18; col. 630.]
I strongly support the Bill, as it seeks to widen and deepen action against terrorism. But for the purpose stated, some of its provisions seem to be rather theoretical and almost metaphysical rather than practical. They risk, as we have heard during the debate today, allowing the argument to be between lawyers and libertarians. The result is likely to be slow and amorphous. In short, it bears the hallmarks of Home Office drafting.
I hope during the passage of the Bill to fill in some of the gaps with a couple of practical steps that can and should be taken. This is a subject in which I have been involved for well over a decade, and I am afraid that I have found, under successive Governments, that the Home Office constantly resisted taking the steps necessary to keep the people of this country safe. I remember that, in 1997, I got Parliament to agree to the introduction of a centrally held electronic register of all legitimate firearms, and I got Ministers in successive Governments to support that. The Home Office resisted and resisted it; the provision eventually came into force in 2006 and is working extremely well.
Even when I have convinced Home Office Ministers, the trouble is that the officials usually oppose them. In fact, the attitude of the Home Office to its own Ministers sometimes reminds me of my early youth, when I started my national service as a recruit at the Caterham guards depot. In those days, probably rightly, the response to any of us who began a statement, “Sergeant, I thought …”, would be—I am deleting the expletives—“You are not here to think. You are here to do what you are told”. Of course no civil servant would dream of addressing a Minister in that way, but the attitude of the Home Office reflects that approach all the same. I hope that the appointment of Sajid Javid as Home Secretary, with the advantages that he has over some of his predecessors, may produce a more effective counterterrorism policy.
But let me first mention the backdrop we face. There is no need for parliamentarians to be made aware of the scale of the threat, surrounded as we are by dozens of armed police. But it is not just we who work or live in London who have suffered a monstrous intrusion into our normal way of civilised life. It has been bad enough to lose the former ease and flexibility of air travel; now it appears that we may face a similar challenge to road travel.
The cost to the economy of terrorism is a serious and growing factor. In May this year, the European Parliament published a report by the RAND Corporation which makes some estimates of the human, physical and GDP cost of terrorism in each EU member country. The highest cost is in France: some €38 billion for the four years from 2013 to 2016. The UK comes second at €16 billion, which is €4 billion a year. This is over 25% of our total annual spending on foreign aid, which is around €15 billion. Of course, the opportunity cost to public spending is a significant factor in keeping down the standards of our social services. There is no doubt that the threat of terrorism and the cost of countering it has expanded rapidly since those figures were calculated for 2016.
We used to have enough problems with the IRA, but that was nothing compared with the threat of Islamist jihad. That of course became a whole new dimension in April 2014 with the formation of the Islamic State from the Iraqi franchise of al-Qaeda. It called itself ISIS—Islamic State of Iraq and Syria. It has as its stated and implacable aim the installation of a worldwide caliphate under sharia law. Although its military forces have suffered heavy defeats, it is active in many other countries. In Europe I suspect that the main country in which it is making progress is Spain.
Let me turn to a couple of proposals which really need to be taken seriously by the Home Office and could be incorporated in the Bill. First, a nation state, even one at peace, needs to know who its citizens are—and by citizens I mean inhabitants, whether of UK or other nationality. I do not advocate identity cards. They are dangerous because they can be forged and thus convince those who need to know of a false identity. This applies especially if there are biometrics in the card because of course any competent criminal or terrorist—and by competent I do not mean the amateurs who now operate for the Russian GRU—can ensure that their biometrics are on the identity document. What is needed is a national identity number with centrally held biometrics of the holder. These could enable the holder to be checked against the central record. This would replace the plethora of other ID numbers used, including those on driving licences and passports.
My second point is on something that I have been advocating for a long while. I believe it has long been essential that the UK passport authority should know what other passports are held by British passport holders. I emphasise that I am not for one moment suggesting that people should not be allowed a second, third or even fourth passport. All I am asking is that their possession of such passports is recorded in such a way that the scanning of a passport at the UK border reveals their existence; otherwise, as I was told years ago, people travel to a place on one passport and do things that they should not do on another passport.
I believe that the powers to take some action envisaged in Clause 4 are long overdue, but rather than designating areas of no travel I prefer the approach suggested by my noble friend Lord Faulks of introducing modern treason legislation. We should look more closely at some of the proscribed organisations. In this context, I think particularly of the Muslim Brotherhood. It was founded in 1928, and practically its first action was to kill the Prime Minister of Egypt in 1947, I think. Its leader was then assassinated and it has been behind huge troubles all over the world, but it keeps its face clean. It is really like Sinn Féin was to the IRA.
We should be more discriminating over those to whom we grant refuge. When David Cameron proposed to take 20,000 refugees from Syria, some of us asked for priority to be given to Christians and Yazidis, who were particularly subject to persecution. Up to now, the Government have resisted this.
It is a disgrace that more than 1,200 members of the UK Muslim community were able to join ISIS and it is an even greater mistake that 400 of them have been allowed to return to the UK. To take up arms against forces of which Her Majesty’s military form a part should be grounds for the immediate withdrawal of UK citizenship.
A national identity number system would be of value not only for national security but also for the administration of social services and health services where the present mess of identity through national insurance numbers and NHS numbers is laughable. The potential saving in that area would easily pay for the introduction of national identity numbers.
Finally, I shall comment on what my noble friend Lady Warsi said. She wants the Government to re-engage with the Muslim community. I am all in favour of that, of course, but the best way to do that would be for the leaders of that community to exclude and excommunicate those who support Islamist jihad. Only then can we really get together to prevent and fight terrorism.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, with so many distinguished experts contributing to this Second Reading, including the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and my noble friend Lord Tyrie, both of whom I congratulate on such outstanding maiden speeches, I am conscious that by speaker number 25 all that could be said has been said and that all I can do is make some additional points. Like other noble Lords, I thank the Minister for her comprehensive introduction and express my thanks to Russell Taylor for his excellent Library briefing, particularly because it included analysis of the very detailed and penetrating report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and of the passage of the Bill through the other place. Like the noble Lord, Lord King, I was very sceptical about the impact assessment. Impact assessments seem to be done incredibly badly by all ministries. I have to admit that, like other noble Lords, while I recognise and support the Government’s intention behind the Bill—to keep people safe and to update legislation—I remain uneasy about some of the detail.
My noble friend Lady Manningham-Buller, who mentioned the increased pace and size of the threat, reminded me that my practical experience of counterterrorist operations is somewhat dated, but the principles have not changed and include the need for any action taken to be balanced and proportionate. As my noble friend Lord Anderson was speaking, I remembered being frustrated, when commanding troops in Belfast between 1978 and 1980, that the conspiracy law was so inadequate that we could not arrest those who incited people to violence when making speeches at IRA funerals.
I have two general comments as well as some detailed ones. First, having been critical for many years of the Home Office’s failure to direct and oversee the systematic processing of legal asylum and immigration applicants, I am concerned about how any of its fragile systems will cope with the demands made on them by both legal and illegal immigration after Brexit. Having lost sight of at least 631,000 legal applicants—a figure that the then Minister confirmed during the passage of the last immigration Bill through this House—and having no record of who has left the country, how on earth will border officials identify, let alone question and detain, individuals suspected of involvement in hostile activity for or on behalf of another state?
Like the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I believe that the definition of “hostile act” is extremely wide, and I worry about the lack of any threshold test before a person is detained and examined. The Minister confirmed that the Government intend to publish a draft code of practice before Committee, which I suggest will need the closest scrutiny.
In responding to proposed amendments to Clause 21 and Schedule 3 of the Bill, the Security Minister in the other place set out in some detail the Government’s riposte to the human rights committee’s concern that access to a lawyer was not adequately protected. The fact that access to such lawyers is currently patchy suggests that his explanation will need to be scrutinised in Committee.
My second general concern is about the European arrest warrant, which many noble Lords have mentioned. The other day I listened to a lecture by the EU’s head of counterterrorism, in which he deplored the potential loss to other European countries of UK intelligence in particular after Brexit, emphasising how vital an ingredient it was to all their antiterrorist operations. Of course, bilateral arrangements can be made with each one of them, but there can be little doubt that in the context of European security the European arrest warrant is a vital ingredient. The Security Minister in the other place alleged that the proposed amendment was not needed because the Government were already negotiating for the European arrest warrant, or something as identical as possible, to apply. Could the Minister please confirm that this is so?
I turn to my other concerns. I share the human rights committee’s concern about the wide scope of Clauses 1 and 2, and echo its view that to criminalise the publication of an article that may be worn or displayed in a private place risks catching a vast amount of activity and being disproportionate. The Minister indicated that the Government intend to update Section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, on which Clause 2 of the Bill is based, for the digital age. I hope that update will be available before Committee. In that connection, I note the Government’s reassurance that the existing safeguards were adequate following the human rights committee’s concern that Clause 3 may capture academic and journalistic research as well as those with inquisitive or even foolish minds. I hope that is true.
Acknowledging the views of the noble Lord, Lord Faulks, about the need for convicted terrorists to be sent to prison but also the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Marks, about the current situation in our overcrowded and understaffed prisons, I am concerned that insufficient thought has been given to the implications of the increased sentences in Clauses 7 to 11. As Chief Inspector of Prisons I inspected both HMP Maze, which housed terrorists in Northern Ireland, and the special separation unit in HMP Belmarsh, which housed both Northern Ireland prisoners, some of whom were on hunger strike, and others convicted of terrorist offences. In both cases, I was very concerned about the lack of support for staff, who were put under immense strain, particularly mentally, because of the intensity of their task and their subjection to propaganda. Do the Government intend to separate terrorists from other prisoners and, if their numbers build up, do they intend to establish a Maze? Either way, consideration needs to be given to what regime might be imposed on terrorist prisoners and what additional resources, including management, support and training, ought to be provided for their guards.
Finally, I agree with all those who have recommended that the Prevent strategy be independently reviewed. I am very glad that the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, said what she did, because Muslims risk being demonised by the failure to engage with them. If the Government are so keen on revising the legislation as a whole, why not all of its parts, including Prevent?
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning (Con)
My Lords, I, too, begin by congratulating my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier and my noble friend Lord Tyrie on their excellent maiden speeches this evening. We have had a good glimpse of the contribution that they will make to your Lordships’ House in the coming days, weeks, months and years. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, mentioned the difficulty of being the 25th speaker. The 26th discovers that he has no original thought whatever. However, I will try to let your Lordships know what I think about our discussion this evening.
The priority of any Government must be the protection of their people. I am therefore very pleased to see this Second Reading before your Lordships’ House. The updating of our counterterrorism legislation following the horrific terrorist attacks in Manchester and London last year is essential. It is fortuitous that the Bill comes before us at this time, when it can incorporate measures that, in Part 2, reflect our response following the deplorable Salisbury attack.
The very nature of terrorism is that those who wish to wage war on innocent people and spread terror will always try to find means to circumvent existing legislation. It therefore behoves all of us to ensure that the legislative framework within which our excellent and brave security forces need to work is flexible and not only up-to-date but predictive in identifying future threats to our country.
As the Bill makes progress through your Lordships’ House, it will, correctly, face significant scrutiny. Some aspects of this scrutiny have already been requested at Third Reading in the other place, when many Members there gave their support to the Bill contingent on the scrutiny of your Lordships’ House. It will therefore lie with this House to ensure that freedom and safety are maintained within the confines of the Bill.
Given the breadth of legal and security knowledge and expertise in the Chamber, which we have already heard today, I shall limit my remarks to three areas. The first is Clause 1 and expression of support for proscribed organisations. Like my noble friend Lord Faulks and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, I agree that the Bill as drafted allows the correct balance between ensuring freedom of expression and allowing our security services to pursue those who seek to radicalise others and use expressions of support in a reckless manner.
As the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, intimated, it took nearly 15 years before Anjem Choudary, the so-called preacher of hate, could be imprisoned, and of course he is about to be released. The same man is widely acknowledged as having radicalised many, leading to their deaths as well as the deaths of others. He maintained his freedom by using the law and keeping ahead of it, moving from one proscribed organisation to another. I hope that the Minister will resist significant dilution of the clause, and so ensure that our justice system can adequately deal with the Choudarys of the future.
I turn to Clause 4, which deals with designated areas. I am pleased to see that among the reasonable excuses that will be considered are those of humanitarian workers and those who work for the United Nations. Many of the best professionals and NGOs across the world are British, and it is important that we do not allow that soft power to be undermined or stopped because they happen to work in the most dangerous parts of the world. The very reason a location may be designated often goes hand-in-hand with the humanitarian requirements of a failed state. I seek reassurance from my noble friend the Minister that, provided there is stringent verification of the humanitarian nature of the work, the Government would consider the kind of pre-registration used in Denmark, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, this evening, or consider the suggestion made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, of pre-authorisation for those who work in NGOs, journalism or other fields where we need to ensure that British subjects are able to go into dangerous areas of the world.
Finally, I shall deal with Clause 19, on Prevent. I have listened very carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, as well as my noble friends Lady Warsi and Lady Barran. Of the four pillars of the Contest strategy, the effectiveness of Prevent is always the most difficult to measure. This has led to regular and some well-founded public criticism of Prevent, and an amplification of publicly embarrassing cases. It is also clear, as my noble friend Lady Warsi told the House, that the Prevent strategy has failed to engender confidence in many of the communities with which it was originally suggested it would build cohesion, specifically our Muslim communities. But we need to keep this criticism in context. As my noble friend Lady Barran intimated, in 2016-17 there were no fewer than 6,033 referrals through Prevent, 20% of which made it to a Channel panel. That is over 1,000 vulnerable people, while 300—as the noble Lord, Lord Stunell, said—were able to receive further Channel support after that referral.
At the same time, some 2,700 were signposted to alternative services, mostly in education. That suggests to me that there is a government pathway that is providing, as my noble friend Lady Barran suggested, safeguarding to very vulnerable, often young, people in this country. I would be very suspicious and concerned if we were to undermine that process in any way before we were clear that internal review and the opportunity to build confidence in communities—using the local government mechanism that will be available, should the Bill pass this House—will allow us to build community cohesion, and allow the Prevent strategy and safeguarding to continue.
I appreciate that Prevent is not perfect and has significant hurdles to overcome if it is to properly build confidence with many. But there is an opportunity, and I hope the Minister will take it to ensure that the priority of reviews within the Home Office is building confidence in Prevent among communities across the UK.
It is also worth emphasising and dealing with the perception that Prevent is there to deal only with Islamic extremism. An increasing stream of Prevent’s work deals with right-wing extremism, often directed at Muslim communities. We cannot allow that to be forgotten as we move forward.
Lord Tebbit
What is this right-wing extremism? Is it people who want to reduce taxes and have smaller government and greater liberty?
Lord McInnes of Kilwinning
I thank my noble friend for his intervention. I refer to the 1,000 cases out of the 6,000 in 2016-17 that the Home Office report identified as providing a channel for those with extreme right-wing views that could lead to terrorism.
I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that the focus of building public confidence will be a core element of continuing internal review.
The Bill protects the freedoms and liberties we all enjoy while fulfilling the state’s responsibility to protect all our citizens from harm. The Government must continue to do all they can to ensure that we have a flexible and fit-for-purpose framework that our security services may work within, keeping ahead of those who wish to cause harm. I look forward to the Bill’s progress through your Lordships’ House.
Lord Hogan-Howe (CB)
My Lords, I support the intentions of the Bill. I will say a little about the context that has not already been covered by the many speeches we have heard today, and will then say little about three of the clauses that have been mentioned. Before that, I will respond to the excellent speeches of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, and the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, both of which were informed and entertaining. The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, who is not here at the moment, referred at the end of his speech to extradition cases. Although he talked about three of the inquiries that have taken place, he did not refer to one police investigation which delayed the conclusion of the first inquiry. Should there ever be a judge-led inquiry, as he would prefer, I hope that the Belhaj case that the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to pursue will be made available to that inquiry, as it would provide vital information that would help inform any future decisions in that area.
Secondly, the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, has concerns about Prevent. I do not particularly share those, but I agree with her that cohesion and integration are a vital element in preventing terrorism in the future. Usually we see two elements where we get radicalisation: a lack of integration and Middle East foreign policy. Those two things tend to repeat time and time again. This is not necessarily my view of Prevent, but minority communities have become so concerned about it, and it is a strong thing, not a weak thing, to review something. The time has come to at least look at it and perhaps move on. It has achieved a lot but may yet achieve more if we are able to be flexible.
We are still reaping the effects of two civil wars which started more than seven years ago: one in Syria in 2011 and the other in Iraq a few years later. At least 12,000 people travelled from Europe to fight, particularly in Syria but also in Iraq. We know that at least 15% of the 900 UK people who went died, and that about 55% of them have returned. Some went for humanitarian purposes and some to fight. We have seen the effects of that terrorism on the streets of Brussels, Nice, Paris and, sadly and more recently, London. The next phase of our fight against terrorism is now evolving. I suggest that the Bill is a good time for us to reflect on our preparations for that future.
It will have three distinct elements that we need to plan to combat. The first is the potential for those foreign fighters to return. They are brutalised, and dangerous because of their training and their motives but also because they are now in contact with a network of other terrorists, and they may still perpetuate conspiracies. The second is the release in the coming years, and even now, of the first wave of prisoners convicted of terrorist offences during the last five to seven years. Sometimes they were convicted of other criminal offences, because, although we believed that they had a terrorist motive, we could convict them only of a criminal offence.
In prison they met people called criminals. Many of the people who we are suspicious of and worried about do not have a criminal background. That is of great benefit, because it means that they do not have access to organised criminals, who are the means by which criminals generally get hold of firearms. They have now met a lot of people in prison, and on their release they will still have those associations, along with the people they met in prison who may have become radicalised.
Finally, the terrorists will have learned from the first series of prosecutions, because the prosecutor reveals the tactics by which they were caught, and that means that they will adapt. We see that with various generations of terrorists, who adapt their tactics to meet their failures, as they see them, when successful prosecutions occur.
I will not repeat the numbers we have already heard for what I always think of as the pyramid of doom: the 20,000 subjects of interest, the 3,000 subjects of current interest, and, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, the 500 security service operations. There are a further 600 counterterrorist police operations, so that is over 1,000 live operations dealing with this threat.
The point I am supporting is that it is clearly fair to say that we have a serious threat now, as described in the threat assessment, but the numbers alone are concerning. It is a real threat that we must all think about. It is, of course, evolving, and the vectors through which the threat operates are evolving too. We need to respond in a proportionate and incremental way; I would argue that, in legislative terms, the UK has responded incrementally. We have not seen the mistakes that, sadly, those with more experience of terrorism in Northern Ireland saw, when general internment caused more problems than it solved. We should approach the problem incrementally and see whether we can adapt; then, if we need to legislate, let us legislate to the problem, not use generic legislation. We need always to keep a majority in our society—and our minority communities in particular—on side.
The question is: if the threat has evolved in a way that requires new legislation, what is it that we are trying to address? The simplicity and volatility of the threat require us to intervene earlier to protect the public, individuals and groups. We need to make sure that a process that goes from planning to attack in a matter of hours is interrupted quickly. Also, offences previously considered peripheral and minor are now seen as indicative of a volatile, unpredictable actor. We do not want to wait for high-level offences before taking action, given how rapidly that threat can escalate; we need lasting disruptive impact and control of offenders, which is where lengthier prison sentences can have an impact.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, is not in his place, but I agreed with a lot of what he said; the tests he applied were sensible. I agreed with an awful lot, but one of the reasons he gave for not extending sentences, if I understood him correctly, was that our prisons are already full and therefore we cannot get more prisoners in. If that is the case, we none the less ought always to find room for terrorists, even if that means excluding other people. In fact, the prison population is starting to drop now—albeit, I would argue, not enough, but we must always find space for terrorists if we consider that they are committing serious offences.
We must also think about technological changes; a significant amount of our coverage of people involved in terrorism concerns their online persona and methods of communication. As we have heard, it is 20 years since legislation set out the various ways in which we can monitor that technology. Particularly in the streaming area, this is a good time to make sure that we can monitor in the way that we need to, and prove offences. We know that radicalisation is happening in a very powerful and influential way by streaming video. It seems to be an incredibly useful way for people to get over quickly some very dangerous methods of implementing terrorist attacks.
There have been some criticisms of the Bill already and we have heard more of them today; I do not necessarily support them all. In the debates to come, I am sure that improvements will be made forensically to the eventual Act when it is concluded. There is a concern that the Bill will capture innocent or accidental online activity, but none of the proposed offences is absolute, as they are in child sexual exploitation offences. Intent has to be proved. In any event, all cases must pass three tests, including sufficiency of evidence and public interest. I know the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, was not convinced by the public interest test, but I am; I think it is a thorough test, supplied by an independent prosecutor, with good lawyers in the CPS, and my experience is that they are quite hard to persuade of something I might find blindingly obvious.
Baroness Hamwee
Perhaps I could explain that my concern about the public interest test is that we should not be forced to rely on it; we should get the legislation certain and reliable rather than look to public interest as the mechanism to catch what we have not been able to solve in the legislation.
Lord Hogan-Howe
The noble Baroness did make that point, and I accept it. My third point is that the prosecution has to overcome any reasonable excuse defence. That is the third measure which I think is helpful in reassuring those who might not be persuaded by the first two tests. Only rarely will a single action or statement be a basis for a charge, as we have seen on many occasions. We heard of the Choudary case, which I shall come back to. In that case, it took an awfully long time to prove a criminal offence, and I think that this strikes the right balance between protecting society and protecting the rights of the suspect.
I will mention a couple of clauses which I particularly support. The first is Clause 4. I argued for this measure about two or three years ago and it relates to the concerns of the investigators. I argued that having a designated area is particularly helpful. Investigating an offence that has occurred within a failed state, such as Syria or Iraq, can be particularly difficult. There is no one at the border keeping a clear register of people who have travelled across it, and there is no easy state mechanism for gathering evidence, particularly from number plate recognition, CCTV, hotel records or anything else that you might want to access. That is particularly difficult in a failed state. So saying “Please give me all the evidence to prove that offence” when people return is a particular challenge for investigators.
I accept that we have intelligence, but the distinction between intelligence and evidence is that we can use intelligence to gain evidence but only evidence can be put before a court. So this is an important change. I understand that some amendment might be needed in relation to humanitarian cases, which I do not think anyone is seeking to stop in any way, but I think that it is a particularly helpful development, and certainly I support it. In my view, it should have happened quite some time ago. Of course, it will not capture the people who are presently in Syria or Iraq, but that is not the intention here, and there is a cooling-off period of, I think, one month for future offences.
The second thing is that putting a responsibility on the traveller to explain why they went to a certain place would not be unreasonable. The Foreign Office will usually have issued a travel advice warning and a designated area warning—and finally there is the reasonable excuse defence. Given the threat that we face, these are not unreasonable things to ask of someone who chooses to travel to a war zone and is acting in a potentially treasonable way, as has been suggested in the past.
I also support Clause 1. I will not say a lot more about it, as others have covered it better, but I think that we have to capture the Choudary-type offence. Clever interlocutors or demagogues will adapt to the latest movement of the law and we have to adapt with them. They will always be clever and try to find a new way round it, so that we have to adapt. Although not the only one, Choudary was an example of where, no matter how hard the security services tried, they could not persuade the prosecutor that they had a case. I do not think that there was a lack of evidence; the law was not helpful and did not allow something that we all agreed was wrong to be prosecuted.
My final points are small ones. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, mentioned the legislation relating to flags and the fact that removing a flag could cause tension. That is a fair point, but most police officers use discretion when making an arrest or an intervention. The display of a flag can cause tension too. People might remember an incident about four years ago in Parliament Square. When I was in charge of it, the Met was criticised for not taking from someone what appeared to be an ISIS flag. The officers were quite right to decide not to do so. First, the person involved was a seven year-old child and, secondly, the officers could not be absolutely sure that the flag they saw with Arabic writing on it was in fact a proscribed flag. They made a perfectly reasonable decision based on discretion. We expect that of officers and I do not see this as a particular problem.
I hesitate to make my final point because it concerns resources—although the noble Lord, Lord West, raises these points, so I do not see any reason why I cannot. I entirely accept that the Government have supported the police and the security services by maintaining resourcing for counterterrorism policing. That is a fair point and there is no argument about it. However, when you lose 20,000 police officers and probably 10,000 police community support officers, it is a real challenge. There are other things as well, but two-thirds of Security Service leads come from community contacts. That comes through neighbourhood policing, and that is the first thing to go when you lose 20,000 cops. So it is an important point and it needs to be considered.
Finally, I remind the House that the threat remains severe and is evolving. The society that we live in has progressed since the Terrorism Act 2000 and this Bill is a reasonable response. It should command the support of the majority and minority communities and, I argue, of this House.
Lord Bethell (Con)
My Lords, I would like to start by saying what a memorable pair of maiden speeches they were. I am a newcomer, so I can say—quite literally—they were the best I have ever heard, a real showcase of two great parliamentary careers, and I welcome them both. I would also like to thank the Minister, who did an excellent job of capturing the essence of the dilemma facing us. How do we protect public security while simultaneously safeguarding civil liberties, and at a time when technology is changing very quickly?
My noble friend Lady Warsi and the noble Lord, Lord Ahmed expressed very well the challenge to the Muslim community in the UK and the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, talked very interestingly about the strategic challenge the police face. I want to come at it from a different direction and declare an interest. I am a founder of a campaign against neo-Nazi fascist and racist extremism, sometimes called far-right extremism, but we will be careful about that epithet. I would like to give the perspective of someone who has worked as a volunteer on the front line against the threat of that kind of extremism, against the kind of people who spend their time online trying to recruit, foster hate and agitate for violence. I ran a campaign 10 years ago to challenge the distasteful and disruptive politics of that kind of extremism. It brought me face to face with supremacists, neo-Nazis and agitators for terror. I spent a lot of time personally rebutting and challenging these keyboard warriors, and have some first-hand experience of how that kind of online extremist propaganda is deliberately calculated to foment civic rage and acts of violence. I came to realise that from a legal and technical point of view, we are really struggling to keep up. Many of the activists of the extreme far-right are thoughtful, systematic strategists who study the law, network technology and human psychology deliberately to create turmoil in our society and to groom individuals into their ideology and potentially into acts of criminality.
I went into this enterprise keen to preserve democratic values and free speech, but came to understand that our laws need to be updated. With some regret, I realised it was necessary to prosecute those who, through their words, images and videos, were spreading hate, and to counter the advantage they had through modern technology. I wrote a report 10 years ago, A Shadow over Democracy, which projected a lot of our fears at the time. I am concerned that those predictions have come true. I remember earlier this year Mark Rowley, the outgoing Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, warning about four foiled right-wing terrorist attacks, the potency of leaders like Tommy Robinson, 24% of Channel panel referrals earlier this year being from extremist groups at the neo-Nazi end of the scale, and this awful interdependent ratchet between Islamist terrorism and far-right terrorism that we need to try to break. The internet has played a central role in these developments. It has provided these groups with a network to spread their hate, to leap borders, to raise money to recruit people and to circumvent the societal norms and laws around incitement to hate and violence. I keep a watchful eye on what is happening in Europe and America, and fear we may be looking at an increase in this area. It is for that reason I welcome this Bill, and in particular Clause 1, which makes reckless statements of support for proscribed organisations illegal. I took on board what the noble Lord, Lord Marks, said—I thought he put it very well—but from my experience, it feels like we need to tighten up the law in this area.
I welcome Clause 3, which tightens up the law around streaming and downloading materials useful to committing or preparing an act of terrorism. I have seen how individuals have been inspired by words and videos to perform acts of violence. However, I was one of those researchers who clicked on these videos a lot, and I do not want to be captured by this law. Therefore, I urge the Minister to stretch every sinew to reassure people like me that we have a reasonable excuse and that this measure will not somehow be lost because of that. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, made very good points on that.
Lastly, I welcome Clause 5, which strengthens the Terrorism Act 2006 and measures concerning the dissemination of material that might encourage people to commit acts of terrorism. Ten years ago, we were warning that self-radicalised, lone wolf, white-supremacist terrorists were a big threat, but it seemed distant and unlikely. However, since then, we have seen Anders Breivik, the Norwegian far-right terrorist, Darren Osborne, the Finsbury Park mosque attacker, and Thomas Mair, the far-right terrorist who killed Jo Cox. In that context, Clause 5 seems both proportionate and timely.
The one nudge I would give the Minister concerns the culpability of the distribution network—the tech giants who own the networks. It is obviously beyond the ambit of this Bill to cover that, but I know that the DCMS is looking at its White Paper and at potential legislation in this area. I urge the Minister please to look at that. A lot has been done, I know, but a lot more needs to be done.
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, this has been an interesting and well informed debate. We also had the joy of listening to two excellent maiden speeches. While listening to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, I wrote down the words, “Amusing and informative”. Unlike during his previous maiden speech, noble Lords were riveted by what he had to say. I am sure the noble and learned Lord will prove that he has his uses in this House. “Generous and thoughtful” is what I wrote while listening to the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. His electoral record in Chichester speaks volumes about the esteem in which he is held generally. Judging by what he said this evening, I am in no doubt that he will be fearless in his future contributions in the House. I also thank the Minister for comprehensively introducing the Bill.
I pay tribute to the police and the security services. During consideration of previous legislation, I had the privilege of going both to GCHQ and to the security services headquarters. I was impressed not only by the capability of those working in the services but by their integrity. The noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, and others talked about the numbers involved—the number of suspects and the number of operations going on—which just goes to prove how successful the police and the security services have been, despite the tragic events that we have seen in recent years.
I am not wrong in saying that there has been a general consensus, on all sides of the House, that the legislation—whatever it ends up as—needs to pass the test of being necessary and proportionate. The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, and even the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, all suggested that that was necessary. There were perhaps two notable exceptions to that consensus, as that was not something that the noble Lords, Lord Blair of Boughton and Lord Tebbit, would support.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, in particular that I was the police spokesman after the bombings on 7 July 2005. I was in this House when the terrorist incident happened in which one of our police colleagues was killed. I was at home, a 10-minute walk away from London Bridge, when that attack happened. That is not the first-hand, tragic experience that the noble Lord has had, and I completely understand that his experience has deeply affected him. We should not lose sight of the impact that these incidents have had on the victims.
So there is a consensus, generally. Clearly, as the noble Lord, Lord King, said, there may be some differences of opinion as to what is necessary and what is proportionate. Obviously, we accept that this legislation has already been through the other place. But, as the noble Lord, Lord McInnes of Kilwinning, said, some in the other place said that they agreed to the legislation being passed subject to it receiving scrutiny in this House, and that is clearly what we must do.
We on these Benches will support any necessary and proportionate measure that makes the United Kingdom safer or will help defeat terrorism, but we will not support measures that we consider to be disproportionate and counterproductive. Colleagues on these Benches, particularly my noble friend Lady Hamwee, highlighted evidence from the Joint Committee on Human Rights—concerns that not only we share but the current Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, Max Hill, also shares. We offer a similar view to his. There are some good, pragmatic measures in the Bill, but there are others that go too far.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, suggested, only in the most extreme cases should the police be given such wide discretion that they can arrest someone engaged in potentially completely innocent activity where the person arrested has to rely on a reasonable excuse defence. Having a reasonable excuse defence in legislation is no protection from an innocent person being arrested and potentially charged.
I echo the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle. If I understand my noble friend Lord Thomas of Gresford correctly, with “reckless”, either it is an objective definition of reckless, in which case we are into the realms of people being arrested for what they think or simply for expressing their view, or we are looking at a subjective definition of reckless, which is what the current law says. In that case, the provision is superfluous to what is already in existing legislation. Clearly, we need to consider these issues carefully.
Similarly, in terms of other provisions in the Bill, it is not too difficult to think of circumstances where a teenager innocently takes a selfie in a mate’s bedroom not realising that there is an ISIS flag on the wall behind him and posts that photograph on Facebook. The next thing, that individual is in police custody—a completely innocent action that results in them being arrested.
Under this Bill, it would also be an offence to click on a page on the internet that has,
“information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism”.
Just one attempt to look at the document could result in that individual being arrested, with a potential term of imprisonment not exceeding 15 years. The Minister said that previous legislation covered only situations where documents were downloaded and now we have a situation where people are streaming or simply just looking at documents. Not too long ago, we in this House considered at length internet connection records. Surely that sort of thing will provide the necessary evidence, even if people are looking at or streaming information rather than downloading documents. There is a lot to be considered here in terms of whether the legislation is necessary or whether it goes too far. Of course, it was only at the last minute that that particular provision about looking at things on the internet was changed from being one where someone looks at a page on the internet, goes back to it and goes back to it again before they can be convicted to being a one-click offence.
The other last-minute provision that we have serious concerns about is the Secretary of State designating areas overseas as being illegal for UK citizens or residents to travel to. It could become illegal for a Syrian refugee who is resident in the UK but whose family still lives in Syria to visit them, even though his mother or father could be dying. Again, the Government will say that there is the “reasonable excuse” defence, but how sick does your mother have to be before it is considered reasonable for you to travel to a designated area? There would be no reason in law why you should not be arrested and charged, whatever the circumstances. The Government will say that the police are not going to arrest innocent people, but the history of policing is littered with cases of innocent people being wrongly arrested where legislation has been drawn too broadly. Sometimes they have even been charged and wrongly imprisoned.
Surely there must be a way for academic researchers to get permission in advance in order to look at offending pages on the internet, or that grieving family members or humanitarian workers can get permission to visit these areas in advance. As my noble friends Lady Hamwee and Lord Thomas of Gresford said, should there not be an opportunity to get the “reasonable excuse” defence in first?
Clearly, offences should carry a penalty that both deters and keeps innocent people safe, but sentence inflation, as suggested in this Bill, will simply add to the crisis in the Prison Service, as my noble friend Lord Marks said. Contrary to what the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, said, this is not about the fact that prisons are full and therefore we should not put terrorists in prison. This is about the difference between prisons being a place where people with extremist views can be rehabilitated and prisons being a place where radicalisation can become endemic because of overcrowding and the lack of ability of prison staff to carry out any sort of rehabilitation. Surely a smaller prison population would be better, in that we know that prisons are places where people, being at their most vulnerable, are more easily radicalised. Keeping people in prison for longer periods of time surely gives more opportunity for that to take place.
As many noble Lords have said, in some communities there is deep suspicion about Prevent, and along with Independent Reviewers of Terrorism Legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, we support not only an independent review of Prevent but a recasting of the programme with a much more community-based approach that is incorporated into other safeguarding functions. Those at risk of being radicalised are also in danger of being exploited sexually or being drawn into criminal gangs. Prevent should be part of a broader safeguarding process rather than people being potentially stigmatised as a result.
I have to say that there was a bit of conflict between what my noble friend said and what the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, said in terms of the statistics around referrals to Channel panels. On one reading, it would seem that only a small proportion of people who are referred are actually considered to be at risk of being radicalised, while on another reading it seems to be a rather higher proportion. Again, we need to consider those issues very carefully.
Finally, there is the extension of Schedule 7. We agree with the former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, that Schedule 7 powers and the powers in this Bill should be limited to those who are reasonably suspected of being involved in the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich
On a point of order, I have always accepted that the Schedule 7 power to stop should be exercisable without the need for reasonable suspicion. I said that some higher threshold should perhaps be required for some ancillary powers, for example those to detain and examine electronic devices.
Lord Paddick
I am grateful to the noble Lord, but the fact is that at the moment, if you are crossing the UK border, you can have your mobile device or computer seized and examined even without any reasonable suspicion. Extending that to those who are now engaged in hostile activity would seem to make this issue potentially worse.
I understand that the Bill is a response to the Prime Minister promising to harden the country’s defences against all forms of hostile state activity following the attempted assassination of the Skripals, but can the Minister confirm whether that was an act of terrorism covered by the existing Schedule 7?
As I have said, we on these Benches will support any reasonable and proportionate response that makes this country of ours safer. However, we believe that large parts of the Bill are unreasonable, disproportionate and could potentially make us less safe, although we look forward to being convinced otherwise.
Finally, I completely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, on the Government’s disengagement with Muslim organisations. Individual members of those communities may have said things that they now regret, but as a result the Government refuse to engage at all with those communities. At the end of the day, a former head of police counterterrorism said that the police and security services alone will not combat terrorism, but organisations working closely with communities will defeat terrorism. If communities are to work with us to defeat terrorism, we need to engage with them.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)
My Lords, the first duty of a Government is to keep their citizens safe and have legislation on the statute book that gives powers to the appropriate authorities to keep people safe. I will always support the work of the Government in this regard. That is not to say that I will not question and probe them and seek to amend legislation when we believe that they are not striking the right balance. That is the point of our being here: to make legislation better and more effective; to fully understand the Government’s intentions; and to avoid as far as possible the problems caused by unintended consequences —a point made earlier by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle.
The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, speaks with great knowledge and experience of these matters and the House will benefit enormously from his contributions. I hope the Minister will answer the points he made.
It would not be right to respond to a debate on counterterrorism and border security without putting on record our thanks to and gratitude for the members of the security services and the police who have done so much to keep us safe, as well as those of the other emergency services, such as the fire brigade and the ambulance service, who are there when they are needed. They save people’s lives, as do NHS staff—not only doctors and nurses but the other healthcare professionals and ancillary staff who work together to deliver the services we all rely on, particularly in times of emergency.
We have seen terrorism on our streets too many times, most recently on Westminster Bridge and at Carriage Gates, at Manchester Arena, London Bridge and Borough Market, and at Parsons Green. There were also the terrible events in Salisbury—the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, then the poisoning of Dawn Sturgess and Charlie Rowley on 30 June, leading to the death of Dawn Sturgess on 8 July. I express my sympathy to all victims of these terrorist incidents and their families. This is very real and we are lucky that many more plots and plans have been prevented, as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, mentioned in opening the debate. The noble Lord, Lord King of Bridgwater, set out in his contribution the number of offences and convictions and the potential terrorist operations that have been prevented. We thank all those heroes for their bravery and professionalism; they were there when we needed them to keep us safe.
The noble Lord, Lord Tebbit, was right to remind us of the names of parliamentary colleagues who lost their lives and were murdered by terrorists. I would add the name of Jo Cox, MP for Batley and Spen, who was murdered by a terrorist with links to the far right in her constituency on 16 June 2016. The terrorist shouted “Britain First” as he stabbed her to death outside the library in Birstall, where she was due to hold a surgery.
Lord Tebbit
The noble Lord referred to the murder of our parliamentary colleague Jo Cox by a far-right terrorist. He was not a far-right terrorist. He was an unbalanced man who was obsessed with the Nazis, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party—a left-wing party.
Lord Kennedy of Southwark
We will have to disagree on that point.
As I said, I support the Bill and will always seek to make a contribution in your Lordships’ House that supports the work of those who seek to protect us and to provide constructive opposition to improve legislation before us, as does my noble friend Lord Rosser.
Before we get to the Bill itself, I join other noble Lords in congratulating both noble Lords who made their excellent maiden contributions today. They bring considerable experience from the House of Commons where they served for many years with distinction. The noble and learned Lord, Lord Garnier, served as the Solicitor-General in the first part of the coalition Government. I lived and worked in the east Midlands for many years and, although I am a Londoner, I have much affection for my time there and in Leicestershire. I know the noble and learned Lord’s former constituency very well.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyrie, was the formidable chair of the Treasury Select Committee for the last seven years of his time in the House of Commons, having succeeded my noble friend Lord McFall to that position. In a previous life some years ago I appeared before a House of Commons committee. It was a scary experience. I am very pleased that the noble Lord was not a member of that committee; I would have been very worried about his forensic questioning. I am now worried about some forensic interventions in future debates, but I know that we all look forward to both noble Lords’ contributions in this House, which they will make many times.
We can support the Bill in general and will seek to make improvements during its passage through this House, building on issues raised in the other place and in today’ debate. The Bill is in two parts, with the first making changes to the law following reviews by the Government of their counterterrorism strategy and of counterterrorism legislation in force, while Part 2 seeks to provide new powers in respect of the detention and questioning of people at ports and border controls suspected of being involved in hostile acts on behalf of and in the interests of another state outside the United Kingdom.
As my noble friend Lord Rosser pointed out, a number of amendments to the Bill were tabled fairly late in the day in the Commons and were added with little scrutiny. Those amendments in particular will require detailed examination by the House. There are Members on all Benches, many of whom have spoken today, who are expert in providing scrutiny and challenge. In particular, I refer to the amendments made to the Bill in the other place covering entering and remaining in a designated area, the publication of images, obtaining or viewing material over the internet, increases in maximum sentences and extended sentences for terrorism offences.
My noble friend Lord Rosser outlined concerns about proportionality, particularly arising from amendments introduced in the House of Commons. The noble Lord, Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames, drew out some contradictions in the Bill that will need to be examined further. The noble Lord, Lord Janvrin, made a very important point about people being radicalised in prison. I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford, will address that in her reply. That is not to say that we do not agree with the proposals but they need proper scrutiny, which they have not received so far.
Legitimate concerns have been raised by Bond, the UK network for organisations working in international development, humanitarian aid and peacebuilding. Can the noble Baroness tell us what the protections for aid workers in high-risk jurisdictions are? She may not think that these proposals pose any risk to them, but that view is not shared by everyone: we need to address the legitimate concerns raised by NGOs in this regard.
It would also be useful if the noble Baroness addressed the protection afforded by “reasonable excuse”. Is she really satisfied that it provides protection to mitigate the impact on individuals? The wider point was made about banks and other financial institutions taking derisking measures such as stopping bank payments and closing the bank accounts of NGOs. Journalists and foreign correspondents of UK news organisations can sometimes find themselves in very difficult and dangerous places. What they find and report on is vital, shining a light on those individuals, organisations and Governments, including dictatorships, who work in the dark, who abuse, oppress, terrorise and murder people, and who do not want their activities to be widely reported on. These activities can be against their own citizens or citizens of another country.
I made the point earlier about unintended consequences of legislation. We must be very mindful of that during the passage of the Bill, which I hope the whole House can see could have far-reaching effects on both international aid and journalism if not handled properly. I very much support the protection of press freedom and journalistic sources, as I support the victims of press abuse and their right to proper redress. Again, it will be important to clarify the intention of some of the clauses so that legitimate investigative journalism and reporting is not caught up and criminalised. It may be that, through regulation and guidance, protections will be sufficiently strong, but this is an important area for our deliberations.
The noble Baroness, Lady Warsi, made a powerful speech which the Government would be wise to listen to carefully. Getting the balance right on this legislation will be crucial. I was very sorry to hear about the abuse the noble Baroness has received on social media, which I condemn. The internet and social media is a wonderful thing and can enrich our lives, but the darker side and the abuse must be stopped. The Government really have to address that issue separately from the Bill.
Of course, we fully understand that the Government have to deal with the issue of foreign fighters returning from abroad, but any suggestion of updating and using the concept of treason, a law dating from 1351 and not used since 1945, is misplaced. There are other, more appropriate means of addressing these issues. I also think that we undermine, not uphold, the rule of law by removing the right to private legal advice. My honourable friend in the other place, Nick Thomas-Symonds MP, reminded us that the Appeal Court upheld this principle recently in the case of the Serious Fraud Office v Eurasian Natural Resources Corporation. Lawyers are subject to professional standards and it is right that they are. Illegal activities should be dealt with appropriately, but we should not lose the principle of being able to seek advice from a lawyer in private. Proposals in the Bill seek to change that, and the reasons given are that the person in question may want to contact someone in order to alert them that they have been stopped at a border crossing, or that a lawyer would not adhere to proper professional standards and would pass information on or would leak information inadvertently. There is a better solution, which is to establish a panel of lawyers, subject to proper rules and regulations, who would be able to give legal advice. The advice would remain private, retaining an important legal principle but also safeguarding against a person misusing the right to seek advice from a lawyer in private.
My noble friend Lord Rosser referred to the European arrest warrant and the important role it plays in bringing suspects quickly into the criminal justice system. We need a deal to secure the European arrest warrant and it will be a disaster if this cannot be assured. Criminals will be the only beneficiaries. It is worth noting that the Government sought a European arrest warrant against the suspects in the Skripal incident.
I fully endorse the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate: there must not be even one hour’s gap in the work of sharing information with other European partners, as to allow this will benefit only the terrorist who is seeking to harm our country, citizens and residents.
The noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, made an important point about getting the balance right and the importance of co-operation with our partners. I accept the point she made about the pace and scale of operations and the need to plug a number of gaps in our legislation to address certain issues.
My noble friend Lord Rosser spoke about the Prevent programme and I fully endorse his comments.
In conclusion, this is an important Bill covering many serious issues for this House to consider over the coming period. I look forward to working with others to improve what is before the House today and to send a much better Bill back to the other place for its agreement. With that in mind, I hope the Government will continue to work in the consensual manner they have demonstrated to date.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very serious debate. We should never forget the nature of the issues we are discussing. Contributions throughout the debate have reminded us just what we are dealing with. I echo the tributes paid to not just the police but the emergency services, who dealt so bravely with the terrorist threats we faced last year, and to my noble friend Lord Tebbit, who spoke not only as a victim of terrorism but for the victims who can no longer speak.
It was particularly pleasing to hear the two maiden speeches. When my noble and learned friend Lord Garnier told the House that he had made his maiden speech in the middle of the night, I did not know whether he had actually engineered that because I arranged for my maiden speech to be in the Moses Room so that not many people would hear it. He brings to this House many years of experience practising at the Bar and of course was Solicitor-General for two years. Drawing on his experiences, he has given us some valuable insights into the provisions in the Bill, particularly those relating to the changes to the criminal law and sentencing. We also heard from the noble Lord, Lord Tyrie. I am glad he is not “Lord Tyrie of Tyrie, Tyrie”, because that might be a bit of a mouthful. But I know he will hold the Government to account in this House with the same vigour that he showed during his 20 distinguished years in the House of Commons, including seven years at the chair of the Treasury Select Committee. I note that one of the accolades he earned in that time was,
“The most powerful backbencher in the House of Commons”,
so it was with some trepidation that I listened to his speech, but I was very interested in some of the things he said and I look forward to further discussions with him.
The many other contributors to the debate demonstrated yet again the considerable experience that the Members of your Lordships’ House bring to bear when scrutinising legislation such as this. I am sure that, given the length and breadth of the debate, noble Lords will appreciate that I cannot possibly answer every single question but, in addition to responding to the debate, I will endeavour to write a fulsome letter, which I will place in the Library. We have had the benefit of insights from a former Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation, a former director-general of the Security Service, two former Metropolitan Police Commissioners, a former Chief Inspector of Prisons, and current members of the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Joint Committee on the National Security Strategy. We are so lucky to have such expertise, while other noble Lords bring to this debate their highly relevant experiences as members of the legal profession or academia.
As this Bill has already been through the House of Commons, where it was given a Third Reading by an overwhelming majority of 376 votes to 10, noble Lords have quite properly approached this debate from the perspective of our role as a revising Chamber. We have heard a range of views, as I have said. It was most important that the noble Baroness, Lady Manningham-Buller, my noble friends Lord King and Lord Tebbit, and the noble Lords, Lord Blair and Lord Hogan-Howe, reminded us how very real the threat of terrorism is. I welcome the broad measure of support for the Bill from the Opposition Front Bench and from many who spoke from the Cross Benches, while accepting that they, like other noble Lords, will want to scrutinise the detail of the Government’s proposals. I think we are in for an interesting Committee stage. I sense from the Liberal Democrats that they might be more sceptical in nature but, even in that, there were expressions of support from noble Lords there. I am sure that they will approach Committee in the same constructive manner that we have heard in the Second Reading speeches.
It is evident that noble Lords will want to probe some of the changes to terrorism offences, the increase in maximum penalties—that was clear—and aspects of the new hostile-state activity ports powers in Schedule 3. I welcome the opportunity to explain these provisions in more detail and respond to some other points that have been raised in the debate.
Regarding Clause 1, “Expressions of support for a proscribed organisation”, and the concept that these provisions might be an attack on the freedom of speech, noble Lords are absolutely right to raise that issue. The noble Lords, Lord Marks, Lord Thomas and Lord Ahmed, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, expressed concern that the extension of the offence of inviting support for a proscribed organisation would undermine that freedom of speech. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Newcastle also spoke about this issue. It is of course right that we uphold the right to freedom of expression, something which we value so highly in this country and is part of our core values. People are free to express any view they wish, even ones which the wider public might find distasteful, as long as they do so within the law and do not harm others. However, we are clear that any groups or individuals that cause harm to our society and promote hatred and division will not be tolerated. This measure is aimed at those who are reckless—“reckless” being quite a well-established word in law—as to whether statements that they make will encourage others to support a proscribed terrorist organisation. That type of activity is very serious. It can have a strong influence on individuals who are vulnerable to radicalisation, as some noble Lords pointed out, and can create a real risk of harm to the public. As such, it is vital that we are able to target those who seek to exploit others and lure them into terrorism, so that they can no longer skirt the fringes of legality—something that noble Lords have talked about extensively today.
Moving to Clause 4, the noble Lords, Lord Rosser and Lord Anderson, my noble friend Lord McInnes and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised the designated area offence that it provides for and sought reassurance that it would not apply to those with legitimate reason to travel to a designated area. I can absolutely confirm that the offence as drafted includes a reasonable excuse defence, which will be available to individuals who travel to a designated area solely for a legitimate purpose—such as, as noble Lords have said, to deliver humanitarian aid or journalism, or indeed to attend a family funeral. The police, the CPS and the courts are familiar with this approach, and it works well in other contexts where an offence has a reasonable excuse defence. In practice, such cases are unlikely to come to court as they would not get beyond the police investigation or scrutiny by the CPS, which would be unlikely to conclude that there was a reasonable prospect of securing a conviction. We do not consider it necessary or helpful to take a different approach for this offence. Whether a particular excuse is reasonable will be highly dependent on the facts and circumstances of the individual case and cannot be prescribed in advance in the abstract.
The noble Lords, Lord Janvrin and Lord Hogan-Howe, asked whether the police have the resources to implement the provisions in the Bill. It is of course important that we ensure that counterterrorism policing has the resources needed to deal with the threat we face. That is why the counterterrorism policing budget has gone up by £50 million of entirely new money in 2018-19 to at least £757 million. This follows the £28 million of new money the Government provided in 2017-18 to forces across the country for CT policing to meet costs relating to recent terror attacks. I totally get the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hogan-Howe, about the pipeline of people required to fulfil those roles.
The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Anderson, talked about the definition of hostile state activity and questioned whether the definition in Schedule 3 is sufficiently precise. For the purposes of this power, hostile activity has been defined as the “commission, preparation or instigation” of an act that threatens the national security or economic well-being of the UK or is a serious crime,
“carried out for, or on behalf of, a State other the United Kingdom, or … otherwise in the interests of a State other than the United Kingdom”.
That may seem broad, but I am afraid that the threat posed to the UK from hostile state activity is wide-ranging and includes espionage, sabotage, coercion, assassination and subversion. Consequently, the definition of hostile activity must necessarily be broad to encompass the range of threats this country faces from nefarious states.
The noble Lord, Lord Bew, talked about Schedule 3 and the creation of a hard border. He pointed to concerns that have been raised in some quarters about how the provisions of Schedule 3 will operate on the Northern Ireland border. As the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, indicated, the issue was raised on Report in the Commons and the Minister for Security has written to Tony Lloyd on this question. I will make sure that noble Lords receive a copy of that letter rather than me repeating it this evening.
My noble friend Lord Faulks and the noble Lords, Lord Thomas of Gresford, Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate and Lord Kennedy, raised detainees’ right to consult their lawyer in private in the context of Schedule 3. In exceptional circumstances there may be a need for a more senior police officer to restrict that right by requiring that the consultation take place in the sight and hearing of an officer who has no connection to the detainee’s case, for instance, where there are reasonable grounds to believe that private consultation will result in interference with evidence, gathering of information, injury to another person, alerting others that they are suspected of an indictable offence or hindering the recovery of property obtained by an indictable offence. The aim of the restriction is to disrupt and deter a detainee who seeks to use their right to a solicitor to trigger activity that would lead to those consequences. It could be achieved by the detainee using their solicitor to pass on instructions to a third party by, for example, intimidating the solicitor or using a coded message of which the solicitor is unaware. However, the shadow Security Minister has put forward an alternative proposal for dealing with this issue, and we can explore it further in Committee.
There were a lot of contributions on Prevent, expressing support for aversion to it, or suggesting review of it. In particular the noble Lords, Lord Stunell, Lord Rosser and Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friend Lady Warsi called for an independent review. Prevent is fundamentally about safeguarding and supporting vulnerable individuals to stop them supporting terrorism or becoming terrorists, regardless of whether that is in support of Islamist, far-right or any other form of terrorism. That point was extremely well made by my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord McInnes. When considered from this perspective, Prevent is working and we do not accept the need for an independent review. It has had a significant impact on stopping people being drawn into terrorism. Indeed, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Cressida Dick, said recently:
“There have been hundreds of people who have been turned away from violent extremism by their engagement with Channel and other aspects of Prevent, and that is all positive”.
It is clear that those who work to keep us safe from the terrorist threat back Prevent.
The noble Lords, Lord Janvrin, Lord Kennedy and Lord Rosser, and in particular my noble friend Lord Bethell, talked about online harms and ensuring that tech companies are responsible for rapidly taking down terrorist content that is posted online. That point about rapid takedown is very well made. The then Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport announced in May that at the next possible opportunity the Government will bring forward online safety legislation that will capture online terrorist content. We need a comprehensive online safety strategy, not one that tackles specific harms in a piecemeal fashion. That is why the Home Office is working closely with DCMS to publish a White Paper later this Session that will set out proposals for new online safety laws to ensure that the UK is the safest place in the world to be online.
A number of noble Lords, including the noble Lords, Lord Rosser, Lord Kennedy, Lord Marks, Lord Blair and Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friends Lord King and Lord Kirkhope, talked about co-operation on counterterrorism after Brexit. That is a crucial point and I think that the whole House is in agreement on it. It is something that the Government are absolutely focused on working towards. The government White Paper provides an ambitious and comprehensive vision for our future security relationship with the EU and reinforces the Prime Minister’s message that the UK remains unconditionally committed to maintaining Europe’s security, both now and after our withdrawal from the EU.
Some interesting points were made about updating the treason laws to reflect what is happening, particularly in foreign states, by my noble friends Lord King, Lord Faulks and Lord Marlesford. We have a comprehensive range of terrorism offences and other powers that the Bill will update for the digital age. That will provide the police and intelligence services with the powers that they need to protect the public from terrorism. We do not consider it necessary to create new treason offences for this purpose, but I know exactly where my noble friends are coming from. The Prime Minister announced on 14 March that the Government will consider the need for new counterespionage powers, including legislation to harden our defences against hostile state activity. Where relevant, treason offences may be considered as part of that work.
A number of noble Lords talked about combating radicalisation in prisons, which is a very good point. I must first point out that those convicted of terrorism offences have already themselves been radicalised, but it is important that we do not exacerbate the problem, as noble Lords said, while defenders are serving their sentences. A joint HM Prisons and Probationary Service and Home Office extremism unit was created in April 2017 to lead the response to extremism and terrorism in prisons and probation. We make every effort to ensure that terrorist offenders are given the best possible chance to rehabilitate while in prison and on probation, and all offenders of extremist or terrorist concern are managed actively as part of a comprehensive counterterrorism case management system.
In conclusion, all sides of the House recognise the real threats that we face, whether from terrorism or the hostile acts of foreign powers. As those threats evolve over time, so must our response. We must ensure that our law enforcement and security agencies have the powers and capabilities that they need to disrupt the activities of those who would do the people of this country harm. The safety and security of those who live in this country must always be our paramount concern, but I recognise that the laws that we create to help ensure such security are a matter of legitimate debate and should rightly be subject to proper scrutiny. In that spirit, I look forward to our further deliberations on the Bill, but it is the Government’s firm belief that its provisions are a necessary and proportionate response to the ongoing threats that we face. On that basis, I have no hesitation in commending the Bill to the House.