House of Commons
Prayers
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Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I beg to move, that the House sit in private.
Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 163), and negatived.
Mr Speaker
I hope that the appetite has now been satisfied and we can proceed with alacrity to business.
Bill Presented
Healthcare (International Arrangements)
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Secretary Matt Hancock, supported by the Prime Minister, Secretary Dominic Raab, Secretary Esther McVey, Secretary Jeremy Wright and Stephen Barclay, presented a Bill to make provision about paying and arranging for healthcare provided outside the United Kingdom and giving effect to healthcare arrangements; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time tomorrow, and to be printed (Bill 279) with explanatory notes (Bill 279-EN).
Homes (Fitness for Habitation) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 View all Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 June 2018 - (20 Jun 2018)
Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
I am very grateful for the cross-party support for this Bill. I will not seek to detain the House, as we have other business, but I will take a few minutes to explain why the Bill is important and should continue its passage through the House.
Living in a cold, damp or unsafe home is hell. It damages people’s physical and mental wellbeing, erodes the income of the poorest households and impacts on children’s education. The most vulnerable tenants are those most at risk of being trapped in substandard accommodation, and they are often the least able to withstand the damage such conditions do, or to fight their corner unaided.
The emails that flow in from constituents—and, indeed, many others, including the hundreds of people who took part in the parliamentary digital involvement exercise before the Second Reading debate—about bad housing conditions make truly heart-rending reading. I am sure that everyone in this House will have received similar representations.
In one of the recent cases that have come to me, a constituent wrote:
“My flat has metal casement windows around 50 years old that were installed when they converted the houses into flats…My kitchen window leaks when it rains. I have video evidence catching water in a bowl as it pours in…The weather is changing into autumn now and I’m worried for my health…it’s difficult to afford to heat my home. I am on benefits so have limited funds. The windows let in a lot of draught so I get very cold in winter. I recently had a level access shower fitted after having spinal fusion surgery last year but in the winter the condensation from the shower forms ice inside the window and it’s freezing in there, everything is damp.”
Another wrote:
“I am tenant of a privately rented accommodation with my partner and two kids…It’s been a struggle to get us out of it as it is not conducive to live in especially for my son who has chronic lung disease, autism, asthma…He was also previously in a coma at St. Mary’s hospital due to a virus caused by excessive cold. The mould and damp in the house turns our clothing, toothbrushes and cups black. I cannot begin to explain how many hospital visits we have had with the ambulance coming sometimes twice a day as my son’s breathing deteriorated. His GP also wrote them explaining his medical condition and this was also ignored.”
Another wrote:
“Hope all is well. I have been complaining about my freezing cold smelly damp mouldy flat for numerous years. The condensation brings in the cold air from outside that makes my flat extremely freezing cold.
I was told to leave my heating on low…I cannot afford to leave the heating on constantly low…in the winter months and when it is really cold I go without food to put the heating on and to try and stay warm. So that has not solved the problem…The cold aches my bones and muscles. The damp and mould affects my asthma. As a type 1 diabetic and asthmatic I am constantly ill living in this flat…I got pneumonia and blood poisoning…I guess the way they are progressing it will be done the day I am being removed from this flat in a coffin.”
Those are the kinds of cases that come to all of us.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for her speech and, indeed, for the entire Bill, which I genuinely believe will make a massive difference. Will she join me in congratulating Newham Council, which has been a pioneer in taking on bad landlords and making sure that our citizens have homes that are fit for habitation?
Ms Buck
I am grateful for that intervention and I will happily congratulate Newham Council, because although it has a problem with its housing stock, it has led the charge on local enforcement. I am happy to give it credit for doing that.
Many landlords take their responsibilities seriously, but still 1 million households across the private and social sectors are forced to endure conditions that harm them or pose a serious risk of harm. According to the latest English housing survey, 15% of private tenanted properties have category 1 hazards classed as a serious risk to the occupier’s health—that is 750,000 households —at least a third of which contain children. A further 250,000 socially tenanted properties have a category 1 hazard under the housing health and safety ratings system, which works out at about 6%.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does she agree that it is completely unacceptable that in my constituency families of four are living in a box bedroom with only a single mattress on the floor?
Ms Buck
I totally agree; overcrowding is a scandalous problem in our social housing, and it is often equated with some of the very poor standards people experience, with damp and condensation linked to overcrowding. These are tragic cases and we urgently need not only an expansion of social rented housing to enable people to escape these kinds of conditions, but the provisions in this Bill and other measures that the Government have introduced.
Landlords currently have no obligation to their tenants to put or keep a property in a condition fit for habitation. A requirement does exist to ensure the structure and facilities such as the heating, gas and water are in repair, but this does not cover issues such as fire safety, heating that is functioning but inadequate, or poor ventilation that can lead to the condensation and mould growth seen in the kind of cases I have outlined. A range of fitness issues seriously affect the wellbeing and safety of tenants and about which tenants can do nothing at all.
For private and housing association tenants, it is possible for the local authority to enforce fitness standards under the housing health and safety rating system, under the Housing Act 2004, but there is a huge degree of variability across councils in terms of inspection, the issuing of notices and enforcement rates. About 50% of councils have served none or only one Housing Act notice in the past year. One London council, Newham, which has an active enforcement policy, accounted for 50% of all notices served nationally and 70% of those served in London. A freedom of information inquiry by the Residential Landlords Association found an average of just 1.5 prosecutions per council, and my own freedom of information research found that enforcement action of any kind accounted for only 1% of the estimated number of category 1 hazards. That means there is a complete postcode lottery on the prospect of councils taking steps, with the real prospect being that the council will not do so.
For council tenants, the decent homes standard requires homes to be free from category 1 hazards, and considerable progress was made in improving the quality of housing stock, thanks to the decent homes initiative, but the 2004 Act and housing health and safety rating standards have little impact, as local councils cannot enforce against themselves. So council tenants have no way to enforce, or seek to have enforced, fitness standards, including fire safety, if their landlord does not do anything. The Bill enables all tenants, whether private or social, to take action on the same issues and standards as local authorities can.
Chuka Umunna (Streatham) (Lab)
May I shower a huge amount of congratulations on my hon. Friend, because this Bill will make an immediate difference in my constituency? For all the case examples she has described, we see exactly the same thing in my constituency. I am pleased the Government appear to be supporting the Bill. If this Bill passes, we need to make sure that tenants all know that they have this power she is proposing to give them and this ability to enforce their rights. Does she agree that it is important that if the Government are going to support this Bill, they make sure that everybody knows they will be empowered to do something beyond what the local authority can now do for them?
Ms Buck
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention and for his congratulations. I totally agree that in addition to the legislation we pass in this House it is crucial that we use all the tools of government communications to get a message out that people have rights, that they need to be able to exercise them, and that they need to know how and where they can go in order to do so. I am sure that the Minister will support that point.
This Bill will enable all tenants, whether private or social, to take action on the same issues and standards as local authorities, following recommendations made by the Law Commission and the Court of Appeal dating back some two decades. This is therefore very much a legislative updating whose time has come. The effect of the Bill will be that the tenant will be able to take action against the landlord to make them put right any problems or hazards that make their dwelling unfit, and the tenant could seek compensation when the landlord has not done so.
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this important Bill. Many of us will have received representations from private landlords who are screaming about the impact of this Bill on their ability to make profit. Let us be absolutely clear: if someone cannot make profit by providing a clean and safe place for people to live, they should exit the game completely.
Ms Buck
I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that. It is also fair to say that the majority of good landlords are happy to endorse that view, because their reputation is dragged down by the behaviour of the rogue minority.
The Bill is not intended as a replacement for the work of local authorities but is complementary to it, enabling tenants to take action where the council has not done so or cannot do so. For all new tenancies after the Bill comes into force, it would make it a right to have a home that did not create a risk to the health and safety of its occupants. As the excellent House of Commons Library briefing on the Bill says:
“The Grenfell Tower fire has focused attention on housing standards in the social rented stock and also in privately owned blocks of flats.”
So I am also pleased to say that the Bill was amended in Committee, with the support of the Government, to extend the fitness obligation to the building within which the dwelling forms part. So the tenant of a flat, a room or part of a shared house will be able to enforce against defects, including fire risks, that threaten their health or wellbeing in their home, even if the defect is in another part of the building.
It has been marvellous to have secured Government backing for this Bill, even to the point of strengthening it. We have had support from across the spectrum. It has come from bodies ranging from the National Landlords Association and the Residential Landlords Association, to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health—CIEH—the Association of Residential Letting Agents, Shelter, Generation Rent, the Law Society, Mind, the National Housing Federation, the Local Government Association, Citizens Advice and others.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I am delighted to say that the Government have now got behind the Bill, as that is very welcome. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would also be useful if they gave more security to private tenants, because that is necessary to ensure that they are not evicted as a result of reporting faults, and if they restored early legal advice for housing matters, because without that it is going to be difficult to enforce this?
Ms Buck
I totally agree with my hon. Friend on that. This Bill is one tool and there are many others we need to adopt to ensure that tenants have a full range of rights and, indeed, are protected against retaliatory eviction. That is outwith the scope of this Bill, but there is much more we will seek to do and will no doubt be pressing the Government to do, on matters ranging from security of tenure protection to the provision of legal aid and advice services
I have always believed that politics is a collective effort. For most of us, most of the time, what we do in here is part of a team effort. Although that can sometimes drift into tribalism, there is no shame in the fact that politics is not primarily about what we do as individuals. Private Members’ Bills are one of the few ways in which we, as individual Back-Bench MPs, can make a difference, but in truth this, too, has been a team effort. I am grateful to the Minister and to the officials, who have been brilliant; it has been a joy working with them on this Bill. I also thank all the MPs, from both sides of the House, who spoke on Second Reading, who served in Committee and who are here today to see us through Third Reading.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
May I, too, congratulate the hon. Lady on introducing this important Bill? It has been a pleasure to serve on the Bill Committee. Does she agree that this is a shining example of the huge amounts that can be achieved when Back Benchers work with the Government?
Ms Buck
I do agree with that. In the end, what we want to do here is to make changes, and it is hard for individuals to do that without having that kind of support, including from the Government.
Information, help and lobbying came from all the organisations I have mentioned, and very much from Sam Lister at the Chartered Institute of Housing and Stephen Battersby, the former president of the CIEH. But none of this would have happened without the inspiration and commitment of Justin Bates and Giles Peaker, the housing lawyers who brought forward the concept of this Bill and have given their time and their considerable brains to it for the past three years. I can only offer my inadequate thanks to them for that effort, but I will say that if anyone can claim credit for securing this important step forward in the protection of tenants, it is them. With that, I conclude my remarks and commend this Bill to the House.
Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) and a privilege to be here to support the Bill. I speak as an accidental landlord myself: when my second wife and I got together 10 years ago, she was shrewd enough to want to hang on to the property that she had, just in case it did not work out, and 10 years later we are still renting out that property. I believe that we are excellent landlords, and that is because it makes financial sense and moral sense: if we maintain our property to a high standard, we will retain our tenant. There are, though, parts of the country where that is not the case—where demand outstrips supply. Some 1.2 million houses have been identified as non-decent. That is clearly appalling and I am delighted that the Bill will address it.
In October 2015, legislation was introduced putting an obligation on landlords to provide a smoke detector on each storey of a property and to provide a carbon monoxide detector if the property has solid-fuel-burning appliances, such as a wood-burning stove. I introduced a private Member’s Bill that would have made it an obligation for landlords to provide a carbon monoxide detector in all properties, socially and privately rented, in which any fuel is burned and carbon monoxide produced. That is an absolute necessity to ensure that all homes are fit for human habitation and do not present a danger to the occupants.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making some interesting points based on his experience in the social rented sector. Does he agree that no landlord should have any problems with the Bill and that we should be clear that it will create an additional power to help tenants, not replace the powers that councils have?
Eddie Hughes
When we consider how many properties are rented out, for both social and private purposes, it is important that they are all as safe as possible.
Unfortunately, when I became a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, I had to step down from my position as chair of the board of Walsall Housing Group, a housing association with 20,000 properties in Walsall. I had been leaning very heavily on the association to get it to provide carbon monoxide detectors in its properties, and I believe it now does that for all its new build properties. I shall continue to try to influence the association to do that in its existing social rented properties.
I completely support and endorse all elements of the Bill and look forward to its becoming law.
Mr Speaker
The board is now sadly deprived of the hon. Gentleman’s expertise and commitment, but at least we have been able to enjoy his eloquence today.
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
I am pleased to be here to support this vital Bill. I commend the hard work of my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude for her tireless work on this issue, without which we would not be considering the Bill today.
The Bill will make huge leaps in the strengthening of tenants’ rights by ensuring that they have the power to hold their landlords to account if appropriate standards are not being met. That is especially important in the age of generation rent, when the proportion of individuals and families living in the private-rental sector has doubled in the past decade and figures for individuals and families occupying properties in the social-rented sector continue to number in the millions.
Since I became an MP last year, I have been dismayed by the number of constituents who have contacted me with housing issues. Some of my constituents have been left without central heating for up to six months, and others have faced serious fly and rat infestations. By any reasonable account, these situations have made my constituents’ homes inhabitable, yet often they have been powerless to act. I am pleased that these issues are finally getting the attention they deserve, but it is utterly dreadful that it has taken a tragedy as serious as the Grenfell Tower fire to throw into sharp focus the issue of unsafe rented accommodation in this country. Grenfell serves as a harrowing reminder of the difficulties that tenants face in getting their voices heard, and it is right that we act to ensure that a tragedy like that never happens again.
It is simply wrong that in 2018 some 2.5 million to 3 million people are renting homes in which there is a
“serious and immediate risk to a person’s health and safety”,
as defined by the housing health and safety rating system. I am hopeful that with cross-party support the Bill will give a long overdue voice to those individuals and families.
For many years now, the Government have placed the duty of ensuring that a rented property is fit for habitation on local councils, while simultaneously slashing their budgets by unprecedented amounts and thereby preventing them from taking any meaningful action to fulfil their responsibilities in this policy area—and many others. This is simply not good enough on an issue as pivotal as the habitation of homes. I am hopeful that if the Bill is given its Third Reading today, tenants will be empowered, burdens will be lifted from over-stretched local authorities and the small number of rogue landlords who refuse to resolve issues that make their homes unfit for habitation will be forced to clean up their act.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
I wish to make a brief contribution, mainly to congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on an excellent piece of incredibly important legislation, which I am glad to support.
Those of us have been following the #ventyourrent campaign initiated by Generation Rent on Twitter have seen incredible squalor in some parts of the private rented sector. Even this week, we have seen on the front page of The Guardian two days in a row incredible examples of problems with repeat offending slum landlords. There is clearly a big problem and I know that Ministers are thinking about it. The Bill, which I hope will be given its Third Reading today, is an important contribution to the empowering of tenants to help to clean up some of these problems. It will clearly not be the end of the story, and we need to think about enforcement and how we can enable it to pay for itself by fining and taking the property of repeat offending slum landlords, but it is a pleasure to support this important legislation today.
Matt Rodda (Reading East) (Lab)
I rise to speak in favour of the Bill and to urge the Government to go further. I wish to point out just how serious the issue of poor-quality private rented accommodation is in my constituency and to show why urgent action is so sorely needed.
Just last week, I met a constituent who was desperate for help. She is a single mother who lives in damp terraced accommodation, with mould growing on the walls. She was desperate. Her son and daughter both have problems with their breathing. One of them has asthma and was seeing the doctor about it. She had asked the landlord for help, but he was unwilling or unable to make changes to the property and solve the damp problem. She is applying for a council house, but because of the severe shortage in places such as Reading and Woodley, she is unable to progress quickly up the list of those seeking homes. The woman’s plight explains the seriousness of the issue and why urgent action is needed.
In Reading, nearly a third of houses are in the private rented sector. There are many good landlords, but there are also many who do not provide a good service. Problems with damp, difficulties with landlords and high fees all make for deep-seated problems that affect thousands of local people. At the same time, as was mentioned earlier, councils have few powers to tackle rogue landlords and there are simply not enough good- quality private rented properties or council houses available in many parts of the country. I urge Ministers to take steps to address this serious problem by considering Labour amendments to the Bill and other related measures on the issues that affect the wider housing sector.
Several amendments to the Bill were proposed, and I am grateful to the Government for taking some of them on board. I hope that they will look again at one in particular. Earlier this year, I spoke about the potential loophole that allows landlords to charge for items such as lost keys. That could provide less scrupulous landlords with a loophole through which they could bypass the Bill’s intent. I urge the Government to look into the matter again.
Other changes that are needed include a much larger programme of council house building and wider measures to improve the planning and development sector.
I urge the Government to support Reading Borough Council’s bid for about 140 new council houses and ask them to go much further in considering the funds that are available for council house building. In my area, we could easily find families to fit into another 1,400 council properties, let alone the 140 that have been bid for.
Kevin Foster
I welcome the spirit of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. Does he agree that his local council may well benefit from the removal of the cap on borrowing to fund housing and therefore might be able to fund more of the council houses he is talking about?
Matt Rodda
I do welcome that. My council colleagues tell me that they are waiting for further details from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and I look forward to Ministers being more amenable to local authorities on this matter.
To sum up, as time is pressing, poor-quality rented housing is a serious issue for many residents and urgent action is needed to address both the problem of rogue landlords and the problems in the wider housing market.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to give my support to what is a welcome and timely Bill. It is welcome that I am able to speak on this matter. While I was in the Department for Communities and Local Government, I would have been unable to do so, but now that I have the joy of being in the Cabinet Office I can, although I have to be careful not to go into some of the issues around Grenfell, given the ongoing inquiry for which the Cabinet Office is responsible.
It is welcome that the Bill has cross-party support today. In summing up, I know that the Minister will want to reflect on how the Government will take it forward and how they will publicise these rights, as was touched on earlier. A key point to make is that the Bill is about additional powers; it is not about replacing the role of local authorities. That clear message will have to be given through local authorities. I accept that the vast majority of them will act on that basis.
A tenant who makes a housing standards complaint should not just be told that there is now an opportunity to pursue it via a civil route; the Bill is about providing an opportunity to pursue complaints via a civil route in addition to the housing standards enforcement work of local authorities. It would be helpful if, in summing up, the Minister reflected on what promotion and engagement work might be done with local authorities to ensure that that is clear in their approach.
A landlord in my constituency came to see me after my speech on Second Reading, when I said that the Bill was absolutely needed because of the actions of a small number of people. They were concerned about the Bill. I said quite bluntly that if they were concerned about a standard that meant they had to maintain their property as fit for human habitation, they really were in the wrong place entirely. Being fit for human habitation is about the lowest standard one can imagine for a property. It covers basics, such as making sure that the heating is on, that there is not undue damp, that it is safe and that the windows are fixed. It really is not the highest of standards. It is therefore right that there is another way for tenants to enforce it.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) said, most reasonable landlords will not fear the Bill at all; they have no reason to fear it. If people are maintaining a reasonable property, the Bill is utterly irrelevant to them. It will never have any impact on them; it will not change how they run their business; and it will not cost them any money. The only people who need worry are those who constantly ignore reasonable requests for repairs, those who have just about avoided prosecution on a couple of occasions because their actions did not quite come up to the criminal standard that is used for local authority offences and those who skimp at every opportunity. Those are the landlords who need to worry.
Landlords who are part of a quality assured system and who work closely with groups such as the Devon Landlords’ Association have absolutely nothing to worry about and will see absolutely no change to their business. As I said on Second Reading, the vast majority of landlords provide reasonable properties at a reasonable rent. Those who do not are the ones who will have to think about the implications of the Bill.
As the Bill covers civil matters, when they go to court they will be dealt with on the balance of probabilities, rather than against the criminal standard. Being able to enforce something as a civil matter gives a court slightly more leeway. When things are done to the criminal standard—beyond reasonable doubt—different evidential standards apply.
Eddie Hughes
With reference to recourse to the law, does my hon. Friend recognise that tenants who have complained about repairs are 50% more likely to be evicted?
Kevin Foster
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He will realise that I have to face the House and am not deliberately turning my back on him as I reply. He is absolutely right that if someone makes a legitimate complaint to their local authority or pursues a case under the Bill, there must be clear actions to be taken if so-called revenge evictions take place.
I am conscious that that danger may vary between areas. In some parts of the country, a large amount of housing may be available at reasonable prices, although I accept that affordability is an issue across the country. However, in other places, particularly the area represented by the promoter of the Bill, the cost and availability of housing are huge issues. The threat of having to move out is much more significant in such places than somewhere where people could just move down the road. There is a need to tackle revenge evictions, because if revenge evictions are the result of the Bill, it will not be a success.
Again, the vast majority of landlords respond to complaints fairly and reasonably and will work with their tenant in their mutual interests. If the landlord has a long-standing tenant, they do not have to pay agency fees to relet their property. Likewise, the tenant is able to make more of a life for themselves and does not have the disruption to their family life and their children’s schooling that comes with regular moves.
My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North, as always, brings his vision and knowledge to this debate, and rightly highlights that we must not only ensure that the powers are used, but that revenge evictions do not take place.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
What would my hon. Friend say to those who say—I disagree with them—that any legislation that impacts on landlords will have an unwarranted impact on the availability of housing, because people will be more unwilling to rent out their properties in areas where there is already a pressing demand for housing?
Kevin Foster
What I would say to them is, as an Opposition Member said earlier, “If you are renting out a property that is unfit for human habitation, you really should not be in the business of being a landlord. If that is the standard of what you are renting out then, bluntly, we do not want you to carry on.”
Will there be an impact on availability? Possibly, but—and it is a very big but—if someone cannot afford to do a property up to the standard where it is fit for habitation, they have an obvious option, which is to sell the property to someone who can. Another option is to discuss with the local authority whether planning permission needs to be granted to allow for a proper redevelopment.
I recently went to see a superb development in Paignton. It used to be poor-quality, guild house-style accommodation. In theory it was sheltered accommodation, but it was more like guild house-style accommodation, with shared bathrooms and facilities that were not particularly good. It was on the site of a former brewery. It was really not that great and the local housing association took the view that it did not meet the standard. It has been done up properly and there are now 22 new homes. The new apartments are modern properties that meet modern standards of disability access; the facilities reflect this era, rather than the 1950s; and young families have moved back in.
Let us be clear about what happens when we take action on housing standards. I know my hon. Friend the Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) will agree with this point; indeed, he probably made his intervention so that I would put it on the record. There is always the theory that when we introduce legislation and take action on housing standards, we might reduce the supply and make it more difficult or more expensive—because if we contract the housing supply, the price clearly goes up—for the tenant to find housing. However, in my experience when enforcement action is taken by local authorities, which will still happen, in many cases it results in the same amount of housing, or even slightly more of it, but this time of the right standard.
If a landlord feels that one of their properties is not up to standard—again, I refer to the landlord with a property in Paignton—they should start engaging with the local authority. Most councils will be reasonable and sensible if a landlord is trying to do the right thing. That could mean looking at how the property is used, perhaps converting the property or getting planning permission to allow the proper redevelopment of the site, as happened in Paignton. I am happy to take another intervention but I think that my hon. Friend can be reassured that, although there is always an argument about how much we do in terms of pushing measures so far that we reduce supply, this Bill will not do that. In fact, it could reduce the supply of completely unsuitable accommodation and increase the supply of the type of rental properties that we want to see.
Let me turn to the matter of implying terms into a lease—a sensible and proportionate measure. For those wondering what that means, this is about how the legislation creates the civil enforcement. Any tenancy will now contain this provision in the lease. As has been said, this is not about bringing back a piece of Victorian legislation, where the maximum rental price is now woefully out of date—probably as historical as the piece of legislation itself. Rather, this is about having a modern piece of legislation that does not come with the idea that every so often we need to decide the maximum rent to which it would apply. That makes this a more secure piece of tenancy legislation.
Following amendment in Committee, it would be interesting to understand how the Bill will affect those who rent out a property in a block where the leaseholders are the freeholders. A concerning issue came out following the fire safety work in Torbay after the Grenfell Tower fire. To be clear, there is not a large local authority owner of tower blocks in Torbay, as some hon. Members might have in their constituencies. We have a lot of apartment blocks and blocks of flats, particularly for those entering retirement, where the leaseholder is the freeholder—that is, the leaseholder owns a share in the freehold—and some of these flats may be rented out. In these cases, the freeholder, who is supposed to be dealing with certain issues and maintaining certain safety standards, has absolutely no incentive to enforce against its own shareholders. In fact, the shareholders are not very keen at all for the freeholder to take enforcement action.
There was an example in my constituency whereby a block had been built in the late 1960s—not a dissimilar era from that of Grenfell Tower. There were two apartments on a floor, which had two fire doors, then the corridor and then the door to the stairwell. About 20 years ago, the owner of one flat bought the other flat on the floor and turned it into one property along the whole floor, so instead of having two doors and the fire door to the stairwell, there was now just a fire door to the stairwell. This had not been picked up, partly because the freeholder had no great incentive to take action against the leaseholder, because the leaseholder was the freeholder. In the Minister’s contribution, she might wish to reflect on whether a tenant of a leaseholder would be able to enforce against the freeholder in such a situation.
Matt Rodda
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a related issue—cuts to fire services—to which he is almost referring in his very thoughtful contribution? I have had representations from Royal Berkshire fire and rescue service about the dire need for more fire safety officers, who take a long time to train. Many properties in multiple occupation actually have multiple fire safety issues, including small adjustments made by landlords and tenants, as the hon. Gentleman has described, and because of the nature of the buildings, which are often old and in some cases dilapidated. I have heard some very concerning stories about this in my county. Will he refer to that aspect?
Kevin Foster
My uncle, Station Officer John Griffin, was for many years a fire safety officer in Plymouth fire service and then Devon fire service, which Plymouth service became. I do not want to get into the grounds that will be covered by the inquiry, as that is not right, but there is an argument about whether the change made just over a decade ago by a previous Government—removing the fire service from being proactively involved in fire safety inspections and very much reducing the role of fire safety officers from the fire service—was the right move.
I put on my hat as a former member of the Local Government Association’s national fire services management committee and as a former member of the west midlands fire and rescue authority, and I do think we should look at rebuilding a more proactive role for the fire service in fire safety. To be fair, I will not criticise everything the previous Government did with the fire service. Some of the measures regarding home fire safety checks and moves to more proactive areas made sense. However, we may well reflect that the changes to the fire regulations and moving the fire safety inspections away from the fire service were perhaps not right. Perhaps we will move forward and review that, although there will need to be a balance in outcomes.
Mr Speaker
I very gently say to the hon. Gentleman, to whose contribution in mellifluous tones I am listening with close attention, that he has now spoken for a little longer than the Member in charge of the Bill. I know that he is not the sort of Member who would respond to any exhortation from any quarter to speak at length for any reason, because he just would not do that, but there is a lot of business to get through and I therefore express cautious optimism that he is now approaching his peroration.
Kevin Foster
As always, Mr Speaker, you can incisively see what is happening with my speeches; you have worked out that I was moving towards the end of my remarks. I know that some colleagues will be very disappointed that I am not going to try to break my record for a speech.
Kevin Foster
My hon. Friend is enjoying this because it is such a rare chance to hear me in the Chamber.
This Bill is very worthwhile, and it is appropriate and proportionate. It has been strengthened in a welcome way in Committee with regard to the provisions on communal areas. I am pleased to support its Third Reading, and look forward to hearing the Minister’s response to the points raised during the debate.
Emma Dent Coad (Kensington) (Lab)
Eighteen years ago in my Notting Hill Housing flat, after prolonged complaints had been ignored, my ceiling collapsed, narrowly missing my young daughter’s head. The five-year battle with my social landlord and the help that I received from my local councillors at the time propelled me into active politics, so I am devastated that social landlords have stepped even further away from their responsibilities over the years. I know from my casework that a collapsed ceiling narrowly missed a young child’s head just recently.
Some residents who attend my surgery have brought photos of the massive cracks across their ceilings—they fear a ceiling collapse—as well as of large gaps in stucco facades, which they fear could fall into the street. However, they have been told by their social landlord that they will not be helped unless they stop talking to me, so little or nothing has changed. That is shameful. I do not need to tell anyone in this House that disrepair followed—if people are lucky—by botched refurbishment can put people in mortal danger. Grenfell Tower residents who complained about their botched refurb were sent cease and desist letters, and had no legal recourse.
Since I became an MP last June, my office has dealt with nearly 1,500 cases of all kinds. Around half are housing cases, most involving disrepair. The majority of cases relate to social housing. Kensington and Chelsea Tenant Management Organisation was among the worst performers, as it has been during my nearly 13 years on the council, but has now improved slightly, leaving Notting Hill Housing—Notting Hill Genesis, as it is now—as our worst performer.
One of my constituents lives in a flat suffering from subsidence, which their landlord has been ignoring. From time to time, due to that subsidence, her front door becomes stuck and she is trapped in her flat for hours. Shame on Notting Hill Genesis. I have told her to call the fire brigade the next time that happens. Another group of constituents who were fleeing domestic abuse with young children were found a place in a hostel where they felt safe, until the ceiling collapsed. They moved downstairs to be safe, but then two more ceilings collapsed. That happened just last year—Notting Hill Genesis again.
Another case involved an elderly and confused woman. Her heating and hot water broke down about a year ago and was not fixed for three months. Her doctor told her that she was close to hypothermia and she then told her neighbour, who luckily reported it to us. Her landlord ignored our pleas, so I put the details on Twitter and there was a response within hours—shame on London and Quadrant. Another constituent’s damp was so bad that he had severe respiratory problems. When I visited, the poor gentleman had to move his nebuliser out of the way to show me the toxic black mould—that was KCTMO.
In yet another case, a constituent who fled from Grenfell with his young child was placed in temporary accommodation in a council flat that was so damp that the toddler’s clothes were literally rotting. Another constituent had a manhole cover in their downstairs kitchen and sitting room that regularly overflowed with raw sewage, by up to a foot. That was Peabody housing. In the last case I shall report on, there were concerns about fire safety that had been reported to a landlord, but were completely ignored. The landlord was told that if they did not fix the problem that they were being emailed about, there could be another Grenfell. A month later, a massive explosion ripped through the flat. There was a huge fire and a constituent died instantly—that was Catalyst housing.
It is such a difficult and long-winded process to get an environmental health officer to visit a home and manage damp that I have my own damp meter. If we have another very cold wet winter, I will be using it extensively and reporting on social media if landlords do not respond, which they often do not, even to an MP. We ask every family that comes to us with problems of damp whether anyone in the family has asthma. So far, every single family reporting damp has at least one such family member. Poor housing is damaging health and sometimes killing my constituents, and until now they have had no legal redress. My office is working on a casework report that will include photos, anonymised examples and timelines of responses from landlords. We will expose the truth. The state of social housing in my constituency is, in many cases, Dickensian.
Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)
Many of the social landlords mentioned in my hon. Friend’s speech are also active in my constituency, where I have some similar examples to hers. Does she share my concern that many of them started as charities and, by behaving in the way that they are and not delivering quality housing, they are breaching their charitable objectives?
Emma Dent Coad
I agree. Many of them have become developers with social purpose, as they are called, and have lost their charitable status—and they have left it well behind. Many are focusing on building new and often poorly constructed developments, while letting their old stock decline, and they are then selling into the private market. This is deliberate. Tenants are ignored, derided and, on occasion, bullied, with their pleas ignored. They need this legal recourse, so I am delighted to support the Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), a dedicated and hard-working heroine, and I ask the House to pass it.
Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), whose hard work and dedication to improving the lives of tenants has got this Bill to where it is today. We need no more stark reminder of the dangers of housing hazards and unfit properties than the Grenfell Tower disaster, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid) mentioned when he spoke up so determinedly for his constituents about the difficult situation in which many of them are forced to live. No tenant should be allowed to live in housing with such fire safety hazards, and no tenant should ever be ignored when they make a complaint about the severe risks that they see in their property. This disaster cannot be allowed to happen again.
The Bill can be the foundation of ensuring that we never see tenants housed in such unfit accommodation ever again. It gives tenants direct rights to compel social and private landlords—my hon. Friend the Member for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad) just highlighted the importance of including social landlords in the measure, and her comments also brought to the fore the importance and imperative nature of the Bill, which comes not a moment too soon—to carry out repairs if their accommodation is not fit for habitation and presents a serious and immediate risk to their health and safety. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) rightly highlighted that, given the number of private rented sector properties in his constituency. He also talked about the growing issues that will come as the sector looks only to expand.
The Bill is undoubtedly a positive step for tenant safety, but the Government must do more to empower tenants to challenge unfair conditions if the Bill is to reach its full potential. The Government must ensure that tenants do not fear retaliatory action when they complain about unfair conditions, as the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) rightly pointed out in his intervention. Unfortunately, a study by Citizens Advice showed that the current measures against retaliatory evictions are simply not working, with local authorities not reporting a downturn in evictions as a result of the Deregulation Act 2015. Protection against retaliatory eviction is vital to the Bill’s success, so will the Government listen to groups such as Citizens Advice and Shelter, and introduce a Bill on the back of their consultation to make three-year tenancies the norm and to give tenants the security they need, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter)?
We saw news this week about the fact that despite the introduction of the Government’s rogue landlords register, some landlords who have been deemed in law to be unfit to let properties continue to be rewarded with rental income, including from the public purse as a result of housing benefit. The landlord register is not being properly used as it might be, and it is also not public. Is this not an opportunity to give that mechanism real meaning, to use it properly and to give consumers their full rights by enabling them to see where rogue landlords are in operation? Such measures would have made the Bill even stronger, but we are very pleased to see it finally reach Third Reading. We hope that it will put an end to the scourge of unfit housing once and for all.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Mrs Heather Wheeler)
Thank you—[Interruption.] Get on with it, absolutely—God almighty! I just think that this is an important Bill and it needs all the time and love that it can have.
Before I start my speech, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial interests. I thank the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) for everything she has said and congratulate her for tenaciously taking this Bill through Committee and bringing it to the House today. Her Bill is an important part of our work to raise awareness of this vital issue of standards in rented properties. I want to talk about rented houses and flats, both social and private, and the sort of unacceptable conditions that some tenants have to put up with. Many Members have already mentioned the minority of landlords who do not think that they need to comply with the law, and how their tenants suffer as a result. I would also like to describe some of the new requirements we have brought in to help improve the lives of tenants and make sure rogue landlords are either driven out of the sector or forced to sort out their properties and their attitude. The hon. Lady’s Bill is an extremely valuable part of this work.
We had, I felt, a very productive, interesting and worthwhile debate in Committee. I am going to set out the other work we are doing to help tenants, which includes some new requirements but also makes sure we sharpen the tools we already have. In England, privately rented houses and flats provide housing for 4.7 million households—20% of all households. The social rented sector provides a further 17%, another 3.9 million house- holds. The majority of these are safe, secure, warm and dry.
People are tenants for all sorts of reasons—maybe the flexibility is convenient for them, maybe it makes more financial sense or perhaps it means they can live in the area they want to. Some 84% of tenants in the private rented sector and 81% of social housing tenants have said they are satisfied with their accommodation. These tenants have already seen an improvement in the quality of the houses and flats they live in. In 2008, serious category 1 health and safety hazards would have been found in around 30% of properties in the private rented sector and 15% in the social sector. By 2016, those figures had fallen to 15% of private rented and 6% of social properties.
However, it is still not acceptable that there is a hard-core, stubborn minority of landlords who rent out places that are not fit for their tenants to live in. Not all tenants have the luxury of choosing where to live, and some of the most vulnerable people in society live in these unfit properties. It is precisely this minority of houses and flats which still have serious hazards that the Bill will help to tackle.
We have been working hard to improve housing conditions and tackle rogue landlords. For example, since 2015 landlords must install a smoke detector on every floor of their properties, and they must have carbon monoxide detectors where the heating comes from solid fuels. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) on all the work he has done on that issue.
We also used the Housing and Planning Act 2016 to give local authorities tough new powers to tackle rogue landlords and poor property conditions in their areas. If landlords do not comply with legal notices served on them because their properties are not safe to live in, local authorities can now impose civil penalties of up to £30,000. Bristol City Council, for example, has imposed 12 civil penalties, with the lowest at £628 and the highest at £25,800. Local authorities do not even have to take rogue landlords to court to give them that short, very sharp shock, and they can use the revenue to further fund their enforcement activities. That is hugely important for council finances.
As well as that, if tenants have had to live with a serious health and safety hazard in their house or flat and the local authority has served a legal notice on their landlord, they may be able to reclaim up to 12 months’ rent. If the rent was paid through benefits, the local authority can get that back, too. Really serious offenders can have their name added to the new database of rogue landlords and property agents and could be banned from being a landlord, possibly for life.
In addition to those powers, we have extended the licensing of houses in multiple occupation. These properties are occupied by tenants who are not related but who share facilities such as bathrooms and kitchens. They are often good value and form a useful part of the housing market for many tenants. However, they are higher risk. Landlords of larger HMOs—those on three or more floors with five or more tenants—require a licence issued by the local authority for each property. On 1 October this year, we extended that to include HMOs with one or two storeys and five or more tenants. We have also introduced requirements for minimum room sizes, to help prevent some of the overcrowded conditions that local authorities have reported to us.
I am pleased to say that this is the third private Member’s Bill introduced by a Labour Member that this Government have supported, following the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) and received Royal Assent in September, and the Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill, which was promoted by the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) and is now in the other place.
The Bill before us builds on the work that has been done and adds a new dimension to the fight against rogue landlords. It will empower tenants by allowing them to seek redress from their landlords if their rented house or flat is in an unacceptably dangerous condition. Landlords will have to keep their properties free from hazards from the outset and for the entirety of the tenancy. Tenants will be able to seek redress without having to rely on their local authority, if they prefer to, and local authorities will still have the same strong enforcement powers to serve legal notices where they find serious health and safety hazards.
No further obligations will be put on landlords who rent out safe, secure, warm and dry properties. If a landlord is quick to carry out repairs when they are reported, manages their property well and takes their responsibilities seriously, the effect the Bill will have on them will be to level the playing field. Rogue landlords will have to improve their properties or leave the business. Landlords who do not maintain safe properties prevent an effective and competitive rental market where all landlords operate on an equal footing.
It is those two aspects of the Bill—giving more power to tenants but putting no new obligations on good landlords—that allow it to sit so well with the range of initiatives we have already introduced. The Bill will give power to tenants, which will complement the existing powers and further enforcement options we have provided to local authorities. Good landlords have nothing to worry about because there are no new obligations or costs for them under the Bill.
It was reassuring to hear such support and general agreement from Members across the House on Second Reading. That is a testament to how seriously all parties take this issue. In Committee in June, I once again heard cross-party support for the Bill and agreement that we need to act now. Members drew attention to issues in the private and social rented sectors that concerned them, and no one argued against the Bill.
Amendments were made in Committee that have further tightened the provisions of the Bill and made it more effective. For example, the common areas of rented properties will now be included. That is important because properties with common areas such as shared stairwells can be at a higher risk from hazards such as fire, as we have heard. Tenants need to be confident that they can hold their landlord to account when it comes to health and safety hazards in those common areas. That amendment will further help tenants in properties such as houses in multiple occupation.
The Bill will extend tenants’ rights and, for the first time, allows them to seek redress if their landlord rents them a property that is not fit for human habitation. It is vital that tenants understand their rights and know how to use them, as Members have said. Subject to the Bill receiving Royal Assent, we will produce guidance for tenants that will explain their rights and how to represent themselves in court should that prove necessary. We will also signpost where and how they can get any support they might need. That guidance will complement the “How to” series of guides produced by my Department, which have recently been revised and expanded. The guides include checklists for new and existing tenants, landlords and letting agents. Whatever the circumstance, we want to ensure that tenants are armed with information, so that they know their rights and responsibilities and can challenge poor behaviour.
There is still more to do. Our support for the hon. Lady’s Bill is an important part of our programme of work to drive up standards in rented houses and flats, and that support does not sit in isolation. We recognise the important role that landlords play in providing homes to millions of people around the country. We want to bring fairness to the market and promote good practice. It is key to the Bill that landlords ensure their properties are fit for human habitation.
Whether a house or flat is fit is determined by the presence of serious hazards. Those hazards are set out in the housing health and safety rating system—or the HHSRS, as it is nattily known. The HHSRS focuses on the hazards that are most likely to be present in housing. Tackling those hazards makes homes healthier and safer to live in. As part of our ongoing work to improve standards, we will commission a review to ensure that the HHSRS continues to work well, and that will take place next year.
Tenants are, of course, at the heart of the Bill. The intention behind it is to empower tenants, which is our intention as a Government. We have introduced legislation banning letting agents from making unfair and hidden charges, making it easier for tenants to find a property at a price they are willing to pay and saving renters an estimated £240 million in the first year alone. In addition, we have announced plans to make client money protection mandatory for letting agents and will introduce requirements on training and accreditation to ensure that tenants are protected. We will further empower tenants by requiring all landlords to belong to a mandatory redress scheme. The work the Government have already done to improve conditions for tenants, as well as the work we are now doing and the hon. Lady’s Bill, will mean a real improvement for tenants and a serious driving up of standards in both the social and rented sectors.
I want to thank the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), the hon. Members for York Central (Rachael Maskell), for Streatham (Chuka Umunna), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for Warrington South (Faisal Rashid), for Reading East (Matt Rodda), for Kensington (Emma Dent Coad), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) and for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn), and my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince), for Walsall North, for Torbay (Kevin Foster), for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) and for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) for all their contributions today and in Committee. I am grateful for all the hard work on the Bill across the House.
To conclude—
Mrs Wheeler
I could go on, if my hon. Friend would like me to.
It is clear that there is support for the Bill across the House. The Bill will empower tenants and help to further improve standards in rented houses and flats. It has been a pleasure working with the hon. Member for Westminster North, and I am sure her Bill will get the continued support it deserves as it progresses.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Act 2019 View all Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 October 2018 - (26 Oct 2018)
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 1, page 3, line 12, leave out clause 2.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.
May I pay tribute to the Minister who has just spoken, the Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for South Derbyshire (Mrs Wheeler)? Her speech was a masterpiece of clarity, conciseness and succinctness on a Friday morning on which there is important business to proceed with.
We had a very thorough and constructive Committee stage. I thank all the Members who took part in it, as well as the Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins). She is not in the Chamber today, but she has been part of the Bill process. I welcome the Minister for Immigration, my right hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who I hope will deftly manage the Bill without incident on its passage through these important stages. I am sure she will want to carry on the continuity of support that the Government have given, because there is very widespread support from both sides of the House for all four major parts of this Bill. Virtually all of them are now Government policy, so there is no reason why they should not want it to proceed. I anticipate that today should be a breeze, and that we can get on to the Third Reading of my Bill and swiftly go on to the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill, which so many of us support. We offer our good wishes to the Bill’s promoter, the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who cannot be in the Chamber today.
Since the Committee sitting on 18 July, there has been a crucial change regarding the extension of civil partnerships, which is why the new clause and the amendment are necessary. That change is of course the announcement by the Prime Minister through the medium of the media—namely, the Evening Standard, on 2 October —when the Government confirmed that, for the first time ever, gay and straight people will have the same choices in life, which will be achieved by new laws to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. There are now some 3.3 million such couples cohabiting in the United Kingdom. That was welcome news, and I was expecting a call beforehand from the Government to discuss how we could collaborate on my Bill to bring about that Government policy in the speediest and most effective way.
The change was of course spurred on by the ruling of the Supreme Court on 27 June, in the case of Steinfeld and Keidan, which revealed that the Government were in breach of the European convention on human rights. That followed a nearly four-year battle by Rebecca and Charles, which was almost as long as my own campaign in Parliament on this subject. I have proposed amendments going back as far as the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, I had a subsequent private Member’s Bill and of course there is the ballot Bill that we are debating today.
Sandy Martin
May I offer the hon. Gentleman my congratulations on achieving this step forward? As he will remember, I intervened on him on Second Reading about the necessity of treating everyone equally according to the law. Obviously, everyone could be treated equally badly; I am glad that everyone is now going to be treated equally well.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman quite rightly spoke very eloquently and with his own personal experience in support of this part of the Bill on Second Reading, for which I was very grateful, and that was very effective.
As I say, I was not warned about this advance in Government policy by the Prime Minister, and I have not really been briefed since about exactly what it amounts to. At the moment, I have no idea whether the Government will now accept this new clause, will vote against it, or will allow debate to go on—perhaps beyond 2.30 pm today. Frankly, if there are objections from the Government, I hope they will be based on fact, not conjecture or some of the scare stories about what my new clause might actually achieve. However, I have been involved in some very helpful discussions with the lead officials in the Government Equalities Office on civil partnerships legislation, and of course the continued support of the excellent lead official from the Home Office on this Bill, Linda Edwards.
The problem the new clause addresses is that at no point have the Government indicated a timeline or a method for bringing the extension of civil partnerships into effect. Delay and obfuscation was a major criticism in the ruling by the Supreme Court earlier in the year. More than three months after the Supreme Court ruling, the Government have simply indicated that they will address the inequality by extending civil partnerships, rather than abolishing them. Abolishing them was never a practical option, but that confirmation is very welcome.
Four months on, the Government have not indicated a timeline, despite the urgency factor pressed by the judges. If we read the Supreme Court ruling, we can see that it absolutely highlights the fact that the Government could have acted before now. On several occasions, it refers to this private Member’s Bill and my previous one as a way of rectifying this matter. It actually criticises my private Member’s Bill for not being tougher in proceeding with a change in the law on a timeline, rather than just agreeing to have a report, which I had to do to get the Bill through Second Reading and into Committee.
My Bill, with the addition of this new clause, is actually very helpful to the Government on a number of fronts. It confirms in law that civil partnerships will be equalised and that the breach with the convention will be rectified. It gives a clear cut-off date for the Government to get on and do it, and it would be effective before the end of next year. If this change goes through, a couple who have been looking to have a civil partnership rather than a marriage—for all the reasons we have debated at length—could make plans from the end of next year to make that a reality. Many people have waited years, and the Government have been on notice about this for years. This is now the time to end the delay.
Crucially, the new clause makes no prescription about the method, wording and reach of the legislative change that is required; that is entirely up to the Government. I know there are some technical matters still to be settled, and I do not want to dictate to them how we achieve that. That is why this is a very flexible amendment to what is a very flexible Bill.
I am afraid that the Government have had plenty of time. Back in the Second Reading debate on 2 February, the then Minister stated at the Dispatch Box about this Bill:
“There is a sense of urgency—very much so.”—[Official Report, 2 February 2018; Vol. 635, c. 1122.]
Yet, since that time, the Government have not been able to report on the progress of the review work that was announced then, and they did not do so in Committee in July either. Indeed, I gather that the Government Equalities Office was given the go-ahead to undertake much of the review work only in the past few weeks.
I remind the House that that is on the back of two full-blown reviews in the past few years of the whole subject of extending civil partnerships. This must be the most over-reviewed piece of legislation that this House has seen for some time. Why has it all moved so slowly, not least since the Supreme Court ruling that made it inevitable that the law would have to change—and change quickly? I pay tribute to the Equal Civil Partnerships campaign and to the now well over 130,000 people who have signed its petition for a change in the law. They are understandably growing impatient, and despite the Government’s announcement, they are sceptical in thinking that the legislative changes will be kicked into the long grass.
I gather that the Government plan to bring forward primary legislation in the next Session. That has been indicated in a written ministerial statement released only this morning—at the last moment. I am always rather sceptical of ministerial statements from the Dispatch Box or in written form at the eleventh hour. However, even if there is primary legislation in the next Session, it might be 2021 before a couple could actually take advantage of a civil partnership, and that is only if it is in the Queen’s Speech and survives the vagaries of the parliamentary timetable, which is likely to be under huge pressure during the next Session from potential emergency Brexit-related legislation.
I am afraid, however, that is just not good enough for me, for campaign supporters—including those with life-limiting conditions who are desperate to formulate a relationship while they can—or indeed for the Supreme Court. My Bill is the cleanest and quickest way to change the law, to satisfy the Supreme Court and, most importantly, to address a significant pent-up demand from couples who have waited for this change and the chance of equality for a long time. I cannot understand why the Government have not more proactively used my Bill as a vehicle for achieving that right from the start.
Ministers have put it around that the new clause is flawed and unworkable, but neither is true. I have discussed its wording and terms at length with Clerks of the House and lead officials from the Government Equalities Office, and because of flexibility in the wording of the Bill and new clause, the timetable can be achieved by using a truncated six-week review process. Indeed, the Scottish Parliament is currently undertaking its own review into the extension of civil partnerships, and I am sure that it would not mind if we just nicked that. A ready-made “one we made earlier” is on the table, and with a little tweaking it could go into the consultation process in a matter of weeks. A statutory instrument could then be designed in the new year, to be drafted by parliamentary counsel and put before Parliament ahead of the summer recess. I know that will be tight and demand a lot from officials—frankly, those officials would be better placed if they had been allowed to get on with the work when the writing was on the wall some time ago. However, it can be achieved in a way that enables the law to allow opposite-sex couples to enter a civil partnership before the end of 2019. That is what the new clause would do. The statutory instrument route gives greater flexibility on a subject which, frankly, we have debated almost to death. It is less vulnerable to the vagaries of the parliamentary timetable than primary legislation.
Maggie Throup (Erewash) (Con)
Has my hon. Friend considered civil partnerships when the relationship is platonic, such as between siblings who live together, and how to protect their future?
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend makes a fair point that has been raised several times. Indeed, an amendment to the Civil Partnership Act 2004 has been tabled in the other place to that effect. I have some sympathy with those changes, but for me they are largely a matter of taxation and an issue for the Treasury, because they mainly concern inheritance tax and other tax matters. My Bill is a social family Bill, and one reason for it is an attempt to cement family units and create greater stability for children—recognising a partnership in law, with all the protections that goes with that, is a good fillip for family stability. The point raised by my hon. Friend is a separate and largely financial issue, and I would be sympathetic to separate legislation that will not mess up my Bill but will address that point elsewhere.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
My hon. Friend knows that I support him in his endeavours. Given his response to our hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Maggie Throup), perhaps the Government should indicate that they will consider taxation relationships between people who have a relationship but not a partnership. That may involve siblings, or someone who has stayed at home to look after an elderly parent, but the current taxation arrangements are desperately unfair. However, my hon. Friend is right to say that that issue should not necessarily complicate the Bill.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend is right. This Bill is about civil partnerships, which are a different sort of relationship. I know the issue is fraught with all sorts of nuances, but my original point stands.
Just this week, the Government announced that primary legislation could be introduced to prescribe food labelling in the light of the recent death of a customer of Pret a Manger and that those measures could be in place by next summer. No Supreme Court ruling hangs over that problem with the law, so why cannot we achieve today the change under discussion with the new clause to my Bill? If the Government allowed the amended Bill to proceed, they would send a strong and reassuring message about their real intent and put their money where their mouth is.
Tim Loughton
I will give way for the very last time, and then I will conclude my remarks.
Kevin Foster
Like my hon. Friend, I am keen for the provisions in the Bill to be introduced. Will he outline briefly why his new clause only covers provisions on civil partnerships when, for example, we have been waiting to get mothers’ names on marriage certificates for many years?
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend pre-empts my closing remarks. If there is a problem getting this Bill through the House, it must be one of the most complicated private Member’s Bills there has ever been, which is my fault. It so happens, however, that all four tenets of the Bill are now Government policy, so there should not be a problem. We still have some way to go before, hopefully, the Bill passes to another place and becomes subject to the vagaries there. If we do not get there, there is the important issue of adding mothers’ names to wedding certificates—that has been an anomaly since the reign of Queen Victoria and should have been addressed ages ago. Now at last we can do it.
The Bill contains important provisions on allowing coroners to look into certain stillbirths, and again, huge cross-party support for that has been aired on many occasions. There are also other important matters regarding how we view stillbirths before the 24-week gestation period. This Bill is not just about civil partnerships; it is about a whole load of other things for which there is widespread support. I hope that the Government will see that the new clause is well intended and will hold the feet of officials to the fire as they work long hours to get this legislation through. It is achievable. I have tabled new clause 1 in the spirit of being helpful to the Government in achieving equality. Consequential amendment 1 has now become redundant, because it is now Government policy to allow civil partnerships, and the new clause will ensure that we get on with it.
The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)
When warned that I might be speaking early, Madam Deputy Speaker, I had not expected it to be this early.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has raised important points, and I am grateful to him for having promoted this Bill in its entirety and for his enormous and, as he pointed out, long-standing campaigning work in support of civil partnerships.
As most hon. Members will know, when the Bill was first introduced back in February, the Government had not yet taken a final decision on the future of civil partnerships. We were clear that the current situation, in which same-sex couples can marry or enter a civil partnership but opposite-sex couples can only marry, needed to be addressed. Indeed, earlier this year, we published a Command Paper that set out how we would proceed with our deliberations to ensure that we chose the right course of action. Events over the past few months have moved on substantially, not least thanks to the efforts of my hon. Friend in promoting this Bill, and I am pleased that the Prime Minister recently announced our intention to make civil partnerships available to both opposite-sex and same-sex couples. We intend to introduce specific legislation to do just that, and I know that in conversation with my hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities made those intentions clear.
Caroline Nokes
If the hon. Gentleman will have some patience, I will come to that in due course.
Caroline Nokes
I can hear that the hon. Gentleman has no patience at all—that may not be news to the Chamber.
Caroline Nokes
I shall undertake to play nicely with the entire House today, because there are some really important components to the Bill and I feel hugely passionate about the inclusion of mothers’ names on marriage certificates—I do not, however, hope that my young daughter will be in a position to demand my name on her marriage certificate any time soon, but you never know, she is 20. [Interruption.] I doubt she would find a partner in that manner of haste.
I am very conscious that my hon. Friend’s amendment has the support of a large number of right hon. and hon. Members from across the House. We support the common objective of an early move to enable opposite-sex couples to form civil partnerships. We made clear our position and the reasons for our concerns about the amendment in a written statement laid this morning by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities.
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I do not want to delay the Bill; I want us to get through the business with all speed. It was for that reason that I read the written statement very carefully. It discloses nothing to me that should mean the Government cannot support the Bill promoter’s new clause 1. Will the Minister just indicate whether she will support the new clause, so that we can get on and get the Bill through?
Caroline Nokes
There are a number of important points I would like to make with particular reference to the amendment and some of the challenges we think it poses. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will be patient and allow me to get to them.
There are a number of reasons why we are concerned about my hon. Friend’s amendment and a number of reasons why the Bill may not be the most appropriate legislative vehicle in which to equalise access to civil partnerships between same-sex and opposite-sex couples. As I have said, the Bill contains a number of important measures that we certainly do not wish to jeopardise by allowing the substantive amendment on civil partnerships at this late stage in the Bill’s progress through Parliament. I think that these substantive changes deserve to have been debated more thoroughly at earlier stages of the Bill’s progress, rather than just in the limited time available to us today.
I also need to make the point that, while we are happy to have announced our intention to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, there are still quite a number of significant issues that need to be resolved before we can move on to implement opposite-sex civil partnerships. Some of these are entirely practical. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) from a sedentary position is yelling, “Such as”. If he will give me a chance, I will get to them. For instance, we need to check all the existing legislative provisions that cross-refer to the civil partnership regime to make sure that they still work as intended for opposite-sex couples as well as same-sex couples. These existing provisions are spread across a wide range of current legislation, from arrangements for adoption through to pension entitlements, so this is not an insignificant body of work. Any existing provisions that are not appropriate to extended civil partnerships will need to be changed. There are also a number of sensitive policy issues that will need to be resolved, such as whether convergence from a marriage to a civil partnership should be allowed and whether the terms for the dissolution of an opposite-sex civil partnership should mirror those for same-sex couples or be the same as for opposite-sex marriages.
We also need to resolve a number of cross-border and devolution issues, such as how we should provide for recognition of similar relationships entered into in other countries and how our own relationships should be treated in other parts of the United Kingdom, which have their own legislation on civil partnerships.
I am disappointed that the amendment tabled today seeks to replace the provisions in clause 2, particularly the requirement for Government to consult and report to Parliament on the way in which they intend to equalise civil partnerships between same-sex and other couples. We particularly supported this original requirement, as we see consultation prior to the implementation of the extension of civil partnerships as key in both helping us to set out the Government’s views on the issues I have just mentioned, as well as getting a broader view of the implications of the various options.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend will acknowledge, of course, that the requirement for review and consultation is not a statutory requirement. It did not need to be in the Bill, but it was the only way of getting it through. And of course the Government, by their own admission, have started that review and consultation, albeit at a late stage. Taking the clause out of the Bill does not mean that it stops it, so it is actually not required.
Caroline Nokes
This is a subject on which we conduct long conversations, reviews and consultation across the Government, and the fact that the review has started does not mean that it should stop, but we do want to conclude it. It is important to us to have those views.
The Government are keen to progress the review and to do so as quickly as possible. The planned consultation is not some sort of prevarication; it is a necessary step to help us to ensure that when we introduce legislation it is fit for purpose and does not slow down its parliamentary passage. Officials are already starting to identify all the matters on which we want to consult. I hope that we will soon be in a position to say more about our proposed timing for that consultation, but we wish to conduct it as soon as possible. I stress that the consultation will be about how we make the provisions to ensure that civil partnerships work as intended for opposite-sex couples, not about whether we intend to extend them in that way.
Sandy Martin
Will the Minister accept that it is not just about how; it is also about when? Given that there is a High Court ruling against her, she needs to move quickly.
Caroline Nokes
It is about how and we are proceeding. We are determined to do it. The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the court judgment. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda says we are doing nothing. In fact, the reality is very much that we are seeking to move forward on this as quickly as we can, but we do think that consultation is important.
However other people may view civil partnerships, our intention is clear. They are intended to have at least one thing in common with marriage: to be a formal bond between couples in a loving relationship. I do not wish to digress too much, but a couple of hon. Members raised this point. I am aware, however, that there are those in this place and the other place who wish to see civil partnerships extended to sibling couples. We do not consider that to be a suitable amendment to either my hon. Friend’s Bill or to a future Government Bill to extend civil partnerships. In the context of today’s debate, I merely note that the addition of substantive amendments on civil partnerships to my hon. Friend’s Bill would make it an easier target for amendments on siblings that would then wreck the Bill, and all its valuable provisions on marriage registration and pregnancy loss would be jeopardised. I note that there is already a Bill in the other place that proposes the extension of civil partnerships to sibling couples. We consider that that Bill, rather than this one, offers an appropriate opportunity to debate the merits of how cohabiting sibling couples should be protected in older age.
The amendment put forward today introduces a wide-ranging delegated power. This causes us concern for several reasons, as I mentioned earlier. We are not yet in a position to know precisely what will be required legislatively, which is why it would be too risky to take a power to change the law by secondary legislation when we are not yet able to explain how we intend to use that power.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
When does the Minister think the Government will be in a position to understand the scope of legislative changes that are needed? Does she plan to publish a further written statement setting out to the House that information once she has it?
Caroline Nokes
I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities is best placed to make written statements on this matter rather than me, but we will provide as much detail to the House as we possibly can. Hopefully, that will be provided as soon as possible.
The Bill, as introduced, contained provisions for such a power to be included, but those provisions were removed in Committee as we did not wish to provoke parliamentary opposition in either place that could prevent the Bill as a whole from proceeding. Those are the reasons why our preference would be to introduce our own Bill in the next session to extend civil partnership as soon as a suitable legislative opportunity is available, which is what my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities has indicated in her written statement. However, I do not want anyone to think that the Government are merely paying lip-service to the need to press on with resolving this matter.
Government research that was originally due to conclude next autumn has already been brought forward by a year. It has been wound up and officials are now using its findings to help with the impact assessment for the new civil partnerships. The Government Equalities Office has also been in contact with Departments across Whitehall to begin discussions on how to undertake the necessary legislative sweep and with its counterparts in the devolved Administrations to identify UK cross-border issues that will need to be considered.
I am very conscious of the keen interest that Members of both Houses take in extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples and of the private Member’s Bill brought forward by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) and her continued support for our introducing measures through that Bill. In addition, as I have said, a Bill has also been introduced in the Lords on this matter.
My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has pursued this matter with passion and enthusiasm, and these are legislative proposals that will get on to the statute book, but we are keen to do so in the right way. I hope that this reassures the House that the Government are working hard to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, as well as same-sex couples, despite not being able to actively support his new clause for the reasons I have outlined.
Sir Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)
The Minister speaks in riddles. Is she saying that the Government are not actively supporting my hon. Friend’s excellent amendment and new clause and so will abstain, or is she saying that the Government are opposing them?
Caroline Nokes
I think I made it clear that we are not actively supporting my hon. Friend’s amendments, but he has done an excellent job over the last few days of making sure he has enormous support for his amendments both on paper and in the House today.
Sir Christopher Chope
I take it from that that, because of the forces lined up against the Government, they are throwing in the towel, which is good and encouraging news. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he has made.
I despair at the way the Government have been dragging their feet over this issue for so long. It was on 21 May 2013—more than five years ago—on the Third Reading of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 that I intervened on the then Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport and Minister for Women and Equalities asserting that I believed that doing what the Government were doing in that Bill would be in breach of human rights law. The answer from the Minister, obviously on the advice of Government lawyers, was that the provisions of the European convention on human rights would not be compromised by the fact that the legislation made unequal provision for civil partnerships.
How wrong were the Government and the Minister! For five years people have been in limbo, while the Government have connived over legislation that is at odds with human rights requirements under the European convention. Surely there must be a greater sense of urgency from the Government than was demonstrated in my right hon. Friend’s response to the new clause. I also find it extraordinary that today’s written statement makes no mention of the Supreme Court ruling.
I hope that when the new clause and amendment are put to the vote, they will go through without a Division, but if there is a Division, I will be interested to see whether the Government try to argue against what the Prime Minister has already assured us of—namely, that the Government are on the side of the proposal in the new clause.
Chris Bryant
I will be very brief. I just want to explain to the Minister why I feel very impatient—she looked grumpy with me for complaining that she was taking a long time. She used words such as “soon”, “as soon as possible” and “quickly”, and while Ministers often use those words, they mean absolutely nothing in parliamentary language.
On the Minister’s timetable, we might get a Bill in the next Session, but I would not be surprised if the next Session was a two-year Session, like this one, which might mean us waiting another two and a half years. Every year, I have straight people coming to my surgeries who had lived with a partner of the opposite gender for years and years in a relationship that had felt in every respect like a marriage, but who never wanted to enter into a marriage and consequently suffered when their partner died due to a lack of a legal arrangement because civil partnerships were not available to them. They suffer exactly the same distress as gay couples did until civil partnerships were brought into law.
Tim Loughton
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time. I said at the beginning of my previous remarks that this morning would be a breeze. There have been a few headwinds, but so far, so good. I hope we can continue in that spirit of agreement and consensus across the House regarding all four measures in the Bill, which are much needed and much supported. My Bill has been referred to as the hatch, match and dispatch Bill because it covers so many junctures in people’s lives. I like to view it rather more as a Bill to address anomalies and iniquities in the law that, in many cases, should have been dealt with a long time ago.
I want to apologise in advance to officials, because if the Bill now goes through as amended, as I hope will be the case, they will have a lot of work to do in a relatively short space of time, but we now have a timeline, and that work should be a welcome distraction for them from Brexit, so there are upsides as well as downsides.
There are four aspects of the Bill, as I have mentioned. Clause 1, which is about marriage registration, seems to have excited the most vociferous support this morning. I am sure that the Minister will actively support it, rather than not actively support it—she appeared to say earlier that she did not like new clause 1 but would not actively oppose it, although passively she would have done. But we have moved on to Third Reading now—we are on the final bend.
I pay tribute to the Bishop of St Albans for the Bill that he has steered through the Lords, ably supported by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), whose name is attached to it on today’s Order Paper, albeit somewhat later on. She has been a champion for this issue over many years, as have other Members who have attached their names to various private Members’ Bills to try to address this anomaly. It is absurd that mothers have been able to put their signatures on marriage certificates in Scotland since 1855—and indeed in Northern Ireland—and in respect of civil partnerships in England and Wales since 2004, but that not since Victorian times has a mother’s name been recognised on a marriage certificate.
On Second Reading, I produced my own marriage certificate. My dear late mother’s name is absent from it, and to add insult to injury, my father’s name is on it twice, because he signed not only as witness but as the vicar who married us, adding double insult to injury. There are countless cases of people saying, “I never knew my father because he assaulted my mother and did a runner on us before I ever knew him, yet his name has to go on my marriage certificate, and the name of my mother, who has done all the heavy lifting, suffered all the abuse, and brought up, nurtured and loved me as a daughter, does not appear.” That is not right. I hope that the Bill will at last address that anomaly and that mothers can then proudly put their names on the marriage register in the new electronic form, which will bring it up to date for the future.
I am not going to go into the second aspect of the Bill, which is civil partnerships, at length again. We have been debating the matter since the 2013 same-sex marriage Bill. If my amendment had been agreed at that time, we would not still be having this discussion now. There have been many opportunities to address this unintended inequality.
Sir Christopher Chope
Since the Government are in the mood to apologise for all sorts of historical events, does my hon. Friend think they should apologise for getting the law completely wrong?
Tim Loughton
I am in a generous frame of mind this morning, and rather than their saying sorry, we should be saying hurrah that we are now doing something about it—[Hon. Members: “Hurrah!”] I do not know how Hansard will treat that.
The third aspect of the Bill relates to the production of a report on the registration of pregnancy loss. Again, clause 3 has already achieved its objective, partly in the light of our Second Reading debate, which we had back on 2 February, when we were all moved by the extraordinarily touching personal testimony of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) about her own experiences—I wonder whether she will draw her attention away from her mobile phone, because I know she would like to listen to this tribute and not be distracted. As a result of the strength of feeling in the speeches and the subsequent response from our constituents, the then Health Secretary—he is now Foreign Secretary—said, “Well, actually I think we just need to get on with changing the law.” A group was set up with a mandate to see how we could change the law to acknowledge in some way those births that are stillborn but happen, by whatever quirk, to fall below the 24-week gestation line and are therefore not recognised in the eyes of the state. The situation has brought huge distress to parents who are already in distress at the trauma of losing a child. The fact that they happened to lose that child at 23 weeks and six days means that, in the eyes of the state, that child never existed and is classed as any other baby loss. In saying that, I in no way diminish the trauma of all baby loss, but there are so many examples of this.
My constituent Hayley Petts first brought this matter to me, and she served on the working group with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West. The group has been discussing many aspects of how the law can be changed and has also thrown up a lot of problems about how we go about changing the law. Should we have a universal certificate for all baby loss, for example? Should the scheme be voluntary or mandatory? Should it be subject to medical verification, as is the case under the Australian scheme, and should it be retrospective? There is then the whole thorny issue of how we avoid getting into the minefield that is abortion and other forms of termination. The Bill has done its job before it has become an Act because such work is going on under the aegis of the Department of Health and Social Care, and I hope we will have some results in due course.
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing his Bill to Third Reading. On clause 4, does he agree that when parents lose a child—a healthy full-term baby—as my constituents Jack and Sarah Hawkins did, they should not have to fight to get answers? A coronial inquest might provide them with independent, public, open and honest answers so that they can concentrate on grieving, rather than having to fight to get to the truth of what happened.
Tim Loughton
I am grateful to the hon. Lady because she pre-empts my clause 4 moment. The fourth, and very important, component of this Bill, which is addressed in clause 4, is coroners’ investigations. She participated in earlier debates and worked very helpfully with me and others to move this important issue up the agenda. I am grateful for her contribution.
Clause 4 will allow part 1 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 to be amended. That is not easy, and the matter is slightly complicated by the fact that it falls under the jurisdiction of both the Ministry of Justice, which is responsible for coroners, and the Department of Health and Social Care, which is responsible for healthcare in relation to baby loss. I must pay tribute to some very helpful and proactive support for this measure by MOJ officials. I had a very helpful meeting with the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), who I am glad to see is present on the Front Bench. He was a great champion of many of the Bill’s provisions when he was just a commoner on the Back Benches and added his name to many of the measures I have been trying to get through today.
The Minister has confirmed that an immense amount of work has gone on at the Ministry of Justice. There are issues still to be resolved, such as whether coroners should have the power to investigate all stillbirth loss or should concentrate, which I think is practically the better approach, on full-term baby loss, when there are the fewest excuses or reasons for stillbirths to happen. Also, should this be mandatory or effectively subject to parental veto? There are serious problems with that, as there are some cases in which a stillbirth may have been connected to domestic violence and some sort of cover-up may be wanted, so I think we are coming to the view that the scheme should be mandatory. Should there be specialist coroners or should all coroners have the ability to investigate? Of course, there are also capacity constraints. The fact that a lot of work has been going on in the Department in the last few months shows that this can be done.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing this important Bill, which is, in effect, enabling legislation in this regard. It is worth reiterating something he has already mentioned, so will he join me in thanking the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar)? It is one thing to have enabling legislation, but given the complex nature of what my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is trying to introduce, a Minister who is so supportive is worth their weight in gold?
Tim Loughton
Give my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince) a job—I am sure that will happen shortly. We should be paying tribute to him, too, because although many other Members have been part of this crusade, including my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis), who is sitting next to him, he has probably done more than anyone to put stillbirth absolutely on the parliamentary and national radar.
It is because of the Minister’s empathy, understanding and preparedness to work with parliamentarians that we are in a position in which, if this enabling legislation is enacted, we can have practical measures in fairly short order, perhaps even ahead of the first civil partnership for opposite-sex couples happening in this country before the end of 2019. This enabling clause gives a good deal of discretion to the Minister, and there is no other Minister I have greater faith in to make sure that something actually happens. Now that we have praised him to the rafters, we will expect a very early announcement on when the change will happen.
This is a complicated Bill, as I have said, and that is my own fault, but it contains four really important measures that have widespread support across the whole House and across the country.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Tim Loughton
If my hon. Friend wants to ruin my peroration, I will allow him to do so.
Luke Graham
I apologise to my hon. Friend and thank him for giving way. I am in full support of the Bill, but I have one technical question that I hope he will be able to answer. Clause 6 clarifies that clause 5 applies to Scotland, England and other parts of the United Kingdom. Clause 5(1)(a) states that
“the Marriage of British Subjects (Facilities) Acts 1915 and 1916…no longer apply in England and Wales”.
Under clause 6, that will also apply to Scotland. As I am sure the House will know, those Acts make reference to the recognition of marriage certificates in the United Kingdom and those of British dominions, basically giving British citizens getting married in the dominions and those getting married here in the United Kingdom almost equal recognition. I am all for increasing rights, but I just want to make sure that that provision will not reduce any of our constituents’ rights in their future marriage choices.
Tim Loughton
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that very pithy intervention. He makes some good points, and no doubt some other smartarse in the House of Lords will want to bring them up as well. With the greatest respect, I am sure that he can speak further to those points on Third Reading—as long as he does not go on for too long. To coin a phrase from Front Benchers, I would be happy to write to him and give him more details. I shall now somehow try to return to my peroration.
As I was saying before I was so helpfully interrupted, the Bill is long overdue. It sets out a practical route and a timeline—certainly in the case of civil partnerships—for these iniquities and inequalities to be resolved. I know that it has widespread support in this House, and I am grateful to all those who have made it possible to get this far. I will be particularly grateful to the Immigration Minister if she ensures that the Bill gets through its Third Reading so that we can have further discussions in the other place. I very much hope that it will be granted its Third Reading without a vote today.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I would like to start by thanking the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for introducing the Bill and for his excellent campaigning and commitment on all aspects of the Bill. It has been a genuine pleasure to work with him, particularly on the registration of very early stillborn babies, and I thank him for his earlier kind words. Following my speech on Second Reading in February, I was overwhelmed with messages of love and kindness from people up and down the country, and even from as far away as the Netherlands and Italy. I also received messages from families who, like me, had experienced the heartbreak of losing a baby pre-24 weeks and who had been distressed to find that they were unable to register their birth and death because the baby had been born a few days, or perhaps a week or so, before the 24-week gestation threshold. Their messages have inspired me to continue the campaign to change this, and I am pleased to be working on the Department of Health and Social Care’s advisory panel for the pregnancy loss review, which will make recommendations to the Secretary of State.
I also support the clause to give coroners the power to investigate the deaths of full-term stillborn babies. Along with the much-improved additional support that now exists due to the very successful national bereavement care pathways—for which the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss successfully lobbied—it will give solace to parents, at the most devastating time in their lives, to know the cause and circumstances that led to the death of their much-anticipated baby.
Moving on to the other elements in this Bill, I believe that it is way beyond time for a mother’s details to be included in marriage registration. We have an outdated system that prioritises fathers over mothers, and it must be brought into the 21st century. The mother’s details can be found on marriage certificates in Northern Ireland and Scotland, and in civil partnership certification. Believe it or not, I was married 28 years ago—[Hon. Members: “No!”] I know; it is unbelievable. The sad thing is that, after being brought up single-handedly by my mother after my father abandoned me and my brothers when we were little, it is my father’s name on my marriage certificate, not my mother’s. It is even more sad that, at the time, I did not even think to question that, so endemic was the patriarchy of officialdom to me as a young woman in 1990.
The fact that, almost three decades later, this antiquated patriarchal anomaly is at last to end shows how far we have come, and that women are not, and never were, chattels to be handed over from father to husband. This change will turn the marriage certificate into what it should be: a legal document, not a transfer certificate. It also never occurred to me that the ceremony may also be a little bit outdated. As my father was not present to “give me away”, I asked my uncle to step in—again believing that this had to be done by a man. I would now insist that it had to be done by my mam—I hope she is watching this; I can tell the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that that is who I was texting earlier, but he is not listening—if indeed I felt I needed to be given away by anyone. However, I am happily married, so that is bit of a moot point. I say that in case my husband is listening, so that he will know that I am not planning on doing it again.
That brings me to my final point on the clause to allow opposite-sex couples to enter a civil partnership. I was pleased when the Government announced earlier this month that they intended to do this, and I am pleased that the amendment calling on the Government to do it within the next six months has been added to the Bill. The clauses in the Bill will help to ensure more equality and fairness in all four of the very different areas that we are discussing. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said, it is a unique Bill, and I am proud to have worked with and supported him in securing its passage through the House. I wish him and the Bill well and look forward to the day it receives Royal Assent.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
I intend to speak very briefly—no cheers, please! This is a great Bill, and it is great that the Government are taking it seriously. I want it to get on as quickly as possible, but I must first convey my thanks to my dear friend the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has spoken so passionately on these subjects. We have had tears and laughter, which is as it should be. If we cannot talk with passion and enthusiasm about birth, marriage and death, what on earth are we here for? Speaking as a serious Government lawyer specialising in inquests and as a bereaved parent, I think it is great that both those skill sets and life experiences have been brought together to enable me to play my small part in forming a law on this subject.
I cannot speak highly enough of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who, with his own unique mix of sarcasm and charm, has managed to persuade the Government to feel competitive about getting the different elements of the Bill into law. He has given us a challenge, and this is now a race. We have to work out whether we can marry or give birth first and then, if the birth goes wrong, whether we can register it. It is right that we take this seriously, because these are desperately serious issues, particularly the registration of stillbirths and when and how we as a society should consider these matters.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on his success in getting the Bill through the House. I will focus on the registration of stillbirths because parents and coroners have asked me to support that aspect of the legislation. As the law stands, coroners have no jurisdiction to investigate stillbirths that occur after 36 weeks, which is generally regarded as full term. Coroners can hold an inquest in cases where it is appropriate, particularly when either the family or medical staff are critical of the level of care, but all deaths after 36 weeks should be examined.
As it stands, the system for reporting and investigating deaths is inconsistent, and that matters because the UK has one of the worst stillbirth rates in the developed world, with one stillbirth in every 200 babies born. The grief and sorrow that the parents go through at the loss of the child is unimaginable, and we all recognise that a bereaved parent may not feel that they can face the extra intrusion of a coroner’s inquest. That may not be appropriate and, of course, the decision must still be one for the parents, but an investigation is the only way to understand the circumstances of prenatal deaths so that recommendations can be made to improve future outcomes.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I rise briefly to add my support to this Bill. It is a fantastic piece of legislation in all respects, and I want to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has been tenacious in his pursuit of this change for a long time. Like all pieces of really good legislation, the question always is, “Why hasn’t this happened before?” It seems so obvious in many respects. The Bill seeks to let opposite-sex couples enter into civil partnerships, permits the registration of the name the mother on a marriage certificate, allows the registration of stillborn deaths before the 24th week of pregnancy and gives coroners the power to investigate stillborn deaths.
As for the first part, allowing opposite-sex couples to enter into a civil partnership, it is often said, “Why don’t they just get married?” Well, I am a person of faith, and I must say that it can sometimes be quite fragile—it can be difficult to retain that faith in the modern world—but part of being a person of faith is also about recognising and respecting no faith. Many people feel that marriage perhaps has religious connotations that they do not wish to enter into. Marriage is also expensive. It can be a huge undertaking at a time of student debts and other financial difficulties for young people embarking on life together, or for people of any age, to take on what can often be a crippling expense. People may also have different experiences of marriage. They may have seen their parents married or perhaps been married themselves, and they may have seen that marriage did not work for their parents or for themselves. We need to respect that and to understand that the days in which people just jumped into a marriage or in which marriage was the natural progression are now gone for many in our society.
The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made a powerful point about rights on Report that resonated with me given an event in my own life. His point was about the rights of people who are in a long-term relationship and experience a catastrophe in their lives and then discover, frankly, that their word does not count for what it should. In 1999, my partner at the time was involved in a car accident. She was hit on 9 July, suffering catastrophic head injuries, and she died on 13 July in Whitechapel hospital. This is no indication about the family, who were absolutely fantastic throughout, but she was estranged from her family and we did not actually see each other—our relationship was outside that family framework.
Now, I was not even given any medical updates at first, and it took me a day to get in to see her. Although our relationship may not have been at the stage at which we would have considered a civil partnership if we had had that option, our relationship was legitimate and deserved recognition. I remember that moment when I went to see her, a day after she had been hit, and I was warned that she would have tubes going into her body and all the paraphernalia that comes with a serious head trauma. I was warned that she would look very strange and that I was not to be shocked. Well, as far as I was concerned, she looked as beautiful as ever. I was touched by what the hon. Gentleman said, and it was that that made me rise in support of this Bill more than probably anything else.
The Bill’s second key aim is to review the registration of marriages. I am pleased that my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) has pursued the matter relentlessly in her role as Second Church Estates Commissioner, and it is a great privilege to sponsor and support her Registration of Marriage (No. 2) Bill. There are roughly 2 million single parents in the UK, around 90% of whom are women, so it is curious that, as the law stands, should their children go on to get married they would be permitted to put the details only of the father into the marriage register. My mother brought me up from the age of 10 after my father left home. I still have good relations with him, but she brought me up, working two jobs and all the hours that God sends, yet when I got married in 2014 my mother’s name did not appear on the marriage certificate. That is just ridiculous on every level, and I hope that the Government brings forward secondary legislation to end that anomaly.
I want to reiterate a point made by Baroness Williams on Second Reading in the Lords, when she highlighted how the proposed changes would also enable all marriage entries to be held within a single electronic registry, negating the need for multiple bound marriage registers. That seems like a sensible change, but it is obviously not the sole reason to do it.
The third part of the Bill seeks to assist people who experience a stillbirth after 24 weeks’ gestation. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on their work in raising baby loss awareness.
This legislation is well overdue. It is finely drafted, and it covers off so many things—so many wrongs in our society—that we as parliamentarians need to address. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham and urge everyone to support it.
Andy Slaughter
I rise briefly to support the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and to commend all those who have ensured that the Bill has reached this point. On civil partnerships, I want to mention just briefly my constituents Charles Keidan and Rebecca Steinfeld, who fought a four-year battle through the courts, ending with a magnificent victory in the Supreme Court this summer that was absolutely clear, unequivocal and unanimous in telling the Government to get on with making this change.
The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has pursued these matters to a head, as he always does, without fear or favour, including with his Front-Bench colleagues. I also mention everybody at the Equal Civil Partnerships campaign and all those thousands of couples who are waiting, with bated breath, to be able to cement their relationships. The measure also has the potential to affect millions of couples who do not have rights in this country but often think that they do. I also thank those who have over many years supported same-sex civil partnerships and marriage, including Peter Tatchell and Stonewall, for continuing to support equality.
I hope that the Minister will take back to the Government the message sent by all those voices, and by those on both sides of the Chamber, that we really have waited long enough. Given that the Government did not oppose new clause 1, I hope they will develop a sense of urgency. They have been urged to act by the highest court in the land and by many people. This significant change in public policy will allow millions of co-habiting couples across the country to secure the rights that, as I have said, many of them believe they already have but then often find, to their financial and other costs, that they do not. I say to the Minister: please, get on with it.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
There are many extremely good things in this Bill, the first being the righting of the wrong, which has been in existence since the Victorian era, of not being able to include mothers’ names on marriage certificates. When I got married in 2012 and was told I could not include my mother’s name, I thought that there had been a mistake and that they were using an old book. I had not realised that the law could still be so ridiculously out of date in the modern era. Members such as the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) have reminded us that that is a really important change for some people.
Likewise, the opportunity for parents who have lost a baby before 24 weeks to register the life of their child is hugely important, as are the new powers for coroners. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) on all the work they have done on that hugely important subject.
I rise today, however, with more mixed emotions than ever before about any proposed legislation, because I do not agree with the extension of civil partnerships to heterosexual couples. To be clear, I support—and supported—equal marriage for gay people. I ran the think-tank Policy Exchange at the time—I was not in this House—and published a paper arguing in favour of it. I thought, and still think, that it was really important for everybody to be treated the same and for everybody to be able to get married, as a further step towards reducing prejudice against gay people in this country.
It is very easy for heterosexual people not to notice the high levels of prejudice that continue to exist in this country, even in this modern era, and not to see that suicide rates for gay people are still higher. I went to school in the 1990s, which was not that long ago, and remember a lad walking up four flights of stairs with kids all around him chanting, “Gay. Gay. Gay.” at him. I do not even know if he was gay, but I am sure he remembers that and will do so for the rest of his life. It is a reminder that prejudice is still out there and still very strong. So, for me, equal marriage was a really important and brilliant reform.
Civil partnerships, however, were, for me, only ever a stepping stone towards creating equal marriage. I thought that, rather than creating two types of marriage, we should have got rid of civil partnerships at the point when marriage was opened up to same-sex couples.
I respect and understand why other Members do not agree with that, and we have heard some of those arguments today. However, I do not accept in particular the argument that we should legislate in this House today because there has been a court case. I think that it is profoundly the business of elected politicians in this House to make such decisions, not unelected judges across the road.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
My hon. Friend is making a case as to why civil partnerships should not be equally available; indeed, he is suggesting that civil partnerships should not be available to anyone. However, does not the term “marriage” carry very long-established religious connotations? Some people may not want to sign up to that. Should not the individual have the liberty to make that choice themselves, rather than be prevented by this House from doing so?
Neil O'Brien
I hear my hon. Friend’s argument, but I do not agree with him. During the process of arguing the case for equal marriage, one of the important points made was that it did not affect religious institutions. It did not affect religious marriage; it affected civil marriage. In fact, that is all we have the power to do in this House; we do not and should not control people’s religious practice.
Justine Greening
I appreciate that my hon. Friend is making what is in many respects an intellectual argument, but this Bill is about matters of emotion and matters of the heart as much as anything else. I have not received a single letter or email from constituents asking for civil partnerships to be scrapped, but I have had emails and letters from constituents asking for them to be extended. If this place is basically about taking people’s priorities and making them ours, why would we argue to do something different?
Neil O'Brien
I recognise absolutely that this an incredibly emotional debate, and I want to tread as carefully as I can for that reason, but perhaps I will come on to some of the reasons—all kinds of reasons—why it is not just an intellectual case I am making, but an important pragmatic one.
I really worry about the attempt to create, in effect, two tiers of marriage. Apart from any of the other lovely things about it, marriage is what social scientists call a “commitment device”: it is a way of binding ourselves in for the future. That is one reason why it is a big public occasion and if a couple get married in the Church of England everyone will be asked to shout, “We will” to support them. I am aware that I am playing into my right hon. Friend’s point about sounding too intellectual when calling it a commitment device, but it is lots of other things, too. Why is such a device needed? It is because life is hard, as is staying together. If people are lucky enough to have children, they find that is incredibly tiring and hard, and they are more likely to split up in the years when the children are small. One big problem, and one of the reasons why relationships often break up—we are not trying to create a perfect happy families world in this House; we have no power to do that—like many of the world’s problems, comes down to men. Men, in particular, have a habit of sliding rather than deciding; they want all the benefits of being in a relationship but they do not want to lose the option to bale out. So there needs to be a moment when they fully commit.
About half the children born today will not be living with both parents by the time they are 15, and it is profoundly sad that they would be more likely to have a smartphone than to grow up with a father living at home. I grew up in a very average household, but I consider myself rich because I was lucky enough to grow up with two parents who got on and got on with us. Not everybody in this House has had that benefit. Parents who are married before they have a child are far more likely to stay together, and nearly all parents—about 93%—who stay together until their children reach 15 are married rather than cohabiting. Cohabiting parents account for about 19% of couples with dependent children but for about half of all families with family breakdown.
It worries me that we would do something that creates a status that is sort of halfway between marriage and cohabitation—a sort of marriage-lite. Some of the reasons given for doing this make me nervous. People say marriage is a patriarchal institution, but it is not; I am not oppressing my wife by being married to her. People say it is a religious institution, and actually there is a profound difference between civil marriage and religious marriage—
Luke Graham
Does my hon. Friend’s argument not surely mean that civil partnerships are a step in the right direction, because they allow couples to formalise their cohabitation and make a formal commitment to each other? Does he not agree that we in the Conservative party are champions of individual freedom and we should be providing people with the opportunity to make their choices? This issue is before this House and out for consultation in Scotland. Does he not think this House should lead so that the rest of the UK can follow?
Neil O'Brien
I hear the argument my hon. Friend makes and I say, “Of course”, but the thing I gently point out is that a lot of other Members have made the case for civil partnerships as a final status for people who do not want to get married and said that we should deliberately create a halfway house, not as something that people can be in a for a time but for something that they—
Chris Bryant
In a way I am sorry to do this, but as someone who is in a civil partnership, I really want to steer the hon. Gentleman away from this idea of civil partnership as being some kind of halfway house or second-rate version of marriage. It is a settled fact now in British society that we will have this form of relationship available for gay couples. The question is simply whether it is going to be available to others. It feels like a fully endowed relationship to me—not second-rate at all.
Neil O'Brien
I am always grateful to take interventions from the hon. Gentleman, who is so thoughtful on all these issues and has worked on them for a long time. I do not mean in any way to suggest that people do not have committed relationships or that they are in some sense second-class because they are in a civil partnership; all I would say is that I am nervous about some of these arguments. If we had a system where everybody—gay people and straight people—can get married, what would be the argument for creating a new tier of marriage? Imagine a world in which we just had these two things. What would the argument be for that? I would be happy to take an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, because I think he has something to say—
Chris Bryant
One difference between the two is that people do not have to have a big ceremony. We did, though—we had a great old party. The gays have probably added to the wedding industry quite significantly. Many people, especially if they have been in a relationship for a long time, do not want to feel that by suddenly having a big event they are invalidating the previous 30 years for which they have been together. They just want the legal certainty of making that commitment to one another and to have the legal privileges that the state affords them. That is the difference.
Neil O’Brien
I am genuinely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his thoughtful intervention. It has been brilliant to go to some of the equal marriages that have happened since the change in the law. One learns some wonderful things and hears people’s stories in a way that one would not have done had those marriages not existed. I am glad that they are also powering the marriage industry. I do not, though, buy the argument that people need to spend more to be married than to have a civil partnership. I think that is a canard. I hear the argument about not wanting to feel like what went before is invalidated, but I just do not think that that is true. Getting married does not invalidate the fact that a couple were together happily before it. I hear all these arguments, but ultimately I am not persuaded by them—
Chris Philp
A moment ago, my hon. Friend asked why we need to have civil partnerships when marriage exists and people are perfectly at liberty to choose marriage as an option. The answer is this: marriage has existed for thousands of years and has a profoundly religious connotation for most people, as a social practice dating back millennia. Some people, exercising their own choice, are not happy to enter into an institution that has that religious connotation and therefore want an alternative arrangement. That is why we need civil partnerships as an alternative.
Neil O’Brien
I almost always agree with my hon. Friend about almost all things, but on this issue we find ourselves in disagreement. Marriage in this country predates almost any religion that one can name. I am worried by the argument that is being made in the House today that if someone enters into a marriage—I had a civil marriage; I am an atheist—they are in some way being lured into a religious institution. I just do not think that is the case. I did not notice it. In fact, people who have a civil wedding are not even allowed to play something like Madonna’s “Like a Prayer”, because apparently it is a religious thing. There is a clear distinction in my mind between civil marriage and religious marriage.
I feel that I have made my points. I respect Members from all parties who have made arguments to the contrary, but I feel differently.
Maggie Throup
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien), even though we perhaps do not agree on every point. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on bringing this important piece of legislation to the House and getting it to this stage. It will strengthen how individuals and their loved ones are formally recognised in law at every level.
As I said on Second Reading, I see the Bill as very much like a pick and mix, but I do like the “hatch, match and dispatch” description of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham. That is a good way to describe the Bill. Its provisions change the way in which marriages and stillbirths are recorded. They are small but important reforms that will make a huge difference to so many. In practical terms, the two events could not be further apart: one is supposed to be the happiest day of a person’s life, yet the other is probably the most tragic day of a person’s life.
I commend those brave colleagues from all parties who have spoken so openly about their own tragic personal experiences of baby loss, in the hope that they can further highlight the issue and give others the courage to do the same. Having talked to people throughout the House and in my constituency during Baby Loss Awareness Week a couple of weeks ago, I know that they have made a huge difference. It has been so powerful. Many colleagues have also spoken in this place about the loss of a loved one at a later stage in life. It is never easy to talk openly about such tragic events. Indeed, the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Nigel Dodds) shared his personal and very moving story in the Chamber just yesterday.
The two elements of the Bill are linked by the acknowledgment that a life existed, for however long or short that time may have been. Because these delicate pieces of paper, birth and marriage certificates, are often treasured by families for generations, they are part of social history and of our story. They often provide comfort to the bereaved when the person recorded on the certificate is no longer there.
On marriage certificates specifically, it is quite astonishing in the centenary year of the Representation of the People Act that this archaic example of inequality has not yet been righted. It is a matter of equality, as well as of family history and social history. Looking at my own family, my parents were married in 1950. Their marriage certificate states that my father’s father was a millworker, but there is no mention of my grandmother. It states that my mother’s father was a stoker on the railway, but there is no mention of my grandmother’s occupation on that side either. Sadly, I have no way of finding out.
Almost 70 years on, we have not moved on at all. To me, that is quite bizarre, which is why I welcome the measures that my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham has brought forward today and that other right hon. and hon. Friends, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), have worked on in the past.
I support the Bill because every measure will achieve progressive changes that are well overdue, and changes that we can all be proud of.
Chris Philp
I rise to add my warm congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on the tremendous work he has done to compile the Bill and steer it through its various stages.
I am happy to support all the clauses of the Bill, as it has been amended, not least clause 1, under which, as hon. Members have said, mothers will be recorded on the marriage certificate.
Of course I support the concept of the electronic register that will be set up under the Bill—it is a modern way of recording very important information—but I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed from the Dispatch Box when she sums up the debate that there will still be some form of paper signing in the church or other venue where the marriage takes place. I ask that because my constituent Councillor Tim Pollard has made the good point to me that the traditional ceremony in which the piece of paper is signed is an important part of many people’s experience of marriage. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed that the signing ceremony will still be part of the process, even if the information is ultimately recorded electronically, rather than in the old bound books.
Clause 2 is about preparing a report on bringing in civil partnerships for people of all orientations. I strongly support that provision. I respectfully disagree with the comments my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O’Brien) made in his speech a few moments ago. He criticised the proposal on the grounds that it would create a two-tier system of relationship recognition: civil partnerships and marriage. He referred to civil partnerships as a “halfway house”. I do not accept that they are a halfway house at all; in my view, they are entirely equal to the institution of marriage. I associate myself fully with the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). On this issue, I am entirely at one with him—I mean that intellectually, rather than in the biblical sense. I think that people should have the choice. As a Conservative, I believe in personal liberty and personal choice. The individual should be able to choose which of the two institutions they subscribe to.
I do think there is a difference between the two institutions, because marriage carries religious connotations. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough said that the institution of marriage predates religion, but even in times before Christianity and Judaism, the marriage ceremony always had religious overtones. Some people may decide, for their own reasons, that they do not want to associate with that. Indeed, my hon. Friend said that he had in the past been one of them. I therefore think that the choice should be available. Personal liberty and personal choice must sit at the heart of our philosophy in relation to these matters.
Clauses 3 and 4 introduce welcome measures. The report under clause 3 will look into how we might go about implementing the registration proposals. I suggest that parental choice should be the overriding consideration. Different parents will probably feel differently depending on their personal circumstances, and it should be up to the parent to choose whether the registration takes place. Perhaps that could be my early submission to any consultation that takes places on the matter.
Clause 4 is about investigations. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, I think, raised a concern about providing only for parental choice, as there might be some circumstances where the parent—for reasons of domestic violence, for example—might not exercise their choice when properly they should. I wonder whether another way of handling this would be to say that an investigation should take place if either parent or one of the clinicians involved opted to trigger a coroner’s investigation. That is, if any of the interested parties felt that an investigation was appropriate, one would take place. That might guard against my hon. Friend’s concern, while also allowing an element of parental choice.
As parliamentarians, we should focus on trying to reduce—as far as we can—the awful tragedy of stillbirth and neonatal death. Of course, my hon. Friends the Members for Colchester (Will Quince) and for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) have campaigned tirelessly on the issue. I draw the attention of the House to the work of Tamba—the Twins and Multiple Births Association—which has run a pilot over the last couple of years, encouraging 30 maternity units to fully adopt National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines in relation to multiple births. As a result, stillbirths in those units declined by 50% and neonatal deaths declined by 30%.
Tamba is campaigning to get these guidelines rolled out across all maternity units. I am a father of twins who were born very prematurely, at 25 weeks and one day. They were very fortunate in that they received excellent care from the NHS and survived, but that is not an experience that all parents have when their children are born as prematurely as 25 weeks and one day. I strongly support Tamba’s campaign and ask the Secretary of State for Health to adopt its recommendations and carry them forward.
Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp). This Bill affects an emotive area of public policy that deserves a great deal of attention. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for bringing it before the House, and of course all those who have worked so hard to bring it to this stage.
The momentous decision taken by the Supreme Court in June this year represents a changing point in how we treat civil partnerships. The review that will be conducted following the passage of this Bill will mean a profound change in how our society treats the concept of marriage and partnership. Following the case, the Government stated that they were considering the Supreme Court decision carefully. The Prime Minister has said that, given the sensitive and personal issues involved in the case, no legislative changes would be taken until the consultation on the future of civil partnerships had been completed. I agree with such an approach as it represents an air of pragmatism with which the Prime Minister has worked throughout this issue.
I fully commend the amendments made in Committee regarding the report on civil partnerships. It is crucial that we ensure that this debate is not lost to the revolving cycle of 24-hour news and social media. Committing the Secretary of State to preparing, consulting and presenting a report on civil partnerships will surely avoid this. We must accept that some people in this country have fundamental disagreements with religion and religious convention. Therefore, some will see a review that supports equal access to civil partnerships as a natural step towards a more secular society. Some go even further and believe that marriage represents a time of patriarchy and a social religious structure that fundamentally discriminates against women. I disagree. Although I fully support the equalisation of civil partnerships, I believe that the concept of marriage should still be cherished. For many families, marriage is the foundation on which the home is built, and we should never lose sight of that. We also should not forget the integral role a two-parent household plays in raising children.
Perhaps I should note that I am slightly biased, as Mr Harrison and I have enjoyed 20 years of wonderful marriage. Indeed, they have been the happiest years of his life—[Laughter.]
Trudy Harrison
And mine. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comment.
In relation to the marriage components of the Bill, I find it outrageous that a mother’s name can still not be included on their children’s marriage certificates. That does represent a time at which patriarchy was widespread and sounds akin to the domestic practices of countries where equality is far from adopted. The current practice in no way resembles the liberal, egalitarian democracy in which we live. If we want to stand by all parents in this nation, we cannot claim to be on the side of single parents when 90% of them are women and, as it stands, if any of their children were to get married they would be able to include only their father’s details in the marriage entry.
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
I support wholeheartedly the contents of the Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), and it also has a personal significance to me as my daughter announced her own engagement just last week and is due to get married next summer. I very much hope that the Bill will be enacted to enable me, her mother, to sign the marriage certificate of my daughter Ruth and her fiancé Aled.
Trudy Harrison
I thank my hon. Friend that intervention, and I am sure that the whole House will join me in congratulating Ruth on her engagement. We look forward to many more mother of the bride conversations in the Members Tea Room.
I thank my constituents Julie Fisher and Howard Johnstone for writing to me about their civil partnership plans after 30 years of being together. It is crucial that this change is made by primary legislation. Although secondary legislation could be used, it would necessitate the replacement of all of the 84,000 marriage register books that are in use and would be costly and ineffective, whereas if we proceed with this Bill, a new unitary digital database could be created for the marriage register, providing not only a safe and secure model but one that is cost-effective and efficient.
I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for seeking to change the registration procedure for stillbirths. The fact that people go through such a traumatic experience only for the loss of the parents to go unregistered is a long-running travesty. The story of parents such as Sarah Henderson, who lost her daughter at 23 weeks and four days and yet received no certification, exposes the incompatibility of such rigid legislation and such a personal and emotive area. Sarah’s story compelled 370,000 people to sign her petition supporting a change in the law very similar to that being proposed today. That shows the strength of feeling in this country about such a sensitive issue.
Although I commend previous Parliaments for scrutinising this area and making amendments, we must take this step to bring greater humanity to our birth-related legislation. Parliament previously supported a change to the stillbirth definition from “after 28 weeks” to “after 24 weeks” following the then clear consensus from the medical profession about the age in which a foetus should be considered able to survive. The pain and distress that parents might feel when they may not register the birth of a baby born before 24 weeks is unimaginable, but parents might also be distressed at the possibility of having to do so.
This Bill affects three areas of life that are often missed in our intense political climate but have an immeasurable emotional impact on the people of this country. Births, marriages and deaths occur every day, and we must reflect upon and amend legislation affecting them. Finally, I would like to once again commend my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for his efforts on the Bill and the campaigning he has persisted with on the issues within it.
Will Quince
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison).
I thank and pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for bringing forward the Bill. I congratulate him on getting it to this point with Government support, which is significant. I applaud him for the parliamentary dexterity with which he has incorporated into the Bill so many issues that he has seen as wrongs and injustices over his career in Parliament—I am sure it has a long way to go—since 1997. It is certainly a lesson for us all that we can squeeze a huge number of issues into one private Member’s Bill and still get it through Parliament.
It is a great honour to co-chair the all-party parliamentary group on baby loss, and it is the parts of the Bill relating to baby loss that I would like to focus on briefly in my contribution. The group exists only really for two purposes: to reduce miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death; and to ensure that we have world-class bereavement care and support right across our NHS for those who sadly still go through one of those tragic occurrences. The Bill goes a long way to addressing both those objectives.
First, the element of the Bill on coronial involvement is really quite significant, particularly in relation to stillbirth. We still do not know why around 50% of stillbirths happen, and there is a huge lack of research and evidence. Allowing parents, whether it is voluntary or not—that is still to be decided—and whether it is a late-term stillbirth or slightly earlier, to have coronial involvement is really significant. As part of that evidence-gathering exercise, it is so important that when mistakes are made—the NHS and the medical profession are human businesses, and inevitably mistakes do happen—we learn from every single one. That is why the element on coronial involvement is so significant.
I mentioned this in an intervention, but I would like to pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar). In respect of coronial involvement, the Bill is just a piece of enabling legislation. As soon as a Department accepts that we are going to do something, it can still take months and in some cases years to introduce legislation, but my understanding is that the work that the Minister and his departmental officials have already done means that a measure could come in as soon as within 12 months. That may strike fear into the hearts of officials, but it is quite incredible when we consider the complexity of this issue. Given my point about ensuring that we have the research and evidence base to look at and some understanding of why stillbirths happen, that will enable us to start implementing the measures that we know need to be introduced and start to address it. Working in tandem with the new Healthcare Safety Investigation Branch, which was introduced by my right hon. Friend the Member for South West Surrey (Mr Hunt), the former Health Secretary, this could have a huge impact, in particular on reducing stillbirth.
The second element, in relation to the registration of pre-24-week baby loss, is part of the bereavement piece and also really significant. I cannot continue my contribution without again paying tribute to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has spoken so movingly about her personal experience of this issue—a hugely brave thing to do—and campaigned tirelessly. She has been key in both forming and working with the all-party group, including as part of her work as a shadow Health Minister.
This is really important because it is so difficult for any parent who suffers a miscarriage or a stillbirth, however it is termed, at 23 weeks and a few days or at 22 weeks to go home with no recognition whatsoever. We have an opportunity to give great comfort. Whether it is still classed technically as a miscarriage or a stillbirth, that baby is still born: the mother has given birth and, in many cases, the father is present. Such a recognition, albeit seemingly quite a small element, is important—that life existed; that individual existed. I know that I do not need to make that point to my friend on the other side of the Chamber.
This Bill has probably achieved such an aim, in that the former Secretary of State has set up the pregnancy loss review, which is being spearheaded by Zoe Clark-Coates and Samantha Collinge. This work is already being undertaken, and it is recognised at the highest level of the Department of Health and Social Care. I have no doubt that we are going to find a solution, but again it is very complex. There are lots of different views about exactly how we do it, such as whether it is voluntary and at what point in the pregnancy it applies. I have differing views on that, and I will certainly feed them into the review.
Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)
On this very sensitive subject, does my hon. Friend agree that if a baby has to be induced very early due to a foetal abnormality, the parents often experience just as much grief as on the other occasions he mentions, such as natural stillbirth?
Will Quince
Yes is the honest answer, and I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I have now met many bereaved parents as part of this process, and the reality is that everybody grieves in different ways, and the more ways in which we can provide comfort and support to those bereaved parents the better. She raises a very good point about foetal abnormality—whether there has to be induction, this is classed as a medical termination, or whatever terminology is used. In fact, I find some of the terminology used by medical professionals pretty harsh, and I would love to tone down some of it and use very different language. She is absolutely right in her fundamental point. My personal view, for what it is worth, is that regardless of the point in the pregnancy, if it provides comfort for bereaved parents to have a certificate, a piece of paper or a document that shows that the baby existed, I feel very comfortable about ensuring that such a system is brought in.
I conclude by again thanking my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham because his Bill will make a huge difference. I have focused on two of its aspects, but I also wholeheartedly support the other provisions. It is fantastic that we have full cross-party support for the Bill, and indeed Government support. The sooner the measures incorporated in the Bill can be implemented, the better.
Caroline Nokes
As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) has described the Bill as one about hatches, matches and dispatches, I feel it is incumbent on me to dispatch it swiftly from the Dispatch Box, so I shall not detain Members for long. My hon. Friend has been described today as tenacious. I certainly know that he is very diligent and committed in relation to these issues, and I thank him for his work to raise the profile of them.
We have heard excellent contributions from Members on both sides of the House, particularly the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). She spoke about the work she has done alongside colleagues, but also alongside the Department of Health and Social Care. Many tributes have been paid to the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), and I delighted to see that the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), is also now in the Chamber. I know that she has worked very closely with Members on these issues, particularly when it comes to baby loss, and I congratulate her on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) brought a perfect combination of humour and seriousness to what is sometimes a difficult subject for us to talk about, and I congratulate her on that. Many Members raised issues faced by their constituents—the hon. Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) mentioned bereaved parents in his constituency, and the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) spoke about his constituents who were successful at the Supreme Court. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) made an excellent and thoughtful contribution, speaking about a difficult experience in a moving way. He made an interesting point about the distinction between civil partnerships and marriage, and those who may simply not wish to go through a marriage, but for whom a civil partnership would be the right thing.
We had an interesting discussion across the House with my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough (Neil O'Brien) and I thank him for the points he raised, which clearly provoked strong feelings and interesting conversations. My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) wished to know a specific point about marriage certificates and schedules and whether couples who marry in a church would still be able to sign a schedule. I reassure him that they and their witnesses will be able to sign that schedule, which will include all the relevant information such as name, date of birth and occupation, as well as, for the first time, the details of both parents. That is something we all welcome and have wanted to happen for a long time.
I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Erewash (Maggie Throup) and for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), as well as my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince). He has spoken previously in the Chamber about his personal experience and the work he is doing with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West. He always speaks thoughtfully, and Ministers welcome his serious thoughts on this matter.
As we have heard, the Bill will introduce the first reform of how marriages are registered since 1837. It removes the requirement for paper marriage register books to be held in more than 30,000 religious buildings and register offices, moving to an electronic system of marriage registration. I assure my hon. Friends that the Bill will not prevent couples who want to marry in the Church of England or Church in Wales from marrying following ecclesiastical preliminaries, such as the calling of banns and the issue of a common licence. As I said earlier, instead of a schedule, the clergy will issue a marriage document that will be signed at the ceremony by the couple, and returned to the register office for entry into the register. The Government—I know this will put fear into the heart of the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant)—will aim to implement those reforms as soon as possible, subject to the successful passage of the Bill, and will enable changes to be made to include the names of both parents of the couple.
Clause 3 has progressed with strong support from hon. Friends, all of whom agree that the report is both timely and urgent. Work on that report is already under way, and the Department of Health and Social Care is engaging with many key stakeholders, including health practitioners, registrars, charities and academics. The review team has spoken to parents with lived experience of losing a baby before 24 weeks’ gestation to learn about their experience and how best to ensure that the NHS is able to provide the best possible care and support when such a tragedy takes place. The clause requires the Secretary of State to publish a report. Many hon. Friends have already contributed to the report for which the clause provides, and I encourage Members on both sides of the House to support that extremely important work.
On civil partnerships, the Bill certainly sets the Government a challenge, particularly on timing. As I pointed out, there is a great deal of work to be done, including a substantial legislative trawl to ensure that the existing statute book works for opposite-sex civil partnerships. There are policy decisions to be made, and consultations on issues such as the conversion and dissolution of marriages and civil partnerships, as well as the resolution of cross-border issues. Although the Government are firmly committed to equal civil partnerships, for all those reasons, we must ensure that we proceed carefully and thoroughly, as I am certain we will.
The Government are grateful to all those who have taken time to speak to the matters raised by clause 4, and it is important that a broad and diverse range of views is heard and considered carefully. It is clear that when considering whether to enable coroners to investigate stillbirths, we must engage the wider public so that any proposals are thoroughly explored and understood. We think that the review is the right approach, and the Bill is an important step in that direction.
I once again thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham for bringing forward these important issues, and I congratulate him on his tenacity. I look forward to the future passage of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Judith Cummins (Bradford South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. On Wednesday I raised with the Prime Minister the police pension shortfall of £165 million. In my area alone, 400 officers could be lost. The Prime Minister responded:
“She refers to pensions; this issue has been known about for some years.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2018; Vol. 648, c. 276.]
Yesterday, the National Police Chiefs Council and the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners issued a joint statement saying:
“no guidance has been given to what that would mean in terms of costs for employers or a timeline for implementation of those changes.”
It went on to state:
“The first notification that has enabled forces to calculate the impact of pension changes came in September 2018.”
I will write to the Prime Minister demanding an urgent meeting with me, the NPCC and the APCC. Can you advise me, Mr Deputy Speaker, on how the Prime Minister can correct the record?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
In fairness, the hon. Lady has corrected the record by what she has just said, so I think that part has been dealt with. On her point about having a meeting, I know that the Prime Minister meets many hon. Members and I am sure Government Whips will pass on the hon. Lady’s request for a meeting.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
Further to that point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Is it in order to ask for a Government statement on this matter? According to Chief Constable Dave Thompson:
“It is an extraordinary amount of money policing has been asked to pay with no notice and with no proper consultation. A serious rethink is needed.”
Mr Deputy Speaker
The Chair has not been given notice of any forthcoming statement, but I think the request will have been noticed. It is certainly on the record that that request is pursued and, knowing the hon. Gentleman, I am sure he will do just that.
Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019 View all Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Act 2019 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 12 September 2018 - (12 Sep 2018)
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
It has been an immense privilege to be a part of the campaign that has brought the Bill to its Third Reading today. I want to pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who has provided real leadership throughout the promotion of the Bill. He and I have sat through many meetings and many committees together. It has been his focus and his determination that has led us to this point where we have today an opportunity to do something very worthwhile. I know I speak for the whole House when I wish him a very speedy recovery from his recent operation.
I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to other hon. Members who have provided outstanding support: my hon. Friends the Members for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott), my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) and the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones), as well as the many other hon. Members, too numerous to mention, right across the House who have worked collectively to get us to this point today. I also want to pay tribute to Trinity Mirror. Its contribution to this campaign has been very significant and I am grateful for everything it has done. In particular, I thank Alison Phillips, Andrew Gregory, Michelle Klepper, Paul Millar and Owen Pritchard for their commitment to this important cause.
In the spirit of paying tribute and giving credit where it is due, I am looking very firmly at the Minister, who has responded in the most sensible, co-operative and constructive way. We have sat in a lot of meetings over many months. She has been an absolute pleasure to work with. The leadership that she has shown has been instrumental in ensuring we have the opportunity to pass this very important Bill today. I thank her and her officials for the important job they have done in getting us to where we are. I am also grateful—and a little relieved—that we can rely on the support of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition. I am determined to ensure that we maintain this consensus on Third Reading today and send the Bill safely to the other place.
I want to reflect for a moment on why the Bill is so important. The bottom line is that it will save lives, but it is important to note that of all the people who died in the UK last year, only about 1% died in circumstances that would have made a donation possible, which means that, even though hundreds of thousands of people across the country are registered as potential donors, only a small handful will ever be in a situation that would allow a donation to take place. This is one of the main reasons why today in the UK there are thousands of people waiting for an organ donation and why every year hundreds of people die waiting. This loss of life is devastating, but it is not inevitable. Today we have the most precious of opportunities to save lives and give hope to many. We must not miss that opportunity. Moving to an opt-out system for organ donation, such as the one in Wales, will add thousands of names to the donor register, meaning that once the Bill is passed, hundreds of lives could be saved.
The Bill is not about the state taking control of people’s organs or shaming people into donating. If people want to opt out, that is absolutely fine, and I am entirely respectful of any decision, for whatever reason, so to do. No questions will be asked and there will be no hard feelings. Instead, the Bill is about making it easier for those who might wish to donate to do so. The current system requires people to take the time to discuss this most serious and difficult matter with their loved ones in order to reach a judgment about whether, in the event of some tragedy occurring, they would want their organs to be donated. It is incredibly important that, if people feel able to have that conversation with their loved ones, they do so. Many of us are guilty of not having had them and of putting this important task on hold. I believe that we can no longer afford to ignore this issue, that we must seek to increase the number of people on the donor register and that we must save as many lives as we can, and I believe that the Bill is an important way to do that.
That said, I acknowledge that the Bill is only part of the way to increase the number of people willing and able to donate their organs, so, in concert with the Bill, it is important that we also have an open discussion with our families and in our communities about the importance of making a contribution in this way.
Justine Greening (Putney) (Con)
I am very supportive of the Bill. It could be transformative in helping to save lives in our country. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that these conversations should be had in school so that children grow up understanding the role they can play in helping to save people’s lives and so that we encourage young people from an early age to think about becoming organ donors? The power of inertia he is talking about can make a big difference for good.
Dan Jarvis
The right hon. Lady makes an important point. None of us who is here to support this Bill believe that it is in its own right a silver bullet that will solve the problem we are encountering; it is not, and therefore it needs to sit alongside some very important conversations on difficult issues. Many of us will potentially feel uncomfortable about having these conversations, but the right hon. Lady is correct: it is important that from the earliest possible opportunity we have these conversations with our loved ones so they are absolutely clear about what we would wish.
That point reinforces that, in addition to the Bill, all of us who believe in the value of organ donation should seek to ensure that as many people as possible come forward to register as organ donors. This Bill serves as another important opportunity to raise the profile of that issue and provides a platform for us to be having these conversations with our loved ones. As leaders within communities, we have a responsibility and an important role to play in seeking to encourage people to have those conversations.
Time is short and I do not intend to detain the House for much longer as I am keen to make progress with the Bill, but I do want to take this opportunity to say a final word of thanks to Max Johnson, to Max’s mother Emma and to the whole Johnson family. Many Members will recall that Max is the 10-year-old who fronted the Daily Mirror campaign on organ donation. He is an exceptional young man. He was kept alive by a tiny metal pump that was in his chest for seven months. I am absolutely delighted that, after finally receiving a heart transplant, Max is doing well. He has been given a chance to live a relatively normal life because of a donation made by a donor, Kiera Ball. I believe that Keira Ball and her family should serve as an inspiration to us all, and I would like to take this opportunity to make a request—I am sure the hon. Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) will be happy to do this—that our collective thanks are passed on to the family of Keira Ball for their bravery and dignity and the example they have set. It has been an inspiration to us all, and I want to personally extend my thanks to the hon. Gentleman for the dignified way in which he has represented his constituents over a number of debates in this House.
Quite simply, we are here today to save lives—to save the lives of people like Max, but also of thousands of other people who would benefit from the change this Bill sets out. We have a rare opportunity at our fingertips to make this powerful and meaningful change. I hope very much that we do not miss the opportunity to save lives and that this Bill goes forward; I hope hon. Members will support the Bill.
Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)
I begin, as I suspect many will, by paying tribute not only to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), but of course to all those he mentioned who have played such an incredibly important role in bringing this Bill so close to, and I hope by the end of the day on to, the statute book. This is a piece of legislation whose time has come, because we live in a society that is less religious than ever before and we are ever more aware of what good medical science can do. It is of course vital that we respect the wishes of those who do not want their organs to be donated, but it is also vital that we have a conversation about the good that organ donation can do. I particularly agree with the hon. Gentleman’s central point that this is not a panacea or a silver bullet. It is a surprisingly small part of the conversation that we need to have, now more than ever, about what organ donation can mean for the people who need those organs so much.
As my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening) said, it is right that we are beginning to have this conversation in schools, and it needs to be surprisingly detailed. Many people whose consent will now be presumed will not realise that their presumed consent applies not only to internal organs but to corneas, for example, and to other parts of the body. Some people will find that genuinely invasive, even though the donation of those parts would do a huge amount of good. This is one of the many reasons why this Bill’s time has come.
People who wish to opt out must have a conversation with their doctor and with their family, so that when the time comes, the information that they have opted out is known, understood and easily accessible. I was hugely envious of the progress that has been made on this in Wales. It is inevitable that the family of someone who went on to give their organs and make a huge a difference would be profoundly unhappy if it later came to light that the person had expressed a wish, which had not been discovered, that their organs should not be donated. This is an immensely complex area, and the Bill provides as many opportunities as possible to opt out in a sensible and informed way. We also need to ensure that, if those opportunities are taken, they are known about and understood, because time is often of the essence when it comes to taking organs and ensuring that they do all the good that they can.
There will be a huge burden on the Human Tissue Authority to ensure that this works as well as it possibly can, because it will be the regulator for this scheme. This is a challenge that we have not faced before, and I know that the HTA is confident of the good that it can do, but we should be careful not to put doctors in the difficult position of being asked to take advantage of the legislation. There will now, I hope, be deemed consent, but it will ultimately be down to the doctors to make the call on whether to proceed.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that one way to ensure that there are not misunderstandings is for everyone who is concerned about organ donation to discuss it with their nearest and dearest so that they all know that the person is happy to have their organs donated?
Matt Warman
I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. This is all part of the broader conversation that we need to have. None of us wants to be in this position. We would all like everyone to have signed up to the organ donation register because they had already had that conversation. Given that we are where we are, however, the more people who have those conversations, the better.
There will be an increased burden on doctors as a result of this provision, not in workload but in decision making. If they have not been able to locate evidence of an opt-out, they will still have to be sufficiently content that they may take those organs that will be so important to others. We should be careful that the presumption of consent is not interpreted as a compulsion on a doctor to take organs. Of course doctors will not behave rashly; we know that they will be considered, cautious and sensible, not only because of the regulatory regime but because they would never seek to upset either the deceased or their family and friends in this situation.
I should like to conclude where I began, by saying that these are immensely complex matters and that this is not a panacea. It should be the beginning of a conversation to make more and more people aware of the huge good they can do, whether by donating corneas or kidneys. Such donations can now make a profound difference to multiple people, and even in moments of extreme sadness, families and friends can do a small amount of good. This Bill enables not only those individual operations, but hopefully a far broader conversation that will allow us to say that great good can be done and that presuming consent is the right balance and that, in the context of that broader conversation, we can ensure that people do opt out where necessary.
I commend this Bill and commend the bravery that some have shown in getting it through the House, because there is sensible and legitimate opposition to some aspects of it. I hope that the Bill will mark a serious bit of progress and will make the difference that everyone here hopes will be made to so many lives. In collaboration with the regulators and the medical profession, I hope that we can strike the right balance to get the maximum benefit and do not inadvertently cause pain and distress to people who are placed in a position that they would never wish to be in.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I thank and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) on introducing the Bill and on the constant campaigning that has led to the Bill reaching its final stages. As we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West is unable to be with us today, so I wish him well and I am sure that the whole House will want to wish him a good recovery. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central for so ably standing in for today’s final stages and for his many years of campaigning, and I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) for his thoughtful contribution.
Many hon. Members have brought this issue to the House over the years, and I want to pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh), for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and for Sunderland Central (Julie Elliott) and, again, to my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central. I also commend the Daily Mirror on its sterling work, its awareness-raising campaigns and especially for supporting the case of Max Johnson, then a nine-year-old boy badly in need of a new heart. Thankfully, Max got a new heart due to the bravery of the family of Keira Ball, his donor, and it was great to hear from my hon. Friend that Max is doing so well.
There is no doubt that we need more organ donors in England. As of 19 October 2018, a total of 6,198 people were registered on the active waiting list for a transplant, with 285 of them needing a new heart. That is why I am proud to support this Bill, which will hopefully help to deliver an increase in the organs available for donation and shift social norms towards donation.
The gap between the number of organ donors and patients requiring organ transplantation is higher in black and minority ethnic communities than in the general population. Earlier this year, I sat on a panel with my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton South West (Eleanor Smith)—I am pleased she is here today—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Tynemouth (Mr Campbell) to review BAME blood, stem cell and organ donation and to hear real-life stories of why more organ donors are needed for these communities.
It is important to recognise that the campaign to increase organ donors will not end with this Bill. We need a comprehensive communications strategy that can reach everyone, but especially those who may not already be convinced by the call to be an organ donor. Will the Minister commit to working with Public Health England to establish a national media campaign to raise awareness and enable people to make an informed decision on organ donation? Any media campaign should be followed up regularly, to ensure that the message is spread far and wide. We will also require investment in health structures, including the workforce, to maximise the potential of a soft opt-out system. Will the Minister consider increasing the number of organ donation specialist nurses, so that families can be supported in their decision?
In closing, this Bill is so very important, but what happens next is crucial. Just one donor can save up to nine people and give them a future with their loved ones. That is why we need any future system to be supported by a national media campaign and increased resources for our healthcare structures, so that everyone has the information they need to make an informed and important choice.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
It is always an immense honour to follow the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I associate myself with everything she said.
I have been asked to speak on behalf of one of our colleagues. My hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Antoinette Sandbach), who cannot be here, is Max’s MP and she has asked me to say that Max has been inspirational to everybody, both locally and nationally, in fighting for change and that his work has been remarkable. As a nation, we need to understand how important the gift of organ donation is to others. Max has demonstrated how valuable that gift is.
Eddisbury is in an area of the country that was affected by the Alder Hey scandal, and my hon. Friend says that we must not fail to take into account the lessons of the past and that those affected by Alder Hey need reassurance that appropriate safeguards are in place. The wishes of the family must always be paramount. Without safeguards, the work of the Bill risks being undermined by people opting out. My hon. Friend is keen that we work together to ensure that the positive benefits of donation are made clear so that lives may be saved.
I am happy to act as a mouthpiece for my hon. Friend, because I, too, approach this Bill with the scars of my involvement in previous inquests. I was partially involved in the Marchioness inquiry. Horrific acts were carried out on the bodies of those who had died. I have always been interested—including, sadly, through my own experience, which we have already talked about this morning—in how we treat the bodies of those who have recently died. It is something that we really do not like talking about in our clean, hygienic society. Many people have never had personal experience of the bodies of the dead, and it comes as a tremendous shock when we do, often in the most dreadful circumstances because it is the person closest to us who we see lying dead.
I, too, approach this Bill with caution, but I pay enormous tribute to another friend on the Labour Benches, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), for steering the Bill through so sensitively. Those who, like him, have served bravely with the armed forces—or, as in my case, have helped support the armed forces from a safe place in London—have to have these conversations, and we have them when we are very young. It is important that the whole of society can learn from that. They are difficult conversations but they are not impossible. It is important that we get with it and say these things, however difficult it may be to do so.
The medical teams dealing with the recently bereaved family or the dying individual are themselves often traumatised by the experience and may not be the best people to have such sensitive conversations. Whatever else we learn from all the sharing we have done during this morning’s debates, training is key and we must be very careful about the training and support we put in place for hospital staff to be able to have those really difficult conversations.
I will close by speaking on behalf of another colleague who, though present, is not allowed to speak, namely my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill). She has asked me to mention her constituent Liam Byrne, who is a campaigner. I should say in this context that he has also been a political opponent of my hon. Friend, but she speaks with great passion and vigour about him, and feels very proud of the campaigning he has done. He has received two life-saving liver transplants, and he strongly believes that we need to get on with this Bill and change the law before Christmas. He would like me, as I am the mouthpiece, and my hon. Friend to make it clear that time is not an option for people who need these organs.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to be called to speak in a debate with you in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, and it has been a particular delight to listen to the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who is moving the Bill’s Third Reading on behalf of the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), with whom I share two things. Clearly, we do not share a political party, but we support both Coventry City football club and his excellent Bill, which he has diligently pursued through the House. It is a compliment to his skills that he has managed to secure such wide-ranging support across the House, and in a very sensitive area. I know that for Government Members this would be a free vote issue and I believe the same would apply to Opposition Members, given the issues it touches on. The fact that he has skilfully managed to assemble such a broad ranging coalition of support is a tribute to him, as is the work that has been done to assuage the genuine concerns some people have about this.
I am quite a religious person, and Members will know from some of my previous speeches the role I play in my local church. This Bill does not raise any issues for me, but I respect the fact that it does for some groups out there. I suspect that many Members will not have seen the reassuring email that has come into my inbox while we have been in the House today from the Board of Deputies of British Jews, forwarding a letter from the Minister setting out a number of reassurances and making it clear that the Board of Deputies is reassured by what has been said and does not see a reason for any objections on the grounds of its faith.
We are calling this Bill the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill, but we could just as easily call it the “Birthday someone is going to be around for Bill”, the “Job that will be kept Bill”, the “School that will be started Bill”, the “Grandchildren who will be seen Bill” or “The father or mother who will get to see their son or daughter graduate Bill”, because that is ultimately what this is about. In this debate, it is natural that we can sound as though we are just talking about anatomy, and I will probably sound as though I am doing that in a minute. It can sound as though we are talking about bits in our bodies being transplanted into someone else, and we can go through the list of things. The reality is that the benefit of transplants and making more organs available is that this gives people back their life or saves their life. We are talking about the person who no longer has to go for dialysis and is able to do other things with their life. We can keep such people alive but once they have been able to have their transplant, they are able to move on. So this Bill is very welcome.
I am clear that this Bill would not force anyone to have their organs transplanted against their stated will—that will not happen. Even if someone did not know about these provisions, protections have been well crafted by the hon. Member for Coventry North West, working together with the Government, that provide reassurance to anyone and any family who might have a concern that that would take place. It was a delight to serve in Committee where this was explored in some detail. It was made clear that people could provide evidence on what the person’s views would have been; clear evidence could be provided showing that they were part of a particular religious group or movement that has an objection, or showing that they had raised their objection. For me, this is therefore very clear.
It is also clear that this Bill is not about taking organs from those who would lack the capacity to make that choice for themselves; clear protections are in place that would be available in respect of those who would not genuinely understand the provisions and what this Bill would mean. So for me, the Bill is welcome.
Just before I was elected, there was a well-known campaign in Torbay called the Green Star Man campaign. A chap dressed up like a superhero and went around hanging stars around the bay, and he tried to get people talking about what it was all about. He did not tell anyone until the great reveal. He had hung them off a palm tree and the town hall, and I think my predecessor, Mr Sanders, brought one up to Parliament and sat out on the Terrace with it to make it look like it had been hung here. I give him credit for supporting that campaign. It was all there for the big reveal, which was that the stars were the people who became organ donors. This chap was motivated by the experience of his daughter, who had needed a transplant, and by the fact that someone could give the gift of life when they could no longer give any other gift or make any other gesture like it. It is such a special and unique gift.
One key thing that drives my support for the Bill is that currently the conversation about organ donation comes up at what will be the darkest time in a lot of people’s lives. It will normally be in the case of a surprise or sudden death. Let us be candid: that is particularly true for those most likely to be candidates for organ donation—people in their 20s, 30s and 40s—who may have had no comprehension that something was going to happen to them. This sort of discussion will bring up some difficult memories, even for some Members present. To be sat down at that moment to have a conversation about organ donation is one of the most difficult things for anyone to do. The doctors need to do it at that time, but the Bill will rightly change the perception, and it will be done only if there is an objection. That will make the conversation at that moment easier.
I was lucky. I can remember when I was 13 and my grandfather had just died. My grandparents were getting older and my father sat me down—I did not think anything of the conversation at the time—and told me his views on organ donation and that if ever I was asked, I should say yes. My mother did the same shortly afterwards. Years later, they revealed why they had done that: their parents were getting older—my mother had lost both her parents by that point and my father’s parents were just about to turn 80—and they realised who it was who was likely to have to have that conversation if something happened to them. It would no longer be their parents, and it would probably be me. They felt that if I, as a 16, 17 or 18-year-old, was suddenly presented with that choice, it would be immeasurably harder for me to make it if I did not know what they thought. Knowing what they thought would make it much, much easier. They also shared one or two other thoughts about medical treatment in extreme situations.
I benefited from that conversation, but not many people find it an easy conversation to have, particularly if we think of someone talking to potentially teenage children about the fact that they may be presented with a situation in which their parents are in a desperate state medically and, if the parents’ views are not fully known, it might come to them, at 18, to make the choice about what happens. The Bill will make that process much easier and much simpler. That is very welcome and will have a genuine benefit in expanding the number of organs available for donation.
The provisions of the Bill cover off any technical concerns that any Member may have. Indeed, this is already the law in Wales. It has not caused particular problems in Wales and we do not see many people there raising huge objections to it. We have not seen huge demonstrations since it came into law there. I have absolutely no reason to believe that the implementation of these provisions in Torbay will be any more difficult than the implementation of the change was in Torfaen. The practical effect on the ground is there to see. Members who represent Welsh constituencies have certainly not come into the Chamber to argue that the change has been a problem. In fact, it is quite the opposite: they have come into the Chamber and made it clear that they welcome the fact that England and Northern Ireland will now go down the same path.
For me, this is a welcome and timely Bill. It is also one of the few occasions when, as a Conservative MP, I will stand up in the House of Commons and praise the Daily Mirror. It is not usually my favourite newspaper—I have been in it a couple of times and it has not normally been positive—but it deserves credit for this campaign because many ordinary working people across the country, the very people the Mirror likes to give a voice to, will benefit.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an impassioned, fantastic speech. I do not know if he is aware that I have had a transplant. It came from a friend, a live donor, rather than from a deceased person. A transplant is hugely important to people who are on dialysis due to kidney failure, like I was, because of the pain they go through, what their families go through and the huge amount of care it takes, quite apart from the cost that is incurred by the national health service. That is why this measure is important and why it is working in Wales. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his contribution. Does he recognise that the old system required the consent of the next of kin, which is the difference that we are talking about today?
Kevin Foster
I genuinely thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. For many people, it will be inspiring to see a Member of Parliament who has benefited from a transplant playing a full part in our parliamentary proceedings, passionately representing his constituents and passionately serving his community in Birmingham. That is what this is about. I could have added to the start of my speech that this is the “Carrying on as an MP Bill”. Such examples are so important.
The hon. Gentleman is right that the issue is the consent of the next of kin. Although I can understand why that was the original process, I have always taken the view that if someone has expressed unconditionally that they wish to be an organ donor, that should be final. I have expressed that wish and it will now be on the record in Hansard. I hope nothing does happen, but I have said that even if my wife was presented with the choice, my view would be the final view.
The hon. Gentleman is right that people are not asked for their consent at a nice time when they can go home, have a think about it and then come back and have a cup of tea when everything is going great. It probably happens after they have received a phone call to tell them that their loved one is very unwell. They then get to the hospital and are sat down, and clearly the conversation is a very difficult one. It is then that the next of kin is asked to make the choice. For some people, it provides a bit of comfort at that moment that at least something good has come of the situation. Many people take at least some satisfaction in the fact that, despite what has happened to their loved one, they can still do something positive. However, for most people, it is not the easiest time to make that decision. The Bill will turn that around and make it easier.
Hopefully in future debates on this issue, more Members will be able to do what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) has done and demonstrate exactly how transplants change lives, whether from living donors as in the case of his kidney transplant or from someone who has made the most special gift that they can make once they can give no more. It literally means people carrying on with their jobs, carrying on with their lives and still being there for their loved ones and their families, just as the hon. Gentleman is doing today in this House. Again, I thank him very much for his intervention.
A member of my office has recently had a transplant. I will not go into the details, because I am conscious that they are a member of staff. They are now in the process of coming back to work. We have certainly seen a great difference in them. They are looking a lot better, a lot fresher and a lot keener. Their view is that they have got their life back. Our thanks go to the family who made that difficult choice. There were occasions when the staff member concerned had to go up, only to find that an organ was not suitable. Finally, I think on the third occasion, the organ was suitable for transplant.
I have seen lives turned around and changed, and we will see more of that because of the Bill. It is genuinely a Bill that will save some of our constituents’ lives. Over the next few years, I doubt there will be a single constituency in the country that does not see at least one person have their life turned around by the provisions of this Bill.
The hon. Member for Coventry North West has been in the House for an incredibly long time, during which he has been in the Government and held numerous positions. Whenever he finally decides to retire, I suspect that he will rightly take the most pride in this Bill. I can genuinely say that it will be viewed as one of his legacies, and I am sure that the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) is pleased that he has been able to play a role in bringing it to the House today.
I am conscious that I have now been going on for about 15 minutes, and I do not plan on trying to break one of my Friday records—not least given how much I support the Bill. I am pleased to have seen the general support in the House and to have had the chance to say a few words in support of the Bill. I very much look forward seeing it pass its Third Reading in the very near future.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to follow my good and hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who made a typically thoughtful, telling and long contribution.
The question of organ donation, as with so many debates about what the Government can tell us to do with our bodies, can be contentious. There are deeply held beliefs on both sides of the debate. A move towards a system of presumed consent is exceptionally worth while, but the right to opt out must be clearly and consistently protected at every stage. There are three factors to consider: first, is there a clear need for the Government to pursue an increase in donations; secondly, does the available evidence suggest that an opt-out donation policy will lead to such an increase; and, thirdly, is such a policy compatible with the private right of the individual citizen to ultimate ownership of their own body?
On the first question, I believe that the only answer is a resounding yes. Every year, hundreds of people die waiting for a transplant and many thousands more languish on waiting lists that create a bottleneck for life-changing—indeed often life-saving—surgery. Even worse is something that I see my own constituency and have raised with the new Birmingham and Solihull clinical commissioning group: black and minority ethnic patients, who are more likely to suffer diseases that require transplants, such as kidney diseases, face an even more acute shortage due to lower take-up of voluntary donation among their communities. Such insufficiencies and inequalities demand that we address them in whatever way we can.
It was a great pleasure to see my good friend the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) in the Chamber and to hear his intervention. I know the circumstances of the individual donation, and the story is even more remarkable than we have heard in the Chamber today. The hon. Gentleman’s vibrancy, which we see day in, day out, is a testament not only to him, but to the medical staff who helped him through the operation.
Of course, there has been a consistent trend of more people opting in under our current regime. Indeed, there are more than 25 million people on the NHS organ donor register, and we thank every single one of them, but it is an unfortunate fact that only a fraction of people die in circumstances that make their organs suitable for transplant—just 1% percent of that 25 million, according to NHS figures. Would a shift to presumed consent address that problem? The available evidence is promising, although not wholly conclusive, but I am willing to go with an act of faith.
Several countries that have moved to an opt-out donation model have seen a rise in donations, including—this is most pertinent to us—Wales, which introduced an opt-out system only recently and has seen increases in both deceased donors and transplants. Countries such as Spain have coupled the approach with other measures, such as heightened public awareness campaigns and an overhaul of the infrastructure underpinning the donation system. That obviously muddies the waters, as does the fact that any uptick in donations often occurs years after the switch to the new system. In some countries, such as Brazil, donation levels have actually fallen slightly after the change to the new system. However, I feel that there is enough positive evidence to suggest that a switch to an opt-in system for England would be very worth while, provided that the rights of individuals to refuse consent are adequately safeguarded.
It is important that the deceased’s family has a role to play. For example, if they are aware of an expressed opposition to donation that was not formally registered with the NHS, I believe that they should have the right to register it. Over the longer term, the right to opt out must be reinforced by robust protections to ensure that doing so remains a simple and easy thing to do, with no questions asked. The hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) was very particular about that, which I was grateful to hear.
Individuals who refuse consent should not be subject to any pressure to change their minds or asked at intervals to think again. We must never lose sight of the fact that our bodies are ours, however valuable and useful they might be to others, and that they are not the property of the state in any way.
In summary, I support the Bill. I have considered the evidence, and while it is contradictory in part, we should look at the examples from Wales and Spain. The system should be married up with the correct procedures, encouragement and public information, and an under- standing that it is our body. I believe wholeheartedly that this Bill should be passed and that there should be a fundamental change in this area.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to support this important Bill. I grew up in Huddersfield, and Barnsley are our great rivals, but despite that it is a pleasure to congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on this hugely important Bill. As my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) said, it protects important rights. He made the incredibly important point that our bodies are not for the state. They belong to us, and it is essential that we have the right to say no if we have objections, but I believe that the Bill includes safeguards to achieve that.
The hon. Member for Barnsley Central mentioned the case of Max Johnson, just nine years old, whose life was saved by a heart donation from Keira Ball, who had been tragically killed. I wonder whether I might also mention the Leicestershire case of Albert Tansey, whose life was saved by a heart transplant at the amazing Glenfield Hospital when he was just four years old. The hospital is home to the now saved children’s heart unit, which we have all strongly supported in Leicestershire. Thanks to the miraculous work done at Glenfield, he is now enjoying his ninth birthday, and his family are strongly in favour of the Bill. It has already been said that this could be called the “Getting on with your life Bill”, or the “Being a Member of Parliament Bill”, but it is also the “Enjoying your ninth birthday Bill”.
Although this debate could be rather bleak, there is some good news: 50,000 people are alive today thanks to organ transplants, including the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood), who is looking very well on it, I must say. The number of people registered as donors is rising—we thank them for that—and the numbers on the transplant waiting list have fallen steadily over the past eight years. However, the Bill is still necessary because some people are missing out. Between 2005 and 2010, some 49,000 people had to wait for an organ transplant, and 6,000 died while waiting, of whom 270 were children. We could save more lives if we had more donations. I am particularly conscious that for some groups, particularly ethnic minorities, it can be particularly difficult to find a transplant. I have seen the good work done by the NHS and visited a temple just north of my constituency to see the outreach work it is doing to try to find more donations, but none the less there is still a big problem.
In 2008, only one of the top eight countries with the greatest number of organ donors per capita had an opt-in system. All the others had opt-out systems, so there is strong evidence that such systems can increase the number of donations. In 2017, we know that 1,100 families refused to allow an organ donation because they were not sure whether their relatives would have wanted to donate. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) made the important point that asking people to make a proactive decision to donate at an incredibly emotional and difficult moment is harsh and unfair. I think that many families would later come to value the fact that a loved one’s organs had gone on to help someone else to live.
Julian Knight
Does my hon. Friend agree that sometimes in that situation, relatives could make a decision that they later regret, because in the emotion of the moment, they might not make the decision to say, “Let’s go ahead and make the donation.”?
Neil O'Brien
I absolutely agree.
Let us also think about the medical staff who need to have these incredibly difficult conversations. A long time ago, I was a medical student. I remember the first time I ever saw someone who had died and the medical staff’s incredibly difficult conversations with his family in the hospital. Imagine then having to ask the family to make the donation of an organ to save another life. It is almost an unbelievable thing to have to ask people to do.
We know that, since the introduction of the opt-out system in Wales, the number of deceased donors is up from 60 to 74. Those are small numbers, but none the less that is a rise of 23%. It is early days, but the opt-out system does seem to help. Obviously, we need the safeguards that my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull described, but at the end of the day, the Bill will save lives—it is as simple as that.
It is ironic that often on a Friday, when there are relatively few of us here, we talk about matters of life and death. This is one of them. This Bill will save lives. It means more careers, more lives and more ninth birthdays. If I can have a moment of poetry, it is what one poet called the
“million-petalled flower of being here”.
This Bill will save people’s lives, and it is a pleasure to support it.
Peter Heaton-Jones (North Devon) (Con)
The reason that I take a particular interest in this Bill has already been alluded to by many Members on both sides of the House, but I make no apology for rising once again to refer to the story involving my constituent.
Before doing so, may I join others across the House in wishing the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) all the best in his recovery? In many ways, we would not be this far in the process were it not for him, and I pay tribute to the way he has led the Bill through the House. It has been my pleasure to speak at each stage of the Bill’s passage and to serve on the Bill Committee. I also thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) for his kind words, which I will pass on to my constituents.
It is to them that I turn now and the story that has been alluded to but is worth retelling. If there is anything about this Bill that we need to keep in mind, it is that it is about people—it is about individuals, it is about saving lives and it is about the double-edged sword of a life being saved, but for that to happen, a life has to tragically be cut short. It is one such life that I wish to retell the story of.
On a Sunday morning last year on 30 July, there was a road traffic collision on the A361, otherwise known as the north Devon link road. It happened only about five minutes from my constituency home. Tragically, we had four fatalities on that short stretch of road in the space of a week. To go off slightly left-field, I am delighted to say that since then, because of persistent campaigning by many people, the Government have granted £83 million for major improvements on the road, mainly because of the safety concerns and the poor accident rate on that particular stretch.
Last summer, an accident took place involving two vehicles. Occupants of both were seriously injured. Before going any further, it is worth recognising that those who survived this accident are still living with its aftermath, and my thoughts remain with them nearly 18 months on. One of the cars involved in the accident was carrying members of the Ball family from Barnstaple. There was Keira Ball, her younger brother Brad and their mum Loanna. The paramedics, the emergency services and the NHS staff at the four different hospitals that the victims of this accident were taken to all did their best work, but sadly, young Keira Ball passed away two days later on the Tuesday afternoon. She was just nine years old.
Keira’s mother and brother were very seriously injured in the accident, and they were in hospital. They were not able to make decisions at this time, so the agonising decision came down solely to Keira’s father, Joe. He took the decision—and what a brave and courageous decision it was in these circumstances—that, in the midst of this tragedy, he wanted the life that had just been so cruelly taken away from his young daughter Keira to be given to somebody else, so he took the decision that Keira’s organs should be donated.
Following that brave decision, four people are alive today who otherwise almost certainly would not be. This is the power and the strength of organ donation, and this is why it is incredibly important that we get this Bill on to the statute book today: it is about these people. Keira donated her kidneys, her heart, her liver and her pancreas. One of her kidneys was given to a man in his 30s who had been on the waiting list for a transplant for two and a half years. The other kidney was given to a woman in her 50s, and she had been on the waiting list for nine and a half years. A young boy received Keira’s pancreas and liver.
Then we come on to Keira’s heart. It was given to a very brave and very sick 10-year-old boy, who has since very much become the figurehead of this campaign. I refer of course to Max Johnson. Max has been mentioned, quite rightly, so many times in this House and so many times during the passage of this Bill through Parliament. The media are calling it, quite rightly, Max’s law. I have a slight preference for it to be Max’s and Keira’s law, but it is actually the law for everyone who has found themselves in this situation—every parent, every relative or loved one, who has had to make the sort of agonising decision that Keira’s father made on that day—and for everyone who has benefited from the donation of an organ from a deceased person, as Max Johnson did.
It is Keira’s story; it is Max’s story; and it is a story of how a very brave and, I am sure, a very difficult decision to allow Keira’s organs to be donated has given life to other people who would otherwise almost certainly not be here today. Surely, of all of the arguments for supporting this Bill and for securing its swift passage on to the statute book, that is the strongest one—that this Bill is about saving lives. It is about giving people the gift of life just at the point when it might be taken away from them, and just at the point when it has been cruelly taken away from somebody else.
More organs are going to be available for donation as a result of this Bill, and that is crucial. We have heard some of the statistics from other Members, so I will not rehearse all of them, but I want to mention a couple of figures that I think are important. According to the latest NHS statistics, only 1% of people who die each year do so in what the NHS describes as “suitable circumstances” to allow their organs to be donated. I think we can probably guess, without going into too much detail, what lies behind that careful use of language. It means that only a very tiny proportion of people who die each year are not only suitable to have their organs donated, but have signed up voluntarily to the organ donation register.
If we cast our minds back to O-level or GCSE maths— depending on our ages—and the world of Venn diagrams, we can see that we need to have a lot of people in the middle bit where the circles intersect to ensure that enough organs will be donated to save lives. Because of the current way in which the law operates, that bit in the middle is not big enough: it does not have enough people in it. Bluntly, we do not currently have a system that allows for enough organs to be available to save enough lives. This Bill changes that, and that is why it is welcome.
Neil O’Brien
My hon. Friend is talking about the circles in a Venn diagram. I just make the point that many people would actually like to give their organs so that other people could live, but their relatives simply do not know that at present. This Bill is one way of solving that terrible problem.
Peter Heaton-Jones
My hon. Friend makes a perfect point. That is indeed the case, and another reason why the Bill is incredibly important.
Mr Khalid Mahmood
I commend the bravery of Keira’s father in making that decision at the very difficult point of the end of her life. Importantly, the Bill will allow families to discuss this issue before things get to that stage and, as has been said, a difficult decision made at a difficult time could become somewhat easier to confront, and other lives could be saved.
Peter Heaton-Jones
That is correct. As someone said earlier, we do not like talking about this stuff, although we should be talking about it more. If the Bill provides us with such an opportunity, that is another reason why it needs to be welcomed.
Although three people a day die from a lack of suitable organs, the situation is worse among people from the BAME community who are more likely to suffer from illnesses that require an organ transplant. The National BAME Transplant Alliance has highlighted that issue, and said in its submission that consent to organ donation must be increased among ethnic minority communities, because transplants are more likely to be successful when the donated organ is a closer match to the recipient. Sadly, however, within that community there is a lack of organs available for donation. That has to do with many issues, including a lack of willingness —perhaps for cultural reasons—to discuss the issue within the family, or perhaps a lack of access to knowledge about the way that the organ donation system works. There are a number of issues, but it is simply iniquitous that the BAME community should suffer more, for whatever reason, and that is why the Bill is so welcome and necessary.
Mr Khalid Mahmood
That is a key part of this Bill because it will allow BAME communities to discuss this issue. I know that there are barriers in terms of some religious thought on this matter, and we are working with the kidney transplantation unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham to try to make people aware of this issue during Ramadan and other periods. More such campaigns would enable us to get the message across to people that organ donation saves lives, and in terms of religious matters, we have a letter from the Board of Deputies to recognise that. We need more support from within the Muslim community to say that this is permissible.
Peter Heaton-Jones
That is an extremely interesting point, and just the hon. Gentleman raising the issue in such a way will help to raise awareness. We are doing part of the job merely by discussing it in this way.
I have fully supported the Bill through all its stages, and it is significant that it sailed through Committee in record time—I think we were there for about 35 minutes. There were no amendments, which is a legacy of how well it was drafted in the first place and a tribute to the fact that the Bill enjoys cross-party support. However, one issue raised in Committee is worth mentioning again, although I am sure the Minister will address it in her remarks. To understand it, we need to look to Spain, where a similar Bill to the one under discussion has been in force for some little while. In Spain, it appears that the legislation has significantly increased the number of organs available for donation and saved lives, but—and this is an important but—the Bill introduced not only a change to the legislation, but additional Government investment to ensure that people could access an education and information campaign and understand that the law had been changed. The campaign encouraged people to hold conversations with their families and to ensure that there was no misunderstanding, and that the Government or the state were not saying “We’re taking your kidneys and liver from you whether you like it or not.” It was extraordinarily important that the public information campaign went hand-in-hand with the change in legislation.
In Committee, the Minister said that the Government would commit £30 million over three years for a public information campaign, with an additional £2 million for one-off spending at the start when there will be a spike in interest and administration. That is most welcome. However, in fully supporting the Bill, I gently make the point that I look forward to hearing confirmation from the Government that they will support the Bill with the necessary financial backing.
It is very important not only that everyone has their say but that we pass the Bill in the time available, so I will conclude my remarks. I fully support and welcome the Bill. Many people deserve credit for getting it to this stage, not least the hon. Member for Coventry North West, the hon. Member for Barnsley Central and many others. The Government have supported the Bill. The Minister has been tireless in personally driving it forward and I thank her for that. I also thank the other parties in this House—the Bill has received cross-party support. It is refreshing in these times, when we seem on a daily basis to talk about conflict in the political arena, that we have an issue that has rightly brought all sides of politics together. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) in thanking the Daily Mirror. That is perhaps unusual on the Conservative Benches, but, working with Max Johnson’s family, it has been instrumental in pushing this forward.
It has been a pleasure to support the Bill at every stage. I have done so while thinking of Max and Keira. It is their Bill. Let us not forget that it is thanks to the brave decision taken by Keira’s dad on that most difficult of days that four more people are alive today who otherwise might not be. I can think of no better reason than that to ensure the Bill reaches the statute book as soon as possible.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure to be in Westminster today. I genuinely believe that the vast majority of people who stand for Parliament do so because they want to make the world a better place. I have to admit that on many days I wonder, when I sit on the train on my way home, whether we have actually achieved very much in that regard. Today, however, we have done three exceptional things.
The first Bill will enable tenants to take action against rogue landlords. It will make a real difference to the lives of many of my Chelmsford constituents. The second Bill will mean that mothers will have their names on the marriage certificates of their daughters, a step forward for equality that should have happened many years ago. It will also mean that anyone who wants to can join their partner in a civil partnership, which is so much the right thing to do. Finally, I am so proud to be here for this Bill on organ donation and a register. I know that lots of people, when they look at our proceedings, think that there are only a tiny number of Members in the Chamber. Actually, there are many, many more hon. Members in Parliament today just in case a vote is needed.
I would like to put on record my huge thanks to the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who have helped to drive these Bills through Parliament. As an Essex woman MP, I give huge thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) on the Government Front Bench, who as the Minister responsible has steered the Organ Donation (Deemed Consent) Bill. I also thank the other woman Essex MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris), who is hiding behind the Speaker’s Chair right now—she has actually just come back—and who as Whip has been key in making sure there are lots of Members here to support the Bill.
I am pleased to support the Bill because organ donation saves lives. For many people, it is the only way their life can be saved, but the system needs changing. According to statistics from the British Heart Foundation, as of last Friday, 6,198 people in this country were waiting for an organ donor, and 285 of those were waiting for a heart transplant. The good news is that more and more people are putting themselves on the register, which is excellent, but the sad news is that it is not keeping pace with the number of people who need a transplant.
Eight out of 10 people in the UK support organ donation, but only one in three are on the register. We need to change that, especially for people from black and minority ethnic communities—one in five of the people who die while waiting for a transplant are from those communities—so I thank the Minister for the helpful toolkit in our inboxes today. It will help us as Members of Parliament to reach out to those communities and give them the necessary information and reassurance to encourage them on to the register.
Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)
My hon. Friend rightly references the very important toolkit, which will be useful in sharing information about this new policy with our constituents, but does she agree that for it truly to work we need to educate people about why the Bill is so vital?
Vicky Ford
I thank my other fellow Essex MP for his excellent point. Essex MPs get things done, as do we all.
I try to think about what has worked in other countries, and it is clear from other countries that an opt-out system makes a difference. As my hon. Friend points out, however, it must go hand-in-hand with information systems and improving the resources available to our excellent health service staff. That is key to ensuring best practice. In countries that have introduced an opt-out system as part of a wider package of measures, it is associated with an increase in the number of donations and lives saved.
I support the soft opt-out system, as it is called, under which family members can say that they do not want their love one’s organs used for donation. It is important that family members have that choice. I have been struck listening to family members who have made that difficult decision after losing a loved one—we just heard the beautiful example of the young lady whose heart went to Max—talk about how much pride and hope it has given them to find out that their loss has resulted in many other lives being saved. That said, it is important, where family members feel strongly that a loved one’s organs should not be used, that they have the option of that soft opt-out.
Having said all that, I believe that with a clear and detailed communications strategy following the introduction of the system, and with investment in the right health structures to give our outstanding NHS workers the resources they need, the Bill will make the world a much better place for many of our constituents. Thank you Mr Deputy Speaker, for making sure we all came here today to pass these Bills.
Trudy Harrison (Copeland) (Con)
This private Member’s Bill has my full support. It was introduced by the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) and inspired by the Daily Mirror campaign to find an organ donor for a little boy from Cheshire, Max Johnson, whom we have heard so much about this afternoon from the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and many others.
In preparing for this debate, I was saddened to learn of just how many people lose their lives due to the lack of a suitable donor. In adopting this Bill, England would have a similar system to Wales, essentially an opt-out system where consent would be presumed unless otherwise stated.
There is already overwhelming public support for organ donation. According to the NHS Blood and Transplant website, over 80% of adults in England say they would definitely donate or would consider donating their organs, but only 37% of the UK population have registered as a donor on the NHS organ donor register.
While the then nine-year-old Max was the inspiring story behind the Daily Mirror campaign, at any one time there are more than 6,000 people waiting to have life-saving transplants. I spoke to one such person, a chap in my local West Cumberland Hospital, during his dialysis treatment in our new renal unit just last month. There are still many desperately sad accounts of lives being lost, with families destroyed and children without their parents.
The Johnson family spent almost eight months on a transplant ward; they said it was a “rollercoaster” of a year, sometimes worrying that their son’s weight might have dropped too low to continue on the transplant list. After 196 days of waiting, a tragically fatal car crash resulted in a suitable heart donation from a little girl, Keira Ball. I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central, and of my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) in his emotional speech, in expressing admiration for Keira’s family.
Being a mum of four daughters myself, I was devastated to learn of other accounts, particularly that of Jade Gulliver’s sister. Jade, a mum to two little boys, died at just 27 while waiting for a liver transplant. She had viral hepatitis. Her sister said:
“You hear about transplants on the telly, but you never expect it to happen to someone you know. She kept getting sicker and sicker. I can’t explain what it was like—waiting every day for a phone call that never came. We take the boys to the bench we have in Jade’s memory for birthdays and anniversaries and we show them pictures.”
Jade’s sister went on:
“I will be the first to admit, before this tragedy, I also was almost ignorant to organ donation. Now I want to do everything in my power to prevent this from happening, so that no more families have to go through what our family has been through, and is still going through.”
It is not at all difficult to opt in. In fact, while preparing for my speech last night I decided that, in order to speak with any conviction and to be in an honest position to encourage the country to take the decision to donate, I at least needed to ensure that I had joined the register, so that is exactly what I did. But what dawned on me at that time, working late in my office here in Parliament and enjoying a mug of coffee and looking forward to getting back up to Cumbria to see my family and friends at the weekend, was how relatively relaxed I felt about making a decision that could only come into effect after my death. Online, I made a choice to donate all the bits of me that could ever be useful, and was rewarded for my choice by being informed that my decision could improve or save up to nine lives. I could instead have individually chosen my heart, lungs, kidney, liver, corneas, pancreas, tissue or small bowel, or any combination of them.
After I had registered, the website encouraged me to take three next steps to make clear my decision to my loved ones. It gave me advice on how to introduce the conversation, how to explain that my decision could improve or even save a life and how to tell them why and how I had arrived at my decision. I have had this conversation many times at home; it is a popular topic around our kitchen table with my four daughters. Personally, I have a positive outlook on life and understand that the only certainty in life is death, but it is a much more difficult to have that conversation with my husband. We are all different. One thing is sure: if the worst had happened, and if my daughters and husband, or my mum and dad, had been forced to make that decision shortly after my sudden death, it would have been very difficult for them.
For me, last night, registering was a simple choice, made without any doubt in my mind, but it is important to note that of the 500,000 deaths each year in this country, only around 5,000 people die in circumstances, or from conditions, that mean their organs could be considered for transplantation. I am sure the Minister will agree that the Bill will significantly improve the chances of finding a suitable donor for the 6,100-plus people currently waiting for that phone call to tell them of a suitable donor who could improve or save their life. It is a tragedy that three people will die today because of the lack of a donor.
The Bill seeks to improve and save lives, but it also seeks to take out some of the decision making at a time when families are suffering the worst possible ordeal of losing a loved one. There are nearly 25 million people on the NHS organ donor register, and such high rates of voluntary donation should be applauded, but I realise that there will be people who, for a range of religious or other reasons, do not want to become full or even partial donors. That choice must be respected. I hope that the Minister can reassure the House that opting out will be possible under the Bill. We know that the numbers of registrations have significantly increased following public awareness campaigns—I hope that this afternoon’s debate will result in such an increase—but that is still not enough to prevent the unnecessary deaths of an average of three people each and every day. Thousands of lives are needlessly being lost, and in thinking of all those who continue to suffer and the inevitable devastation for their family and friends, and in the belief that the Bill will save and improve so many lives, I will be supporting it through its parliamentary stages. I hope that colleagues across the House will do the same.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Jackie Doyle-Price)
It really is a pleasure to confirm the Government’s support for this important measure from the Dispatch Box today. I join other Members in sending my good wishes to the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), who has been the driving force behind the Bill, and I am grateful to him for choosing this as the subject of his private Member’s Bill, because it will save lives. I also want to thank the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), who actually began this journey for me with his Westminster Hall debate on the subject, which took place before we launched the campaign to take this Bill ahead. This has been quite a journey for us, and it has been a pleasure to work with him and the hon. Member for Coventry North West. They have made it very easy for me to work with them; we were all very focused on the outcome that we were trying to achieve, which was to save more lives, and we have approached the matter practically and pragmatically. I wish the Bill Godspeed to the other place, from where I hope it will emerge unscathed to take its place on the statute book very soon. I shall certainly be saying my prayers to ensure that it does so.
Lots of colleagues mentioned the debt that we owe to Trinity Mirror for a campaign that captured the public’s imagination, and we are grateful to Max and his family for their role in it. However, we cannot thank the family of Keira Ball enough, and my hon. Friend the Member for North Devon (Peter Heaton-Jones) has been fantastic at telling their story. One of the joys of doing this job—I always feel inadequate and utterly humbled—is meeting donor families. It is great to have the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) here, because we should not forget live donors and their altruism. It is incredible that people will make such donations voluntarily and, it must be said, at great personal risk. Giving the gift of life is something that donors and their families should be proud of, and I never fail to be inspired by those stories. We think today not only of those who benefit from organ transplants and those on the waiting list—we hope to be able to save more of them—but of donors and their families, without whom we would not be having this debate. I thank them all.
The real objective of this Bill is to ensure that we improve the chances of the thousands of people who are desperately waiting for a transplant. Again, I totally associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central when he introduced the Bill, because it will not achieve the degree of change that we want on its own, but one of the happy advantages of this Bill and of the Daily Mirror’s campaign is that we have raised awareness of organ donation. Such things were rare 40 years ago, but donation has almost become so commonplace that people may think, “That is somebody else’s problem. I don’t need to worry about registering my preference. Somebody else will do it. There isn’t the need.” Well, there is a huge need. We also need to remind people that dialysis is a life-saving process, but it is not nice. We have become desensitised to just how challenging such illnesses are.
The Bill provides us with a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of the whole organ donation issue, which I have been pushing NHSBT to take full advantage of, and I am pleased to say that it has. We will obviously have to build on that progress as the Bill moves forward. My hon. Friend the Member for North Devon pressed me on that, and if the hon. Member for Coventry North West was here, he would have done the same. I can tell the House that we will be investing £18 million over the next three years to raise awareness of the new scheme and to encourage people to register their wishes and have conversations with their families, which is by far the most important thing. There will be £18 million over the first three years, but ongoing communication to raise awareness will very much be part of how we take things forward.
If Members and anyone watching today have not had that conversation with loved ones about their wishes in the event of their death, please have it. The last thing we want is for loved ones, in the unhappy event of a loss of a life, to be put into a position where they have to make a judgment not knowing the true wishes. We have heard how people have approached that and doing so is immensely brave. I sometimes hear from donor families that the decision was easy because they had had that conversation, and I cannot repeat that message often enough.
I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Barnsley Central when he said that the Bill is not about the state taking control of people’s organs. Organ donation is a gift, and that is a fundamental principle of the Bill. We are altering the basis on which people’s wishes can be expressed, which will have the effect of altering the conversation at the bedside when it most needs to take place. However, we will continue to invest in the specialist nurses who are trained to have those conversations in the most sensitive way. It is important that they are specialists, because the surgeons and medical staff who are emotionally invested in trying hard to save a life should not be the ones who then must have that conversation with the family—that clearly would not work.
I totally endorse the argument that, in addition to the new system, the accompanying measures relating to all support staff and communication will contribute to an increase in the number of organs available for transplant. It is only by taking those measures together, rather than in isolation, that the scheme will be successful.
In the time remaining, I want to address some issues that have arisen. There is a lot of nervousness. People are inhibited from signing up to organ donation mostly by a sense of mistrust—of institutions of the state and of medical professionals—and because they do not really know what happens. I want to put some points on the record to calm the situation and provide reassurance.
We have talked extensively about the need for more donors from black and Asian communities because they are more likely to suffer from conditions that require a transplant. Obviously, the most successful transplants are those with a strong genetic match, so we need more of those donors.
We know that the issue is taboo in some communities. Some people believe that there are reasons of faith for not supporting transplantation. We have been working with various faith leaders to develop messages and materials to reassure people that the practice is consistent with their beliefs. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) for mentioning that the Board of Deputies of British Jews supports the Bill. We have had similar conversations with representatives of the Hindu faith, the Sikh faith and the Muslim faith, as well as with Christian Churches.
That dialogue needs to continue. It is clear that people will respond to messages from people whom they trust and respect, so it is very important that we continue to engage with faith communities. It cannot all be done at once; we need to keep chipping away and sending messages. I hope Members will use the toolkits I have circulated today. They are designed to equip Members of Parliament, who are trusted in their communities and are good advocates for the proposal, with the material to engage directly with communities.
Much reference has been made to the role of families at the bedside. There is concern that families often overrule the wishes of people who want to donate, but we need to protect the family’s ability to have that final consent. It is very easy for us to imagine situations in which we would want our wishes to be respected, but we do not know the circumstances when it comes to matters of life and death. It is very important that families have that final consent, and I emphasise that that will remain the case. I cannot emphasise enough that if people have that conversation with loved ones, their wishes are less likely to be overruled.
I remind the House that guidance on the current system of consent is detailed in a series of codes owned by the Human Tissue Authority. We will update those codes and people will have the opportunity to make representations. The idea is to have a complete, up-to-date document providing information on the approach taken in England. The guidance will cover how consent can be expressed; how people can register their wish to opt out; the role of the organ donor; and how specialist nurses will interact with families. It will also give people the opportunity to record that their faith is important, if they wish that to be an issue of consideration.
It is also worth noting that as we develop technological solutions to addressing things in the NHS, people will be able to amend their views on donation regularly by direct interface with an app. They will be able to change their mind. One day they might decide that they are happy to give their corneas and then on another decide that they are not. People will be able to make that selection and make anything that they would wish to be considered clear.
On timing, we hope that the Bill will receive Royal Assent by March, in which case the HTA is all set to go to produce a first draft of the code by May. That will be followed by a 12-week consultation on the draft guidance with stakeholders, including faith groups, so there will be another opportunity for us to address any concerns properly at that time. We expect to lay that guidance before Parliament next September. I can therefore assure the House that we intend to make use of this Bill speedily once it has received Royal Assent.
I wish to make a point about children. Obviously, children below the age of 18 will be exempt from the Bill, as they are not at the age of majority in order to make their choices known. As before, the family will be fully consulted. The safeguard will be as it is now, and children are always dealt with extremely sensitively.
I have mentioned that we will continue to engage with faith groups. I wish to emphasise that NHSBT is updating and extending its faith training, so that as we can expect more conversations to be taking place on the part of specialist nurses following this change, people will be kept fully up to date with any religious and cultural issues that might need to be considered.
Finally, I wish to say something about an issue that Members may have been lobbied about: novel transplants. We have all talked a lot today about kidney, liver, heart and lung transplants, and these are the organs we are all used to talking about. Clearly, medical advances being what they are, other things will materialise; I have heard evidence of hand, face and uterine transplants. They will not be covered by the Bill. They will be exempted by our introducing regulations that exempt certain organs from the deemed consent procedure. We have done it that way because this Bill needs to be able to have a life and to respond to medical advances, so it is better to have regulations that enable us to exclude rather than to have a list of organs that are covered. In that way, it is easier to keep this law in date.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend know whether the proposals she has set out on protecting parts of the body such as hands and the other things she mentioned will be marrying up with legislation going through the devolved legislatures now? Will we therefore have a similar code of practice across the entire UK?
Jackie Doyle-Price
Just as this Bill has progressed with good will from those in all parts of this House, so it has progressed with good will from all nations. We have all been sharing our experience to make sure that we get this right. So I am sure that that will be taking place in a consistent way.
In conclusion, as I said at the beginning, I am so proud that I have been able to play my part in taking this Bill forward. I am so grateful for the good will from both sides of the House in taking this forward. It has been a fantastic piece of cross-party working. It has made the process quick and speedy, and we have all been focused on what we are trying to achieve, which is to save more lives. I am very confident that Max’s and Keira’s law will have a very positive impact on how we treat people with organ failure and that it will also kick-start a cultural change in how we address these issues. In fact, it already has: people are talking about organ donation much more and joining the organ donor register at increased rates. I hope that the House will give the Bill its wholehearted endorsement.
Dan Jarvis
With the leave of the House, and on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson) as well as myself, I thank all Members who have contributed to and supported this important debate. We have seen the House at its very best with Members from right across the political spectrum working together to deliver meaningful, real change on behalf of their constituents. I take this opportunity to extend formally my thanks to my Front-Bench colleagues for their support, to the Minister, of course, to the Government and to all the officials who have made this possible.
The Bill is a welcome measure that will make a huge difference to thousands of people right around our country. Max and Keira’s law will save lives and give hope to many. I look forward to the Bill receiving Royal Assent at the earliest available opportunity. As many Members have said, this is only part of the process by which we increase awareness and encourage the most important conversations around organ donation. I thank all Members who contributed to the debate and supported the Bill’s safe passage through the House. It is much appreciated.
Question put and agreed to.
Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.
Physician Associates (Regulation) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Physician Associates (Regulation) Bill 2017-19 View all Physician Associates (Regulation) Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Physician associate is a new profession. Physician associates are clinically trained to be able to work across several disciplines. For example, they can work in A&E, with GPs and in gynaecology. It is something that is very necessary in today’s modern world: we need more specialist generalists, which is exactly what physician associates are. Indeed, it is often a second career, making the profession very popular.
We currently have some 2,000 physician associates. Some are in training, while some are actually practising. With that number of them, it is only right and responsible for any Government to regulate, because without regulation, we do not have the safety that members of the public really deserve. The Bill will regulate this much-needed profession that will give great support to doctors across primary and secondary care. Indeed, even the Government have committed to introducing regulation.
Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)
I heartily congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill. As she says, this important industry is growing in prominence. One of the most interesting things about the Bill is that it will provide greater protection against those who wilfully and falsely pretend to be physician associates. Will my hon. Friend talk more widely about that?
Anne Marie Morris
I thank my hon. Friend for his helpful comments. When I get a little further into speech, I will indeed talk a little about that, time permitting.
The previous Secretary of State for Health and Social Care said that he wanted 1,000 new physician associates in training each year, and the current Secretary of State said on 12 October that he wanted to push forward with legislation to regulate physician associates. It therefore seems to me that there is no divide between what I wish to achieve with the Bill and what the Government say that they want to achieve, so I certainly hope to get Government support for the Bill. If minor—or even major—amendments need to be made, that can happen in Committee. If the Government feel that they really want to get behind the Bill, they could adopt it and give it Government time. That would be welcome.
Why is the Bill so important? Regulation would ensure the necessary competence, accountability and safety of care provided by these healthcare professionals. It would provide legal authority and accountability, which is not currently there. It would provide a valuable framework for patient safety.
At the moment, professional standards are set by the Royal College of Physicians and the Faculty of Physician Associates underneath it, but they do not have the force of law. We need to ensure that those standards, which set standards of behaviour, guidelines for competence, educational requirements and conditions to ensure fitness for practice, are legally binding.
We also, as my hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Julian Knight) set out, need to protect the title of physician associate. We do not want people holding themselves up as physician associates, which they can do now, if they are not properly trained, educated and qualified to work in the role, because they have considerable levels of responsibility.
If we are to enhance the professional credibility of this group of professionals, as the Government and I wish to do, we need national recognition of the role. That is what the Bill would provide.
Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on bringing forward her Bill. Does she agree that any regulation must not do anything to prevent people from taking up the profession of physician associate? She and the previous Secretary of State have spoken about its importance, and the current Secretary of State agrees, as do the devolved Assemblies in Cardiff and Edinburgh. Physician associates are employed to fill many jobs in the national health service across the United Kingdom. Does she agree that regulation, which I am sure we all back in principle, must not in practice put anybody off taking up the profession which, as she said, is vital?
Anne Marie Morris
I totally agree with my hon. Friend. I would say that the Bill will make the job more attractive. The reality is that physician associates cannot fully take on the role that we need them to take on because they cannot prescribe and they cannot authorise X-rays, which they would be able to do if they were regulated. That is an important next step. The Government would like physician associates to be able to do such things so that the workload burden on general practice and those working in A&E is reduced.
Neil O'Brien (Harborough) (Con)
I want to press my hon. Friend on whether she thinks the Bill might lead to savings that we could reinvest in the NHS because it would allow these people to do more within the regulated profession she is seeking to create.
Anne Marie Morris
I think that the Bill will increase the attractiveness of the profession and the variety of professions that individuals can go into. It will also free up resource for those who are more specially qualified, such as general practitioners and anaesthetists. I think it is more about increasing resource than necessarily about money, although that is very important.
If physician associates were regulated, matters that are important to all members of the public and to Members of this House could be legally enforced—that is crucial. It would also ensure that we had a more diverse workforce and the variety of people that we need.
Of course, the most important thing to bear in mind is that this is about not replacing doctors, but enabling them to do the specialised tasks that only they are able to do and to pass down to others roles that those individuals can quite competently fulfil. The concern has been raised that by having these professionals regulated alongside doctors by the General Medical Council, we might put them into competition with doctors. I reject that concept because we have a shortage of doctors and we need as many individuals as possible to be medically qualified. It is therefore the right thing to do.
That brings me to a brief comment, before my time elapses, on why the GMC should regulate physician associates. It should do so because physician associates work very closely with doctors. They perform very similar functions and work under their supervision. They need to be regulated by a body that truly understands them, in the same way that nursing associates came under the Nursing and Midwifery Council when they were regulated. It is very important that these individuals are held to the same standards and that there is alignment across the piece in how they are educated. The GMC has a long history and wealth of experience in regulating doctors, so I think that it is the right body for this purpose. I sincerely hope that the Government will support the Bill and I commend it to the House.
Petition
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I present a petition on behalf of my constituents in Finedon, a small town that can be traced back to the Domesday Book. It has two medical centres, both of which are branches of other medical centres. One of them is being forced to close because it is not up to standard, and we need to find a solution whereby we have proper medical facilities in the town. Three constituents have signed the lead part of the petition: Mr Ray Ogle, Mr Laurence Harper and Councillor Barbara Bailey. I would like to thank them for their help in getting this petition to the House.
The petition, to the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, reads:
The Humble Petition of residents of Finedon, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth,
That the Petitioners believe that the proposed closure of the Health Centre in Finedon should not proceed on the grounds of the loss of business to the Finedon pharmacy; further that its closure would cause longer waiting times at the only other GP practice in Finedon, difficulty for vulnerable patients in travelling to other GP practices and the loss of a support network for constituents.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Department of Health and Social Care and Nene Clinical Commissioning Group to take into account the concerns of the petitioners and decline to close the Finedon Health Centre.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
[P002279]
Business without Debate
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Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 23 November.
Licensing of Taxis and Private Hire Vehicles (Safeguarding and Road Safety) Bill
Resumption of adjourned debate on Question (2 February), That the Bill be now read a Second time.
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Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 23 November.
Food Insecurity Bill
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Live Animal Exports (Prohibition) Bill
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June Bank Holiday (Creation) Bill
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
The first sitting Friday in 2019, as required by Standing Orders.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
You need to name a date.
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 11 January 2019.
Mr Bone
It is relevant to this point. Obviously, your ruling is unquestionable, Sir, but Standing Order No. 14 requires the appointment of private Members’ days. We know that the Leader of the House will do that in 2019, but we have the farce here of every Member having to name a date in November because the other dates are not announced. It seems to me that Members should be perfectly entitled to request a future private Members’ day, which we already know will be given by the Leader of the House, because she has committed to that.
Mr Deputy Speaker
In fairness, you are correct to name the date under Standing Orders, and I am sure that you will have helped the Whips with your little clarification to assist them with your future challenges ahead. Right, let us continue.
Business of the House Commission Bill
Motion made, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Mr Bone
I would try, Sir, the second private Members’ day allocated in 2019, but that appears to be out of order, so can we try 18 January 2019?
Bill to be read a Second time on Friday 18 January 2019.
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Closure of Finedon Health Centre
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I present a petition on behalf of my constituents in Finedon, a small town that can be traced back to the Domesday Book. It has two medical centres, both of which are branches of other medical centres. One of them is being forced to close because it is not up to standard, and we need to find a solution whereby we have proper medical facilities in the town. Three constituents have signed the lead part of the petition: Mr Ray Ogle, Mr Laurence Harper and Councillor Barbara Bailey. I would like to thank them for their help in getting this petition to the House.
The petition, to the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in Parliament assembled, reads:
The Humble Petition of residents of Finedon, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth,
That the Petitioners believe that the proposed closure of the Health Centre in Finedon should not proceed on the grounds of the loss of business to the Finedon pharmacy; further that its closure would cause longer waiting times at the only other GP practice in Finedon, difficulty for vulnerable patients in travelling to other GP practices and the loss of a support network for constituents.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Department of Health and Social Care and Nene Clinical Commissioning Group to take into account the concerns of the petitioners and decline to close the Finedon Health Centre.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
[P002279]
Youth Obligation
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Over the course of the past year, I have tabled a number of parliamentary questions about the Government’s youth obligation support programme, which was introduced in April last year, and the answers to those questions have contained remarkably little information. I am delighted to see the Minister in his place, and I hope he will take this opportunity to provide the House with some more information to allow us to make at least an initial assessment of whether the programme is proving effective. At the very least, will he confirm to the House that such information will be forthcoming in the near future?
Just over two decades ago, I became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Andrew Smith, who was the first holder of the post of Minister for Employment after the 1997 general election. We introduced the new deal for young people, which was a radical departure in state labour market intervention, and it has profoundly influenced all the programmes since.
By the way, as the youth obligation is the only current labour market programme for young people and is available only in areas where universal credit has been rolled out, there have been since April 2017—for the first time in two decades—parts of the country where there is no programme at all for young people. With universal credit being rolled out for new claims to every jobcentre by the end of the year, as I understand it, will the Minister confirm that we will again have a programme for young people in every part of the country by the end of the year?
Young people are still at a distinct disadvantage in the labour market. According to this month’s labour market statistics, the unemployment rate among 16 to 24-year-olds is 10.8%, compared with an overall rate of 4% for those aged 16 and over. The unemployment rate among young people has consistently been two and a half to three times the overall rate for quite a long time. Of course the employment rate—the overall rate and the youth rate—is much lower than the peaks we saw five or six years ago, but the introduction of the youth obligation is an acknowledgement, rightly, that youth unemployment remains too high.
More than one in 10 young people are out of work and looking for a job, when they ought to be building the skills to secure for themselves a lifetime of employment and in a position to contribute to the economy. There is also of course a disastrously large number of young people outside the system altogether—not in education, employment or training at all. The Government are therefore absolutely right to focus effort on young unemployed people.
The question is whether the current programme is any good. From the answers given by the Minister’s colleague, the Minister for Employment, the Government appear not to know whether it is any good, and indeed they appear not to have very much interest in finding out. I therefore hope that the Minister will be able to dispel that impression when he responds to this debate.
The only information provided in answers to my questions so far was in those from April and May, when I was told that, from when the youth obligation started in April 2017 to this February, 24,600 people had started on the programme and 9,300 were still on it. Is the Minister able to provide the House today, after another six months, with an update on those figures? As far as I know, there are no figures in the public domain other than those in the answer I received at that time. The obvious and important question is: what has become of the 15,300 who started on the programme and then left it? I asked a series of questions about this—for example, how many of them had gone on to an apprenticeship—and in reply to each the Minister’s colleague said that he did not know and that it would be disproportionately expensive to find out.
It is now 10 years since I was a Minister in the Department, but I cannot believe that the Department has forgotten the importance it attached at that time to evidence about effectiveness. Indeed, if the Minister is doubtful about the value of such data, he should read some of the speeches that the current Secretary of State made about the Work programme when she was the Minister responsible for employment. The Work Programme, for all its many faults, generated a great deal of valuable, published performance data. I understand that Ministers intend to publish comparable data for the Work and Health programme in due course, in some detail and with reasonable regularity, although I also understand that publication of that data has been delayed. It would be puzzling if Ministers really do not intend to gather, still less publish, evaluation data on the youth obligation.
On 26 April, I asked how many of those supported through the youth obligation had gone on to various destinations. The Minister for Employment replied on 1 May in a written answer, stating:
“It is not possible to say how many of them have subsequently gone on to (a) an apprenticeship (b) a traineeship and (c) a work placement without checking individual records, which would incur disproportionate cost.”
I asked how many young people had stopped receiving benefits since beginning the youth obligation, and an answer from 1 May stated:
“DWP does not hold this information as part of any centralised management information process. To answer this would require checking individual records at each Jobcentre, which would incur disproportionate cost.”
I tabled more questions on 6 September, and on 11 September the Minister for Employment replied, more encouragingly:
“The information requested is not currently readily available, however the Department does monitor requests we receive for new statistics and consider whether we can produce and release analysis that will helpfully inform public debate. The Department is therefore looking at this issue with a view to seeing what statistics could be produced on a regular basis.”
I hope that the Minister will provide us with an update on the Department’s thinking on the matter.
Although the Department is not able to say how the youth obligation is going, others have started to provide valuable information about the effectiveness of the programme. Their findings so far are not encouraging, and I want to quote this afternoon from two pieces of research. Centrepoint, drawing on funding from the Trust for London, commissioned the University of Warwick to evaluate the extent to which the youth obligation supports disadvantaged young people into employment, education or training. The researchers undertook longitudinal research in London and Manchester, including a survey of 80 youth obligation participants. Centrepoint has compiled interim findings, with a final report due to be published in the spring. Those interim findings concluded that only around half of those who started the youth obligation programme remained on it for the whole six-month period. That was not generally because the participants found work or entered training; instead, there were three key reasons for withdrawing from the programme.
First, 45% of London participants and 40% of Manchester participants left the programme because of continuing, pre-existing difficulties in their lives, such as homelessness, drug or alcohol problems, or mental health issues. Secondly, 45% of London participants and 57% of Manchester participants left because they ran into a specific problem, and afterwards—through fear, embarrassment or uncertainty about their continued status on the programme—did not go back. Thirdly, 10% of London participants and 3% of Manchester participants left because they did not like the programme. That included two participants with learning difficulties who found the activities they were asked to engage in impossible without support, which they said they were not offered.
Research found that the most positive aspect of the programme was the initial engagement, and nearly two thirds of participants thought that making an individual plan that identified their interests and the support they wanted was helpful. Beyond that the focus was on practical mechanisms for identifying and applying for jobs, such as how to write a CV and use websites. In the experience of those who took part, there appeared to be little acknowledgement of whether the participant was ready to find work, or of the specific barriers that many participants faced or how to mitigate them. For example, one participant with low qualifications commented:
“They just tell you how to make a CV. Then they tell you to make it a different way.
Like every day, that’s all we did”.
Most participants were happy with their work coach, but there did not seem to be much substantive personalisation. Participants rarely noted that they had been offered access to particular activities or services to meet their specific aspirations, or additional or specialised support to address their more complex needs. Despite the complex needs of quite a number of the participants, referrals outside Jobcentre Plus were rare. In interviews, participants noted that they thought their work coach did not have time to discuss issues not directly related to looking for work.
A significant group of participants held very negative views about Jobcentre Plus and expected to be treated poorly. This made them less likely to disclose issues that were hindering their ability to work, such as worsening mental health or addiction issues. It also resulted in some participants viewing reasonable advice from the Jobcentre very negatively. In both London and Manchester, the sanction rate for those on the youth obligation was higher than for the comparator group claiming benefits in a non-youth obligation area. Some 36% of London youth obligation participants were sanctioned at some point in the past year, compared with 24% in non-youth obligation areas.
The second piece of research I want to draw on has been published today by the Young Women’s Trust. It is brand new and I appreciate that the Minister and his officials may well not yet have had a chance to consider it. However, it, too, is a useful and informative piece of work. The research surveyed over 700 young Jobcentre Plus users in the UK over three years. It conducted interviews with staff in 13 jobcentres across three London boroughs and conducted focus group interviews with 28 young people aged between 18 to 25 who were living across 10 different London boroughs. It concluded that the youth obligation is misunderstood by Jobcentre Plus staff and is patchy in its implementation. Young people’s employment outcomes are not recorded and there is little plan for support beyond six months. Only a third of young women and two fifths of men surveyed felt they were getting personalised support from their work coach. Some 21% of black, Asian and minority ethnic jobseekers said they were treated unfairly by Jobcentre Plus staff, compared with 15% of white jobseekers.
One youth obligation manager described their package for young people as intense specialist support for six months, which I think is what Ministers intended. Another manager, however, explained that over the course of six months they
“have two workshops where young people can learn how to write a good CV and meet providers”.
That appeared to be it. Managers in all the boroughs studied acknowledged that they do not monitor referrals and that there is no effective monitoring system in place, as the Minister’s difficulty in answering my parliamentary questions also illustrates. The policy, as I understand it, is that after six months on the programme, if young people do not have a job they should go on to a mandated apprenticeship or voluntary work experience. That is not happening in practice, according to the published research. In a small survey of voluntary sector service providers who work in youth employability and training, 79% were completely unaware of the youth obligation scheme, including a fair number of those who work with their local Jobcentre Plus on a weekly or monthly basis.
The report presents the positive conclusion that there has been a 17% increase in the number of users saying that the jobcentre helped to motivate them in their job search since 2016. However, it also reports that of the young women using Jobcentre Plus over the last three years, 52% have ranked their experiences as humiliating and 65% as stressful and that 63% have felt ashamed to go to the jobcentre.
It is clear from both pieces of research that the programme is not going well. I understand that one of the problems for the Department is that the universal credit IT system does not provide the basic information that would allow an assessment of how the programme is doing—information that was routinely provided under the older systems. I recognise that providing evaluation data may well not be the top priority among the current difficulties with the universal credit IT system, which I have been following closely for the last eight years, but I am sure the Minister will agree that it needs to be fixed.
I am encouraged that the Minister’s colleague told me in his written answer last month that the Department is considering what statistics could be produced on a regular basis, and so I want to finish by suggesting what some of the statistics ought to be. I would hope they could be produced at least on a half-yearly or perhaps on a quarterly basis—statistics on the Work programme were published quarterly.
We need to know how many people have gone on to the youth obligation in the latest period and how many have left it, and how many were on the programme at the beginning of the period and at the end. It would also be helpful to know something about the age, geographic spread and gender of participants. For those who have left the programme, the crucial information we need is where they have gone: how many have gone on to an apprenticeship, in line with the policy intent; how many have gone on to a traineeship or work placement; how many have gone into education or training; how many have got a job; and how many have stopped claiming benefit but not started work or training. Finally, what is the sanction rate for those on the programme?
I welcome the fact that, as I understand it, by the end of this year we will again have a nationwide labour market support programme for unemployed young people, but we need to know how effective it is. At risk of teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, I make the obvious point that that requires at least basic data to be recorded, collected centrally and published. At the moment, none of that is being done for this programme. I hope the Minister can provide some reassurance that it will soon start being done, for the Department’s benefit and the benefit of us all.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions (Guy Opperman)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) on securing this debate. I have been asked to respond because the Minister for Employment sadly cannot be here.
Everyone on the Government Benches acknowledges that the right hon. Gentleman should be on the Opposition Front Bench, given his massive experience at the Department for Work and Pensions, and I welcome this opportunity both to debate this matter and to discuss in the more detail the subject of youth employment, which I think motivates every single Member of Parliament. We all want to improve the life chances of those whom we represent.
Nationally, the employment rate for 18 to 24-year-olds not in full-time education is 77%, which is up eight percentage points from 69% in 2010, and only 4.3% of young people aged 16 to 24 are unemployed or not in full-time education, which is a fall of 350,000 since 2010. Moreover, the national unemployment rate for this age group is 10.8%, as the right hon. Gentleman set out, which is a record low. It is worth commenting briefly that the decrease in youth unemployment is markedly better than that in the EU. When one compares our record low youth unemployment rate with that in Spain, at 34%, Italy, at 32%, France, at 21%, and Greece, at 39%, one realises that there has genuinely been a transformation, and one that I believe is among the driving successes of this Government. We all accept, I believe—I think the right hon. Gentleman accepts this—that the single biggest driver of social mobility and improvement of life chances is work, and the reality is that the universal credit programme and the Government reforms since 2010 are helping to create an employment revolution in this country, which is a massive improvement on the old system.
The statistics reflect a real achievement, but while this is worth celebrating we must not be complacent. That is why the Government have introduced a wide range of support for younger people. The principle of support for young people is well known to the right hon. Gentleman; it has dated back through many different Governments and generations and has been developed by the DWP in collaboration with a variety of organisations. We recognise that providing early targeted help at the start of a young person’s adult life helps them secure work and avoid unemployment. It is in that context that we introduced the youth obligation support programme.
The programme is for people aged 18 to 21 who make a new claim in a UC full service jobcentre. It is worth understanding how this programme came into being, and I will briefly outline that. We believe it takes the best types of support that previous individual evaluations have shown to work and puts them together in a single programme. The support starts with the intensive activity period. In 2016, the Department published an evaluation of this approach by the Institute for Employment Studies. It reported that it had an immediate positive behavioural effect on participants. It increased their confidence, and meant they engaged in a wider range of job search activities and made job applications to a higher standard. Earlier this year, the Work and Pensions Committee recognised in its youth employment report of 2018 that the Department had conducted a good quality trial of intensive activity. It said that the intensive activity element of the youth obligation should help young people overcome key barriers to work. We believe it encourages young people to think more broadly about their skills and job goals and identify any training they may need.
An example that applies to both the programme under discussion and the traditional model for younger people are sector-based work academies, which last for up to six weeks and include work experience, some bespoke training and a guaranteed interview for a real apprenticeship or other job. The Department published a quantitative impact assessment in 2016 that showed that young people who took part in this type of support spent on average considerably more days in employment and considerably fewer days on benefit than those who did not take part, and I know it had some success in the right hon. Gentleman’s constituency of East Ham, particularly utilising the work of his local colleges.
Stephen Timms
I am grateful for the way the hon. Gentleman is answering my questions. Does he have any information about how many participants on the youth obligation programme had the opportunity of the sector-based work academy to which he refers?
Guy Opperman
I am going to come to the specific points the right hon. Gentleman raises on numbers and data, but let me make a quick point before returning to my speech. We are in utter agreement that data and statistics are needed on a long-term basis—no one is disputing that—and he will know from his knowledge of the DWP that it likes to focus on long-term figures. However, I am not in a position to give individual numbers in answer to that specific question.
However, the right hon. Gentleman surely accepts that sector-based work academies, which occur in many different types of profession but in particular teaching, retail, hospitality, transport and logistics, social care, manufacturing and engineering, are one of the most successful innovations that apply to all young people whether on the YOSP or the traditional support provided by jobcentres.
In addition, there are traineeships. Like the right hon. Gentleman, I have visited a multitude of jobcentres. In the last year, I have been from Hastings and Chichester in the south to Banff in northern Scotland, from Basildon to Blackpool last Friday, to Birmingham and Lambeth in London, and in the last four years I have hosted a jobs fair in Hexham and worked with my jobcentre, and I have seen the impact of traineeships, which are another part of the YOSP that are utterly key. I must mention Release Potential in my constituency, which provides these traineeships for younger people on an ongoing basis up and down the country, and I have seen their success.
The right hon. Gentleman will realise that this programme began only in April 2017 and that it is still being rolled out around the country. More than 500 jobcentres are now offering this support, but some started only this week. I accept that others started in April 2017, but I believe that the programme still has to be rolled out to 22 jobcentres before completion takes place at the end of this year. In his own area, jobcentres have strong links to Barking and Dagenham College, and there is also specialist guidance on training, apprenticeships, the Prince’s Trust, the movement to work programme, the construction skills programme and English language classes.
I want to address a couple of points that the right hon. Gentleman raised. I take on board his suggestions, which have been noted, on statistical evaluations and pathways. He will understand that the Department takes these matters very seriously, and I will ensure that they are taken back to the Minister for Employment. As I have said, the programme is still being rolled out, and the automated management information process is still being developed as we speak. He raised the matter of young people in particular, and there is one point on which I want to push back. He said that the was no other programme for young people, but he will surely know that the Department is committed to providing targeted support for all young people, including those who are still claiming jobseeker’s allowance or claiming through the universal credit live service. The traditional JSA includes basic skills training, traineeships and support funded through organisations such as the Prince’s Trust. There are also opportunities involving sector-based work academy placements for those individuals. It would therefore be wrong to suggest that there is no other programme over and above the youth obligation support programme.
I repeat that we collect information on each individual claimant, but there is not at this stage an aggregated assessment of the kind that the Department traditionally produces. However, the right hon. Gentleman will under- stand that this programme started only in April 2017, that it has not finished being rolled out and that in some jobcentres it started only in the last week. With respect, therefore, I would say to him that we believe the programme is becoming more mature every day, that we are continuing to test and learn and that we are holding workshops with work coaches to get their insight into what works well and into the local barriers that 18 to 21-year-olds can face in the labour market. We are also collating and sharing good practice, and we will obviously take on board the reports that he has outlined today, including the one that came out just this morning. We are genuinely committed to ensuring that any 18 to 21-year-old, whether they are from East Ham or Hexham, Carlisle or Cardiff, has the ability to work towards securing an income, to develop their skills and to improve their life chances. After all, that is what this is all about.
Question put and agreed to.
Written Statements
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Written StatementsRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
HMS Victory 1744
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
I wish to apologise for an error made in a written response to a parliamentary question asked by the right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones). The question and answer were as follows:
Asked on 28 October 2014
Mr Kevan Jones : To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether completion bonds or other financial arrangements will be put in place before granting the Maritime Heritage Foundation permission to recover at risk surface items from the wreck site of HMS Victory 1744; and what specific communications there have been between government departments on that matter.
[212332]
Answer on 5 November 2014
Minister of State for Defence, Welfare and Veterans, the Rt. Hon. Anna Soubry MP: Funding for the approved next stage of the project (recovery of at-risk surface items, subject to a licence by the Marine Management Organisation) is underwritten by a financial bond provided by Odyssey Marine Exploration and held by the Ministry of Defence (MOD). Funding of the project has been discussed by officials from MOD and the Department for Culture Media and Sport as part of the assessment of the Project Design.
Additionally, this response was repeated in a second parliamentary question raised by the right hon. Member for North Durham on 28 November 2014, answered by the then Minister for Culture, Communications and Creative Industries, my right hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey), on 4 December 2014 (PQ UIN 216395).
Subsequent investigations have proved that this information was incorrect. No funding was held by either the Ministry of Defence or the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
As the current Minister for Defence People and Veterans, I wish to correct this error. I have also written to the right hon. Member for North Durham, and the responding Ministers at the time, my right hon. Friends the Members for Broxtowe and for Wantage, to apologise for this error.
[HCWS1038]
Foreign Affairs Council: 15 October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Europe and the Americas (Sir Alan Duncan)
My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs attended the Foreign Affairs Council (FAC) on 15 October. It was chaired by the High Representative and Vice-President of the European Union (EU) for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (HRVP), Federica Mogherini. The meeting was held in Luxembourg.
Current Affairs
Ministers discussed current affairs issues including the Jamal Khashoggi case on which they agreed the need for a full and transparent investigation by the Saudi authorities in complete co-operation with the Turkish authorities. My right hon. Friend welcomed the new chemical weapons sanctions regime and EU solidarity since the Salisbury attack. He noted the attack on the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and called for new sanctions regimes to address cyber and human rights abuses. He also spoke about Burma and the UN fact-finding mission.
Libya
The discussion on Libya focused on the political process, the stability of the country, and the economic situation. Ministers reiterated the EU’s support for the political process led by the United Nations (UN) Secretary-General’s Special Representative, Ghassan Salamé. The Council confirmed the EU’s determination to support a Libyan-led solution for the Libyan people under UN auspices.
The discussions also considered the forthcoming high-level meeting on Libya that will take place in Palermo, Italy on 12-13 November 2018. The Council underlined the importance of holding both presidential and parliamentary elections as soon as possible, and the need to put in place a proper constitutional and legal framework before the elections take place.
External aspects of migration
The Director-General of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), António Vitorino, and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), Filippo Grandi, briefed Ministers during this session. Ministers took stock of progress and recent developments, and underlined the importance of the strategic partnership between the EU, the IOM and the UNHCR in Libya. The Council emphasised the significant results delivered through the joint efforts of the EU, its member states and UN agencies. Irregular migration flows to Europe have significantly decreased, and efforts to tackle irregular migration and to fight smuggling networks have been considerably strengthened, in particular through Operation Sophia.
Central African Republic
The Council discussed and adopted conclusions on the Central African Republic (CAR). The conclusions underlined that the situation in the CAR remained fragile and the EU continued to engage in supporting the country. The conclusions also stated that the EU would continue working, through its various instruments, to support the CAR to achieve stability, peace and development and to meet the aspirations of its entire population for lasting peace and reconciliation.
Venezuela
Ministers discussed the situation in Venezuela, and its impact on the region, including on migration. Ministers reaffirmed the EU’s strong position on the political crisis in Venezuela. They agreed that the crisis could only be solved through a political process and to explore the possibility of establishing a contact group that could, if conditions were met, help to facilitate such a process.
The Council agreed a number of measures without discussion:
The Council adopted a new regime of restrictive measures to address the use and proliferation of chemical weapons;
The Council adopted conclusions on “Connecting Europe and Asia—Building blocks for an EU strategy”;
The Council adopted conclusions on Bosnia and Herzegovina/Operation EUFOR Althea;
The Council decided to extend the EU stabilisation action in Mopti and Ségou (EUSTAMS) for a period of three months;
The Council extended the EU restrictive measures against ISIL (Daesh) and al-Qaeda and persons, groups, undertakings and entities associated with them until 31 October 2019;
The Council adopted new rules of procedures for the Joint Committee established by the EU-Vietnam framework agreement on comprehensive partnership and co-operation;
The Council agreed the signing, on behalf of the EU, of a protocol to the Euro-Mediterranean agreement establishing an association between the EU and Tunisia or order to take account of the accession of Croatia to the EU;
The Council adopted the EU programme of exercises and exercise-related activities under the common foreign and security policy for the period 2018-22;
The Council extended the mandate of the EU advisory mission (EUAM) Iraq until 17 April 2020;
The Council adopted a recommendation providing detailed guidance on the objectives and progress indicators for the fulfilment by each participating member state of the more binding commitments that have been undertaken when the permanent structured co-operation (PESCO) was launched at the end of 2017;
The Council approved the High Representative’s report on the operation commander’s 28th six-monthly report on Operation EUFOR Althea;
The Council adopted a regulation on the research and training programme of the European Atomic Energy Community for the years 2019 and 2020;
The Council approved a joint statement for the occasion of the second Arctic science ministerial meeting that will take place in Berlin on 25 and 26 October 2018.
[HCWS1042]
Wilton Park: Tailored Review
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
I am announcing today the publication of the recent tailored review of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
Wilton Park convenes discreet dialogue on the UK’s strategic foreign policy priorities. It has shaped and delivered events since 1946, which link a global network of experts from sectors including academia, the military, civil society, business, politicians and diplomats.
The principal aim of tailored reviews, which are carried out according to Cabinet Office guidance, is to ensure public bodies remain fit for purpose, well governed and properly accountable for what they do. The full report can be read on gov.uk.
This review involved consultation with a broad range of stakeholders across the UK and beyond, including Wilton Park staff, the Wilton Park board, commercial and academic sponsors, and a full range of partner organisations.
The review reported in September 2018. It found that Wilton Park is functioning well as an organisation. It recommended that it should remain an executive agency of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and remain at Wiston House at least until the end of the current lease in 2027.
The review nonetheless contains a number of recommendations to refresh and strengthen Wilton Park’s corporate governance. A plan to implement all the recommendations by their stated deadlines has been developed and agreed between the FCO and Wilton Park, and will be taken forward by officials.
Copies of the review will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
[HCWS1041]
Future Reciprocal Healthcare Arrangements
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister for Health (Stephen Barclay)
Today, the Government are introducing the Healthcare (International Arrangements) Bill. This will provide the Government with the powers that are needed to fund and effectively implement arrangements for UK nationals to obtain healthcare abroad after the UK exits the European Union (EU).
Current EU reciprocal healthcare arrangements enable UK nationals to access healthcare when they live, study, work, or travel abroad and visa-versa for EU citizens when in the UK. They give people more life options, and support tourism, businesses, and healthcare co-operation. The UK also has a number of reciprocal healthcare agreements with non-EU and European Economic Area countries, such as Australia and New Zealand.
These arrangements ensure that UK nationals living and working in the EU, EEA and Switzerland can access healthcare in exchange for paying taxes and social security contributions. The UK also funds healthcare abroad for a number of current or former UK residents. This includes healthcare for UK state pensioners who spend their retirement in the EU and needs arising when UK residents visit the EU for holiday or study through the European healthcare insurance card (EHIC) Scheme.
The Bill is part of the Government’s preparations for EU exit and will ensure that whatever the outcome of EU exit, the Government can take the necessary steps to continue reciprocal healthcare arrangements or otherwise support UK residents to obtain healthcare when they move to or visit the EU.
Presently, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care has limited domestic powers to fund and arrange healthcare outside the UK. When the UK leaves the EU the current EU regulations will no longer be part of UK law and new legislation will be needed.
This Bill confers powers on the Secretary of State to make and arrange for payments to be made in respect of the cost of healthcare provided outside the UK. This would allow for the funding of reciprocal healthcare arrangements for UK nationals living in the EU, EEA and Switzerland.
The Bill also confers powers on the Secretary of State to make regulations for and in connection with the provision of healthcare abroad and to give effect to healthcare agreements with other countries or territories (both EU and non-EU) or supranational bodies such as the EU.
Finally, the Bill provides for the lawful processing of data where necessary for purposes of implementing, operating or facilitating the operation of reciprocal healthcare arrangements or payments.
Current healthcare agreements benefit people in all parts of the UK, assisting people to obtain healthcare when they are abroad. The UK Government are therefore engaging with the devolved Administrations to deliver an approach that works for the whole UK in a way that fully respects the devolution settlements.
The Bill underscores the Government’s commitment to reaching a reciprocal healthcare agreement with the EU, or where necessary making agreements with member states, and to exploring potential agreements with third countries in the future.
The Government welcome the forthcoming scrutiny of the Bill, to ensure that it achieves its aims for the continuation of healthcare support for UK nationals in the EU, EEA and Switzerland after the UK exits the EU, but also enabling the UK to look to the future.
[HCWS1040]
Housing Update
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (James Brokenshire)
I am today publishing a consultation on updates to national planning policy and guidance. This consultation proposes changes to the standard method for calculating local housing need to ensure consistency, with the objective of delivering 300,000 homes per year, on average, by the mid-2020s while providing the clarity that communities need. The consultation also proposes clarifications of national planning policy on housing land supply, the definition of deliverable sites and appropriate assessment for habitats sites.
Our reforms are enabling local planning authorities to plan for the right homes in the right places, in a way that is open, transparent and sustainable for local communities. A key part of this is a standard method for assessing housing need. This has been introduced to ensure a consistent starting point when understanding how many homes are needed in each local area.
Recent changes to one of the statistical datasets the standard method relies on has led to confusion and uncertainty in some areas about how many homes are needed. This consultation therefore proposes changes to the standard method to ensure consistency, with the objective of building more homes, while ensuring local authorities have the clarity they need to produce local plans.
This consultation is open until 7 December, and I will inform the House of the outcome of the consultation as appropriate.
[HCWS1044]
Trade Remedies Authority
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Trade and President of the Board of Trade (Dr Liam Fox)
This Government are committed to establishing the new UK Trade Remedies Authority (TRA), which will be responsible for providing a safety net to domestic industries after the UK has left the EU.
We have made significant progress so far. The Taxation (Cross-Border Trade) Act 2018, which sets out the trade remedies framework that the TRA will be responsible for delivering, received Royal Assent on 13 September 2018. In parallel, we are in the process of establishing the TRA as a non-departmental public body through the Trade Bill.
The UK is a strong supporter of free trade. But this does not mean trade without rules. Trade remedy measures support free trade by ensuring it is also based on rules, in accordance with the UK’s international obligations to the World Trade Organisation and our traditions.
We cannot risk leaving UK industry unprotected against these unfair trading practices. That is why it is in our national interest to ensure the TRA is established and appropriately staffed in case we do not negotiate a deal prior to the UK’s departure from the European Union.
I hope all opposition parties in both the House of Commons and the House of Lords will give support to the Trade Bill to ensure that no UK industries, or parts of the UK, are at risk of being left unprotected. On 29 March 2018, the Department secured a technical ministerial direction to authorise spending on the implementation of the TRA prior to Royal Assent for the Trade Bill, in line with the guidance issued by the permanent secretaries of HM Treasury and the Department for Exiting the European Union as well as the written ministerial statement from the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in October 2017.
We have been focused on ensuring that the TRA has the right leadership in place from the start. That is why I am pleased to announce that Sir David Wright, the UK’s former ambassador to both the Republic of Korea and Japan, has been appointed to DIT as TRA chair-designate. Sir David presents an outstanding profile in international and bilateral trade policy, having served as the first chief executive of British Trade International, which later became UK Trade and Investment. He also served as vice-chairman of Barclays Capital from 2003 to 2010, and then subsequently as vice-chairman of Barclays PLC until his final role as senior advisor from 2016 to 2018. Today he is global advisor of SMFG, chairman of Skarbek and chairman of TheCityUK’s Japan market advisory group. I am confident that Sir David’s unique experience in international trade, diplomacy and non-executive roles make him the ideal candidate.
Sir David will initially be appointed to DIT as TRA chair-designate until the Trade Bill receives Royal Assent and the TRA is legally established—which is, of course, subject to the will of Parliament. Once this has taken place, it is my intention that Sir David be formally appointed as TRA chair. The total length of Sir David’s term—across both roles—will be three years.
I can also announce that Claire Bassett has been recruited to DIT as TRA chief executive-designate. Claire offers extensive public body leadership experience, having most recently served as chief executive of the Electoral Commission. Prior to that, she has been chief executive of the Parole Board for England and Wales and the Criminal Cases Review Commission.
Once the TRA has been legally established, the TRA chair will be responsible for making a final decision on the appointment of a TRA chief executive, subject to my approval. This is consistent with the appointment powers set out in the Trade Bill.
I am also pleased to say that the future TRA’s wider senior leadership team has also now been recruited to DIT—including its chief economist, chief operating officer, general counsel and joint chief investigators. It is our intention that they will be transferred to the TRA once it has been legally established.
Sir David, Claire and the senior leadership team will join the Department’s “shadow” TRA function in its Reading office premises in Northgate House, in the near future. Located in the heart of Reading, Northgate House offers excellent transport links and will enable the TRA to serve the whole of the UK effectively. Reading has one of the highest concentrations of relevant skills in the country and this is in addition to having access to Reading’s university and leading businesses. By securing these office premises now, we have ensured that future TRA staff have a location in which to be properly trained in preparation for the UK’s exit from the EU and the TRA being legally established through Royal Assent of the Trade Bill.
[HCWS1046]
Justice Update
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Mr David Gauke)
The “Supplement to the Fortieth Annual Report on Senior Salaries 2018” is published today. The supplement follows the Senior Salaries Review Body’s (SSRB) annual and major reviews of judicial pay. Copies are available from the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office. I am grateful to the chairman and members of the review body for their work in undertaking these reviews.
The Government value the vital role played by the judiciary. Our judges are the envy of the world. They deservedly have the very highest reputation for integrity and independence. They deliver justice every day in courts and tribunals across the land without fear or favour, and in doing so uphold the rule of law on which our society is founded. Beyond that fundamental role, the quality and dependability of our judiciary is a critical part of making the UK an attractive place to settle disputes, and English law a pre-eminent choice for contracts.
I am pleased therefore to confirm today that members of the judiciary will receive a pay increase of 2% in 2018/19, which is the biggest pay rise for judges in nearly 10 years. This award will be backdated to April 2018.
In reaching our final position for the 2018/19 pay award, the Government have had to balance the need for affordability for the tax payer and future sustainability of public services while ensuring that pay awards are fair and consistent across the public sector. Therefore, the Government have not accepted in full the SSRB’s recommended increase of 2.5%.
The SSRB has also, at the Government’s request, conducted a major review of the judicial salary structure. This is a comprehensive assessment of the appropriate structure and levels of judicial pay for the future, taking into account the need to recruit and retain judicial office holders of the highest calibre.
In its major review report, which I am also publishing today, the SSRB highlight evidence of a growing recruitment problem at certain key levels within the judiciary—notably at High Court and circuit bench level. The SSRB conclude that these problems are principally occurring because the reward package has become much less attractive to potential applicants, and highlight in particular the impact of recent pensions changes on judicial reward.
The SSRB have made a series of recommendations, including that varying levels of pay increase are made across different salary groups, with the biggest increases recommended for those judges in salary groups where there is evidence of a recruitment problem and who are in the new judicial pension scheme 2015.
The Government take very seriously the threat that being unable to fill key judicial posts represents to the proper functioning of justice and the UK’s wider prosperity. We are now carefully considering what changes might be made to the judicial remuneration package to address the particular issues highlighted by the SSRB’s major review.
The Government will also be considering the SSRB’s recommendations on changes to the current judicial salary structure and their proposals for new pay supplements for those judges who undertake extra leadership responsibilities. I can also confirm that the Government will honour their commitment to maintain the recruitment and retention allowance currently paid to eligible High Court judges until they have responded to the major review.
This Government remain committed to ensuring our courts and tribunals system is as efficient as possible. Through our reform programme we have already taken important steps towards enabling judges to make the best possible use of their time, and I will continue to work towards this objective in partnership with the Lord Chief Justice and Senior President of Tribunals.
I will make a further statement to the House when I am in a position to set out in full the Government’s response to the major review.
[HCWS1045]
Crossrail Update
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Joseph Johnson)
On 31 August 2018, Crossrail Ltd, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Transport for London (TfL), announced a delay to the planned opening of the Elizabeth line.
Discussions between TfL and Government are under way as to how any additional funding will be provided, with London—as the primary beneficiary of Crossrail—bearing any additional costs via a financing arrangement.
TfL and the Department for Transport have commissioned an independent review of Crossrail’s governance and a separate review on Crossrail’s finance and commercial position.
Today, as an interim measure, we are announcing that £350 million of short-term repayable financing will be made available to the Mayor for the year 2018-19. This will ensure that full momentum is maintained behind Crossrail.
This project is already delivering benefits for the whole of the UK through its cross-country supply chain and its UK-built train fleet. When open, Crossrail will be transformative and carry up to 200 million passengers a year, delivering £42 billion of investment into the UK economy.
A further update will be provided once the discussions on the financing arrangements have concluded.
[HCWS1043]
Civil Partnerships
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for International Development (Penny Mordaunt)
This Government are committed to fairness and equal treatment in all areas of life. Families, in all their forms, are a fundamental element of society, and we want to ensure that they are as secure and stable as possible, in order for people to flourish.
Civil partnerships were originally created to enable same-sex couples to formalise their relationships at a time when marriage was not available to them. Since then, we are pleased to have introduced marriage for same-sex couples through the Marriage (Same-Sex Couples) Act 2013. However, this created a situation whereby same-sex couples have the option either to marry or form a civil partnership, but opposite-sex couples have only the option to marry.
The Government have been considering how to equalise access to civil partnerships between same-sex and opposite-sex couples and on 2 October, the Prime Minister announced that the Government will extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples.
There are around 3.3million cohabiting couples in the UK, almost half of them with children, and all of them without the protections and security that a formalised relationship can bring. The announcement ensures that, in future, opposite-sex couples will be able to benefit from the protections and security that a civil partnership provides.
I would like to pay tribute to those who have campaigned for this change over a number of years, including my hon. Friend for East Worthing and Shoreham, whose commitment to this cause has laid the foundation for the Government to take forward this important change through his support for the cause of equal civil partnerships, and his Civil Partnerships, Marriages and Deaths (Registration Etc.) Bill, currently before the House.
The changes needed to effect the greater equality we wish to see are not all straightforward and there are a number of questions that arise specifically about opening civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples for the first time, on which we will need to consult. For example, whether couples can choose to convert their civil partnership into a marriage (or vice-versa) and what should be the grounds for dissolution of an opposite-sex civil partnership.
We are clear that Government legislation is essential to ensure that these and other consequentials of opposite-sex civil partnerships are properly legislated for and adequately debated by this House and in the other place. This would not be possible through my hon. Friend’s Bill as currently amended.
We intend to consult to enable us to introduce legislation in the next parliamentary Session to bring about the necessary changes.
[HCWS1039]
House of Lords
Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Act 2018 View all Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 6 June 2018 - (6 Jun 2018)
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen (Con)
My Lords, the Bill will place the National Data Guardian on a statutory footing and will promote the provision of advice and guidance on the processing of health and social care data in England. It is an honour for me to bring the Bill before your Lordships today.
The Bill is an important step in increasing the public’s and patients’ confidence in the use and appropriate sharing of health and care data. It has gone through the necessary stages in the other place and I extend my thanks to the many people who have helped prepare the Bill, in particular to Jo Churchill for her dedication to the original Private Member’s Bill and to Peter Bone for sponsoring the Bill in the other place and ensuring that it reached this stage. It would be remiss of me to proceed without mentioning and thanking the National Data Guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott, who has contributed so much to this area. I am grateful to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for coming to listen to the debate. I appreciate the department’s help with the progress we have made so far and the cross-party support for the principle behind the Bill. Indeed, I see that Jo Churchill is also here today and we welcome her. I hope that with that cross-party support, the Bill will go through its stages here as quickly as it did in the other place.
I would like to take some time to reflect on the importance of the role of the National Data Guardian. We all know that when collected and used properly, healthcare data has the potential to be transformative for patients. Sharing data offers immense promise for improving the NHS and the social care system, as well as benefiting individuals through unlocking new treatments and medical breakthroughs. Getting information sharing right can create a better experience for people using services and make care more efficient. Too many people with serious conditions have to tell the same story to multiple people and services involved in their care. Appropriate data sharing could eliminate any unnecessary burden. As well as that, if commissioners have access to data that they need to make the decisions about the best use of their resources locally and nationally, services can be provided where they are most needed and available funds can be maximised and budgets fully optimised.
Of course, our ability to unlock the benefits of data sharing relies on the public having confidence in the health and care system’s appropriate and effective use of data. If data and information is to be used effectively to support better health and care outcomes, the public have to have trust and confidence that there are strong safeguards in place to protect it from inappropriate use. The establishment of the National Data Guardian as an authoritative and independent voice for the patient and service user on how their data and information is used is a crucial element in that. This short but important piece of legislation will promote challenge and build assurance across the health and social care system, enabling the system to access the data it needs to run safely, effectively and efficiently. A statutory National Data Guardian will enable the postholder to speak with increased authority. A statutory basis increases strength of argument, allowing for guidance to be published as standards and good practice to which relevant organisations must have regard.
Importantly, the National Data Guardian is not a regulator. The role is first and foremost to support organisations and individuals who use health and care data to do so in accordance with the relevant laws and good practice. Placing the role on a statutory footing was a manifesto commitment of the Government, and the Government’s support has been clear throughout the Bill’s progress. The Bill will be significant in maintaining public trust and confidence in the appropriate and effective use of health and care data.
I shall give a short summary of the provisions of the Bill, which consists of only six clauses and will establish the statutory role of the National Data Guardian. The Bill also makes provision for the administrative and financial operation of the National Data Guardian’s office. The Bill will give the National Data Guardian the power to publish formal guidance and provide informal advice, assistance and information relating to the processing of health and adult social care data in England. The Bill imposes a corresponding duty on public bodies within the health and adult social care sector and private organisations that contract with them to deliver health and adult social care services. They must have regard to the National Data Guardian’s formal published guidance.
The Bill requires the National Data Guardian to consult with appropriate persons before publishing the guidance and requires the National Data Guardian to produce an annual report including a set of accounts, details of advice given and guidance published in the previous financial year, and the priorities in the forthcoming year. The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to provide for the commencement of its provisions, and requires him or her to appoint an individual to hold office as the National Data Guardian.
A money resolution to authorise money for the Bill was laid before Parliament on 21 May 2018. The expenditure of £725,000 per annum is necessary for the Office of the National Data Guardian to undertake its statutory function. The cost is based on the current £500,000 per annum provision for the existing non-statutory National Data Guardian office. The overall increase in spend of £225,000 per annum relates predominantly to additional team resources to strengthen the National Data Guardian office’s ability to prepare and disseminate statutory advice and monitor its impact and relevance, amid anticipated increased demand for independent legal advice and assurance, along with a further responsibility for communication and engagement, including delivery of formal guidance, production of an annual report and accounts, and raising the profile of the National Data Guardian’s website.
I will reflect on a few points which have been raised in discussions over the past couple of weeks. With regard to whether the statutory National Data Guardian will have access to the Information Commissioner’s Office, the National Data Guardian already has a formal understanding and close working relationship with the Information Commissioner’s Office. That is covered by a memorandum of understanding. We would expect to see this updated to reflect the statutory footing. The statutory role allows the opportunity to build on the relationships already developed with regulatory bodies, including the Information Commissioner’s Office, the CQC and NHS Improvement, and to support them in their responsibilities around ensuring that appropriate practices are being adopted by regulated organisations.
I draw your Lordships’ attention to the fact that the Act would come into force,
“on such day as the Secretary of State may by regulations appoint”.
Regulations to this effect made under Clause 5 are to be made by statutory instrument. The Bill contains no other regulation-making powers. There is no intention to amend this.
Lastly, the Bill’s provisions extend to private sector providers that contract with public bodies to deliver health and adult social care services. These must have regard to the National Data Guardian’s published guidance. Data held by privately arranged and funded health and adult social care providers is not covered by the Bill. However, private providers of healthcare will have access to NHS patient data in the vast majority of cases—for example, where patients give their consent for their records to be shared—but this alone will not bring them within the scope of the Bill. The NDG’s remit extends to all health and adult social care data but purely private bodies are not required to have regard to published guidance.
Placing the National Data Guardian on a statutory footing is important for many reasons. This is a significant time in the history of health and care and it is critical to maintain and strengthen public and patients’ support. People want to know what their data is being used for, who it is being shared with and why. A statutory National Data Guardian will be key in ensuring that citizens’ confidential information is safeguarded securely and used fairly and lawfully. I thank everyone for their help so far and I hope that we can make swift progress with the Bill. I beg to move.
Lord Patel (CB)
My Lords, I am very pleased to support the Bill. It is a simple Bill, which has been a long time coming. I pay tribute to two friends: Jo Churchill and Dame Fiona Caldicott, both of whom I know extremely well. Dame Fiona Caldicott has been a staunch guardian of the public interest so that patients can have confidence that whenever their data is kept and used, it is secure and used responsibly and transparently. In 1997, after her first review, she established what became known as Caldicott Guardians in every hospital in the land. As somebody who was involved in the use of patient data at that time, I can tell your Lordships that you had to satisfy the Caldicott Guardians—they were no pushover. They were there to make sure that patients’ data was used appropriately and responsibly and that the purpose was clear. It is because of this that all the professional bodies—the royal colleges, the GMC, the researchers and research organisations, and all others—back the Bill.
It is a simple Bill. It is necessary to put on a statutory basis what has been working extremely well on a non-statutory basis. Following the disestablishment of the national governance board, there was no statutory body to be the arbiter and the guardian of patient data. Putting the National Data Guardian on a statutory basis will provide that. As has been laid out clearly and in detail by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, it is there to give guidance and help and to work on behalf of patients and the public so they can have confidence that the data about them or their health is used appropriately and for a clear purpose. This becomes even more important as we go further in using data to develop genomic information to improve healthcare and to develop things such as artificial intelligence for diagnosis. The National Data Guardian will therefore have an extremely important role to play.
I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, said: we must not confuse the Bill with taking over any of the role of the Information Commissioner, or, for that matter, the Data Protection Act. This is completely different from them. It is focused on health and care data—how it is used and who is the guardian of that information in the public interest. I strongly support the Bill and hope that we will not hold it up in any way whatever. It would be a great pity if the Bill failed because of some misunderstanding of what it is all about.
Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)
My Lords, I too very much welcome the Bill and the way that it was introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, with appropriate detail and clarity, and the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Patel. Like them, I agree that it is important to give the authority of a statutory footing to the National Data Guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott.
I remind your Lordships of my interests in respect of my part-ownership and administration of a company called xRapid. Without wanting to go into any kind of long advert for its technology, it demonstrates why I am excited by health technology. This particular technology uses an Apple iPhone attached to a microscope to allow diagnostics, such as of malaria. It works in the same way that a laboratory technician does: it recognises what it sees through a microscope and gives a diagnosis. To be able to do that the computer has to be trained, which is done by it looking at a series of images so that it can learn what the parasites look like. That is health data which has to be collected in order for the machine to be trained. But I see the huge social benefit of that technology—in the end, of that data being used—to provide much cheaper and much more accessible and affordable access to diagnostics around the world.
I have huge excitement around the potential for machine learning and other artificial intelligence to be able to spread some significant health benefits. I want that excitement to build and for others to share it but I am also aware of the worries that people have about the privacy of their data. I share those worries, especially about the inferences that can be drawn from data when it may not have been collected for a specific health purpose, as in this case, but is then mashed with data that has been collected with consent for health-related purposes. Inferences and intelligence are then drawn from what is found and analysed.
I was supportive of the Data Protection Act, as it now is, but at the time of its passing I also pointed out the limitations as I saw them, in that it is a consent-based regime. It is very difficult to give consent about information if I do not know that you have it, because you have inferred it from analysing various sources of data that I might not know about. That is why I have previously talked in this House about the need for us to explore mechanisms such as data trusts and a statutory duty of care on technology companies, similar to the duty of care that they have in the physical world in respect of environmental protection or health and safety. In that way, they can then be held to account in a more general way for how the technology is used for social good.
Those concerns are good reasons for our needing a National Data Guardian in respect of health. I had some initial concerns about how that guardian would relate to the regulators but as set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, in her speech I am satisfied that there would be a reasonable relationship—one whereby the National Data Guardian issues guidance, and the trusts and other health bodies would adhere to that guidance. If they did not, then it might be referred to the regulator.
I also remind the House of my interest as one of the chief officers at Tes Global, a large education business. I guess that my only question—if the Minister is in a position to answer questions when he responds—would be around the remit of the National Data Guardian. At Tes, we hold all sorts of data on teachers’ behaviour but we do not really hold any for children. I understand from my relationship with education the particular sensitivities that we have around the collection of children’s data: how it is held, who it is shared with and what happens when there are data breaches in respect of children. I am aware that there are 25,000 schools in this country collecting data on a systematic basis, many of which are led by people who are struggling to understand their obligations under the Data Protection Act and GDPR. I think that they would welcome guidance from a National Data Guardian, if such a person had a remit that extended to children and vulnerable adults. If the Minister were able to give any thoughts on it, has any consideration been given to extending the role of the National Data Guardian or finding another body that could perform a similar function in respect of children and vulnerable adults’ data as a whole?
I very much welcome the Bill and hope that it proceeds quickly, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said. We should get this on to the statute book quickly so that these protections can be put in place and it becomes part of a range of what has to be ever evolving legislation where we, as policymakers and legislators, are continuously keeping an eye on an ever evolving technological landscape. That will allow us to live in a society which can realise the excitement that I have around health technology and other social technologies, with the confidence of knowing that our rights as individuals in respect of the privacy of our data are being maintained.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, I refer noble Lords to my registered interests, particularly as founder and chair of the 5Rights Foundation. Like the noble Lords who have already spoken, I very much welcome the Bill. Dame Fiona Caldicott’s role is important and if by putting her guidance on a statutory footing we give it more weight, then that can only be a good thing. I want to raise some things that are not covered in the Bill. I have one substantive point about the value of the data that the NHS holds and a couple of questions for the Minister.
The longitudinal data gathered by the NHS since its inception is one of the most valuable health datasets in the world. Within it lie clues to the next generation of drugs and treatments, and entirely new ways of thinking about prevention, treatment and cure. Equally, the gathering of data across health and social care could revolutionise the provision of services. If we knew the impact of meeting, or failing to meet, the social needs in the community on health outcomes, or could accurately predict the social care resources required for certain health conditions, it could help government to provide the right service at the right time to the right people, most probably at less cost.
While using data to improve health and social care outcomes is an exciting prospect, I believe we need to do it in a way that benefits the NHS and the British people. In 2016, the Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust allowed DeepMind, an artificial intelligence company owned by Google, to access 1.6 million patient medical records in a trial of its Streams app, which was an alert, diagnosis and detection system for acute kidney injury. Subsequently, the arrangement was found to have been given on an “inappropriate legal basis” that broke data protection laws and revealed swathes of highly personal information without patient consent. The following year, Taunton and Somerset NHS Trust partnered with DeepMind on the very same app. In spite of a freedom of information battle and a data audit done by Linklaters on the instruction of the ICO, we still do not fully understand the financial or IP benefits of this deal to the NHS. But we do know that, earlier this year, DeepMind stated that while it was currently providing its development resources free to the NHS,
“it would determine how much to charge the NHS … later”.
The costs of healthcare have become distorted with drug companies and private providers demanding eye-watering sums from the NHS. I wonder whether this Bill is an opportunity to start redressing the imbalance because, if the national data guardian Bill ensured that the value of the IP that emerges from our health data was properly recognised, that data could, with the consent of the patient, be shared or sold on a basis that that could revolutionise the financing of our struggling health service in the future.
Without a clear mandate, individual trusts with crippling budget deficits may be tempted to commoditise patient data in exchange for cash injections offered by corporations with far deeper pockets. The breakthroughs and advances that patient data makes possible may well then be sold back to the NHS at inflated prices, creating the risk that they will be out of the reach of the very people upon whose data they were built. To understand the value of the data in the NHS, we need only look at the share price of data-rich companies, even those with no revenue. The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care is particularly well placed to understand the value of what we hold. I would love to see the Government use this Bill to give the National Data Guardian a duty to develop binding and enforceable guidelines for the sale and exchange of health data for research and development. Those guidelines should fully reflect the sensitivity of the data and the singular value of the NHS dataset.
In addition to this point, I would like further details about the powers of the National Data Guardian. Will the Minister say what duty health providers have to comply with the National Data Guardian’s guidance and to demonstrate how they have done so? As noted by the shadow Minister in the other place:
“Without a requirement for organisations that receive advice to provide evidence of their response in a way that can be easily disseminated, there is no way we can be sure that the Data Guardian will be effective”,
since,
“to ‘have regard’ to advice does not always mean that they take action in respect of that advice”.—[Official Report, Commons, Health and Social Care (National Data Guardian) Bill Committee, 6/6/18; col. 7.]
If, as has been explained, the purpose of putting the National Data Guardian’s role on a statutory footing is to give it weight, which we all welcome, surely a requirement to prove that the guidance has been acted upon is essential.
In looking at the information about the Bill, I found it hard to establish how the National Data Guardian will decide what guidance is needed. A positive obligation to provide the NDG with information about current data-sharing arrangements through report or audit would enable her to identify and anticipate potential issues and to address them in her guidance. Perhaps the Minister will explain why this obligation does not form part of the Bill.
I understand that children’s health data is covered by the Bill but not children’s social care data because that is covered by the Children and Social Work Act 2017. This carve-out raises the question of how family social care data will be considered, especially with regard to decisions made about one family member that can be made only in full sight of the family’s circumstances. I am sympathetic to the Government’s concern about conflicting guidelines, but the absence of guidance for children’s social care may well create greater conflict than a judicious overlap. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services, the Local Government Association and medConfidential are just some of the many organisations which have said that without children’s social care data in scope the National Data Guardian role is “a risk”, “perverse”, “not sensible” and “not a data guardian”.
The challenge we have about data in the 21st century is about its flow between one environment and another. Its value, beneficial and malign, lies in the fact that it can be amalgamated to reveal patterns of information and create new intellectual property. For that reason, it is frustrating to see children’s data being treated on a sector-by-sector basis. Has the Minister given any thought to how the partial coverage of children in this Bill fits with the Government’s other activities in this area, including the age-appropriate design code, potential outcomes from the Centre for Data Ethics and Innovation and the long-awaited internet safety strategy? Once again, I am afraid, I must put on the record my deep regret that the Government have deliberately chosen to deprioritise children by removing the UK Council for Child Internet Safety’s child focus, which could have served as a single point of expertise to consider children’s needs across all sectors.
I conclude by acknowledging the kindness of the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, in discussing the scope and purpose of the Bill in the run-up to today’s debate. I hope that I will receive comprehensive answers on all of these points, if not this morning, then certainly before the Bill progresses.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm of Owlpen, for introducing this important little Bill. From these Benches, we support it. Patient data is precious to each and every patient, and it is vital to the success of treatment that it is shared appropriately with those who have care of the patient. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, it is also precious to the NHS as a resource for research into new treatments and for monitoring the effectiveness of existing treatments. As such, it has a value, which raises the ethics of how it is used by the NHS and others. These two aspects of data make it highly desirable that we have a person, backed by an office and adequate resources, who can establish best practice and ensure it happens.
I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, about the importance of knowing that we have proper and accurate data collection to enable us to exploit the enormous potential of artificial intelligence. When I left university more than 50 years ago, I worked at the Christie Hospital reading cervical smears. My job is now done much faster and probably more accurately by a computer, and there are many other opportunities to speed up diagnosis and make it more accurate. That is one of the many reasons why this Bill is needed.
The measures that have been taken over the last few years, since the debacle of care.data, to protect patients’ data and privacy have been very helpful, and I hope this latest step will go a long way to countering the lack of trust in some quarters which followed the data breaches of the past. Fundamentally, to have confidence in the system, patients should be able to know how data about them is used. That is necessary if the NDG is to be meaningful.
Currently, many patients who want to see how data about them is used go to theysolditanyway.com. While it has a very negative title, it is not an official NHS site. The launch of the new NHS app would be a great opportunity for the NHS to make full and accurate information available to every patient. Patients understand how important it is that their data should be shared appropriately between health and care workers who are providing services to them. Indeed, it is highly desirable that all who have care of patients have relevant information on which to act. We have all heard of cases where this has not happened. I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that, with the safeguards that will be in place when this Bill becomes an Act, the quality, capacity and interoperability of IT provision in the NHS and care systems will be up to the job.
However, patients are perhaps less aware of the value of anonymised data to researchers. Without access to it, medical research would be put back a long way. The first figures from the national data opt-out designed by the National Data Guardian are now available. They show that while hundreds of people made a consent choice each month using the online service, thousands of people did it at their GP. The latter option has now been taken away by Department of Health and Social Care. Is this the Government’s idea of a successful digital service? Is it not vital to have an effective public information scheme so that patients understand the issues surrounding their consent, what is being done with their data and how to make their choice? The figures suggest that that has not been done so far, but it is early days.
I hope that when the Bill becomes law the Government will be making an effort to explain to patients how their information is being protected and why they can now have confidence that when they allow their data to be used it will be done in an efficient and ethical manner in the interests of all patients now and in future.
Turning to specifics, I think it is welcome that the NGD may not only issue statutory guidance but provide help and information to assist health and care organisations not just to comply but to achieve excellence in the way they handle patients’ data and any constraints on their use of that data in generating income. Clause 4 provides that the Bill extends to England and Wales only. However, the Bill’s Explanatory Notes state that Clause 1, which provides for the NDG to publish guidance and give advice, information and assistance, applies only in relation to the processing of health and adult social care data in England. Given that health is devolved in Wales, can the Minister please explain this for the record as it has been explained to me behind the scenes?
I turn to the issue of cost. The Explanatory Notes state that the Bill may result in some,
“implementation costs for the bodies and individuals required to have regard to the Data Guardian’s published guidance, in that they will need to review and assess the relevance of the guidance”.
Given that NHS trusts, GPs, local authorities in respect of adult social care and so on are all under financial stress, what is being done to provide for these costs? It is not just a matter of assessing the relevance of the guidance, as the notes say; there may be a need to put in place new systems for ensuring that they are compliant with the guidance, and that also has a cost.
In Committee in another place, Chris Bryant MP made the point that MPs often have confidential information about constituents’ health given to them willingly by the patient when asking for help or making a complaint about their treatment, and that sometimes applies to Peers too. He asked whether the NDG would be able to advise MPs about the handling of this data even though they are not covered by the Bill. The answer from the Minister was not very helpful: she said she hoped health organisations would be open and helpful to their MPs about these issues. That is all very well, but it did not give Mr Bryant the assurance that he was seeking about help and guidance for Members, so can the Minister do so now?
Having asked these various questions, I assure the Minister that we on these Benches are very supportive of this mainly uncontroversial Bill.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Chisholm, for bringing the Bill before us today. I join her and others in paying tribute to Dame Fiona Caldicott. The Bill has the support of these Benches.
The purpose of the Bill, as noble Lords have said, is to establish a statutory footing for the National Data Guardian for Health and Social Care. This role is responsible for providing advice and guidance to all the relevant parties regarding the processing of health and adult social care data in England. I agree with other noble Lords that the NDG is vital in helping to ensure that confidential health and care data is used and shared appropriately, upholding and protecting high standards for medical confidentiality. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, said, it is very important that the organisation that is already providing this crucial function has wended its way into this position. We welcome the fact that that is to be recognised in statute.
As noble Lords know, the Information Commissioner’s Office is the regulator for compliance with the general data protection regulation and the Data Protection Act, but there is no equivalent national regulator for the confidentiality of personal healthcare data—information provided by a patient to a healthcare professional for the purposes of receiving care or treatment—despite significant public interest in maintaining a confidential healthcare service. We on these Benches support the creation of a statutory basis for the National Data Guardian’s role, given the hugely important role that it plays in this area. I thank noble Lords and the National Data Guardian for the consultation and discussions that all stakeholders have been able to take part in in preparation for the Bill. We have appreciated that.
That is in sharp contrast to the conduct regarding the Mental Capacity Bill. If I might swerve slightly for a moment, I was shocked to learn that the Minister and his colleagues have rejected a freedom of information request about the consultation that they carried out before the Mental Capacity Bill was introduced to the House, which was also in sharp contrast to the level of transparency and consultation by the Law Commission when it looked at mental capacity. I feel I need to say to the Minister that he really could learn a few things about how to manage complex policy issues from the National Data Guardian and indeed the Law Commission.
I return to the Bill. The circuitous route to get here, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Patel, has actually been beneficial to where we have ended up and what we have before us. I welcome the fact that the Bill includes the social care data and the importance of protecting patients’ data wherever they find themselves in the health and social care system. I echo and agree with my noble friend Lord Knight’s remarks and questions, and I share his excitement about the use of data and the benefits that it can bring to patients and their families.
I have received a briefing from the National AIDS Trust. I do not wish to delay the Bill but I think this briefing raises some important points about it. The National AIDS Trust agrees with the rest of us in strongly welcoming and supporting the Bill. Given that HIV stigma and discrimination are still prevalent in society, people living with HIV need to be assured that appropriate protections around confidentiality are in place when they access health and social care services. Indeed, the NDG herself has proved to be an invaluable source of expertise and advice when it comes to the health and social care system maintaining that essential balance between confidentiality and communication for this group.
The concern that the trust wants me to raise on its behalf is that in Clause 1 the Bill provides for a legal duty on relevant public bodies to have regard to guidance published by the NDG,
“about the processing of adult health and social care data in England”.
In Clause 2, “Interpretation”, “health and social care data” is defined. The NAT’s concern is that this definition of health and social care data could be interpreted to exclude non-clinical, demographic data that relates to an individual—for example, home address and family details—from the scope of the NDG’s guidance. Individuals do not distinguish between the kinds of information that they provide to health and social care services and, of course, expect all their information to be treated confidentially. Polling undertaken by NHS Digital recently found that the general public consider it as important that the NHS keeps their address confidential as their clinical information. I would be grateful if the Minister could give a clear assurance that the wording of the Bill, particularly at Clause 2(6), includes within the scope of health and social care data, and thus of the National Data Guardian’s guidance, all data, including non-clinical data, held on individuals by health and social care bodies.
The National AIDS Trust talked about asking to have the Bill amended. That is almost certainly not necessary but I would like the assurance that it seeks. I would also like to be assured that the definition, and the clarity that is required in regulation, is there. This is one of those Bills where the regulations are going to be very important. I hope the Minister will be able to assure the House that, when the regulations are drafted, a proper consultation, including with Members here who have expressed an interest, takes place.
Finally, I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, about the value of NHS data. It is of value to patients and families, but it is also hugely valuable to organisations that want to exploit it and, if they do so, that should be for the benefit of the NHS, not for private benefit. I suspect that the Bill is not the place to solve that problem, but the noble Baroness was absolutely right to put that issue on the record. We had a very good debate a few weeks ago about precisely this matter, which a group of us wants to discuss with the Government on a cross-party basis: how we ensure that the nation as a whole benefits from the fantastic NHS database that we have in this country because our NHS has existed for so long. It should benefit not only us but the whole world. I also echo the noble Baroness’s question about PALS and children.
Noble Lords on these Benches absolutely support the Bill. We welcome it, we want it to speed through the House, and we look forward to the discussions that we probably need between now and its final stages.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O'Shaughnessy) (Con)
My Lords, it has been with great interest and pleasure that I have listened to the discussion on this important Bill, introduced by my noble friend Lady Chisholm, and I speak on behalf of the Government in support of it here today. I join other noble Lords in congratulating my honourable friend Jo Churchill on her efforts in introducing the original Private Member’s Bill and on being a mainstay in keeping attention on it after it fell at the last election; my honourable friend Peter Bone, who has worked closely with Jo and many others in the other place to get the Bill to this point; and my noble friend Lady Chisholm on introducing it so lucidly and bringing to life the importance of its provisions.
I also join other noble Lords in recognising the enormous contribution that Dame Fiona Caldicott has made to the area of data safety and security in the health and care service. As the noble Lord, Lord Patel, pointed out, over many years she has had a profoundly positive impact in this area. The Bill’s purpose, and in some ways its genesis, rests on her work and desire to put the issue even more front and centre than it is today. I thank her profoundly for that.
At the heart of our discussion today is maintaining and strengthening the public’s trust in the appropriate and effective use of health and social care data. The interests of patients and the public are at the heart of this Bill and the reason why it is such an important piece of legislation. As we reflect on it, I think it is important to bear in mind two truths. The first is that the NHS remains the most trusted institution in the country for holding and using data. That was confirmed by recent research by KPMG. The second is that in England, we have a world-class, comprehensive health system offering a unique opportunity to bring together an unrivalled, diverse, longitudinal dataset on the health and care of more than 55 million people. Let me be clear: we need to protect the first truth, otherwise we will not realise the extraordinary benefits provided by the latter. Giving the NDG a statutory footing is an important part of realising the same, because we will underpin the trust we need to deliver the healthcare transformation that we all want to achieve.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, pointed out, the potential gains in front of us from the digital revolution are enormous: improving outcomes for patients, making the health system safer and more efficient, and improving research so that patients benefit more quickly from medical breakthroughs. To secure these benefits, we need to appreciate and act on people’s concerns about how their data is used, who it is shared with and whether that is lawful. People want to understand, and have more control over, how their data is collected and used, and to see the benefits being realised for themselves, other patients and the health system more widely.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, makes an excellent point about the value of data and points out some of the concerning behaviour that we have seen in recent history. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, that the Bill is not the right place to deal with those issues, but there is a concerted effort—heavily influenced by the NDG—going into what is the proper way to value the NHS data asset and then realise that value in a fair way that maintains the public’s confidence. We had a fantastic debate instigated by the noble Lord, Lord Freyberg, about six weeks ago on that topic. In that time, we have published a new code of conduct on data driven technologies, and there will be much more to come. I look forward to working with the noble Baroness on developing that.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, reminded us, the ghost of care.data is always present at this feast. Experience tells us that public confidence in the Government’s ability to hold, share and use data cannot be taken for granted. If data and information are to be used effectively and their great potential unlocked, we need to strengthen the public’s confidence in the safeguards in place to protect it from inappropriate use. Of course, this is a time of great technological change, and new uses of data are transforming the type of care that is possible to deliver. There are exciting government initiatives to make the best of this opportunity: local health and care records, global digital exemplars and digital innovation hubs. Meanwhile, academics, clinicians and life sciences companies of the kind mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, are developing pioneering digital therapies and algorithms that will utterly transform healthcare in the years ahead.
Last week, the Government published the Secretary of State’s new vision and a standards document on the future of healthcare, describing a more tech-driven NHS so that the health and care system can make the best use of technology to support preventive, predictive and personalised care.
The potential is here today, but to fully enjoy its fruits, we need to put in place a bedrock of reassurance. That means improving cybersecurity, as well as clear rules around privacy and data sharing. The National Data Guardian is an essential stratum in this bedrock. It is one safeguard that we already have in place to ensure that the interests of the patient are front and centre of all our deliberations about the best way for the NHS and the UK economy to make the most of those innovations.
Let me be clear, if I have not been already, that the Government strongly support the Bill. As my noble friend Lady Chisholm pointed out, it was a manifesto commitment of my party at the election. By supporting the Bill and putting the NDG on a statutory footing, we are playing our role in ensuring that it has the powers needed to make an even more positive contribution in future, allowing the office to effectively advise and challenge the healthcare system. As such, it represents a significant moment in our efforts to maintain and strengthen the public’s trust in the proper use of health and care data.
The Government want the Bill to succeed. I am confident that it will achieve the aims that my noble friend Lady Chisholm set out. The NDG will, as it has to date, work in concert with the Information Commissioner. There has consistently been cross-party support for the Bill, which I welcome in our debate today, as well as support from professional organisations within the health and care sector, as the noble Lord, Lord Patel, reminded us. I hope that it will make swift progress through its remaining stages.
Let me just deal with some of the questions raised today and, I hope, provide the reassurance that noble Lords are looking for. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, asked about demographic data. I can confirm to her that where issues surrounding demographic data have the potential to impact on or form part of the processing of health and adult social care data, this would fall within the NDG’s statutory remit and it would be able to publish formal statutory guidance on the topic, with organisations having a corresponding legal duty to have regard to that guidance. I hope that that provides the reassurance that she was looking for.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, and the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked about children’s social care data. Children’s health data is of course covered in the remit. The reason that their social care data is not is that it has its own safeguards and protections which operate within a different legal framework and is governed by its own statutory guidance. However, I can tell noble Lords that my department and the Department for Education have reached a sensible interpretation of the Bill which would not preclude the National Data Guardian engaging constructively with the DfE on adult social care data and its interaction with or effect on children’s social care data. There has been an exchange of letters between the departments to formalise this agreement. I am happy to provide more reassurance on that front, but what I can say now is that this relationship is already being developed and we are finding a sensible way to interpret the powers within existing regulatory frameworks to make sure that there is a much more joined-up system. I should also mention that the Department of Health and Social Care is working closely with the Home Office on its online harms White Paper so, again, we are making sure that there is a cross-government approach to dealing with this issue.
I will just quickly deal with some of the other issues that have been raised. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, asked about the duty of health providers. They have a duty to have regard to this statutory guidance, but this is of course the sort of thing that is inspected by the CQC and NHSI. It is worth pointing out that when the National Data Guardian provided her feedback on the WannaCry attack, it directly led to 10 data standards that are now embedded in the NHS contracts, so that gives you a sense of the kind of response that the system has to the high-quality advice that comes from the National Data Guardian when there are problems. I confirm to the noble Baroness that it will be up to the National Data Guardian to decide on her priorities.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked about the national data opt-out. I tell her that we ran an extensive public campaign in May, which has continued from then. It is now much easier to opt out oneself rather than, as she pointed out, having to go through GPs as in the past, which not all GPs were wild about, it has to be said. Nevertheless, the service is in a public beta at the moment, so we are honing and improving it and are always keen to have feedback. One thing that I found reassuring about the introduction of the new single data opt-out is that we have seen people who have previously opted out who are now opting back in. I find that rather encouraging; it is quite a good metric of whether we are doing the right thing. I therefore think that there is some cause for encouragement but I of course take the noble Baroness’s advice seriously.
In terms of how this relates to Wales, it will be up to the Welsh Government to implement with the same statutory force that the NDG will have in England, because health and care are devolved issues. That is something that the noble Baroness may be keen to impress upon the Welsh Government.
On the costs of implementation, all authorities have a responsibility to take standards into account—that is part of their normal, everyday life—but I should point out that there are major investments going into the IT space in health and care. For example, a big investment, which was centrally funded, has gone into replacing unsupported IT systems following the WannaCry attack. So there is central funding support for some of these changes.
Helpful advice and guidance is something that I would need to speak to Dame Fiona about personally. I am sure that she would be willing to provide it; it is certainly within her ability to do so and she is not precluded from that.
To conclude, I hope that I have been able to reassure all noble Lords that the Government take seriously and are dealing with the points that they have raised. This Bill is an essential building block in the foundation of trust that we need to have in this country in order to make sure that the public are with us on this extraordinary technological journey that we are on at the moment, which will transform the way that we deliver health and care and will deliver radically better health outcomes for patients. That is something that I am sure we all want to see. I close by once again thanking my noble friend Lady Chisholm for introducing this Bill. I look forward to its swift passage through this House.
Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions today and support for this Bill. I must say, my life this morning has been made much easier, because my noble friend the Minister has answered all the questions raised, which I thought I was going to have to do. I feel that I have got off rather lightly, and he has done it so much better than I could have.
The NDG Bill is significant at a time when we must ensure that we maintain and strengthen public/patient support on the use of data for health and social care. As your Lordships know, it is in the greater use of technology and the integration of health and social care that the future of healthcare lies. I look forward to continuing dialogue with your Lordships as the Bill progresses. I ask the House to give the Bill a Second Reading and beg to move.
Duchy of Cornwall Bill [HL]
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest: I live with my wife in the Isles of Scilly; she has lived there for over 40 years. I have been following royal transport costs for many years and make no secret of my opinion that some of the Royal Family’s transport costs have been justified and are seen to be frugal, but some are excessive, including a charter flight to Saudi Arabia for a funeral.
The point of the Duchy of Cornwall is clearly to provide an income for the heir to the throne. We can dispute how much is needed and whether the confused and non-transparent operation of the Duchy is justified to achieve this. As the Duchy has been telling us for many years, it is a private estate and private estates often provide income for their owners in a transparent and non-discriminatory manner. I note that this Bill requires the consent of both the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall. I question why the Duke of Cornwall: is there not a conflict of interest? I do not think we will get that far, but it is an interesting question to debate.
I think this is the fourth time I have put down this or a similar Bill. This is simpler than previous ones and seeks to concentrate on what I think are the most important issues to be addressed. I argue that because the Duchy now firmly says that it is in the private sector, it should be treated as such. I am also very grateful to Dr John Kirkhope, an eminent scholar and notary public who has spent years examining the Duchy issues and helped with the Bill and what I am going to say.
The trouble is, the Duchy sometimes chooses to be treated as a private estate and sometimes as a Crown body, which receives privileges and is largely unaccountable and silent on many issues. It is wrong that the Duchy should be able to choose its own status based on what is apparently the most financially advantageous option. It should be one or the other—and it has chosen the private option. My Bill is designed to put that option into effect, making it a private estate with no special privileges. I emphasise that the Bill is not about the Duke of Cornwall per se, apart from the first clause. I should also tell the House that a year or two ago, when I previously put forward a Bill, I had a meeting with Duchy officials. We went through all the clauses in that Bill, which was very similar to the Bill today, and, at the end, I asked if they agreed with what I had said and they replied “Yes, largely”. Then when I asked if they would say so in public they said, “No”. I wrote to them again before today asking if they would like to discuss this Bill and I did not get a reply. So there we are. We ought to compare what the Duchy of Cornwall does with what the Duchy of Lancaster and the Crown estates do, which are much more transparent and open.
Clause 1 is on the succession to the title “Duke of Cornwall”. We have debated this in the past and I could go on about it for a long time. The key thing is that it should be open to women as well as men; I am not quite sure whether they would be called the Duchess of Cornwall, but it does not matter that much. The point is that they should have the same privileges and rights as the Duke of Cornwall. After all, the Duke of Lancaster is always the sovereign, regardless of gender, so why should that not apply to the Duke of Cornwall? We can debate that, and I am sure that when the Minister replies he will go back to the royal charter of 1842, although it probably goes back to long before that. But I will not get into that now, because there are many important things that I need to put to the House.
Probably the most important issue is Crown immunity, which is addressed in Clause 2. To illustrate the lack of transparency, a friend of mine who has been trying to buy his house in the Isles of Scilly under the right to buy, and other colleagues, put in 64 freedom of information requests about the Duchy and the Crown immunity issue. I will give only one example. In August 2011, they asked the Ministry of Justice:
“Please provide any papers which explain the basis on which the Duchy of Cornwall enjoys Crown Immunity”.
At least the ministry answered it, but its answer was: “We do not hold any material which you request”. So how can they do it?
There are other examples in various Acts of Parliament which need to be considered. One is the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009. It states that the provisions of the relevant part of the Act “bind the Crown”, which includes the Duchy of Cornwall, and that:
“No contravention by the Crown of any provision of this Part is to make the Crown criminally liable”.
The Data Protection Act gives the same information, and Section 14 of the Nuclear Explosions (Prohibition and Inspections) Act 1998, the Transport Act 2000, the Licensing Act 2003, the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004—I have nearly finished—and the Planning Act 2008 all contain the same exemptions.
Most people would find it odd that if the Duchy of Cornwall caused a nuclear explosion—which is highly unlikely—it would not be subject to criminal sanctions. Surely, it is a pretty remarkable state of affairs that an estate that asserts it is private is given exemptions from criminal sanctions under numerous Acts of Parliament, should it act in breach. I can go on about Crown immunity but I will not, because I would like to move on to tax.
We have debated in your Lordships’ House many times the issue of tax and the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duchy pays tax on a voluntary basis, but no other estate that I know of in this country does so. I do not know how many other noble Lords pay tax voluntarily—we would probably all like to—but the fact remains that the Duchy should be assessed and treated in the same way as any other estate or private individual.
Clause 4 addresses exemptions under the Leasehold Reform Act. As noble Lords will know, there is a consultation out on this at the moment. I have a friend who has been trying for many years to buy a property in St Mary’s on the Isles of Scilly, and he has completely failed. He has responded to the consultation and I hope he will be successful. This goes back to the issue that the Duchy of Cornwall is not bound by the Leasehold Reform Act because it has an exemption. You can understand the need for an exemption for London’s Royal Parks and other national parks and buildings, but some not very special houses on the Isles of Scilly—I am sure my friend would agree with that assessment—have this exemption and my friend is not allowed to buy his house. Whatever we think of the Leasehold Reform Act, the fact remains that everybody should be treated the same, but in this case they are not.
I think the Duchy will like Clause 5, as it would enable it to purchase land in the UK outside England. Why is there a restriction? I am told that it is a hangover from Victorian times, because of very different land and inheritance laws in Scotland at the time. Apparently, Balmoral was purchased in the name of Prince Albert because, despite the fact that Victoria was Queen, as a female she could not own land in Scotland. I am sure that many noble Lords will know more about this than I do, but that is what I am told. After the death of Prince Albert, the Crown Private Estates Act 1873 was passed to rectify the situation.
Clause 6, on the Stannaries Act, is a bit of a Cornish situation; not many people know about Cornwall’s stannaries. It is time to remove this Act because under it, the Duchy can appoint anyone to be a Duchy solicitor or barrister; they do not have to be legally qualified. That seems unnecessary. The Law Commission recommended that this provision be repealed, and I am told that the Crown lawyers, Farrer & Co, objected. They would, wouldn’t they? They would probably lose revenue if the cases ever came forward. That is another classic conflict of interest, but it is time to move that one on. The same applies to the Solicitors Act 1974.
The issue of the Treasury Solicitor is a serious one. The Duchy is a private estate. Which other private estate gets free legal advice of unlimited quantity—and, presumably, quite good quality—from the Government’s lawyers? I know several people who have had disputes with the Duchy. There was a case concerning the Helford river, which I think we have discussed before. A friend of mine won his case against the Duchy, probably because the Duchy’s representative said, “We believe we are above the law”, or something like that; but of course, when the Treasury Solicitor got involved he lost on appeal, which is no great surprise.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My noble friend referred earlier to the tax position of the Duchy of Cornwall and the fact that it pays tax on a voluntary basis. My understanding is that the revenue surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall has increased by 50% in the last seven years and that its property asset base has increased from £630 million in 2011 to £940 million in 2018, which is a huge increase. Does my noble friend have the figures for what the increase in the voluntary tax paid by the Duchy of Cornwall has been in that seven years? I cannot find them. Has there been a 50% increase in the tax paid by the Duchy of Cornwall to the Treasury over that period? If my noble friend does not have the figures, it may be that the Minister, who is in full command of all the figures to do with the Duchy of Cornwall, could tell us.
Lord Berkeley
I am most grateful to my noble friend for that question. He will not be surprised that I do not have the answer to it. Of course, we are not talking only about income tax—it is about capital gains tax and everything else as well. We can do an FoI on it, but I suspect that it will take a long time, and that is part of the lack of transparency. I very much doubt that similar estates are subject to the same exemptions, so it is a very good question.
I think it is time that the apparent right to Crown immunity for this private estate, with the privileges that it seems to enjoy without any clear basis, came to an end, and my noble friend’s question is very germane to that. The Duchy asserts, as it is entitled to do, that it is a private estate, yet to avoid a suite of laws and because it would not be seemly for the Duchy to be seen in court, it has been granted taxation privileges and property rights and—a procedure that continues today, I think to the detriment of other taxpayers and also to some of the residents—has no parliamentary approval or judicial oversight. It is also free from criminal sanctions should it break the law—something that I think is just crazy.
Let us be quite clear: this is not the Duke but the Duchy of Cornwall. The Duke of Cornwall is completely different. Various Acts of Parliament relating to tax and many other matters in relation to this private estate have been “suspended”, as it has been called. I recall that the last time I managed to question the Chief Whip, he kindly said—I think it was before the Third Reading of a Bill—that the Queen and the Duke of Cornwall had kindly put their interests at the disposal of Parliament. When I asked why, it took about six weeks to get an answer. That was not the Chief Whip’s fault; the answer probably came from the palace, but it was completely meaningless. Therefore, we really need to bring all this into the 20th century and put the situation on to a clear and transparent footing.
Noble Lords ask me: what next? That is a fair question because I am sure that this Bill will not find its way on to the statute book in this Parliament. However, the Duke of Cornwall could decide to do much of what it seeks to do on a voluntary basis. I hope that he will read today’s debate and perhaps consider what he and his successors can do in the short term to put this matter on to a more transparent footing. I beg to move.
Lord Wakeham (Con)
My Lords, first, I congratulate the noble Lord on his persistence. He has obviously done a lot of work and, as he said, this is the fourth time he has produced a Bill, although I think it is only the second time that any of them have been debated. That, in itself, constitutes the greatest measure of congratulations that I could give him on this Bill.
The Bill raises many important issues and, as the noble Lord realises, introduces changes that would dramatically alter the role of the Prince of Wales and the Duchy of Cornwall. At this stage, I certainly do not want to debate the substance of his Bill. I oppose quite a lot of it but I agree that some of the issues in it could well be, and probably will be, considered in the years to come.
What interests me is why the noble Lord thinks that a Private Member’s Bill is the way to deal with these issues, although in his closing remarks he rather implied that he did not think it was. In the interchange with his noble friend, they seemed not to be talking about the same thing—one was talking about assets and the other about income—and that indicates that this is a very much more difficult subject than can, in my view, be dealt with in a Private Member’s Bill.
I confess that I have some form on this matter. In the early 1980s I was one of the people involved in trying to negotiate a Bill which became the Duchy of Cornwall Management Act. Its purpose was to modernise the financial arrangements of the Duchy of Cornwall and how it made investments. The existing arrangements were very restrictive and came under a Duchy of Cornwall Act passed in the middle of the 19th century, which I am told was considerably influenced by Prince Albert. I suspect that Prince Albert and the noble Lord might have had quite a lot in common on some of the Duchy’s financial arrangements. As I am totally opposed to what the noble Lord is doing, I am trying to be as nice as I can be to him in my remarks. It is interesting to note that in the course of that research it was made quite clear to us that the Duchy of Cornwall was always far better run when there was a Prince of Wales of the right age to take a proper interest in the estate, and for hundreds of years that has been the position.
Faced with having to decide how to deal with the Duchy of Cornwall’s finances, we felt that the first thing we should do was consult. I spoke to the then Labour Chief Whip, the great Michael Cocks, who told me that he wanted a meeting with Prince Charles’s private secretary, Edward Adeane. We arranged a meeting, at which I provided the drinks and the charming Edward Adeane produced a paper. Michael read it very carefully and then looked up and said, “Who wrote this unstructured drivel?”. Actually, the word he used was rather stronger than that but I was advised that parliamentarily I should not say it. The Labour Chief Whip was not opposed to what we were trying to do, and in fact he eventually agreed to it. He was trying to say that it was not possible for one party to change the rules that govern our monarchy and the Duchy and so on. In our society, it could be done only through all-party agreement. He told me in no uncertain terms that the Bill we wanted to bring in did not stand a chance unless I had got the Opposition to agree that it was a sensible thing to do. We worked at it and did our best. It was not difficult to reach a compromise, as the Labour Chief Whip was not really opposed to what we were trying to do, and we got the Bill through the House of Commons in spite of the republican remarks of the great Willie Hamilton, whom some people will remember.
The lesson is quite clear: if you want to make changes to our monarchy and the way that the Duchy of Cornwall is run, it has to be done with all-party support. That means consultation with all the parties before bringing in a Bill, as well as consultation with the Commonwealth, the Churches and many others. I am not unsympathetic to some of the things that the noble Lord wants and I suspect that they will happen in the next 20 or so years, but my view is that it is not sustainable to bring about those changes through a Private Member’s Bill.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, because of the great respect and loyalty that we have for Her Majesty the Queen and the Prince of Wales, we pay little attention to the royal finances and royal income, but I think it is time that we started to do so because the situation is very unsatisfactory and is becoming more so. I wish to make a few observations on my noble friend’s Bill, which, although it clearly will not pass, performs a great public service in bringing the issue of the Duchy of Cornwall and the wider royal finances to the attention of the House and giving us the opportunity to debate them.
The first point to make is that the position of both the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster is highly anomalous. The deal done in 1760, when George III came to the Throne, was that the Crown would surrender the Crown Estate, from which of course prior to that the monarchy had enjoyed the full income, in return for a settlement with Parliament on the royal finances. That situation continued until 2011 and the passing of the Sovereign Grant Act, to which I shall return in a moment, as it is crucial to understanding what has gone wrong with the royal finances in the last seven years. However, an equivalent deal was not done in respect of the Duchy of Cornwall and the Duchy of Lancaster, which clearly should have happened. There is no reason why a set of historical estates, which just happen to be a function of long history, should rest in the Crown, totally unrelated to the income requirements of the monarchy, and of course the heir to the Throne is part of the monarchy.
My noble friend referred to a lack of transparency. I agree that that is an issue, but a big issue also is the fact that there seems to be no relationship whatever between the income enjoyed by the Duke of Cornwall and the requirements of the office of the Duke of Cornwall for the income.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, said that I was confusing capital and revenue. I was not. My analysis of the accounts of the Duchy of Cornwall found that both the capital and the revenue have increased substantially in recent years. The figures I gave in my intervention are striking. The capital base of the Duchy of Cornwall has increased from £630 million to £940 million in just the last seven years, and the revenue enjoyed by the Duke of Cornwall has increased by a similar proportion. My questions for the Minister are these. First, how does he justify this? Secondly, what contribution is being made in voluntary tax—and in my view it should not be voluntary; I see no reason at all why the Duchy of Cornwall should pay tax on a different basis from any other estate in the country—and what has happened to that tax revenue?
The other substantial income of the monarchy is the sovereign grant, which used to be called the Civil List. That situation appears to have become seriously out of sorts in the last seven years. In 2011, a peculiar deal was done between George Osborne, who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the Keeper of the Privy Purse to end the previous system of the Civil List, which as I said went back to the 18th century, and to replace it instead with a formula whereby the monarchy would be funded by 15% of the net revenues from the Crown Estate. There was no basis for this formula, because of course the Crown Estate was no longer the Crown Estate in anything other than name—it is part of the ordinary income of the Treasury. It was done for effect more than anything, I think, to try to establish some connection and to put the royal finances substantially beyond the process of annual negotiation with the Treasury and with Parliament. These was no other basis at all for doing it. Indeed, when the Sovereign Grant Bill was debated in your Lordships’ House on 3 October 2011, the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, who is deeply familiar with the royal finances, said that,
“the link with the Crown Estate … is pretty artificial as there is no relationship between the net income of the Crown Estate and the funding of the monarchy, and there has not been since 1760, when the hereditary revenues of the Crown Estate were first surrendered”.—[Official Report, 3/10/11; cols. 966-67.]
Leaving aside the formula, it is its impact that ought to be of concern to the House. When setting out the formula in 2011, George Osborne said that the effect would be to keep the income of the monarchy roughly stable. On 14 July 2011, he said in the House of Commons that,
“the important thing, is that the amount of money going from the public purse to the royal family will be broadly the same … We can have a debate about the mechanism”—
that is, the new sovereign grant mechanism—
“but the effect will be pretty much to continue through this Parliament with the sums that they were getting during the last one”.—[Official Report, Commons, 14/7/11; cols. 541-42.]
He went on to say that, because of efficiencies, there would be a 9% net reduction over the course of the last Parliament. That did not happen. On the contrary, the reverse happened: the baseline income that the Royal Family received in respect of the Civil List, which was £30 million in 2011, went up to £36 million in 2013, £39 million in 2014, £40 million in 2015, £42.8 million in 2016, and last year it was £76 million. The £42.8 million figure was a 38% increase in a settlement that was presented to Parliament as a steady-state settlement in a period which, I need hardly remind the House, was one of great austerity in the funding of other parts of the public service.
Far from improving, the situation got worse last year, because of the suddenly announced decision—which was not debated in your Lordships’ House at all—whereby the formula for the allocation of the Crown Estate to the funding of the monarchy was, overnight, increased from 15% to 25% to accommodate the refurbishment costs of Buckingham Palace. I could make a whole speech on the cost estimates and the refurbishment of Buckingham Palace, which have been subject to no parliamentary oversight whatever. The initial projection made to Parliament in a Select Committee appearance by the Keeper of the Privy Purse was that the refurbishment would cost about £150 million. The last figure on which the calculation of the increase from 15% to 25% took place was £368 million—a more than doubling in the cost. We think that the renewal and refurbishment—or whatever it is called—of the Palace of Westminster is out of control, but proportionately, what is going on in Buckingham Palace is far worse. But because we do not debate these issues and there is no relevant parliamentary committee or any oversight process whatever in respect of the royal finances, it is entirely shielded from public view.
The 25% figure is entirely arbitrary—it looks to me as if it was done on the back of an envelope, because it is a round figure. That 25% has already taken the allocation from the Crown Estate to the Royal Family from £30 million in 2011 to £76 million in 2018. The projection is that it could go up by £10 million, £20 million or £30 million in the next five to 10 years. It depends entirely on what happens to London property prices, which is where the bulk of the Crown Estate is. Although Brexit is having some effect on London property prices, noble Lords will be aware that they are pretty resilient.
The arrangement that was made in 2011 has become a one-way ratchet for a significant and extra-parliamentary increase in the revenues of the Crown. As if that is not enough, the arrangement under which this formula is calculated provides that there can be no diminution in the income going to the Crown. If that happens, under the Sovereign Grant Act the Exchequer will simply make up the difference. It provides also that the formula that set the 15% and then revised it to 25% is set by a committee of commissioners of the Crown: the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Keeper of the Privy Purse. They are three very worthy people, and I admire them all, but no one can pretend that this is an open and accountable process subject to parliamentary control.
The Minister is always immensely well briefed when he appears before the House, and I hope he will be able to comment on what I have said, and provide us with the justification for the 15%, the 25% and what is happening to the tax paid in respect of the Duke of Cornwall.
My final comment is simply to quote the noble Lord, Lord Luce, who enjoys great confidence in the House as a former Lord Chamberlain, and who has performed great service to the state while in government and to the Royal Family. When the Sovereign Grant Bill was presented to the House on 3 October 2011, he said that,
“the monarchy must set an example of restraint and prudence in expenditure, especially in tough times”.—[Official Report, 3/10/11; col. 971.]
I completely agree. However, the exact reverse has happened and the situation is very unsatisfactory.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for introducing the Bill and for the comprehensive way in which he opened the debate. We welcome the Bill. As the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, and the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, suggested, I do not suppose that the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, expects his Bill to sail on to the statute book, but that does not stop us discussing its principles in a Second Reading debate on a Private Member’s Bill.
I handled for my party the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, which provided principally that succession to the Crown should not depend on gender, as well as removing the unjustified and discriminatory disqualification from the succession by marriage to a Roman Catholic, a disqualification that dated from the late 17th century and the conflict about the departure from the Throne of James II and the accession of William and Mary. The Succession to the Crown Act was passed by the legislatures of all the Queen’s realms in a complicated exercise of diplomatic co-ordination when the Duchess of Cambridge was expecting a child. It was passed in time for the newborn, whichever gender it happened to be, to take a confirmed place in the line of succession and not be liable to future demotion if the child was a girl. As it happened, he was a boy, and Prince George duly became third in line to the Throne, but the Act has had the effect that Princess Charlotte comes next, notwithstanding the birth of a younger brother, and that is as it should be.
Clause 1 of the Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, replicates that Act in its removal of gender preference for the title of the Duke of Cornwall. The present rule, embodied in the 1377 charter, is an arbitrary and discriminatory preference, which is a hangover from the 14th century, and it is high time for its removal.
One might say the same about the rest of the hereditary peerage—that daughters should inherit on the same footing as sons—and that the present arrangements in most letters patent are also discriminatory and quite unacceptable in a contemporary context. The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, certainly takes that view and introduced a Bill to reform the system in the 2012-13 Session, although the Bill never proceeded. I, and no doubt many others, can see why the Government may not see this kind of reform as meriting a high place on their legislative agenda, because it affects only a limited number of families and usually highly privileged ones at that. But the question does arise as to how far and for how long we should tolerate this kind of blatantly unfair discrimination, in spite of its limited application. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, is quite right to challenge it in this Bill in the context of the Duchy of Cornwall.
Clause 2 would remove Crown immunity from suit for the Duchy of Cornwall and we agree that there is no reason for Crown immunity to extend to the Duchy. The only proper purpose of Crown immunity is to give immunity from suit to the sovereign and to organs of government in certain tightly defined circumstances which Parliament has sanctioned, as set out in the Crown Proceedings Act 1947. As the noble Lord said, the Duchy is effectively a body in the private sector and there is no earthly reason why Crown immunity from suit should extend to the Duchy of Cornwall.
Again, Clause 3 would remove the anomalous exemption from tax for the Duchy, which was the subject of much of the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Under the present arrangements, tax for the Prince of Wales is an entirely voluntary matter, as is tax for the Duchy estate, and the estate is immune from income tax, corporation tax and CGT. The Prince of Wales does not pay voluntary tax on any increase in asset values as the Duchy is a royal body and the Duchy is the owner of the assets. I do not regard that as a desirable or defensible state of affairs. Many would say that the right to the very substantial income of the Duchy is good fortune enough without its being compounded by the Prince’s only paying tax on an entirely voluntary basis. The income of the Duchy is now well in excess of £20 million a year. The Prince pays voluntary income tax of about £4.9 million, but only on his income after meeting the expenditure on royal duties, and no CGT, as I said. Those are substantial sums, and substantial sums of tax forgone are involved.
If the Duchy’s income is to go to maintain the Prince of Wales and his household, then so be it. But why there should also be a tax break for the heir to the Throne, I entirely fail to see. The Royal Family has done great things to pull itself into the 21st century. Not being required to pay tax on income in the same way as other citizens do is likely to feed controversy and questioning and bring the institution into disrepute. Nor is there any reason why the Duchy should be immune from claims by its leaseholders under the Leasehold Reform Act when they want to secure the freeholds or long leases on their homes—a reform that has been broadly welcomed and has worked well over many years for private landlords..
Closer to home for me, Clause 7 would remove access from the Duchy to the Treasury Solicitor. I see no reason why the Duchy should have access to the publicly funded legal services of the Treasury Solicitor— effectively, the Government’s legal department. We have had enough trouble with legal aid cuts for the vulnerable. Why we should be providing extensive legal aid to the Duchy of Cornwall escapes me.
For the monarchy to thrive, it needs to be contemporary, understood and trusted by the public. Maintaining discriminatory rules of succession, unfair immunities from tax, an out-of-date exemption from the Leasehold Reform Act and publicly funded legal services for the heir to the Throne is not a great way forward, and we need to start changing the rules.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Berkeley on his perseverance on this matter, on today’s Bill, and on his fascinating introduction, which was then reinforced by my noble friend Lord Adonis’s speech. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Marks, I am delighted to be able to return to the issue covered in Clause 1 of the Bill because it follows a long discussion that we had back in 2013 when we were dealing with the Succession to the Crown Act prior to the birth of Prince George. Indeed, I have to confess that I was personally rather disappointed by his gender when he appeared as it delayed the impact of the Act to which we had put in a fair number of hours. Nevertheless, the Act does mean that the young Prince Louis does not overtake Princess Charlotte in the batting order, so we achieved something.
It seems eminently sensible to amend the existing rule passing the Duchy of Cornwall title to the eldest male child of the monarch given that at some future date this may no longer be the heir apparent. If the income is indeed needed to help prepare the future sovereign for their role, then surely that and the whole training that goes with running that estate should be with the heir to the throne and not to her younger brother in those particular circumstances.
A very helpful Lords Library research paper reminded us that the then principal private secretary to the Prince of Wales confirmed that the charter could be amended, so this seems an excellent moment to put that in train. I am afraid that when the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, talked about doing something in 20 years’ time or so, my heart failed. We have had enough of kicking tin cans down the road. If something needs fixing, let us fix it now.
On the taxation immunities, the other aspect of the Bill that has been well covered, that matter could appropriately go to the constitutional convention that my party has long sought because it deals with some important constitutional issues. That would also reflect the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, to do these things on a cross-party consensus basis. The difference between us is probably that we think we should get on with it and his feeling was to forget about it for now.
There is one aspect, however, that the Minister could clarify when he comes to respond—one already described about the Duchy’s exemption from the Leasehold Reform Act, which prevents leaseholders buying the lease in the way that they could from any other landlord. Given that the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, has just announced a review of this very issue of leases on houses, and put them in the very capable hands of our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Best, who is not in his place at the moment, might this specific case also be referred to that group so that it could be looked at in a timely manner? It involves the individual property rights of UK citizens, so it warrants some close and more urgent scrutiny than perhaps some of the other measures might achieve.
I want to reflect on one of the other issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, which is whether a Private Member’s Bill is the right mechanism for this. When the Government fail to act on something that needs to be done, it is a very appropriate way for your Lordships’ House to do it. Indeed, shortly we will move on to another Bill that seeks to implement something which the Government want to see but cannot find legislative time for, so therefore it is being taken through in a Private Member’s Bill. On occasion it seems highly appropriate to use this mechanism for something that needs to be done. As I say, it is better than waiting another 20 or more years.
I look forward to the Government’s response, in particular on their plans for changing the gender rules as regards the inheritance of this title and therefore its assets so that they will indeed go to the heir to the Throne, especially when the heir is a woman.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for raising once again this important issue. He has brought these measures forward in a number of guises and is a true crusader for reform in this area. I thank all noble Lords for their valuable contributions to the debate, in particular my noble friend Lord Wakeham for putting the issue in a broader historical context and for explaining the basis of the current settlement. He also stressed the importance, a point underlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, of trying to seek a consensus before we make changes in this area.
Every day we say a prayer for the Prince of Wales, prospering him with all happiness. I am sure that nothing which has been said in this debate will go against the daily injunction we are given by the right reverend Prelates. The Duchy of Cornwall is an important institution. Since it was established in the 14th century, the Duchy’s main purpose has been to provide an income that is independent of the monarch for the heir apparent. The land, property and other assets of the Duchy and the proceeds of any disposal of assets are subject to the terms of a number of Acts, including the Duchy of Cornwall Management Acts 1863 to 1982, the combined effect of which is to place the Duchy’s assets in trust for the benefit of the present and future Dukes of Cornwall and to govern the use of the assets.
The current Prince of Wales chooses to use a substantial proportion of his income from the Duchy to meet the cost of his public and charitable work. The Duchy funds the public and private lives of five other adult members of the Royal Family—the Duchess of Cornwall, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Turning to Clause 1, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and others have raised the matter of the inheritance of the Duchy of Cornwall. The issue of gender equality is a priority for this Government and quite rightly the matter has been raised again today. Noble Lords are correct to say that at present the title can pass only to the eldest son and heir of the monarch. Thus, when the Queen was heir presumptive to the throne, she did not hold the title of Duke of Cornwall and the Duchy lands were vested in her father, the sovereign. The mode of descent specified by the Charter of 1337 is unusual and differs from that which commonly occurs in respect of hereditary titles. The monarch’s eldest son is automatically the Duke of Cornwall immediately he becomes the heir apparent. However, the manner of descent of the Duchy would preclude a grandson who is heir apparent from gaining the title of the Duke of Cornwall if he were heir to the sovereign because he is not the son of the monarch. With the Duchy of Cornwall we have a very unusual piece of English history that does not conform to the standard rules of descent for hereditary titles.
If we look back over recent years, there have been long stretches when there has been no eldest son to be the Duke of Cornwall, in which case the Duchy estate vests in the sovereign who oversees the affairs of the estate in lieu of a Duke. Viewed from today’s perspective, as opposed to that of the 14th century, I can understand why noble Lords have raised concerns about the descent of the Duchy of Cornwall, and indeed the Government have some sympathy with those concerns against the background of the changes made to the Succession to the Crown Act 2013 and other moves to increase equality. However, parliamentary time is currently scarce and noble Lords will agree that there are other more pressing priorities. Furthermore, given that currently there are three male heirs to the sovereign—Prince Charles, Prince William and Prince George—I do not believe that the time is right to dedicate parliamentary time to this matter when it is badly needed elsewhere. Indeed, the issue raised by the noble Baroness may not arise until the next century.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, raised the more general issue of the succession of hereditary titles, on which I am sure a number of noble Lords have different views. However, they are not the subject of this particular legislation. Perhaps I may reassure the House that a female heir apparent will not find herself at a financial disadvantage because the Sovereign Grant Act 2011 broadly ensures that financial provision equal to the income from the Duchy is made for the heir apparent.
I turn now to the amendments on enfranchisement which are of particular interest to many in this House and to myself as a former housing Minister. The Leasehold Reform Act 1967 gives leaseholders the right to purchase a property from the landlord if certain circumstances are met. The Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993, which I put on the statute book, gives the tenants of flats in a building the right to collectively acquire the freehold of that building, again if certain conditions are met. The Act also provides the right for a tenant to extend the lease if certain conditions are met. Both Acts exempt the Duchy of Cornwall and other Crown lands from these provisions. This is because the capital raised from the Duchy cannot be distributed and is reinvested in the Duchy; the Duke of Cornwall receives funds only from the surplus. The general exemptions are important to protect land and property associated with the Crown and to ensure that the Duchy continues to perform its role for future Dukes.
However, I shall turn to what I think is the crucial point: Crown authorities have voluntarily committed, most recently in 2001, to abide by the same terms as private landlords in most circumstances. The Duchy has more than 600 residences, around 20% of which would be subject to these Acts had the Duchy not been exempted. The number of tenancies which the Duchy has sold or granted a lease extension to tenants under the terms of the enfranchisement Acts is around 120. There are some exceptions, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, implied, including the historic Royal parks and palaces, property or areas which have a historic association with the Crown or where there are security considerations.
The Bill would represent a significant change to the legal status of the Duchy of Cornwall. There is a presumption that legislation does not bind Crown lands, including the Duchy of Cornwall. Removing Crown immunity for the Duchy of Cornwall could be problematic in the future. As the Duchy of Cornwall vests in the sovereign when there is no Duke of Cornwall, the sovereign has a residual personal interest in matters affecting the property of the Duchy of Cornwall. When vested in the sovereign, the Duchy of Cornwall would have a different legal status from other lands belonging to the Crown.
I turn to the tax status, again raised by a number of noble Lords. The Bill proposes that the Duchy of Cornwall will be liable to income tax and capital gains tax. Let me start by confirming the current arrangements. The Duchy enjoys Crown exemption and is not in any case a corporation within the charge to corporation tax. The Duke of Cornwall is not entitled to the proceeds or profits from the sales of the Duchy’s capital assets, which are retained in the Duchy to provide income for the Duke and future beneficiaries.
The Prince is liable to pay income tax and capital gains tax on any income and capital gains he may receive from other non-Duchy sources. In line with the Memorandum of Understanding on royal taxation, he pays income tax voluntarily on the surplus of the Duchy of Cornwall after deducting official expenditure, applying normal income tax rules and at the 45% rate. In his annual review, the Prince of Wales stated that he paid £4.85 million in the 2017-18 financial year, although this figure includes VAT, income tax and capital gains tax from non-Duchy sources. If employer’s national insurance contributions and council tax are included, the total tax paid increases to £5.3 million. Of course, the expenditure varies from year to year, as does the value of the surplus.
The tax status of the Duchy of Cornwall reflects that of the sovereign, who is also not legally liable to pay income tax, capital gains tax or inheritance tax because the relevant enactments do not apply to the Crown. The Queen also pays income tax and capital gains tax on a voluntary basis in line with the Memorandum of Understanding. Moreover, the unique nature of the Duchy of Cornwall means that, in order to produce a workable income tax and capital gains tax regime, deeming the Duchy as a settlement would not be sufficient. Further provisions would be necessary to ensure that the legislation would work effectively without unintended consequences.
In his speech, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, focused mainly on the Sovereign Grant Act rather than the Bill before us. I will write to him in answer to some of the issues that he raised. In summing up, I again pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for pursuing this important matter.
Lord Adonis
What has happened to the tax paid by the Duchy of Cornwall in recent years? The Minister gave last year’s figure. Can he say how that figure has changed?
Lord Young of Cookham
I have the figures for only the past three years in my brief. I think that the noble Lord’s queries went further back than that, so I will write to him. I would just say that the Labour Party voted for the Sovereign Grant Act.
Lord Reid of Cardowan (Lab)
I want to make one comment prior to the Minister’s response to my noble friend. There may be good reasons—I can see them in principle and in practice—for insisting on more transparency surrounding the costs at Buckingham Palace, for instance, but the expectation that it will hold costs stable or reduce them is not one of them. Witness the increase in the cost of refurbishing this Parliament and the cost of the Scottish Parliament building, which was overseen by not one but two Parliaments. The cost rose from the estimate of £40 million to more than £400 million. There may be good reasons for the transparencies regarding Buckingham Palace, but the expectation that oversight by this or any other committee will reduce the price is not one of them.
Lord Young of Cookham
The noble Lord said that he wanted to make a comment rather than ask a question and he did exactly that.
I conclude by expressing reservations about the Bill. The Duchy of Cornwall plays an important role in providing funds to support the public and private lives of six members of the Royal Family. The Government are keen to ensure that the Duchy can continue to perform that function. Noble Lords have made informed contributions to the debate and given pause for thought. However, the Government believe that now is not the time to attempt this reform. I repeat the valid point made by my noble friend Lord Wakeham: if we make progress, it should be on a consensual basis. Considering other pressures on the legislative timetable, the Government have reservations about the prospects for the Bill in future.
Lord Berkeley
My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who spoke. We have had a fascinating debate. I am not surprised by the comments from the Minister—or the noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, for that matter—which I would have expected.
However, this demonstrates the confusion over what is part of government and the monarchy and what is part of private ownership and businesses. The Duchy frequently says that it is in the private sector. In his response, the Minister said that if there is not a Duke of Cornwall, the Duchy reverts to the Crown, with which I agree; it therefore presumably becomes public. How can you have a body or estate that changes between public and private depending on whether there is a male Duke of Cornwall? That seems to need looking at in a bit more detail.
The same principle applies to the property of Buckingham Palace and the discussion started by my noble friend Lord Adonis about its cost. Which bits of Buckingham Palace are Crown property because it is part of our constitution and which bits of it, including all the pictures and the ornaments, belong to the Queen personally? If she were not Queen, would she still have them? I do not know, but it seems that this obfuscation could go on for another 20 years if we are not careful.
The noble Lord, Lord Wakeham, asked why the Bill is a Private Member’s Bill. My noble friend Lady Hayter responded to that, but I would say that it is because it has been a good forum for debate. If we are going to talk about the monarchy as a whole, we could include Prayers; the Minister mentioned that we pray for Prince Charles. We could have a discussion about whether we should get rid of the link between the Church and the state, but the Minister started that one and I will leave it there.
I am also grateful to noble Lords for commenting on the Leasehold Reform Act. I do not accept what the Minister said, because it is nothing to do with a private estate, but we will follow up on that in other areas. I share other noble Lords’ views that we may not get this on to the statute book in this Parliament, but the debate has been very good anyway and I thank everyone for it.
Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2018 View all Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Pidding (Con)
My Lords, it is my privilege to move the Second Reading of the Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill. The Bill had a speedy and uncontroversial passage through the other place, which I interpret as reflecting the widespread support for the Bill and its important provisions. I am hopeful of a similar reception and swift passage through this House.
I begin by thanking all the Members in the other place who spoke in support of the Bill, particularly Maria Caulfield MP, who sponsored the Bill, taking over from Esther McVey MP, who originally brought the Bill forward and Sir Paul Beresford MP, who sponsored the original legislation that the Bill seeks to amend.
The legislation that Sir Paul sponsored, the Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Act 2012, made an important contribution to improving the effectiveness of action against illicit mobile phone use in our prisons. It provided the power for the Secretary of State to authorise the governor of a public sector prison or the director of a privately run prison to deliberately interfere with wireless telegraphy in their institution to prevent the use of illicit mobile phones or detect or investigate the use of such devices.
In practice, the existing power means that governors are able to purchase and deploy equipment to detect, block and investigate illicit phones in their prisons. Without this authority, deliberate interference with wireless telegraphy in this way would be an offence under Section 68 of the Wireless Telegraphy Act 2006. The powers are necessary given the role that mobile phones play in the illicit economy in prisons and the violence, self-harm and crime in the wider community that they drive.
On a recent visit to HMP Brixton, I heard at first hand about the serious problems and significant challenges that are caused by illicit mobile phones. There is increased ingenuity and sophistication in attempts to smuggle mobile phones into prison, taking advantage of the fact that phones are becoming thinner and smaller. They can be no larger than your thumb and made nearly entirely of plastic. Illicit mobile phones are a major facilitator in enabling ongoing criminality such as smuggling drugs and other contraband into prisons; for example, co-ordinating throw-overs or drone drops. They can be used for malicious communication such as harassment of victims and witnesses, blackmail and intimidation. In more extreme circumstances, they could be used for orchestrating escape, child sexual exploitation or extremism. Illicit mobile phones are a valuable and profitable prison commodity that prisoners will get into debt over, driving up the risk of violence against themselves or families in the community if they cannot repay it.
Noble Lords may wonder why it is necessary to amend legislation passed as recently as 2012. It should not be interpreted as meaning that the 2012 Act was in any way deficient or flawed. Rather, it clearly illustrates just how rapidly mobile technology has developed, is still developing and how quickly it changes. We need to help governors and directors to keep up with this pace of change. Therefore, the Bill seeks to future-proof the provisions of the 2012 Act by making a small but crucial change to enlist the direct support of the acknowledged experts in the field of mobile technology, the public communications providers, to combat the serious problems caused by illicit mobile use in prison. It is a small but important Bill of two clauses and one schedule.
Clause 1 allows the Secretary of State to authorise public communications providers to interfere with wireless telegraphy in prisons in England and Wales, in addition to the existing authority that can be given directly to governors and directors. Authorisation can be given for the same purposes as in the 2012 Act—namely, to prevent the use of a device such as a mobile phone or to detect or investigate the use of such a device. Authority can be given to a public communications provider to interfere with wireless telegraphy in one or more institutions in England and Wales, one or more kinds of relevant institution in England and Wales or relevant institutions in England and Wales generally.
Clause 2 sets out the Title of the Bill if passed, provisions for coming into force and deals with territorial extent. On the question of territorial extent, in line with convention, it mirrors the Act that it amends, extending to England, Wales and Scotland. However, if passed, the Bill will apply only in England and Wales. The 2012 Act gave powers to Scottish Ministers to grant authorisations to governors or directors of prisons enabling them to interfere with wireless telegraphy, and the Scottish Parliament passed a legislative consent Motion to this effect. I understand that the Ministry of Justice has discussed the Bill with Scottish counterparts, but the Scottish Government do not want the additional proposed powers in this Bill.
The Schedule to the Bill contains further amendments on two important matters: the safeguards for using the powers, and retention and disclosure of information. Under Section 2 of the 2012 Act, where the Secretary of State authorises a governor or director to interfere with wireless telegraphy, he must accompany that with directions setting out information that the governor must pass to Ofcom, the frequency with which the information must be provided and circumstances in which interference activity must be modified or discontinued.
The Schedule makes it clear that any public communications provider authorised to interfere with wireless telegraphy must also act in accordance with any directions given by the Secretary of State. However, the nature of the directions will differ from those given to an authorised governor or director, as the authorised provider will provide information to the governor or director of the institution where the interference is taking place and the governor or director will remain responsible for passing such information to Ofcom. In a similar way, provisions in the 2012 Act covering retention and disclosure of information obtained from interference with wireless telegraphy are extended to cover providers, but responsibility for decisions about retention and disclosure of such information will continue to rest with the governor or director of the relevant institution.
I should make it clear that the Bill is not about facilitating one particular technological solution but about providing a clear line of legislative authority to enable public communications providers to bring their knowledge and expertise directly to bear on the problems caused by illicit mobiles in prisons in England and Wales. And as I have explained, public communications providers will be covered by existing safeguards concerning the need to comply with directions and concerning retention and disclosure of information obtained from wireless activity.
To sum up, this is a short Bill but, I hope noble Lords will agree, a very important one. As I saw from my visit to HMP Brixton, the staff and volunteers in our prisons do an extraordinary job in often difficult circumstances. Their role is to care for and support men and women whose personal circumstances and behaviour can often be challenging. The illicit economy in prisons undermines their efforts and drives a cycle of debt and bullying that is one cause of current high levels of violence and self-harm. Illicit phones, along with drugs, are a central part of that illicit economy.
I pay tribute to the excellent work that prison staff and volunteers do and hope that this Bill will play a role in supporting them. I look forward to the debate. I hope that there will be widespread, if not unanimous, support for the Bill and that it will make quick progress through this House and achieve speedy Royal Assent. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, I warmly support this Bill, so ably introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding. As the Prisons Minister, Rory Stewart, said during the passage of the Bill through the other place:
“Tapping the almost 10,000 mobile phones that were seized in a single year and interfering with their ability to communicate is not a silver bullet, but it should help to make prisons a safer and more orderly place in which we can begin to address some of the underlying drivers of violence and crime”.—[Official Report, Commons, Prisons (Interference with Wireless Telegraphy) Bill Committee, 9/5/18; col. 6.]
I want to set my support in context of the current crisis in our overcrowded and understaffed prisons and—what I have always regretted—the failure of successive Home and Justice Secretaries to implement any of the 12 ways ahead for the Prison Service set out by the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, then Home Secretary, in his White Paper, Custody, Care and Justice, in 1991, following the seminal report on the causes of the riots in Strangeways and 23 other prisons in 1990 by my noble and learned friend Lord Woolf.
My noble and learned friend identified the three things most likely to prevent reoffending as being a home, a job and a stable, preferably family, relationship, all of which were put at risk by the way that imprisonment was conducted. He recommended that prisons be grouped into what he called community regional clusters, so that, with the exception of high-security prisoners, of whom there were not enough to justify an expensive high-security prison in each region, prisoners were always held in their home areas. Had the 12 ways ahead been implemented, I do not believe that the present crisis would have arisen, but that is another matter.
The maintenance of stable relationships depends on visits, letters and occasional telephone calls, which is where many people believe that mobile phones have a role to play. Unfortunately, mobile phones are used by too many for nefarious purposes, such as controlling drug deliveries by drone, organising crimes or arranging intimidation of families, with the result that they are, quite rightly, currently banned. Life for prison staff is made no easier by the fact that advancing technology has now produced mobiles no bigger than a finger joint, meaning that a phone can be smuggled in in a Mars bar.
However, in the context of maintaining stable relationships, I deplore the current high charges made by BT for the use of legitimate land lines from prison—which I note have been reduced by 50% for in-cell telephones now being installed in 20 prisons. Of course, prisoners should be expected to pay for any call, but not exorbitantly. I ask the Minister to pursue this matter with BT, stressing the important contribution that maintaining stable relationships makes to the protection of the public by contributing to the prevention of reoffending.
Current arrangements for blocking mobile phones used by prisoners are exceedingly cumbersome and bureaucratic, requiring individual governors to deal with individual providers to have specified SIM cards blocked. Nobody needs to carry a mobile phone in prison: prisoners are banned from doing so; visitors have to hand them in at the gate; and staff do not need to use them. Therefore, rather than interfering with their use, I am in favour of an electronic ban in every prison, on the lines of the electronic fence that the governor of HMP Guernsey has erected to prevent drones from being flown into the prison. Currently, Guernsey is the only prison in Europe to have such a fence. It cost a mere £60,000, which I would have thought was cheap at the price, making prisons safer and more orderly places.
Not least for the sake of the overstretched staff in our prisons, I hope that the Bill will be enacted swiftly.
Lord German (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding, for bringing the Bill before the House. I concur with many of her remarks, as I do with those of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who, with his years of experience in this matter, should be listened to.
The Bill meets a tight and limited objective: it intends to make our prisons safer and more secure by disrupting and halting communication by illicitly held mobile phones in prisons. This is to combat the activities derived from the smuggled devices increasingly found in our prisons, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, pointed out. In 2015 there were 17,000 mobile phones and SIM cards discovered in our prisons. The Bill permits the identification and blocking of activities using smuggled mobile phones and devices illicitly brought into prisons, as well as allowing the Secretary of State a degree of control over private communication providers when they are exercising their powers.
The Bill itself is limited in scope. It tackles the preventive aspect of prison policy but, as such, it has to sit alongside rehabilitation measures which prevent reoffending and the overcrowding crisis which is a feature of our justice system at present. As described in the House of Commons debate, and by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, the Bill is not a silver bullet for the problem of smuggling and contraband in prisons. I respect the intention of the Bill to ensure that mobile devices do not work within the confines of the prison. However, I have two concerns I would like to explore. The more important one is associated with technology and the potential for unintended consequences. The other has to do with the related rehabilitation activities recently laid out in the Prison and Probation Service business plan.
I say at the outset that I am not seeking to wreck the Bill, but the Government wish the Bill to move swiftly and for that to happen I must seek guarantees from the Minister at this stage if there are to be no amendments tabled at a future stage. My first area of concern is over the technologies used to block illicit mobile phones. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, there is a third alternative to those currently being discussed. The Government are considering two technologies. I understand that one is jamming by equipment inside the prison and the other is IMSI, international mobile subscriber identity, whereby mobile phones are identified and that information is passed to the governors of prisons. The third methodology, of an electronic fence, suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, is also worth exploring, but we have to consider what happens when you block activity in a given area. The issue relates to both telephone and data activity and I shall refer briefly to the difference between the two parts of the technology.
If I refer to the mobile devices that every Member of your Lordships’ House has been provided I can describe this very easily. There are two very simple symbols at the top left hand corner of noble Lords’ phones. The first identifies the provider—in the case of your Lordships’ House it is O2 UK. To the right of that is a series of symbols which range from an e, GPRS, 3G and 4G to a fan-like symbol. All those symbols relate to wireless facilities. The left-hand one, the one with the name of the provider, is sometimes missing and it says “no service”, and sometimes the one on the right is also missing when no service is available. The left-hand one provides Members of this House, and everybody else, the ability to make telephone calls and to text. The right-hand one also provides telephone calls, and noble Lords will have received a letter this week indicating that their phones are going to be altered. In fact, some of us have already received the new phones.
All the phone technology in your Lordships’ House will now be provided by the right-hand end, in other words, by wireless technology using voice over internet protocol. The right-hand side also allows access to the internet and provides the ability to converse using programs such as Twitter and Facebook. It is important that we have a guarantee from the Minister that whatever technology is chosen deals with both the telephonic end and the data end of the telephone spectrum of which we are all in possession. The right-hand end is far more important: it allows you to do absolutely anything. Will both technologies that the Government are considering block both uses, telephone and data?
I turn to the services available on the right-hand side of the phone from wireless systems outside the prison walls. I do not know whether the Minister walks down streets where he is not known and knocks on every door to talk to people in the houses. My party encourages us to do so, as I am sure the Conservative Party does. I have a provider which allows me to share my wireless facility at home with those who have that provider elsewhere in the country so, as I walk down these streets, my phone pings and tells me that I am connected to the wireless of those houses. I do not know which ones because it is quite a large area, especially if you have a wireless extender in your home—a facility which you can purchase at any electrical store and plug into your electrical socket, which extends the reach of your wireless and therefore the fan-like symbol on the right-hand side of your phone. That wireless signal is available to me in streets that I know nothing about. It is available in properties outside prison walls.
I ask the Minister for two guarantees: first, that the technology used inside the prison will have no effect on the legally available commercial services purchased by those living close to prison walls; and, secondly, whether the technology used to jam or stop mobile services within the prison will be able to deal effectively with these external wireless signals from consumers that I have described.
The Bill allows for the collection of data. It would most likely be collected by using the IMSI catchers that I talked about earlier, which could indiscriminately intercept and hack phones within a given radius, allowing them to intercept mobile signals meant for the network provider. There is a danger of unintentional consequences where innocent third parties may accidently have their mobile data captured within the radius of a defined geographical area. I ask the Minister for a guarantee that this will not happen.
The Government state:
“Blocking works by preventing phones from connecting to mobile networks, allowing us to stop the mobile phones that we have not been able to find from working”.
I accept that and think it an appropriate aim. I seek a guarantee that technology that allows for a blanket block on mobile communications will not unintentionally cause disruption or hacking to innocent third parties; for example, the person living across the road from the prison suddenly finding that their mobile does not work in their home or that their calls and data are observed. For example, a new block of student accommodation has been built right alongside the walls of HMP Cardiff. Students are nine or 10 floors up—all of whom, I guess, will have some form of wireless communication, which of course is vital to undertake their studies. I recognise that these are significant guarantees that I am seeking but I am sure the Minister would not want to face a charge of the Government snooping on personal information.
Finally, I turn to the legitimate uses of telephone and data services by those in prison. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. Currently offenders have to deal with a high-cost, low-availability prison phone that makes the possession of an illegal mobile phone attractive despite the costs of punishment. If prisoners have to make a choice between a 10-minute call to a mobile that costs nearly half their average weekly income—after waiting for a long time to use the phone, during which there is a real risk of violence; I cite the government advice on this matter—and a mobile phone that can be used at any point, it is hardly surprising that offenders choose to illicitly obtain a smuggled mobile phone.
The Howard League for Penal Reform and the Prison Reform Trust make a powerful case for greater access to prison-controlled phones. There are important rehabilitation needs for prisoners which require the use of telephones and data access. One of the most important factors in avoiding reoffending is the retention of family links and family support so that when a person leaves prison there are powerful reasons to not return there and, I hope, that most essential of needs—a roof over their head and somewhere safe to live.
Access to a telephone is essential to achieve this goal. The Minister’s colleague, in her letter dated 24 July this year, told us that the Government are spending £7 million on in-cell telephones. I applaud and welcome this objective but it raises other questions about the timescale for the rollout of that programme, especially if this Bill is enacted and immediate action is taken. Can the Minister outline the progress of the rollout of in-cell phones and whether that will be alongside the enactment of this Bill and the activity relating to it? There is a genuine rehabilitation need to improve offender access to phones, as well as to reduce the cost of calling.
Equally, access to data services is essential to many learning and training schemes provided in prison. Crucially, the Government have made it a requirement that applications for benefits, including universal credit, are made online. If this is not possible to do in prison, there will be a long wait before a released offender gets access to the vital financial means on which to live, and perhaps they will turn back to offending. The ability to interfere with wireless telegraphy requires protections, and these must be reflected in the guarantees that I seek from the Government. I wish the Bill speedy progress but it is essential that the public are protected in this matter.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, although this Bill is welcome, its provisions would, of course, have been better within a government Bill that incorporated a comprehensive programme for the reform of prisons and courts. Our prisons are now, I am afraid, in a pretty sorry state—I think the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to a crisis—thanks to government underinvestment and poor management.
The previous Government’s Queen’s Speech promised reforms to transform how our whole justice system operates. But what materialised instead was a legislative drip-feed, with many of the most important challenges completely absent from their legislation. Indeed, the one welcome initiative—the one before us today—has had to be handled in a Private Member’s Bill. It would create a power for the Secretary of State to authorise communications providers to disrupt unlawful mobile use in prisons, which would otherwise contravene the law. As the Bill is all about that legal power, we do not share the worries about technicalities raised by the noble Lord, Lord German.
In 2013, 7,500 phones and SIM cards were found in prisons but, as we heard, within just two years—by 2015—the figure was nearly 17,000. This Bill goes some way to addressing that problem. There is, as we have heard, clear evidence that mobiles are smuggled into prisons, often enabling inmates to order drugs, harass victims or witnesses and even organise crimes, whether inside or outside prison, as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Pidding. The ability to disrupt phone usage could indeed reduce illegal activity and may help to counter organised violence and drug use. It is obviously not a panacea.
Alas, the Government have a lot to answer for regarding the sort of environment that we now see in prisons, an environment which facilitates violence, drugs and crime. If the Government are going to take a decision, as they did, to slash budgets and prison officer numbers—indeed, to neglect our prisons—they will have to accept responsibility for overcrowding, limited offender rehabilitation and the violence that goes on in prisons. Attacks are reaching a record high as the service struggles to tackle out-of-control drug use and the influence of gangs. Every 20 minutes there is an assault in prison, and a prison staff member is attacked every hour. Attacks on staff have increased by more than a quarter in the year to June, while prisoner-on-prisoner attacks have increased by one-fifth. This problem will not go away through wishful thinking; it needs serious funding and a proper strategy. We still look to the Government to provide that.
As has been said, the measures in the Bill were originally in the Prisons and Courts Bill, which fell when the Prime Minister called her rather ill-fated 2017 election. Not only did she lose her majority but this measure similarly disappeared. Can the Minister say when the other provisions in that lost Bill will come before Parliament? As I think he knows, we are particularly concerned about the measure to prohibit the cross-examination by perpetrators of victims of domestic violence in family courts. There is currently no sign of that measure appearing. I am sure the Minister is not content that it is still possible, despite restraining orders being in place, for these victims to be cross-examined by the individuals they most fear, who have made their lives and those of their children so miserable.
A recent study by Women’s Aid, with Queen Mary University of London, showed that nearly one-quarter of domestic abuse victims are still being cross-examined by the perpetrator in family courts—a practice we managed to end in criminal courts. That concern caused the Law Society and Resolution to write to the Lord Chancellor to urge action. Despite professing support, however, the Lord Chancellor resorted to that old excuse, yet again, that it would be dealt with,
“as soon as parliamentary time allows”.
That was in a letter from the Lord Chancellor three months ago. Perhaps the Government will take the opportunity provided by today’s debate to spell out when we will see that legislation. If need be, it could be addressed in a similar Private Member’s Bill or assisted by us in some other way.
We are content, with the support of your Lordships, to give this Bill a Second Reading, and we certainly wish it speedy progress. However, the Government’s handling of the legislative programme relating to wider reform concerns us. The fact that they have now to rely on a Private Member’s Bill, welcome though this one is, as a vehicle is probably also of concern to your Lordships. For now, we wish this Bill well.
The Advocate-General for Scotland (Lord Keen of Elie) (Con)
My Lords, first, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Pidding on bringing this Bill before the House. Like her, I thank Members in the other place who have made a significant contribution to the progress of the Bill so far. I strongly concur with my noble friend’s assessment that the Bill will make an important contribution to keeping our prisons safe and secure. I note the contributions from other Members of your Lordships’ House—it appears that they agree with the aims and objectives of the Bill. It would be deeply regrettable if for any reason the Bill could not find its way swiftly on to the statute book, given the need to address such an important issue with regard to our prisons.
Noble Lords clearly understand that the illegal supply and use of mobile phones presents real and serious risks not just to the stability of our prisons but to the safety of the public. Illicit phones erode the barrier that prisons walls place between prisoners and the community. They can be used to commission serious violence, harass victims and continue organised crime and gang activity outwith the walls of the prison. They are also key to the illicit economy within prisons, and consequently contribute to the cycle of debt, violence and self-harm that can occur in prisons, particularly where it is related to drugs.
Examples of the risk that illicit mobile phones in prison pose to the public are clear. We should have no doubt about the seriousness of the crimes committed by means of mobile phones. As a result of considerable work and intelligence-led enforcement activity, we have managed to investigate and prosecute crimes committed in prison using mobile phones and the control of criminal activity outside prison from within prison.
Clearly this is a major issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, referred to the number of mobile phones that are being recovered in prisons. It is an ongoing and demanding issue that we seek to address in various ways. Addressing the security challenge posed in many cases is an essential prerequisite to making prisons safer and therefore capable of performing their rehabilitative functions.
Noble Lords highlighted the need to continue to provide legitimate ways for prisoners to contact family and friends as we tackle the illicit use of mobile phones. We recognise and endorse that point. Recent research published by the Ministry of Justice has shown the beneficial impact that maintaining family links can have on reducing reoffending. The provision of accessible legitimate telephony services is obviously a key factor in maintaining those links, and there is an ongoing programme of work to improve those services. Touching upon a point raised by the noble Lord, Lord German, we have completed the deployment of in-cell telephony to 20 prisons to make calls more accessible to prisoners. We are investing £7 million over the next two years to provide in-cell telephony in a further 20 prisons. In response to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, we have also reduced tariffs in these sites to make calls more affordable. I recognise that telephones that are otherwise available in prison are subject to a higher tariff than that normally found in domestic tariffs because they are essentially charged on a pay-as-you-go basis. That is being addressed. For the avoidance of doubt, we hope all in-cell phones will be on a more affordable tariff. There will be limitations on the use of those phones because they will be limited to preapproved phone numbers and there will be robust restrictions in place to address that.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, raised a point in earlier conversations about linking the availability of such in-cell telephony with incentives and privileges within the prison. We recently consulted on the incentives and earned privileges policy. As we take that forward, I will pass his point on to officials because it strikes me that it is worthy of further consideration.
As for the means by which we seek at present to limit the use of mobile phones, we have the means touched upon by the noble Lord, Lord German. He talked about the jamming of equipment and the identification of particular phones and the use of a fence, as mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I will come back to that point in a moment. Looking at the current means of trying to limit mobile phones within prisons, we have the basic idea of searches, detection using scanner technology, telecom restriction orders—which I think are what the noble Lord was alluding to—and blocking devices. It is a problem that if blocking devices are not deployed with sufficient care we can end up blocking telephony outwith the curtilage of the prison itself. There are therefore certain limitations on their deployment, and we agree with that, so their use has to be approached with considerable care. In addition, because of those limitations there are instances where the blocking cannot be deployed throughout the entire prison itself, where there may be areas that are not blocked. So blocking is not a complete answer so far as mobile telephony is concerned. Where it is deployed, however, let me be clear that the blocking of such equipment extends not only to telephony but also to data—there is no question of that—because they both operate on the same part of the network. Therefore where it is effective in respect of telephony it is also effective in respect of data.
Then there is the issue of wi-fi provision outwith the curtilage of the prison that might be picked up within the prison itself. There is a theoretical risk of that happening; albeit in this day and age one would expect these wi-fi providers to be password-protected, that would not always be the case. Indeed, one of the aims of the present Bill is to enable us to engage with the telecommunications companies in order to develop strategies as the telecommunications develop. One area where we may be able to address this is with regard to further technology to combat the ability of people to pick up wi-fi signals from outwith the curtilage of the prison. As I say, it is a theoretical risk; it is in theory an issue that we would want to address, and one that we feel we might be able to.
Lord German
Perhaps the Minister would allow me to reiterate the point that when you take out a broadband contract with the largest provider in this country, it gives you the option of allowing your wireless to be available to others. If you do that, clearly there are a large number of people operating through this system where you do not require permission, because that has already been given, nor do you require a password. It just automatically happens when you walk down streets with which you are unfamiliar.
Lord Keen of Elie
I recognise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord German. That is why, as I say, the Bill would allow us to engage with the telecommunications companies in order that we can combat that sort of development and indeed future technology that may not create an issue at present but may create one in future as we go on to 5G and 6G technology.
We have already invested £6 million in prisons to provide them with modern technology such as scanners, phone-blocking technology and indeed improved searching techniques. Clearly we want to do more. We then have the telecommunications restrictions orders that would enable us to disconnect mobile phones or SIM cards identified as operating within a prison. But I want to be clear: the purpose of the Bill is to ensure that we can engage directly with, and grant permissions to, the telecommunications providers, which are probably the best qualified to guide us on how we can best meet the demands in future presented by the illicit use of mobile phones within our prison estate.
I hope that that has addressed the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord German, because I would not want the Bill to be derailed. I hope that it has also addressed the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, ranged into a wider area with regard to courts and prison reform, and in particular raised the issue of cross-examination in domestic cases within the family courts, as distinct from criminal courts. I undertake to write to her on that subject rather than endeavouring to address that issue in the context of this debate. I hope that she will accept that undertaking from me.
With that, I commend my noble friend for moving this Private Member’s Bill.
Baroness Pidding
My Lords, I am grateful to noble Lords who have contributed to the well-informed and considered debate and for the general support for the measures in the Bill. As I said in opening the debate, the Bill is short but none the less important. It is gratifying to have its importance recognised in this House. I welcome the shared understanding of the problems caused by illicit mobile phone use in our prisons. I emphasise what I said earlier: the Bill is not about one technological solution but about providing a clear line of authority in primary legislation to enable public communication providers to bring their unrivalled technical knowledge, specialised expertise and ingenuity directly to bear on the problems caused by illicit mobiles in prisons in England and Wales.
The Bill is also about trying to anticipate future challenges. The pace of technical change is very rapid, and prisoners will undoubtedly seek to take advantage of those changes, but public communication providers are at the forefront of that technological change, and the Bill will provide a clear line of authority to allow them to play a full, active and, I believe, successful part in the battle against the harm caused by illicit mobile phone use.
The involvement of public communication providers will be subject to all existing necessary safeguards, with the Bill constructed in such a way that governors and directors will remain ultimately responsible for interference activity in their institutions, even where it is communication providers which are conducting that activity. That must be right.
I am very grateful to my noble and learned friend Lord Keen of Elie for expressing the Government’s clear and full support for the Bill, and for helping me by answering the questions and issues raised. I am sure that noble Lords will have welcomed his clear statement that if the Bill becomes law, it is a small but nevertheless important element of a much wider programme of work to make our prisons safe and secure, enabling them to become more fully places of rehabilitation. I note that rehabilitation is a priority for all noble Lords who have spoken, and I share this aim.
If the Bill receives a Second Reading, I look forward to it going successfully through all its remaining stages and becoming law. If it does, I am confident that it will make a significant contribution to improving the safety and security of our prisons.
Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) Bill [HL]
Friday 26th October 2018
(6 years, 1 month ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) 2017-19 View all Children Act 1989 (Amendment) (Female Genital Mutilation) 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 28-I Marshalled list for Committee (PDF) - (24 Oct 2018)
Lord Berkeley of Knighton
Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)
My Lords, this Bill seeks to make a small yet important—vital, even—amendment to the Children Act 1989. I take this opportunity to thank officials from the Ministry of Justice and the wider Government and, in particular, the noble Baroness, Lady Vere—the Minister—for their considerable support in helping to ensure that this Bill is clear in its extent and scope. I also pay tribute to the barrister David Maddison in Manchester, who has given unstintingly of his time in helping me with this Bill, and to my noble and learned friend Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood for generously casting his eye over matters and proceedings—an eye far more expert in these matters than mine.
As I explained at Second Reading, the family court can issue a care order for a child at risk of forced marriage or at risk from a habitually drunken, violent father, but it cannot issue a care order for a girl at risk of having her genitals mutilated. My Bill aims to redress precisely this situation. The amendments before your Lordships’ House today are technical in nature and ensure that necessary reference is made to the relevant sections of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 in order that this Bill extends only to female genital mutilation—FGM—protection order proceedings that occur in England and Wales, and applies only to those proceedings where they occur in the family court. During Second Reading, I explained that the Bill seeks to include FGM protection order proceedings within the definition of “family proceedings” for the purpose of the Children Act 1989. This means that in future, during proceedings for an FGM protection order, an application for a care or supervision order in relation to a child at risk of significant harm could be made. This would avoid the need for separate applications and potential delay. Other powers of the family court, including powers to make, for example, a prohibited steps order, special guardianship order and family assistance order, would also be available in FGM protection order proceedings. The Bill seeks to close a small, unintended gap—an oversight or anomaly, if you like—in the law and will serve to increase the ability of the court to protect children at risk.
I turn to the amendments in more detail. Amendment 1 seeks merely to remove, in Clause 1(2), the superfluous reference at line 5 to “Section 5A of and”, making appropriate reference to “Part 1 of”. Section 5A of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 refers to and simply introduces Schedule 2 to the Act, which sets out the legislative detail on FGM protection orders. However, given that the Bill extends to England and Wales only, it is appropriate to refer to “Part 1” of Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. This is necessary, as Schedule 2 also makes provision, in Part 2, for FGM protection orders in Northern Ireland, to which the Bill does not extend.
Baroness Harris of Richmond (LD)
My Lords, as we have heard, the Bill would insert a reference to Section 5A of, and Schedule 2 to, the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 into Section 8 of the Children Act 1989. By doing so, the Bill would amend the Children Act 1989 to state that proceedings under Section 5A of and Schedule 2 to the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 are “family proceedings”.
I pay tribute to the work of my noble friend Lady Featherstone for her long-standing commitment to fighting FGM. Unfortunately, she is not able to be in the Chamber today to speak in Committee, but I know that she very much supports the intents of the amendments.
We on these Benches are grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, for bringing this sensible and valuable change to the law, and to the Government for their backing. As we heard, these amendments are technical in nature, and we are very much supportive of them. It is vital that we continue the fight against this deplorable practice, and we should be using every tool available to us to ensure the safety of these young girls.
Baroness Gale (Lab)
My Lords, as the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, said, these are technical amendments, and I am pleased that he was able to bring them before the House today. He explained in detail exactly what they mean, and there is little to add other than to say that we fully support them, and that we know that they will help to make this Bill a much better Act when it comes on to the statute book. I know that the Government will support this as well. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, and I look forward to seeing this on the statute book very soon.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in today’s discussion and, in particular, the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley of Knighton, for his Bill and the enormous amount of time and effort that he has devoted to it.
As the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, has explained, the purpose of his Bill is to amend Section 8(4) of the Children Act 1989—the 1989 Act—to bring proceedings for female genital mutilation protection orders, or FGMPOs, within the definition of “family proceedings” for the purpose of the 1989 Act. Bringing FGMPO proceedings within the definition of “family proceedings” would mean that, in future, an application by a local authority or the NSPCC for a care or supervision order in relation to a child at risk of significant harm could be made during FGMPO proceedings. This would avoid the need for separate applications and potential delay. Other powers of the family court, including powers to make, for example, a prohibited steps order, special guardianship order or family assistance order, would also be available in FGMPO proceedings.
Female genital mutilation, or FGM, is an extremely painful and harmful practice that blights the lives of many girls and women. This Government continue roundly to condemn the practice of FGM and are determined to see it eradicated in this country and elsewhere. That is why the simplification of process intended by the Bill is sensible. It adds to the measures which the Government have brought forward to tackle FGM issues. It is also why the Government supported the Bill at Second Reading, subject to the minor and technical amendments put before the Committee today.
The Government believe that the amendments provide necessary clarity on the extent and scope of the Bill—that is, they clarify that the Bill applies to FGMPO proceedings only in England and Wales and does not inadvertently extend to Northern Ireland, and it excludes FGMPOs made during criminal proceedings which are distinctly criminal proceedings and not family proceedings for the purpose of the Children Act 1989. The Government are very pleased to support the Bill, subject to these minor amendments being made, and I too commend them to the Committee.
Lord Berkeley of Knighton
Lord Berkeley of Knighton