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Oral Answers to Questions
(6 years ago)
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Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
The Minister for Africa (Harriett Baldwin)
The UK Government continue to lead global efforts to end the horror of sexual violence in conflict. We have developed tools to improve the chances of justice for survivors and in June secured sanctions against seven Burmese military officials. We will host an international conference in 2019 to galvanise the world into further action.
Dr Johnson
Given that the recent UN taskforce report highlighted appalling examples of sexual violence against Rohingya Muslims in Burma, I welcome the announcement that the Secretary of State made on his recent visit to Rakhine of increased support to victims of this terrible crime, but what can be done to increase the resources available to other conflict regions?
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my hon. Friend for welcoming the announcement and highlighting the work of that team of experts, who have now been deployed, I think, to 26 countries on a wide range of cases, have helped to train 17,000 people to make sure that evidence is secured and have worked extensively on this important issue in a range of situations around the world.[Official Report, 12 November 2018, Vol. 649, c. 2MC.]
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
The use of sexual violence was an ugly characteristic of the Sri Lankan civil war under the stewardship of Mahinda Rajapaksa, and now the very same man is back in office, illegitimately, as the Prime Minister of that country. Will the Minister now, and the Foreign Secretary shortly during topical questions, condemn unreservedly the turn of events in Sri Lanka and make sure we never see a return to those dark days of appalling human rights abuses under the Rajapaksas?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to raise this issue, which I know has captivated the attention of my right hon. Friend the Minister for Asia and the Pacific. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Foreign Secretary will be calling the President today, I think, to discuss this very matter.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
What diplomatic actions are being taken to assist with the return of the 113 Chibok girls who were seized from their school by Boko Haram in 2014, four and a half years ago, and are still missing? Tragically, many of them will have suffered terrible, horrific sexual and physical violence.
Harriett Baldwin
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the Bring Back Our Girls campaign. As many will remember, that campaign is now four years old, yet 113 of the girls have still not been returned. The UK consistently offers its support for the Nigerian Government’s efforts to return these girls to their homes, and we stand ready to do more if requested.
Chris Elmore (Ogmore) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that there are many Rohingya children living in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Will she set out in more detail what she is doing to support these boys and girls, who are at extreme risk of sexual violence?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman is right to widen the question to the extensive part of the population affected by this terrible crisis. He will know that, from a humanitarian point of view, the UK is contributing £129 million to address it, including through the kind of psychosocial support he refers to.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
In recent years, the UN Population Fund has operated fearlessly at the frontline of conflict, helping hundreds of thousands of girls and women who have suffered sexual violence. Does the Minister agree that it is utterly reprehensible that Donald Trump has eliminated US funding for that agency to the tune of $700 million? Is that not one more demonstration that the current US President could not care less about women and their rights?
Harriett Baldwin
I am happy to be answerable at the Dispatch Box for the actions of the UK Government, and I can assure the hon. Lady that the UK continues to support this important work and, in fact, to do more on things such as access to safe family planning around the world.
Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
Earlier this month, London hosted the largest ever illegal wildlife trade conference, with representation from more than 70 countries and 400 organisations. Ministers from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for International Development announced additional support for developing countries to tackle IWT. I pay tribute my right hon. Friend the Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) for all the work that they have done and continue to do to advance this agenda.
Neil Parish
Many of the countries where there is wildlife crime involving iconic species such as elephant and rhino are war-torn. That is a huge problem that makes it dangerous for the rangers and others who try to protect the wildlife. What more can we do to help war-torn countries? It is essential that we do so.
Mark Field
I am sure my hon. Friend is grateful that the London conference highlighted the links he has pointed out between human conflict and IWT. DFID has committed to spend at least 50% of its annual budget in fragile and conflict-afflicted states. Although that does not impact directly on IWT, it should help to reduce it. The IWT challenge fund and the Darwin fund have also supported projects in countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and Sudan. Trophy hunting occurs in a few countries with well-developed tourist industries, but it is unlikely to be a major feature of war-torn countries.
George Freeman
I congratulate and thank the Ministers for what they are doing to tackle this appalling trade. Does he agree that one of the most important aspects of tackling it is to create mutual economic interest for local tribespeople and farmers to support wildlife? Does he support the work of the excellent Laikipia Wildlife Forum in Kenya, which was set up by the great British conservationist Dr Anthony King?
Mark Field
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. A Chatham House study presented at the London conference on transboundary green corridors supported the view that the creation of jobs and local prosperity partnerships can indeed help to protect endangered species. That is why we secured an uplift of some £6 million for the IWT challenge fund, and why DFID is committed to further such work to address these issues.
John Lamont
Now that the Government have confirmed that we will adopt a world-leading ban on the ivory trade that applies to ivory of all ages, what steps is the Minister taking to put pressure on other countries to adopt a similar measure, particularly those in the Chinese area?
Mark Field
We very much welcome China’s closure of the domestic ivory market. It is, of course, the single largest market in the world. It is vital to ensure that the ban is properly and fully enforced, and that the ivory trade is not allowed simply to relocate to other parts of south-east Asia, or indeed anywhere else. We shall continue to work with the Chinese Government and other Governments to ensure that that does not happen.
Chris Evans
The illegal poaching trade is worth £16 billion worldwide and is one of the largest organised crimes in the world. What assurance can the Minister give the House that that money is not being laundered through UK banks?
Mark Field
In specific terms, I cannot give direct assurances, but that is clearly something we will work on. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that the illegal wildlife trade is very much a security issue. One of the real achievements of the conference—something for which I have pushed for some time—was that it made that clear. IWT is often the soft underbelly of the very worst sorts of criminality, not least money laundering, the narcotics trade and people trafficking.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In the media today, there are indications that China intends to lift its ban on the sale of rhino and tiger remedies. What discussions has the Minister had with the Chinese Government to ensure that the ban is retained, not removed?
Mark Field
We are aware of the announcement by the Chinese State Council in the last couple of days concerning the domestic trade in tiger bone and rhino horn. We are concerned, and we will make representations that any changes should not have a negative impact on the tackling of the illegal wildlife trade. Of course, we will raise this issue at the earliest opportunity with our Chinese counterparts.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
I am glad to hear my right hon. Friend the Minister speak about the connection between wildlife crime and other forms of instability. Does he agree that the work that is done by several organisations to preserve not just natural heritage but architectural and archaeological heritage is essential in helping people to have the sense of identity, place and belonging that is so essential to resisting forces such as ISIS and other extremist elements?
Mark Field
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I spoke earlier about the need globally to recognise that in the case of criminality, we live in an interconnected world. As he rightly points out, a sense of place and being is an important aspect. Many might feel that a concentration on the illegal wildlife trade is, to a certain extent, a Cinderella area, but it is an important aspect of what the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is trying to achieve through its soft power initiatives.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his work in making the illegal wildlife trade summit a couple of weeks ago an enormous success. I know he will join me in welcoming the efforts of Zambia, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Angola and Botswana to work together to deliver the KAZA programme, a massively ambitious cross-border conservation plan linking their countries together. May I urge him to use all his diplomatic skills to support that initiative and also to ensure that DFID provides whatever support it can?
Mark Field
I should perhaps thank my hon. Friend again: not only is he very committed to this, but a huge amount of his time over the past six months was spent on ensuring that the IWT conference was such a great success. I do not want to step on the toes of my hon. Friend the Minister for Africa on these matters, but I will of course do all that I can. The other important aspect of what we are trying to achieve with elephant corridors such as the one to which my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) referred is to recognise that technology has an important part to play in clamping down on the illegal wildlife trade. That is an important aspect of where we see this issue going in the years to come.
Gill Furniss (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
I regularly discuss human rights concerns with my Saudi Arabian counterpart Foreign Minister al-Jubeir, most recently on 27 September and 20 October.
Gill Furniss
Media reports have surfaced this weekend suggesting that UK intelligence services were aware of the Saudi plan to abduct the journalist Jamal Khashoggi and take him back to Riyadh, and of the deployment of the hit squad to Istanbul for that purpose. May I give the Foreign Secretary the opportunity to tell the House today that those reports are categorically untrue?
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
It has been reported today that 17 Filipino women are being held in custody in Saudi Arabia for the heinous crime of attending a Halloween party. How much more oppressive does the Saudi regime have to get before it loses its esteemed place as Britain’s greatest friend in the middle east?
Mr Hunt
Saudi Arabia is a human rights country of concern for the Foreign Office. We have regular discussions with the Saudis about our concerns—the guardianship system, freedom of expression, the death penalty and a range of other issues—but it is because we have a relationship with them that we are able to raise these concerns both privately and in public, and the hon. Gentleman should rest assured that that is exactly what we do.
Sir Desmond Swayne (New Forest West) (Con)
Do we have any regret about seeking the election of Saudi Arabia to the Human Rights Council?
Mr Hunt
All sorts of issues with respect to Saudi Arabia’s human rights record are in sharp relief at the moment, but I think I have spoken more clearly than perhaps any other western Foreign Minister in saying that if the Khashoggi stories turn out to be true, that will be inconsistent with our values.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I was going to ask a question about Yemen, but I am afraid I have to follow up on the answer given to my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), because if the allegations in this weekend’s report are true they are extremely serious. It was reported that in early September our intelligence services became aware of the Saudi plan to abduct Jamal Khashoggi, and on 1 October they knew that a Saudi team had been dispatched to Istanbul for that purpose. I hear what the Foreign Secretary says that he did not know, but did the intelligence services know, and has he asked them?
Mr Hunt
I have to repeat what I said to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), and I am sure the right hon. Lady will understand that it is not possible for a Foreign Secretary, or indeed any Minister, to comment on intelligence matters, for very obvious reasons, but I did not know about this attack. It is very important that the right hon. Lady and the House understand that. We are as shocked as everyone else is about what happened.
Emily Thornberry
I understand what the Foreign Secretary is saying, but he must understand that these allegations are extremely serious, and I am afraid it will not do to hide behind a blanket refusal to discuss intelligence matters. So will he, first, agree to attend an emergency session of the Intelligence and Security Committee to answer these questions behind closed doors, and, secondly, if he is not prepared as a point of principle to say what the intelligence services knew, at least reassure us that something will be done about this and that Ministers will find out what the intelligence services knew at the time?
Mr Hunt
If I am invited before the Intelligence and Security Committee, I will of course consider that invitation, but the right hon. Lady must know that her desire for me to release important intelligence information to the House or anywhere else is totally inappropriate. I do not think for a moment that she would be doing that if she were Foreign Secretary. I respect and understand her concern about the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, but I wish that she would show the same concern for what is happening in Venezuela and Russia, and indeed with antisemitism. There seems to be a blind spot when it comes to countries that share Labour’s anti-western world view.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
Conditions remain dire for civilians in Syria. Half the population is displaced and some 13 million people are dependent on humanitarian assistance. We continue to engage with agencies and Governments to ensure humanitarian access and the use of supplies. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to meet Staffan de Mistura here in London.
Alison McGovern
As the Minister has said, civilians in Syria desperately need calm, and they need a political process to lead them out of this conflict. On Saturday, France, Germany, Turkey and Russia met in Istanbul. How will we bring the UK’s influence to bear to ensure that this is a Syria-led process that puts Syrian civilians at the heart of whatever the political process brings next?
Alistair Burt
I should like to start by thanking Staffan de Matura for all the work he has put in. As the House will know, the United Nations special envoy will be standing down in November. He has devoted the past few years of his work to trying to achieve a settlement and agreement in Syria that will indeed enhance the rights of civilians. At present, he is still working on the details of the constitutional settlement. It will involve a constitutional committee, for which he has put forward various names. There is an impasse on that at the moment, but his work, and the work of the Syrian high negotiating committee, to ensure that civilians have a recognised role in the future of Syria remain a key part of the United Kingdom’s contribution to these discussions.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for that response, but could he take this a little bit further and tell us what conversations he is having with his counterparts in other countries to ensure that civil society and civilians are at the heart of the post-conflict resolution and the peace and reconciliation that are so needed?
Alistair Burt
That is a good question. We as a Government are engaged in regular consultations with states that have an interest in supporting the UN process. Essentially, this is a UN process, supported by the UN Security Council, to ensure a settlement that involves civil society. All the evidence suggests that conflict will reoccur unless women, civil society and others are involved in the resolution of that conflict. The United Kingdom takes this issue forward very carefully.
John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Ind)
But as my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern) said, the UK was not at Istanbul and it will not be part of the EU-US summit organised to take place in France next month. Is it not a source of profound dissatisfaction and, potentially, shame that the UK will not be at the table? What are the Minister, the Foreign Secretary and the Prime Minister going to do about that?
Alistair Burt
Yesterday, the UN small group met in London with representatives of a variety of countries and the UN special envoy in order to be part of the process that is supporting the special envoy in his work. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary and I have been involved, and I was at a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly with other Foreign Ministers to discuss the future of Syria. We are engaged—we cannot be at every meeting, but the United Kingdom is heavily involved in backing the work of the UN and will remain so.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
What update can my right hon. Friend offer the House on the resettlement of the White Helmets in the UK following the joint operation to rescue them in the summer?
Alistair Burt
The White Helmets and their families were evacuated from southern Syria under the vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. That support has been delivered, and we continue to work with other countries to ensure the resettlement of the White Helmets’ supporters who left Syria a short while ago.
John Grogan (Keighley) (Lab)
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
Diplomatic relations with Mongolia are flourishing, not least owing to the efforts of the hon. Gentleman, who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on Mongolia, and his Mongolian counterpart, former Prime Minister Batbold, who I understand is in the Gallery today. I very much look forward to seeing him again on Thursday.
I visited Ulaanbaatar and the Oyu Tolgoi mine in the Gobi desert in July to promote our growing trade and investment relationship, as well as our bilateral co-operation on the environment, education, foreign policy and defence.
John Grogan
Does the Minister agree that the land of Genghis Khan is now a beacon of freedom and democracy in the region, and that its foreign policy of encouraging rapprochement between the two Koreas and developing diplomatic and economic third neighbours throughout the world beyond Russia and China is a good opportunity for the United Kingdom?
Mark Field
I understand that the hon. Gentleman recently visited Mongolia—his visit was probably more enjoyable than mine, with fewer diplomatic commitments than I have had recently. Yes, that is important. Mongolia has transformed over the past 30 years, and we want to play our part in continuing that transformation, not least because, as he knows, it is a small country by population between two giants in Russia and China, and very much sees its relationships with third countries, of which we are one of a number, as important.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
I cannot even get back to my seat—it is a tough old day on the Asia brief. I appreciate that this is a serious issue for the hon. Lady. We encourage all British nationals visiting or residing in Pakistan to read our travel advice and ensure they have the appropriate insurance. While most visits are trouble free, of course we have a very dedicated consular team ready to provide support to those most in need.
Mr Speaker
The Minister is much in demand, and I am sure he appreciates that fact.
Alison Thewliss
My constituent Ali Soofi has serious concerns that his nephew, a British citizen, is being held against his will in Pakistan—he has been for more than a year now—and that his life is in danger. A court order issued by the high court in Lahore back on 15 August acknowledged Mr Soofi’s poor health and recommended the assistance of the British high commission in facilitating his return to the UK for medical treatment. To date, he has not been able to return. Consular assistance seems very soft touch, I am afraid to say. Can the Minister intervene in this case to ensure that all means possible are used to ensure that Mr Soofi gets home to Scotland as soon as possible?
Mark Field
Naturally I can. I thank the hon. Lady, who has done sterling work in relation to the case of her constituent Mr Soofi. As she knows, I wrote to her on 24 October with the latest on this case and, in view of its sensitivities, offered to meet her and discuss it privately in more detail. I very much look forward to doing so once our offices have agreed a mutually convenient date.
Greg Hands (Chelsea and Fulham) (Con)
Many British nationals in Pakistan are involved in trade. A year ago I went to GlaxoSmithKline’s factory in Karachi, which is one of its largest and most profitable in the world. However, given the size of our Department for International Development presence in Pakistan, which is the equal largest in the world, and our consular presence there, what more can the FCO do with the Department for International Trade to boost our commercial activity in Pakistan?
Mark Field
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. He will know that the UK shares a long-standing relationship with Pakistan. We have the strongest of cultural and historical ties and, of course, a very large diaspora. On the trade side, I have been working on trying to ensure that that diaspora plays its part in ensuring ever stronger trading connections between our two countries.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
I very much recognise that there are human rights concerns in both India-administered and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. The FCO encourages both states to uphold their international human rights obligations. Any allegations of human rights violations or abuses are concerning and must of course be thoroughly investigated, promptly and transparently.
Debbie Abrahams
The all-party parliamentary group on Kashmir’s report on human rights abuses, which was published this summer, reflects the UN’s findings. What discussions have the Minister or the Foreign Secretary had with the Governments of Pakistan and India about those human rights abuses? Will the Minister meet me and other members of the all-party group to discuss taking forward our recommendations?
Mark Field
I am always happy to meet members of all-party parliamentary groups, so I would be glad to do so. We very much encourage the parties to keep the channels of dialogue open as a means of resolving differences. The hon. Lady will recognise that the UK’s long-standing position is that it is for India and Pakistan to find a lasting political resolution to the situation in Kashmir, taking account of the wishes of the Kashmiri people. The relationship between the two countries is very complex, as the hon. Lady will be aware. We encourage both sides to maintain good relations and make the most of all opportunities for dialogue.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
The human rights abuses reported to me by my Urdu-speaking constituents are not a complex matter; they are often simple and horrifying. Does the Minister share my concern that a lack of English language news reporting is keeping these abuses out of the public consciousness in the United Kingdom and around the world, and will he join me in calling on journalists to bring forward English language coverage so that the world can be informed?
Mark Field
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this matter. We persistently raise the issue of Kashmir, including human rights, with the Governments of both India and Pakistan, but my hon. Friend makes a good point about ensuring that there is at least mutually trusted media coverage of this matter. I know that the BBC’s coverage in south Asia has become more extensive, and I believe that the BBC World Service is looking to extend matters further. I will make sure that that organisation is made well aware of this point.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
I hear what the Minister says about the relationship with the two Governments, but, given that we are talking about two nuclear armed powers and that Delhi is increasingly belligerent with a relatively new Government, is there not something more that the Minister can do to bring the two powers together, given our historical relationship with Delhi and the Government in Pakistan?
Mark Field
I know that the hon. Gentleman takes these matters very seriously, as do other Members throughout the House who represent constituencies with large Pakistani and Indian populations; I speak for my rather silent Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson), who does a lot of work behind the scenes on this matter but is obviously not able to speak on it in Parliament. The hon. Member for Leyton and Wanstead (John Cryer) will be aware that it is not our place to mediate, intervene or interfere in this issue, but I hope he is also aware that I raise the issue of Kashmir at every opportunity when I see my counterparts—the Indian and Pakistani Ministers—as well as the high commissioners to London, because the matter is so close to the hearts of many hon. Members.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Last week we celebrated the Jammu and Kashmir festival, and the anniversary of the instrument of accession, whereby the whole of Jammu and Kashmir was ceded to India. Sadly, Pakistan refuses to accept this, so what is my right hon. Friend doing to encourage the Pakistani Government to dismantle the terrorist bases in Kashmir that are causing human rights abuses in the whole of Kashmir?
Mark Field
I know that my hon. Friend takes a strong view on this matter. We do all that we can to raise the legitimate concerns brought up by all Members in this House with the Governments in both New Delhi and Islamabad. However, we believe that the pace of progress is for India and Pakistan to determine.
Dr Philippa Whitford (Central Ayrshire) (SNP)
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
The Government remain deeply concerned about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. I regularly raise with the Israeli authorities the need to ease restrictions there. Our ambassador to Israel discussed Gaza with the Israeli authorities on 17 October. The UK supports healthcare in Gaza through the International Committee of the Red Cross, and is a strong supporter of the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which provides basic healthcare in Gaza.
Dr Whitford
As well as many breast cancer patients not being allowed out of Gaza for treatment, it is very difficult for doctors to get out to access training, so Medical Aid for Palestinians has recruited specialists to bring the training to them. But on our visit last month, I was formally denied permission to enter Gaza and two other doctors on our team never received theirs. This totally wrecked our teaching programme. Will the Minister make representations to the Israeli authorities to allow these medical projects in Gaza to continue unhindered?
Alistair Burt
First, I have already done so. Secondly, although it is of course a matter for Israeli authorities to make those decisions, the value of the visits of the hon. Lady and her team cannot be overestimated. Thirdly, we are all in her debt for the work that she does to support those suffering conditions in Gaza.
Stephen Crabb (Preseli Pembrokeshire) (Con)
The Save a Child’s Heart programme at the cardiology department of the Wolfson Medical Centre in Israel has now seen or treated around 6,000 Palestinian children. Does my right hon. Friend agree that these kind of projects—which bring together Palestinian and Jewish medics, and bring Israelis into contact with Palestinian families—are incredibly powerful and uplifting? Will he look at what more we can do to support such projects?
Alistair Burt
It is an often understated fact of the complex relationship between Israel and its neighbours that there is cross-border work, and that medical treatment takes place in Israel for those from both the west bank and Gaza—some of it is very high level and done in the most important circumstances. Save a Child’s Heart is not directly supported by the United Kingdom, but we certainly support all efforts to make sure there is even more contact between the Palestinians and the Israeli authorities, particularly in healthcare matters.
Fabian Hamilton (Leeds North East) (Lab)
The United Nations says that international funding to tackle the humanitarian crisis across the Palestinian territories is at an all-time low, with the shortfall to meet this year’s needs now standing at $380 million. Although we warmly welcome the £7 million increase in September from the UK Government, the Minister of State must know that it is a drop in the ocean. Will he instead do what we have been calling for since January, convene an urgent global funding conference and treat this as the pressing emergency it is?
Alistair Burt
The support we give to UNRWA continues to be considerable, and we have brought forward support that would have come in the next couple of years, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that, compared with the loss from the United States, it is only a small amount. We lobby other states directly on this, and there has been an increase in funding that will see us through a relatively short period of time. After that, it is essential that the issues surrounding UNRWA are dealt with and that funding is found for those who are in need. Ultimately, the issues that UNRWA deals with will only be resolved when we get the final agreement for which we are all searching. In the meantime, we do encourage, and we have seen a response from, other states following the United Kingdom’s generosity.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Following the 4 March Salisbury attack, the UK co-ordinated action among 28 countries and NATO that led to 153 Russian diplomats being expelled, which we think is the largest mass expulsion in history.
Steve Double
Because of recent events, Russia is not currently sitting in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. There are those who seek to change the rules governing the Council of Europe to make it easier to readmit Russia. Although we all want to see Russia welcomed back, does the Secretary of State agree that it is not the Council of Europe but Russia that needs to change its ways?
Chris Davies
I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing agreement among our European allies for EU sanctions against senior Russians in charge of Russia’s spy networks following the Salisbury attack, but what further action can now be taken in respect of cyber-related attacks, given the growing menace of Russia’s targeting of other countries’ computer networks?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we looked at a map of Europe showing all the places where there have been Russian-inspired cyber-attacks, we would see it is a very busy map indeed. We need to create a new international red line that says these cyber-attacks are unacceptable, which is why it is very positive news that, on 15 October, the EU agreed to set up a sanctions regime for cyber-attacks, but that is just the first of a number of steps.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We need to keep up the pressure on Russia. There is no point in just referring to what we have already done. When will the Government bring forward their first list of people caught by the new Magnitsky legislation in this country? Would it not be a good idea for us now to include those who are gangsters, rather than just those who have abused human rights?
Mr Hunt
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. As he knows, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 only comes into effect after Brexit, because it depends on us taking trade measures, which is what has to happen. Ahead of that, however, we are talking to the EU about whether it should introduce a sanctions regime for human rights abuses, and that is relevant not just to Russia but to many countries.
Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)
Can the Foreign Secretary update the House on any discussions he has had with NATO partners and allies in relation both to the Salisbury attack and to the rise in cyber-attacks?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do that for the right hon. Gentleman. NATO Foreign Ministers recognise collectively that we are starting to see international norms being breached in an extremely dangerous way. One of those breaches is on chemical weapons; we should never forget that the Salisbury attack was the first use of chemical weapons on British soil, and it is extremely serious from that point of view. The other is on cyber, with the general undermining of confidence in democracy when people think that hostile state actors might be trying to interfere in our elections. We need to stop both those things.
Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend have a word with his successor as Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to ask why the NHS—Pharmacy2U, to be precise—is advertising on RT and so is lining the pockets of Putin’s mouthpiece?
Mr Hunt
I am very happy to have a word with my excellent successor, but of course this affects us in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office as well. With the unexplained wealth orders and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, we are starting to tighten the net on people from unfriendly regimes who are financing activities that are against our values.
Mr Khalid Mahmood (Birmingham, Perry Barr) (Lab)
In reaching the sanctions agreement he referred to, I am sure the Secretary of State was grateful for the support of the former eastern bloc countries, which he welcomed to Chevening before the summit. Did he take the opportunity to apologise to them for comparing their experience under Soviet domination to membership of the EU?
Mr Hunt
We had a very enjoyable time, including when getting a little lost in the maze. Let me answer the hon. Gentleman’s question directly: I stand by exactly what I said, which was that a club of free countries that was set up, in part, to stand against the Soviet Union and totalitarianism should not, in way that is inconsistent with its values, seek to punish someone who wishes to leave.
Stephen Gethins (North East Fife) (SNP)
It was deeply impressive how many states stood by the UK in the aftermath of the Salisbury attack, not least those that know fine well what the Moscow regime is capable of. So I am going to give the Foreign Secretary the opportunity: what message does he have for those states that have thrived since independence in the EU but were deeply offended by his crass remarks comparing the EU with the former Soviet Union?
Stephen Gethins
I will give the Foreign Secretary a second opportunity, but before I do, let me read out some quotes. The Latvian ambassador said:
“Soviets killed…and ruined the lives of 3 generations, while the EU has brought prosperity, equality, growth, respect.”
The Lithuanian European Commissioner was born in a gulag—I want the Foreign Secretary to reflect on that—and he said:
“I was born in a Soviet gulag and was imprisoned by KGB”.
He has offered the Foreign Secretary a history lesson. Will he take the Lithuanian Commissioner up on that?
Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
I discussed the proposed United States peace plan with the US President’s middle east envoy, Jason Greenblatt, on 28 September in New York. The Foreign Secretary discussed this with the special adviser to the US President, Jared Kushner, on 22 August. The UK remains committed to a negotiated settlement leading to a two-state solution based on 1967 borders, with Jerusalem as a shared capital.
Sir Henry Bellingham
I am glad the Minister has made that commitment, but does he agree that the time really has come for a re-energising and reinvigorating of a two-state solution? Will he personally take a lead in that? Surely what the world expects from both sides is restraint and statesmanship, with Hamas stopping the constant rocket attacks and Israel drawing a halt to the west bank settlement programme?
Alistair Burt
I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s questions. The need to keep the middle east peace process at the forefront of the world’s mind is perhaps greater than ever. Just because it has gone on for so long, that is no reason why it should slip away. I absolutely assure my hon. Friend that, everywhere I go and in every conversation I have in the region, they know that the middle east peace process will come up because the United Kingdom must not let it be as it is, because there will no peace or security for either the state of Israel or its neighbours unless the issue is finally resolved.
Mr Hollobone
After a comprehensive two-year investigation, Human Rights Watch has concluded that
“Palestinian authorities routinely arrest people whose peaceful speech displeases them and torture those in their custody.”
Will my right hon. Friend condemn that deplorable abuse of power and make appropriate representations to the Palestinian Authority?
Alistair Burt
We read with great concern the report that my hon. Friend quoted. We do not provide any funding to the agencies mentioned in it, although we do support other areas of the security sector. We have raised our concerns about this issue with the Ministry of Interior and continue to encourage the Palestinian Authority to respect human rights and to ensure that complaints of mistreatment or arbitrary detention are properly investigated. We continue to work with the authority to improve the performance of the security sector.
Dame Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
Has the Minister considered the political implications of the recent tragic events at the Gaza border, where Palestinians are encouraged to believe that they have a right of return within Israel’s internationally recognised 1948 boundaries? That makes a two-state solution impossible.
Alistair Burt
What I can and should say to the House is that it has been clear in recent weeks that Hamas has much greater control over the demonstrations at the border than it had at the start of the summer. Hamas has in effect completely taken over the committee that was responsible for the protests and the march on the right to return, and it is now taking people, including children, to the border. That is a practice that must end. The situation at the Gaza border is very grim. It will take both sides to realise that there can be no future unless Gaza and the west bank are included in the overall settlement for which we work so hard.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
Is not it incredible that earlier we had a discussion about the terrible situation in Gaza in which the word “Hamas” was not mentioned once? Is not it the case that the only way in which that terrible situation will be alleviated and improved is through progress being made on a peace process, and that the only way that that is going to happen is when Hamas lays down its weapons, stops using resources that should be used to build houses, hospitals and schools to dig tunnels and to make rockets to fire at civilians in Israel, and stops the incendiary attacks that have caused 1,000 fires on the border?
Alistair Burt
As the hon. Gentleman knows, although very often Members on one side of the House or the other tend to raise issues of greatest concern to themselves and ignore the other side, the United Kingdom Government have been clear about the responsibilities in Gaza. I just mentioned Hamas in my previous answer—but I understand the point—and it is very clear that Hamas has significant responsibility for the events in Gaza. None the less, Israel also has some responsibility for the restrictions and the issues in Gaza, which is why, as the hon. Gentleman rightly said, none of this will be settled by one side or the other; it will be settled only by the comprehensive agreement that we are all working so hard to achieve.
Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
The situation in Yemen is tragic and we are deeply concerned by the humanitarian impact. We play a leading role in efforts to find a peaceful solution by supporting the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths, calling a special session of the UN Security Council, and pressing all parties to join peace talks.
Gavin Newlands
In the past three years, the UK has granted military export licences to Saudi Arabia worth a total of £5 billion. Given that the Saudi-led invasion has pushed Yemen to the brink of famine, with thousands of civilians killed in the process, does the Minister feel any guilt that those arms sales have helped to enable the Saudi regime to perpetrate war crimes? Or, as with the American President, does money trump ethics for this Tory Government?
Alistair Burt
I shall say two things. First, on arms sales, which have been discussed comprehensively in this Chamber and elsewhere, every licence is considered on an individual basis. A very comprehensive set of controls are gone through and the United Kingdom sticks to that process. Secondly, the hon. Gentleman referred to an invasion by the coalition. Let me be clear: an insurgent movement usurped a legitimate Government, who were then backed by the UN in order to relieve that Government, and the coalition responded to that call to take action to protect the Government and to protect the civilians in Yemen, who are being comprehensively abused by the Houthi insurgency. The hon. Gentleman should not refer to it as an invasion, as that is just not what it was.
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
Has our new Foreign Secretary had a chance to review the position of the British Government at the United Nations in respect of Yemen? Will he move from a position of supporting the Saudi coalition where Britain is complicit in creating a famine, to one of constructive neutrality to secure a ceasefire and meaningful constitutional negotiations, as the UN special representative, Martin Griffiths, is consistently urging and trying to secure?
Alistair Burt
On 15 March, the UK proposed and co-ordinated a United Nations Security Council presidential statement, which called on the parties to agree steps towards a ceasefire. That remains our position. Calling for a nationwide ceasefire will have an effect on the ground only if it is underpinned by a political deal between the conflict parties. Given the lack of agreement between those parties, passing a ceasefire resolution risks undercutting the UN envoy’s efforts to reach a political deal and undermining the credibility of the Council. As soon as the right opportunity arises, we will bring forward a resolution.
Tommy Sheppard (Edinburgh East) (SNP)
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Since the last oral questions, I have attended the United Nations General Assembly in New York, addressed a special Security Council session on North Korea, joined a meeting of Foreign Ministers on the tragedy in Yemen and convened a roundtable on Burma.
Tommy Sheppard
Last week, the UN special rapporteur, Michael Lynk, produced his report on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. He concludes that the problem is not with the clarity of international law, but with the unwillingness of the international community to uphold it. Does the Foreign Secretary agree with that assessment and, if so, what action will his Government take to ensure the rule of law in the middle east?
Mr Hunt
We are very concerned about a number of the things that have been happening in the occupied territories. We will study that report extremely carefully. Indeed, we are talking closely to the Americans about their middle east peace plan, which we hope will be launched soon.
Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
Mr Hunt
We look at those reports with a lot of concern. We had our own diplomats visiting the Xinjiang province in August and they concur that those reports are broadly accurate. I raised it with the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, when I went to China and we continue to be extremely concerned about what is happening.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The Burmese Reuters journalist Wa Lone has still not met his 11-week-old daughter. She may be seven years old before he finally sees her. He was jailed for seeking to report accurately the Rohingya crisis. Does not the fate of Wa Lone demonstrate that the Government’s position is too weak in expecting the Myanmar Government to investigate themselves? Will the Foreign Secretary adopt the UN recommendations and refer Myanmar’s military leaders to the International Criminal Court?
Mr Hunt
I share the hon. Lady’s concern about what is happening. With respect to Wa Lone and to the other Reuters journalist, Kyaw Soe O, I have raised concerns directly about due process in their case with State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and she assured me that she would relook at whether due process had properly occurred, but we are very concerned about that and indeed about the situation in Rakhine, where there has to be accountability. However, we have made some progress. We had the strongest ever condemnation of what happened by the Human Rights Council on 27 September. I convened a meeting at the UN General Assembly about this. The fact-finding mission has now come before the Security Council and there are lots of things that are happening.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The Minister for Africa (Harriett Baldwin)
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his tireless championing of this agenda. I can confirm that the UK will be supporting it. I can also confirm that we are on course with the blue belt programme to deliver over 4 million sq km of maritime protection around the UK’s overseas territories by 2020.
Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
The Minister for Asia and the Pacific (Mark Field)
It is important to remember that President-elect Bolsonaro received a clear mandate from the Brazilian people, and we will of course endeavour to work with his Administration. However, as the hon. Gentleman will be aware, our view on racism, homophobia and misogyny is clear—it would never be acceptable. We will remain the strongest of champions on human rights on the international stage and will not shy away from expressing that view where we disagree with other Governments, including our closest allies.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
I declare an interest as the chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on Tunisia. Yesterday the Tunisian capital, Tunis, was the target of a suicide bombing—the first attack in the country since 2015. What support are my right hon. Friend and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office providing to Tunisia in the wake of yesterday’s attack to ensure that its tourist economy, strengthened by UK holidaymakers, does not falter as it is starting to gather speed?
The Minister for the Middle East (Alistair Burt)
We have already expressed our condolences to Tunisia for the attack yesterday. The security situation in Tunisia has been worked on quite intensively by the Tunisian authorities since the attack in Sousse some years ago. We remain in close contact with Tunisia. We constantly update our travel advice to keep people in touch with the situation. We will continue to work with the Tunisian authorities to improve the security situation still further.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Harriett Baldwin
We are well aware of the reports to which the hon. Gentleman refers. I can assure him that, should there be any issues in terms of action that the UK can take in this regard, it stands ready to do that, should the situation require our intervention.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
May I ask the Minister for Africa what diplomatic support the Foreign and Commonwealth Office can give to the English-speaking community in Cameroon, which is being quite widely oppressed at the moment?
Harriett Baldwin
I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important situation. I was in the Anglophone region of Cameroon earlier this year. We are following with great concern the reports we are hearing that the situation has not got any better since I visited. We are urging the President, who has recently been re-elected, to follow through on his assurance that he would engage in meaningful dialogue to address the concerns of the people living in that region.
Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)
Sir Hugo Swire (East Devon) (Con)
When my right hon. Friend speaks to the President of Sri Lanka later on in the week, will he point out that his recent actions are in direct contravention of the 19th amendment to Sri Lanka’s constitution, that the international community continues to recognise Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the legitimate Prime Minister, that this can only be changed by a vote in Parliament, and that Parliament must be recalled as a matter of urgency in order that such a vote can take place?
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
The independent international fact-finding mission has recently spoken of the “enduring catastrophe” in Myanmar. Has not the time come to put forward a UN resolution referring this to the ICC and bringing public pressure to bear, to try to prevent it from being vetoed?
Mr Hunt
I completely share the hon. Gentleman’s concern. As I said to the House at the last oral questions, the issue with the ICC referral is that it has to go through the Security Council, where we think it would be vetoed by Russia or China. We are looking at alternative solutions. We are absolutely clear that there has to be accountability, because without accountability, the Rohingyas will not feel safe to go home.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Further to the question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Sir Hugo Swire), will the Foreign Secretary confirm that Britain’s position will be to back the rule of law as a guiding principle in Sri Lanka and elsewhere?
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
Alistair Burt
The most important thing in Yemen is to bring the conflict to a conclusion. Over the weekend, I spoke to representatives of the UN, the United States, the coalition and the Government of Yemen. Intensive work is going on to make every effort to bring the conflict to a conclusion, and the United Kingdom will play a full part in that.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
Following the terrible Salisbury attack, the United Kingdom Government expelled 23 Russian diplomats, and about 20 other countries did the same. Given the evidence that has emerged since then—for example, the attempted hacking of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons—does the Foreign Secretary agree that there is a case for the UK to go further in degrading the Russian state’s ability to commit espionage on our territory, by expelling more Russian diplomats?
Vernon Coaker (Gedling) (Lab)
Mark Field
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. He may not have heard it, but I said earlier on that we are making it very clear that it is not our place to intervene or interfere in this matter, but clearly it is a concern. The UN report on human rights has rightly been referred to. We very much take note of former high commissioner Zeid’s presentation to the Human Rights Council in June this year and the clear recommendations for the Governments of India and Pakistan. We hope that those will be adhered to.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
In the light of recent worrying developments in Sri Lanka, will the Foreign Secretary urge the Government there to make good on their promises to deliver justice for the Tamil people and accountability for war crimes committed against them?
Mark Field
I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. I was in Sri Lanka at the beginning of the month, and like the Foreign Secretary, I am deeply concerned by the fast-developing political situation there. As I say, not only do we want to stand up for the constitution, but my right hon. Friend is right to say that we need to continue to urge Sri Lanka to implement fully the commitments it has willingly made to the UN Human Rights Council.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
Harriett Baldwin
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s work as vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for Sudan and South Sudan. This is a serious situation. We continue to advocate the freeing up of political space and the freeing of political prisoners, as some of the cost-free things that the Government of South Sudan could do to show willing in terms of the peace process declared on 12 September.
Paul Scully (Sutton and Cheam) (Con)
While the nation and the international community rightly focus on the situation in Rakhine state in Burma, I recently met people from Karen and Chin states, and they told me some horrendous continuing stories. I am also hosting a delegation from Kachin and Shan states—
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is a busy man—we are all well aware of that—but what is the question?
Paul Scully
Will the Foreign Secretary tell me what we are doing to tackle the situation in the whole of Burma?
Mr Speaker
I know the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) very well. He has many commitments, he is a very busy man and he has a very full diary. There is no need to advertise it to the House; we are all aware of what an indispensable public servant he is.
Imran Hussain (Bradford East) (Lab)
I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. For over 70 years, the sons and daughters of Kashmir have been subjected to persecution, oppression and human rights abuses, yet it seems that our position continues to be that this is a matter for India and Pakistan. How many more innocent men, women and children have to die before we at least facilitate peaceful talks between those countries to find a peaceful resolution?
Mark Field
I do understand the passion and the genuine sense of outrage that the hon. Gentleman feels. Ultimately, there can be a solution only if India and Pakistan work together. It cannot be our role to intervene, not least because, as I think the hon. Gentleman will understand, we will be seen by one or other side as intervening on that side rather than on the other. We will do our very best, as I have already mentioned, as far as the UN is concerned—given that a UN report is on the table—to try to bring the parties together. However, on the notion that it is in any way the place of the UK Government to intervene on this matter, I am afraid that we have quite rightly maintained such a position for over 70 years.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
Twenty-five years ago, I was part of a British, Han Chinese and Uighur expedition that crossed the Taklamakan desert in western China for the first time. Today, Xinjiang is not a happy region, and there are worrying, wide-scale reports of abuses of the human rights of the Muslim Uighur population. Does the Minister believe that this is something we should be raising at the human rights talks in Geneva?
Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)
Will the Secretary of State consider all options we have at EU level to prosecute and impose sanctions on those who have committed atrocities against the Rohingya people in Myanmar?
Leo Docherty (Aldershot) (Con)
What steps have been taken to counter the rise of Russian influence inside Libya?
Alistair Burt
Increased Russian military activity has been noticed in Libya, and we continue to monitor that. We would reiterate that there is a UN arms embargo in relation to Libya. It should be the role of all parties to work constructively with the efforts of UN special envoy Ghassan Salamé, and Russia should direct its efforts to encouraging parties to work with that process to bring the conflict to a conclusion.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Speaker
Order. We are running late, which is not exactly novel, but I could accommodate more colleagues if each was kind to every other. I am sure Mr Stewart Malcolm McDonald will volunteer just a sentence.
Stewart Malcolm McDonald (Glasgow South) (SNP)
What discussions have the Government had with the Government of Ukraine regarding internally displaced people and food insecurity, particularly in the illegally occupied Donbass region?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman was there recently, I understand. He will be aware that, through the Department for International Development, we do have a programme of humanitarian assistance there, but Russian aggression continues to destabilise the area. In fact, my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary recently spoke to Foreign Minister Klimkin to emphasise our commitment to and support for Ukraine, including through Operation Orbital.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
Given the extraordinary declaration by the Argentinian Foreign Minister that Argentina will seek to enhance its claims to the Falklands if the UK leaves the EU without a deal, will my right hon. Friend confirm that—deal or no deal—there will be no question whatever of undermining the status of the Falkland Islands as a British territory?
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
The Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources is meeting now in Hobart. What progress has the UK delegation made in securing a marine protected area for the Weddell sea, which is absolutely vital to stop run-away climate change?
Harriett Baldwin
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the important talks that are taking place. The UK is very much a co-proponent and keen advocate of the proposal currently under discussion. We strongly support this marine protection work, not just in the Weddell sea.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
I have recently returned from Abu Nuwar, a village close to Khan al-Ahmar. There, I asked some of the mothers about their hopes and expectations. They said their hope was to remain in their village; their expectation was that, if Khan al-Ahmar is demolished, they would be next. What hope can the Minister give the mothers of Abu Nuwar?
Alistair Burt
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, both for his visit and for his continuing interest in this issue. As he knows, and as the House knows, we have made significant representations in relation to Khan al-Ahmar and other Bedouin communities in recent times. There has still been no decision to demolish the Khan al-Ahmar village; that is currently paused—a decision by the Israeli authorities that we welcome. We continue to hope that a resolution will be found that does not involve demolition. The United Kingdom will remain closely involved.
Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
If President Sirisena will not back down on the apparent return of Mahinda Rajapaksa—a man with a terrible human rights record in Sri Lanka—what further steps will the Foreign Secretary take with our European allies to demonstrate the seriousness of Britain’s concern about this matter?
Mark Field
We very much hope that President Sirisena will back down and will adhere to the constitution, which of course means bringing back Parliament at the earliest opportunity. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, when he alludes at least to this, that we are actively co-ordinating our response within the international community. We believe that a concerted international response will have the most effect.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
During the events that followed the Salisbury attack, the incompetence of the Russian operatives was there to be seen, but so too was their malevolence. Our EU friends were hugely helpful in thwarting their ambitions. Can I have an assurance that Her Majesty’s Government will continue in the future, whatever the future holds, to work closely with our European friends in thwarting this kind of threat?
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
Does the Foreign Secretary understand the complete terror and horror of my Tamil constituents at the idea that Mahinda Rajapaksa may be coming back? There can be no justice in Sri Lanka; these people will not find out where their disappeared relatives went nine years ago. What is the Foreign Secretary really going to do to support them?
Mark Field
I hope the hon. Lady will recognise that we do a lot already to support them. As I mentioned, I visited Colombo at the beginning of October and made these points to Foreign Minister Marapana. I also met the Tamil National Alliance leader and a number of human rights and other civil society activists. We will continue to do that work. I entirely agree with the hon. Lady, and I am as alarmed as she is. It is absolutely essential that we get Sri Lanka back to the table to ensure that it adheres to its UN Human Rights Council obligations.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
When will the Government formally recognise Palestine as a state in its own right and a full member of the UN?
Alistair Burt
The United Kingdom reserves the right to acknowledge and recognise the state of Palestine when it is in the best interests of the peace process to do so.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
Why are the Government not doing more to help UK citizens in Yemen who wish to leave?
Alistair Burt
We have no current presence in Sana’a, so we have no consular staff or anyone available. When people can get to a border, we can offer support, but we cannot physically offer support in Yemen. I know that the hon. Gentleman has a continuing case, and we have done our very best to support him and his constituents in very difficult circumstances. We will continue to do so, but the conflict makes our assistance extremely difficult.
Petition
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of 1,459 constituents from across York and a further 400 online; 1,859 residents and business owners are calling for a transformation in business rates. Although some progress was made in the Budget, it is absolutely clear that a fundamental reform of business rates is still needed, as some will lose out as a result of yesterday’s Budget.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the current business rates system is out-of-date, unfair and is undermining the viability of our high streets, our hospitality industry and many small businesses across the UK.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to carry out an urgent review and reform of the Business Rates system to help protect the future of the UK High Street and create a level playing field for all businesses.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002282]
Tobacco
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Tobacco Bill 2017-19 View all Tobacco Bill 2017-19 Debates Read Hansard Text
A Ten Minute Rule Bill is a First Reading of a Private Members Bill, but with the sponsor permitted to make a ten minute speech outlining the reasons for the proposed legislation.
There is little chance of the Bill proceeding further unless there is unanimous consent for the Bill or the Government elects to support the Bill directly.
For more information see: Ten Minute Bills
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Sir Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to report on means of requiring tobacco companies to meet the costs of smoking cessation services; to make provision about the advertising and marketing of products that are alternatives to tobacco; to require tobacco companies to publish information about their activities in relation to such products; to create an offence of selling tobacco without a licence; and for connected purposes.
In 1990, almost one third of adults in Great Britain smoked. The most recent figures show that this has almost halved—the prevalence rate is now 15.8%. The Government’s ambition, set out in the tobacco control plan last year, is to reach 12% or less by 2022, with a longer-term aim of achieving a 5% prevalence rate. Despite that relative success, the UK still has 7.6 million smokers, which means that more than 200 people a day still die from smoking-related illnesses that could have been prevented, and that smoking is estimated to cost our economy in excess of £11 billion a year.
In 2017, local authorities cut their budgets for stop smoking services in half. Separately, the number of smokers using NHS stop smoking services has decreased from a peak of 100,000 in 2011 to 40,000 in 2016. The Bill aims to highlight what a package of measures could do to accelerate the decline in smoking prevalence. At the heart of this new approach is the creation of a new fund that would be used primarily to supplement local authorities’ cessation expenditure, while simultaneously encouraging cigarette companies to shift away from combustible products to less harmful alternatives.
I know many are very wary of those products and the fact that many are produced or funded by tobacco companies. We must recognise that the tobacco companies have been extremely dishonest in the past about the harm caused by smoking. Tobacco companies have made a fortune selling cigarettes and they have got the country into this mess. I believe it is only right that they get us out of it. We should and must follow the simple principle of the polluter pays. They have the resources and the customer base to help smoking cessation tools get straight to the people who need them most.
The proposed tobacco transition fund would work in a similar way to the carbonated drinks industry fund, providing incentives for both individual consumers and the tobacco industry to change their behaviour. Over the next decade or so, such a fund could raise up to £1 billion, which would be spent primarily on cessation services in the areas with the highest smoking prevalence. The fund would be paid for by the major tobacco companies according to their market share. The fund would remain at the same level, regardless of the number of smokers in the UK, thereby making it increasingly costly for any company that wished to continue selling cigarettes as the number of smokers declined. The vast majority of the fund would be passed directly to local authorities to fund cessation services, with a particular focus on those with the highest rates of prevalence.
The fund could also provide extra ring-fenced money to Public Health England to promote switching by funding independent research, with the aim of promoting popular understanding and awareness of non-combustible products. The final element of the fund would be to support trading standards in its ongoing efforts to combat illicit trade in combustible tobacco, with the investment based on Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs’ assessment of local need and impact. The fund would need a robust and independent governance structure to oversee spending by the Department of Health and Social Care, Public Health England and local authorities. It would also require accurate reporting by the manufacturers of their efforts to switch consumers. This could include publication of sales data, and research and development spend.
The Bill would also need to find a way to encourage more smokers to switch. It is apparent that the Public Health England endorsement, which states that e-cigarettes are 95% safer than smoking, has been insufficient in persuading smokers that the alternatives are safer. In a survey last year, 26% of adults thought e-cigarettes were as harmful or more harmful than smoking, up from 7% in 2013.
We also need a new approach to help people receive the required information and support to quit. That must include a new approach to the rules on advertisements. We must recognise that e-cigarettes and other non-combustible products are very different from products that tobacco companies are better known for. It seems ridiculous that it is possible to advertise these products on outdoor billboards, but the same information cannot be provided using the internet, even with restrictions to limit its audience to adults only. Manufacturers of reduced harm products would adhere to a marketing code similar to that which applies to other highly regulated products, such as alcohol. The Advertising Standards Authority would monitor and enforce the code.
We must also look at reducing access to harmful tobacco products that are still being sold. At the moment, there is no requirement in England to have a licence or to register with a local authority to sell tobacco. Scotland has a model that requires registration, which is relatively simple to complete and free for retailers so that it does not hit small businesses. Introducing a register in England would strengthen tobacco control, making it a criminal offence to sell tobacco without being registered. If retailers sell illicit tobacco or sell to minors, they could then be struck off the register altogether.
I truly believe that if the industry is willing to commit to a future based on e-cigarettes and other reduced-harm products, we should take it up on the offer and allow Government and local authorities to partner with it for the financial and technical help needed to help smokers to quit. I am sure we would all agree that we want a smoke-free society as soon as possible. Hon. Members on both sides of the House and even some tobacco companies are now saying this as well, so the Government could not ask for a better opportunity. The challenge now is to make sure that the reality lives up to those ambitions, and I believe that the measures I have set out give us the best opportunity to do this. I commend the Bill to the House.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
To be clear, while I rise to oppose the Bill, I do not intend to divide the House. I do not intend to speak for long either, as I know that many hon. Members want to speak in the Budget debate, but it is important to put the Bill that the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Sir Kevin Barron) proposes into some context. I commend his dogged determination to reduce the number of people who smoke, but my fear is that, with this Bill, the points that he raises are either unwelcome or largely not necessary.
Yesterday the Chancellor again increased the tax on tobacco products by a rate above inflation, which means that the tax on some products is now more than 90% of the retail price. Around £12 billion of excise revenue is raised from tobacco products in the UK each year, and that does not include VAT. Each year the Government increase the level further above inflation. It was supposedly Louis XIV’s Finance Minister, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, who famously said that the art of levying taxes is to pluck the goose so as to get the maximum amount of feathers with the minimum amount of hissing. That is the balancing act that the Government have to perform every year with duties, including tobacco duty, except in this case the only hissing that we can hear is the sound of the criminal gangs who smuggle illegal tobacco into this country rubbing their hands with glee. If the Government thought that they could raise any more from the tobacco industry, I think that they would already be doing it.
The right hon. Gentleman proposes that the House should require the Secretary of State to report on how he is making the tobacco industry pay for smoking cessation services. One is tempted to ask how much more than £12 billion the right hon. Gentleman wants or expects, but of course what he is calling for is some kind of levy on tobacco, which he and a few others have repeatedly asked this and previous Governments about in the House. Indeed, such a question was asked only last month by the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), so clearly Members are having no difficulty in holding the Government to account on this issue, and I certainly do not think that we need a new Bill to help us.
The hon. Lady received the same answer in September that the Government have given many times before: a levy would be passed on to consumers and so would have the same effect as a duty increase, which is happening anyway, except for the fact that a levy would complicate the tax system, increase the administrative burden on Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, and create uncertainty for consumers and businesses. It was a bad idea in 2016 when the right hon. Member for Rother Valley presented a petition to the House about it, it was a bad idea last month, and it is still a bad idea today. The right hon. Gentleman keeps banging this drum, but perhaps it is time to change the tune.
On the advertising and promotion of alternatives to smoking, such as e-cigarettes, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government have already committed to examining how they can better support smokers with clear information after we leave the EU and once we are no longer held back by the outdated thinking of the EU’s tobacco products directive—yet another benefit of leaving. The best thing that a smoker can do, of course, is to quit smoking altogether, but it is obvious that those who cannot, or do not want to, deserve to be told the truth about e-cigarettes and other products that could offer them a less harmful alternative. At present, the law prevents manufacturers from giving them that information, but I hope that once we leave the EU, we will be able to change that.
Not all aspects of the tobacco products directive are bad, however; some offer real protections to consumers and deserve to be preserved after we leave the EU. For example, the right hon. Gentleman will be aware that the directive requires the manufacturers and importers of e-cigarettes and novel tobacco products to share with the Government any market research information that they hold on those products when they place them on the public register of legal products. That seems to be a very proper measure to allow the Government to monitor what is happening in this marketplace. As long as that measure remains in place after we leave the EU, it strikes me that we see another part of the right hon. Gentleman’s proposed Bill that is simply not needed.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman asks for the introduction of a tobacco licensing scheme, with tough penalties, but again that simply is not needed. The Government are already at work on implementing a Europe-wide system to track and trace tobacco products. That system will require that manufacturers, importers, wholesalers and retailers are all registered on a public database as “economic operators” in order to handle tobacco. That is a de facto licensing scheme anyway, and it does everything that is needed to support trading standards enforcement against unscrupulous criminals who sell smuggled tobacco or sell tobacco to children—with a bit of luck, we will see a few more of them behind bars as a result. I certainly hope that anyone who is caught committing such crimes would be automatically struck off the list and rendered unable to legally handle tobacco.
As I said, the right hon. Gentleman deserves our respect for his tireless and relentless work to reduce smoking. Although it is not my intention to divide the House, I thought that it was important to put on record the context of his proposed Bill and to point out that its measures are either unwelcome or, more often, not necessary.
Question put (Standing Order No. 23) and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Sir Kevin Barron, Norman Lamb, Mark Pawsey, Liz Kendall, Jess Phillips, Crispin Blunt, Mr Charles Walker, Mr Kevan Jones, Adam Afriyie and Tonia Antoniazzi present the Bill.
Sir Kevin Barron accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 23 November, and to be printed (Bill 280).
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. We have just agreed that the Bill is theoretically going to be read a Second time on 23 November. Unfortunately, on that day, 150 private Members’ Bills are going to be considered, 148 of which—now 149—I suspect will not be reached. Under our Standing Orders, the Government have to provide us with 13 days in a Session for private Members’ Bills. They guaranteed that they would provide additional days in this Session, because it is a two-year Session. They are considering having a two-year Session next time as well. Would it not be a good idea if they announced some additional days for private Members’ Bills—today, for instance?
Mr Speaker
Order. The Clerk has consulted his scholarly cranium, on the strength of which—and it is a very considerable strength—he was about to proffer me some advice, to which I will listen attentively if I can hear it. In any case, I have a view on what the hon. Gentleman has said, but let us first hear the point of order from the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), if it is on the same matter.
Philip Davies
It is on that very point, Mr Speaker. Am I not right in thinking that the Standing Orders state that there “shall be” 13 sitting days in a Session for private Members’ Bills, not that there will be a minimum of 13 days? Would it therefore not be quite proper for this Session to have just those 13 days, as that is what the Standing Orders clearly set out?
Mr Speaker
Conformity with Standing Orders is a very good starting point, but in reality it is possible for there to be differences of opinion about their interpretation. Recalling the sequence of events earlier in this Parliament, I believe that the Government nodded their recognition of the fact that a two-year Session had an implication for Opposition days and private Members’ Bills, and that therefore there would need to be an explicit commitment to guarantee the requisite number of days. I am not aware that that has yet happened, and that, I think, is at the heart of the hon. Gentleman’s point of order. If he is asking if I think it would be a good idea for there to be an announcement, my answer is: it might very well be, and if there is to be such an announcement, it would probably be a good idea for it to be sooner rather than later, if for no other or better reason than that it would mean he did not have to exercise his knee muscles again by rising to his feet to raise this perfectly legitimate point. I think we will leave it there for now, but I am grateful to both hon. Members for their points of order.
Ways and Means
Budget Resolutions
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Four weeks ago, the Prime Minister promised to end austerity. She raised people’s hopes—the hopes of teachers that they would no longer have to rely on begging letters to parents to fund the running of their schools; the hopes of police officers that the safer neighbourhood teams would return to tackle the rise in violent crime; and the hopes of local councillors of all political parties that they would have the resources to support local families in need at a time when a record number of children are being taken into care.
Those hopes were dashed yesterday. At best, those people got what the Chancellor described as “little extras”. No wonder so many teachers, police officers, local councillors and others feel bitterly disappointed at the Prime Minister’s broken promise, because yesterday’s Budget was not the end of austerity. Even with yesterday’s Budget, two thirds of the welfare benefit cuts planned by the Government will still roll out. Outside the NHS, departmental budgets are flat, and the Resolution Foundation this morning revealed that some Departments faced a further 3% cut in their budgets by 2023. Austerity is not ending.
For most people, ending austerity is about not just halting some of the cuts planned by the Government, but lifting the burden that austerity has imposed upon them and their communities over the last hard eight years.
Chris Philp (Croydon South) (Con)
I thank the shadow Chancellor for giving way so early in his speech. May I refer him to page 39 of the Red Book, which shows clearly that, by fiscal year 2023-24, there will be a £30 billion fiscal loosening? He referred to the Resolution Foundation, but it says that under universal credit, more money will be paid out to recipients than under the current system.
John McDonnell
To be absolutely clear, the Chancellor gave the impression yesterday that there would be no departmental cuts, but the Resolution Foundation has said that, although some Departments will be protected, others will have a 3% cut as a result. I call that continuing austerity.
Ending austerity is about more than that; it is about ending and repairing some of the damage that has been inflicted on our society and, yes, has undermined some of the social fabric we rely upon. Yesterday, the Chancellor claimed that this was a “turning point”. It is, but not in the way he suggested. This is not the end of austerity, but it is the beginning of the end of the dominance of an economic theory and practice that has wreaked havoc on our communities. People no longer believe the myth that austerity was necessary. They are seeing this Government hand out £110 billion in tax cuts to the rich and corporations while their services are being cut and their children are forced into poverty.
Dan Carden (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
Liverpool’s local authority will have had 64% of its budget cut by 2020. Would not a reversal in austerity mean its budget being reinstated?
John McDonnell
We are currently seeing local councils—the first wave has been Conservative—virtually going into administration. That must say something about the impact of a 50% cut in local government funding over the last eight years.
People no longer accept the trickle-down economics that has gripped the Tory party for four decades.
John McDonnell
I will in due course. The Parliamentary Private Secretary has done his job and handed out the briefings and questions to everyone. I respect the hon. Gentleman for his diligence and I will allow some interventions but, to be frank, people out there are fed up with parliamentary banter and want a debate that reflects the real world.
People no longer accept the trickle-down economics that has gripped the Tory party for four decades—the idea that somehow if we cut taxes for the rich and the corporations, this wealth will trickle down to everybody. They no longer accept “public sector bad, private sector good”. They no longer accept privatisation and deregulation; in fact, those are anathema to most people now. What was surprising yesterday was how lacking in self-awareness the Chancellor and his colleagues were and how out of touch they were with the reality of our people’s day-to-day lives. His speech reflected how ideologically crushed the Tories are. They are so bereft of ideas that the Chancellor yesterday, in a major parliamentary speech, was reduced to toilet gags. They are so bereft of ideas that they made a pathetic attempt to imitate Labour policies.
Mr Marcus Jones
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his generosity. Is the new economic model that Labour is proposing the same one that left 500,000 more people unemployed in 1979 and 450,000 more people unemployed in 2010 than when it came to office?
John McDonnell
A former Local Government Minister gets to his feet in this House and does not express a word of apology for what the Government have done to local government.
For some time, I have had concerns about the nature of the whole debate on austerity. First, many—I accept not all—in the Conservative party seem to have no appreciation of what austerity has meant and continues to mean for our society. I thought at one point that that was because many Labour MPs such as me represented constituencies with a different demographic to many Conservative constituencies. I represent a working class, multicultural London constituency. Yes, it is faced with different challenges from those of leafy Surrey, for example, but most of all our constituents, wherever they are, rely on the NHS, local schools, the police and local council services, so all of us should have some idea of what the public services that support our constituents have been going through.
Mr Ranil Jayawardena (North East Hampshire) (Con)
Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
John McDonnell
Not at the moment, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.
What shocked me yesterday was that the Chancellor delivered a Budget that so clearly failed to address the desperate needs of our society after eight years of austerity. Let us look at just some elements of the human cost of austerity and what the Chancellor brought forward in the Budget.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
As part of the number crunching that the right hon. Gentleman has undoubtedly been doing, has he worked out how much more would have been available for the police, prisons, schools and local government if the UK had not voted to leave the European Union two and a half years ago? Does he not believe that that reinforces the case for a people’s vote now to restore the level of growth that we saw two and a half years ago?
John McDonnell
I respect the right hon. Gentleman’s views on Brexit because I campaigned for remain as well, but it behoves any Liberal Democrat to come to this House with a bit of humility after serving with a Tory Administration that savaged our public services.
Let me look at some of the elements of human suffering. Health workers are having to cope with the biggest financial squeeze in the NHS’s history.
Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that we must reinstate nursing bursaries if we are to see the number of nurses we need in our NHS?
John McDonnell
That is an essential element of the reconstruction that Labour will have to do when we come to power.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that a rise in health spending of 3.3% was needed just to maintain the current stretched service, and that at least 4% was needed to improve it. Instead, according to the Nuffield Trust, what we got amounts to just a 2.7% increase in overall health spending in real terms next year.
Police officers have seen 21,000 of their colleagues’ jobs cut since 2010. As a result, violent crime is on the rise. The independent police watchdog is warning that
“the lives of vulnerable people could be at risk.”
What did the police get yesterday? Some £160 million for counter-terrorism—far less than is needed—and not a penny more for neighbourhood policing. And that despite the head of counter-terrorism warning that counter-terrorism work relies on regular policing being properly funded.
Teachers’ pay has fallen by 4% since 2011 and the schools budget has been cut by £3 billion in real terms. Some 36,000 teachers have left the profession in a year —the highest since records began.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the cuts to education that have left 22 out of 26 Wallasey schools facing cuts and that have seen £3 million cut from their budgets, while teachers are earning £4,000 a year less and having to do more, are an absolute disgrace, and that that demonstrates that this Government give no priority whatsoever to the future of our children?
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend has got it exactly.
It takes something, does it not, to have headteachers marching on Downing Street? That has never been seen before. Just what did yesterday’s Budget do to tempt teachers back? What the Chancellor offered was “little extras”. It was an insult, especially when 60% of teachers are not getting a pay rise this year.
There are now 4 million children living in poverty, 500 children’s centres have closed, 500 children’s playgrounds have closed and 128,000 children are living in temporary accommodation. When children’s social care faces a funding gap of £3 billion by 2025, what did the Chancellor offer? Just £84 million for just 20 councils. That will not even scratch the surface of the problem.
John McDonnell
No.
We have a record number of children coming into care. I know what coming into care means for a child: they are scarred for life. Why are they coming into care? Because there has been a 40% cut in funding to councils for early intervention to support families. Let the Government justify that.
On young people, the YMCA reports that spending on youth services has fallen by 62% since 2010. The average graduate comes out of university with a £50,000 debt. The IFS describes home ownership among young people as having collapsed completely. Tragically, with the mounting pressure, a decades-long decline in suicide among men has been reversed since 2010.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for mentioning suicide. I wonder whether there is anything in this Budget that he can welcome, even though I appreciate that we may differ. Does he not welcome the announcement on mental health or the announcement of a £21 million centre of excellence for public sector leaders?
John McDonnell
Of course we welcome more money for mental health, but what was required was £4 billion, not £2 billion; and that £2 billion was contained within the £20 billion that had already been announced, so it is not additional money. There are some things that we can work on on a cross-party basis in this House, but we have to be honest about the needs and the requirements, and we have to be straightforward in saying how they can be funded.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is being a little unfair; some people have done very well from austerity. A thousand of the richest people in the United Kingdom have seen their personal wealth increase by £274 billion over the past five years.
John McDonnell
The facts speak for themselves.
To make a real difference to the lives of young people, the Chancellor needed to address the housing crisis, deal with the toppling mountain of student loans, and restore work allowances for single people and couples without children. Instead we got piecemeal, unambitious housing announcements and re-announcements, nothing on student finances, and nothing on universal credit recipients who are single and without children.
Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)
The Chancellor’s meagre contributions to universal credit will do nothing to reverse the social security cuts for disabled people. Does my right hon. Friend agree that for the millions of disabled people, austerity is far from over?
John McDonnell
I will come on to the plight of disabled people, who seem to have been a particular target for this Government, given how they have withdrawn funding and services.
On older people, there were more than 31,000 excess winter deaths among the over-65s in 2017, and well over 150,000 elderly people are in arrears in their social care payments. The Local Government Association, which works on a cross-party basis, said that £1.5 billion was needed by 2020 just to fill the funding gap in adult social care. The £650 million that was announced yesterday is less than half of that.
What comes out of the analysis is this. The burden of austerity has fallen disproportionately on who? On the shoulders of women. Yesterday, that did not just continue; it got worse. The share of the Government’s tax and benefit changes impacting on women increased from 86% to 87%—another year with an increase. The 1950s women, who have been treated so unjustly, have been overlooked once again.
The victims of possibly the harshest cruelty inflicted by this Government are disabled people. A UN inquiry into the rights of persons with disabilities found this Government guilty of “grave and systematic violations” of their human rights. When have any UK Government been charged with that by a UN body? Never. To be frank, we know—
John McDonnell
I have given way to the hon. Gentleman once.
Many have taken their own lives as a result of the welfare reforms imposed upon them since 2010, and the Government—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I apologise for interrupting the right hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp) has made his point with force and alacrity, but he should not witter from a sedentary position, engaged in an animated conversation with a Member on the opposite Benches. The same goes for Members on both sides of the House. The shadow Chancellor has addressed the House, as in my experience he invariably does, with considerable courtesy. Whatever people think of what is being said, they should extend courtesy to the Front-Bench speakers, as they should to Back-Bench speakers.
John McDonnell
I understand the hon. Member for Croydon South (Chris Philp); he gets excited at times, but as someone who has been excited myself at times, I completely understand.
The Government have been repeatedly forced by the courts to change how they are treating disabled people. They do not seem to have learned their lesson yet, so yesterday we saw no restoration of disability premiums, no end to the cruel social security freeze, and no end to dehumanising and unreliable work capability assessments.
The Government are also putting the livelihoods of future generations at risk. A few weeks ago the world’s leading authority on climate change said that avoiding dangerous climate change would require “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented” action. What did we get yesterday? We got no mention of climate change, no reversal of cuts to renewable energy, and no significant environmental policy.
Neil O'Brien
I am curious: the other day the Government voted through a £650 million scheme to improve energy efficiency and home insulation; why did the Labour party vote against it?
John McDonnell
Because it was not on a scale that would have had sufficient impact. I welcome interventions, but I think we should have a rule that when Members intervene they should describe their background, in this case as advisor to George Osborne, who cut back on the solar energy industry, who undermined wind power in this country, and who set us back so that we will never meet our climate change targets.
The impact—[Interruption.] Calm down, calm down—George Osborne used to say that to me, and I said “I’ll calm down when you resign,” and he did. The impact on the self-employed and small businesses has been equally stark. Some 51,000 high street stores closed last year. Wages for the self-employed have collapsed to around the same level as 20 years ago.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that it was a disgrace that yesterday we heard that the Government are going to save the high street by turning our shops into residential properties and risking the very fundamentals of how the high street operates?
John McDonnell
My hon. Friend is right. Yesterday we needed serious action to address the bias against high streets, which has led to so many empty shops. Instead we got legislation that will help turn shops into flats.
We then had a huge media presentation about an online tax being introduced: it was said that £400 million will be found from this online tax in a few years’ time. At the weekend the Tax Justice Network said the top five tech companies have avoided £5 billion-worth of tax.
My second concern about the austerity debate is that if we understand and appreciate what people have been forced to go through with austerity, only callous complacency could drive us to inflict those policies on people. Yesterday the Chancellor’s speech, with references to “Labour’s recession,” demonstrated that he is trapped in a time warp of a political propaganda exercise by the Tories of a decade ago. [Interruption.] I thought they would like that one. Let us be clear: the financial crash was the result of greed and speculation, and a lack of regulation that goes right back to the 1980s. Austerity was always a bad idea.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Like my right hon. Friend, I heard the Chancellor try to blame the last Labour Government for the recession, but in actual fact the previous Chancellor said a couple of months ago that it was not the Labour Government’s fault; it was the whole system’s fault, starting with Lehman Brothers in America. We should get the facts right.
John McDonnell
I always said George Osborne would get it right one day.
The consensus among economists, and the evidence of recent history, is absolutely clear. The worst possible response to a recession is for a Government to cut their own spending. In a recession, the Government should be there to support businesses and households. Instead, at the moment when Government support was most needed to help people back on their feet, Conservative Chancellors chose to impose the most severe spending cuts in generations. They did not have to, and they should not have done.
The Tories were warned that austerity would lead to slower growth and lower wages, and it has. The economic experts the Tories chose to ignore were proved right. Growth since the financial crisis, under Conservative Chancellors, has been the slowest after any recession in modern times. Real weekly average earnings are still lower today than they were in 2010. The Resolution Foundation reports this morning that real wages will not have fully recovered until 2024.
Ten years after the crash, we should be clear about the causes of the financial crisis. The Chancellor seemed confused on that point yesterday. It was not the deficit that caused the crisis; it was the crisis that caused the deficit. It was a crisis—[Interruption.] They don’t like to hear the truth. It was a crisis that resulted from the casino economy that the Tories helped construct right from the 1980s and supported every step of the way.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
The right hon. Gentleman asked us to give our personal history: I was a proud public sector employee for 17 years and I take issue with the way that Labour wrecked the economy and spent money we did not have. Would he like to tell us how he proposes to pay for his current funding system?
John McDonnell
Here is an answer: it is called a fair taxation system.
It was the ideology of neoliberalism that said markets were always right, that regulation was simply a barrier to growth, and that, ultimately, greed was good. The financial system this ideology helped design collapsed 10 years ago, and it was Conservative Chancellors who took the political decision to force working people, not the bankers, to pay the price for it.
Several hon. Members rose—
John McDonnell
Mr Speaker, you will admit that I have been generous in the number of times I have given way, and I suggest that, as you have a large number of Members wishing to speak, particularly on the Labour Benches, I should press on.
The result has been a period of stagnation unprecedented in modern British history: a period of falling wages, crumbling public services, and insecurity in an economy visibly failing across great swathes of the country. And because the cuts are still, even now, grinding on, the stagnation will continue, as the official forecasts say: investment forecasts have been revised downwards across the Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast period, real wages will barely recover, and growth will remain far below its long-run trend.
The Chancellor cannot use Brexit as an excuse for those dismal figures. The OBR presented its forecasts on the basis of what it called a “relatively smooth exit” from the EU next year, but the Tories are bungling the Brexit negotiations—it is so bad that there is now an impact on the economy. Investment is being delayed and has even been cancelled. Britain already has the lowest rate of business investment in the G7, and even that has fallen this year. It is the uncertainty the Tories have introduced into the whole process that is so terrifying businesspeople. They just want to know where they stand, but the uncertainty was made even worse yesterday. The Chancellor has taken to threatening to revoke his own Budget in the event of a no-deal Brexit, yet on the very morning of the Budget, his Prime Minister was contradicting him. How can any company looking to invest in Britain not wonder where we are heading?
For well over two years, the Government have spent more time negotiating with themselves than with our European partners. With the date for leaving the EU just five months away, time is running out to present a deal that would respect the result of the referendum and win the support of the House. Instead, as the Tories continue to indulge in their squabbling, the economy and the whole country are being confronted with the grim prospect of a no-deal car crash. I have asked the Chancellor before to rule out a no-deal Brexit. A responsible Chancellor simply would not support such a thing, and would not, as he has done before, idly threaten to mutate this country into some form of tax haven off the coast of Europe. Let us put it on record that austerity is not ending. In the weeks and months ahead, people will recognise that the Prime Minister’s promise has been broken. There are rumours that this was possibly a pre-election Budget with pre-election tax giveaways. If the Conservatives are contemplating a general election, let me say on behalf of the Labour party: bring it on.
The Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Matt Hancock)
Yesterday’s Budget proved the time-honoured truth that careful stewardship of the economy, taking difficult decisions, creating the environment for enterprise and generating growth will lead to better days, not just for those with the dignity of employment, now in record numbers, who did not have it in the past, but for the provision of the public services on which we all depend. This Budget reported record jobs, unemployment lower than in a generation, more full-time jobs, the lowest proportion of low-paid jobs for two decades and rising real pay, with the fastest rises in real pay among the lowest paid in our society, thanks to our national living wage.
We have just seen the big difference between the two Front Benches. While we are delivering more jobs, more opportunity and more prosperity, those on the Opposition Front Bench promise more borrowing, more taxes and more debt. We have just heard it again from the shadow Chancellor: no ideas for the future; just talking Britain down. There is a big difference in this Parliament between a party that believes in the future and an Opposition Front Bench that would only take us back. Wherever it has been tried in the world, the programme that the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) proposes has led to bankruptcy and misery for millions, and we cannot fund public services on that. Without a strong economy, we cannot fund an NHS that everyone can turn to in their hour of need, whether that involves a life-threatening condition or falling over some fly-tipping. We are able to put record funding into our NHS only because there are millions more people in work who are earning more and paying their taxes.
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
On that point, may I thank the Secretary of State for his work on securing the public capital for the Midland Metropolitan Hospital in Sandwell, which had some difficulties following the collapse of Carillion? His work with the chief executive and the board of the trust has secured the future of that hospital, which is now on track to be built. It will be a vital resource for my local area of Rowley Regis.
Matt Hancock
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who has worked so hard to get that hospital back on track. It is now being built because we have put in the capital—it is in the NHS budget. We had to rescue it from the failed private finance initiative that was invented by the Labour party. It is only because we have a strong economy that we can give the NHS the longest and largest cash injection ever in its history—
Matt Hancock
If the right hon. Gentleman will welcome that injection, I will give way to him.
Sir Edward Davey
The right hon. Gentleman is talking about the rise in health spending. He is Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, so can he tell us by how much social care expenditure is going to rise over the next five years?
Matt Hancock
Yes, I am going to come on to social care. Yesterday, we put a further £650 million into social care, and we are coming forward with reforms to social care to put it on a sustainable footing for the long term.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I want to ask the Secretary of State about acquired brain injury. We save so many lives now, but if we put in significant investment up front to ensure that everyone got the right neuro-rehabilitation, we could save vast amounts of money for the taxpayer. Is that not rather a good model for us to pursue?
Matt Hancock
Yes, and the constructive approach that the hon. Gentleman has taken on this subject with me over many months, and for years before that, shows the progress that we can make. We are putting £20.5 billion extra into the NHS, and making an uplift like that means that we can turn resources towards preventing ill health in exactly the way that he describes. I pay tribute to the work that he has done on this subject.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Yesterday, the Chancellor boasted of a “jobs miracle”. If there is a jobs miracle, why is the chemotherapy unit at King George Hospital in my constituency closing because of a shortage of chemotherapy nurses?
Matt Hancock
We have a plan to improve the cancer workforce and to try to solve some of these problems. Maybe the hon. Gentleman should come over to this side and work with us to put record funding into the NHS. We can only have record funding for the NHS if we have a strong economy.
Mr Jayawardena
Is it not critical that every single penny put into the NHS is well spent if we are to tackle waste and bureaucracy, unlike what happened when Labour was in charge, when almost half was not spent on patient care?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. People want to see more funding for our NHS, and they are going to get it, but they also want to see all the money being well spent.
The Budget confirms that the NHS is the Government’s No. 1 spending priority, just as it is the British people’s No.1 spending priority. This Budget places the Government four-square in the centre of British politics. It is progressive and optimistic and focused on the future, not just for the many but for the whole country that we serve.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
I absolutely welcome the uplift to NHS funding, but will the Secretary of State answer a small technical question, please? In the Red Book, there are separate entries for the increases in the resource departmental expenditure limits for health and for NHS England? Can he confirm that the difference—£6.3 billion versus £7.2 billion—will not result in a transfer from Public Health England, from Health Education England or from capital budgets to fund the discrepancy? That has happened in the past.
Matt Hancock
Yes, I can confirm that. The £20.5 billion real-terms funding for the NHS in the Budget is for the NHS itself and will be channelled through NHS England. Of course there are budgets in the Department that are outside the NHS envelope, and they will be settled in the spending review. This is exactly as has been planned, and it was made clear in June. I can tell the House that the £20.5 billion is both the longest and the largest settlement for any public service in the history of this country.
Grahame Morris
We need to be precise and accurate about this, and I have just googled the settlement. In fact, the biggest ever increase in NHS funding happened between 1997 and 2008 when the budget went up from £55 billion to £125.4 billion—
Grahame Morris
Well, I am talking about being factually correct. The biggest ever funding increase came under a Labour Government. Let us be honest about this.
Matt Hancock
This is a single settlement for a five-year period so that the NHS can plan again.
Several hon. Members rose—
Matt Hancock
I want to make some progress.
I received some representations about what we should do on NHS funding. One was from a John from Hillingdon, who called for a 2.2% increase in funding. John said that would make the NHS the “envy of the world”. Others may preach a gospel of envy, but we are getting on with building the NHS to be there for us all. The £20 billion increase I have talked about is not a 2.2% per year increase—it is 3.4% a year more over the next five years.
Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)
I acknowledge the Secretary of State’s contribution to funding the Midland Metro Hospital, which is very important to people in the Black country. However, given that NHS hospital trusts have cumulative debts of around £7.5 billion plus a further £5 billion or so of other debts, can he reassure us that the £20.5 billion will be used not just to pay debts but to provide extra services?
Matt Hancock
The £20.5 billion is just for day-to-day running costs—the resource costs. Of course there is a capital budget, too, which includes £4 billion of taxpayers’ money. That goes towards ensuring that we can get the capital built. The critical point is that we have not only that £20.5 billion uplift in running costs but a capital budget. We will make further announcements on the allocation of the capital budget later in the autumn.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Secretary of State for clarifying the £20.5 billion figure, which does not include training or capital. Of course, that contradicts the unhelpful briefing from Downing Street during the summer that it was something like £84 billion. Will he confirm that that £84 billion figure, which has been repeated in the media, is, as the Health Service Journal says, a fib, and that we are talking about £20.5 billion purely for resources in the NHS in England and Wales?
Matt Hancock
No. The £84 billion is the cash figure. The £20.5 billion is the real-terms increase by the end of the five years. If we add up all the extra money, we get £84 billion. It is there on page 36 of the Budget, if the hon. Lady wants to look. The biggest single cash increase comes next year, in 2019-20. It is all there in the Red Book.
Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for more good news for the midlands in the form of £70 million for the Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre just outside my constituency to help civilian rehabilitation. Can he share further details of that with us?
Matt Hancock
I pay tribute again to my right hon. Friend, who has worked tirelessly in support of that project. The Defence and National Rehabilitation Centre in Loughborough will link world-class military medical facilities with our NHS. That means lessons learned in the medical field from treating our brave troops who come back from the frontline can be brought into the NHS—for instance, surgical techniques that were learned in battle can be adapted to help civilians here. I pay tribute to her and others for the work they have done.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
Here is a representation from a Jonathan from Leicester. Further to the question from the Chair of the Select Committee on Health and Social Care, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), can the Secretary of State confirm that, in next year’s spending review, the cuts to capital budgets and the £700 million-worth of cuts to public health budgets will be reversed, and that there will be real-terms increases in funding for capital, training and public health? Can he guarantee that?
Matt Hancock
The spending review is next year. What I can guarantee is a £20.5 billion increase in NHS spending. That is the biggest increase in any spending commitment for any public service in the history of this country. [Interruption.] It is a pity that the Leader of the Opposition is not interested and does not want to hear about it. If he stayed, he could also hear about the reforms we are going to make. He should hear this more than anyone. We are acutely aware on the Conservative Benches that this is not Government money or NHS money but the hard-earned money of taxpayers, and we need to ensure that it is spent wisely. When he sprays his commitments around, Opposition Front Benchers would do well to remember that this is money from taxpayers.
Mr Jayawardena
I welcome the fact that taxpayers’ money will be spread across the whole country, including £10 million to support air ambulances, which provide vital services in rural areas.
Matt Hancock
So many of us know just how important air ambulance services are and the countless lives they save. I am delighted that, on top of the £20.5 billion for the NHS—the biggest ever, longest ever cash settlement for any public service in history—there was £10 million for air ambulances.
Neil O'Brien
If my right hon. Friend will excuse another Leicestershire-based health intervention, I am incredibly grateful for the creation of the new Cottage Hospital in Market Harborough, the gleaming new A&E ward at Leicester Royal Infirmary and the decision to save the brilliant children’s heart unit at Glenfield Hospital. Does he agree that that is a more welcome record than the Labour party’s record of bankrupting the country, giving us the biggest recession since the second world war and putting 1 million people on the dole?
Matt Hancock
It is true that the Labour party in office has always left unemployment higher than it found it; it is true that, while Labour left the deficit higher, we are bringing it down; and it is true that inequality, too, is coming down. Page 8 of the distributional analysis shows that, contrary to what we heard in that paean of gloom from the shadow Chancellor, the biggest rises in full-time employee gross weekly real earnings over the last three years have been among the 10% least well paid in our country. That is what this Conservative Government are doing—delivering for everybody in our country.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
On inequalities, does the Secretary of State recognise that life expectancy is stalling under his Government? In some regions it is getting worse. For women, it is getting worse. Perhaps he can answer the question he could not answer last week—why, for the first time in 100 years, do four babies in 1,000 not reach their first birthday?
Matt Hancock
As the hon. Lady knows, life expectancy is increasing, and we are forecast to see an increasing number of people live to a good old age. Indeed, the number of people aged 75 and over is set to double in the next 30 years. That is a brilliant achievement, which is in part down to the hard work of our NHS. Cancer survival rates are at a record high, strokes are down by a third and deaths from heart failure are down by a quarter. Of course, those successes have brought new challenges. The biggest health challenge we face is that people are living longer, often with multiple chronic conditions. The money is only one part of the plan to safeguard the NHS and ensure it is fit for the 21st century. The Budget delivers the funding, and later this year we will deliver the plan for how we will set the NHS fair for the future.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I have very little hope for the older people of our country given that the Government have cut £7 billion from the social care budget and replaced it with only £240 million. How is that safeguarding our old people for the future?
Matt Hancock
Of course, in Scotland social care is devolved, so—[Interruption.] And in York, the amount of money for social care is going up thanks to the decisions announced yesterday.
Mr Jayawardena
Is not it true that Labour talk the talk but do not walk the walk? They failed to deliver an effective long-term solution for social care when they were in government. They had 13 years to sort it and they did not. Is not it also true that, even though they said they would use the comprehensive spending review to address that, they left office without delivering? That is what they do time and again.
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The long-term plan needs to ensure that we address the challenges of today and of tomorrow, including dementia, obesity and the rise in mental ill health. It will set out how we are going to address and deliver these changes. The Government believe in an NHS that is free at the point of use for everyone, for the long term.
Vicky Ford (Chelmsford) (Con)
The A&E in my local hospital is deeply loved and I am very grateful that it is staying, but it is still under huge pressure. When I have been out at night with the emergency services, I have seen that emergency services personnel have to stay with someone who has an acute mental illness and needs a mental health bed, which means that they cannot get on with other roles. Does the Secretary of State agree that the Government’s strong announcement of more funding for mental health will help the whole NHS to do more?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and we can only have a sustainable NHS if the social care system is also properly supported.
The social care Green Paper to be published later this year will set out the options to meet the unprecedented demographic challenge—and what a challenge. Some 70% of people in residential care homes now have dementia. The number of people with dementia is set to rise from 850,000 today to over 1 million in less than a decade. The number of people of working age in need of care is rising and is set to increase by almost half by 2035. Yet, despite these pressures, 83% of adult social care settings are now rated good or outstanding by the Care Quality Commission. That is the highest level since assessments began. As a society, we need to address the pressures on social care so that everyone can live in dignity and we can have a situation that is sustainable for the long term.
The Green Paper will bring forward a range of proposals to reform our social care system. I pay tribute to the excellent cross-party work of the Health and Social Care Committee and the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which are helping to build a consensus behind potential solutions. This is exactly the sort of long-term cross-party work that we need to see, when fair-minded people from across the House come together to address the challenges of the future, and I will work with anyone from any party to get this right.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I listened with care to my right hon. Friend’s very welcome remarks on yesterday’s “Today” programme about having parity of esteem between mental health and physical health, and I welcome the announcement in the Budget of £250,000 for children’s crisis centres. Sadly, people in society now have complex mental health problems at a younger and younger age. In order to make these policies work, will the Secretary of State ensure that there is a sufficient number of well trained staff in the NHS to deal with these mental health problems?
Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely right; he has put his finger on an incredibly important point. As we spend £20 billion extra on the NHS, we are going to ensure that we train up and attract the people who are going to do the caring.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
On the issue of mental health support and services for children, I was quite disappointed that mental health support for schools was missing from the Budget. A lot of money was promised for child and adolescent mental health services but, as the Secretary of State will know, the Education Committee produced a joint report with the Health and Social Care Committee entitled “The Government’s Green Paper on mental health: failing a generation”, in which we outlined that we were really keen to see additional funding for mental health support in schools. Is there anything that the Minister can do to look again at that issue?
Matt Hancock
Yes—part of the £2 billion of extra mental health funding that we announced yesterday is to ensure that there is support in schools, particularly for young people. That is one of the elements of the funding that we announced in the Budget yesterday, and I am very happy to talk to the hon. Lady about the details.
The social care Green Paper will address the question of long-term funding reform for social care and how we can help people to plan sensibly so they do not have to fear the risk of losing everything. But the Green Paper will not just look at funding; it will also look at the role of housing, at how we can combine a home with high-quality care, and at the links between the care of children and of the elderly. I have seen how such links can benefit both groups, helping children’s development and tackling the scourge of loneliness that elderly people too often face. The Green Paper will of course also look at how we can better integrate the NHS and the social care system. What matters is what works, so we will look at things such as auto-enrolment, and how and if reforms elsewhere can be applied to social care. Like the NHS, the future of our social care system rests not just on funding, but on reform, and we are determined to rise to this challenge.
Every Member of this House will have their own personal story of the NHS. Whether it was the first few breaths of a child or the final few moments of a loved one, from cradle to grave that care is ever present, whatever the shade of Government. This Government want to ensure that that care will always be there for whoever needs it, and that the NHS remains free at the point of delivery. That is why we are putting the extra £20 billion into the NHS. It is only because our economy is strong, employment is rising and we believe in a free market economy that we can fund this increase, for just as there can only be truth when there is freedom of speech, so can there only be prosperity to fund public services when there is freedom of enterprise. It is a great sadness that, in stark contrast with the greats of his party in the past, the shadow Chancellor opposes both. It is now a combination that we can only get under a progressive, optimistic, future-focused Conservative Government. That is what this Budget delivers. I commend it to the House.
Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)
It is an honour to speak for the Scottish National party on the second day of the 2018 Budget debate.
Ten years ago last month, Lehman Brothers collapsed. Excessive risk-taking by financial institutions created an international banking crisis, and a global downturn followed. Since then, people and families across the UK have had to pay for the fall-out. There has been a decade of wage stagnation, a decade of cuts and a decade of the most vulnerable in our society being hit the hardest by Tory austerity. Looking forward, we are staring into the abyss that is Brexit. Mark Carney says that Brexit has already cost householders an average of £900, and the Fraser of Allander Institute estimates that leaving the single market and customs union would cost 80,000 Scottish jobs. After a decade of austerity, households cannot afford to lose £900 each, and they certainly cannot afford a Tory Brexit.
The reality is that the people of Scotland are badly served by Westminster. We did not vote for a Tory Government and we did not vote for Brexit. I cannot think of a time in the past when a country has committed such a foreseeable act of economic self-harm. The Chancellor does not believe that we will be better off after Brexit. Even the Prime Minister does not believe that we will be better off after Brexit. We were promised £350 million pounds a week for public services. We will not be bought off with a commemorative 50p coin.
Sir Edward Davey
The hon. Lady is making an excellent start to her speech. Does she agree that, after a decade of Lehman austerity, we could be facing a decade of Brexit austerity?
Kirsty Blackman
I absolutely agree. An economic catastrophe is coming down the line as a result of Brexit. It does not matter what kind of Brexit there is; any Brexit is bad for the economy. Staying in the EU is the best possible option for the economy. If we cannot stay in the EU, staying in the single market and the customs union is the second best option.
Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Further to that point, did my hon. Friend notice in the Red Book that the expected growth that the UK will achieve in the next four to five years equals that of Ireland in only one year? Is that example not a clear signpost to all in Scotland and elsewhere that independence has worked for Ireland and is going to work for Scotland, and that the sooner we get it and the sooner we are clear of this lot, the better?
Kirsty Blackman
Absolutely; it is clear that remaining part of the UK is bad for Scotland’s economy. The comparators in the Budget information documents show that the UK economy is growing slower than the EU economy is set to grow in every but one of the next five years.
Matt Hancock
May I just ask whether the hon. Lady has ever seen the result of a referendum that she likes?
Kirsty Blackman
Do you know what? The reality is that we have argued for a very long time—I have argued for my entire adult life—against the current democratic system, because it does not work for the people of Scotland. We do not get the Governments we vote for and we do not get the result that we voted for in the EU referendum. If the democratic system meant that Scotland’s votes were reflected in reality, we would be in a very different situation today.
On a serious note, every week in our communities and at our surgeries MPs from both sides of the House are faced with the consequences of Westminster’s poor decisions. We see working mothers forced to go to food banks. We see and hear about the Home Office-enforced separation of families. We meet young men struggling with mental health problems who have been sanctioned yet again because they are unable to jump through the unreasonable hoops put in their way by the Department for Work and Pensions. I do not know how anybody, even in this Westminster Government, can believe that their policies are having a positive benefit. The tears and desperation with which we are all faced on a regular basis give the lie to that notion.
The Chancellor has failed adequately to fund our public services in this Budget. He has failed to undo the devastating social security cuts, he has failed to legislate for a real living wage and he has failed to provide adequate support for businesses facing the impending cliff edge of Brexit.
The Budget should have included decisions to help support all those who have been hit by a decade of austerity, and all those who will be hit by the forthcoming Brexit. The roll-out of universal credit should have been halted. A third of working-age households will be entitled to some universal credit. Of those, around a third will be at least £1,000 a year worse off than under the legacy system.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government missed an opportunity in the Budget yesterday not only to correct the injustices of universal credit but to compensate councils such as Highland Council that are having to foot a £2.5 million bill out of council tax funds simply for administering this failed and shambolic universal credit roll-out?
Kirsty Blackman
Absolutely. The Highland Council area has been particularly badly hit as one of the first areas in which universal credit was rolled out. It is currently rolling out in Aberdeen, and I am hugely concerned about the impact it will have on my constituents. The roll-out needs to be halted, because the issues that happened in the highlands and elsewhere have not been fixed, and they need to be fixed before any further roll-out can occur.
The benefits freeze should have been lifted, the sanctions regime should be scrapped, support for lone parents under the age of 25 must be reintroduced and the WASPI issue must be sorted, with those women being given the money they are owed. I am pleased that the Government have made a commitment to the pensions dashboard, but they now need to legislate to compel companies to comply so that people can access information about the pensions they are owed, and so that they can then get those pensions. That is important, and lots of people have been calling for it.
Workers’ rights are another reserved issue, and the Chancellor should have committed to increasing the minimum wage to the living wage—an amount people can actually live on—by the end of this Parliament. The Office for National Statistics said this week:
“Among the countries of the UK, long-term pay growth has been highest in Scotland… Median pay for full-time workers was 87% higher in Scotland than it was in 1997.”
The Scottish Government are doing all they can, particularly for staff employed in public sector roles, but we need the powers to do more. In Scotland, our Government have focused on uplifting the pay packets of the lowest paid, which is a progressive choice that makes the most positive difference. The UK Government have not chosen to do that.
We have fought long and hard for a single, real living wage rate. The UK Government need to recognise that it does not cost a 24-year-old less to live than it costs a 25-year-old. If the Chancellor will not make the required commitment to a real living wage for all, he should devolve it so that we can.
Statutory paternity leave should be doubled from two to four weeks, giving fathers even more opportunity to bond with their babies. A complete review of parental leave should be undertaken, including consideration of the start date of maternity leave, especially when a baby is born prematurely.
We propose that the Government set up a labour participation committee to consider groups that are currently under-represented or over-represented in certain sectors, and to examine barriers to work for women, disabled people, parents and other marginalised groups.
The Institute of Directors has called for a pot to be set aside so that small and medium-sized enterprises can bid for advice on how to cope with Brexit. The UK Government’s advice thus far has been wholly inadequate, and we have only five months to go until the UK crashes out of the EU.
Businesses need to be able to access finance in order to grow. To do that, they need to have trust in financial institutions and, crucially, financial institutions need to earn that trust. The Chancellor should have committed to setting up a tribunal service so that those affected by business banking fraud—through the Royal Bank of Scotland’s global restructuring group, Lloyds Bank, Halifax Bank of Scotland or others—can seek affordable redress, rather than having to go through a court process that is too expensive to access.
The UK Government must also ensure that current EU funding will continue until the end of the current multi-annual financial framework. Scotland must not be any worse off in respect of the funding allocations that replace those provided from the EU, and any arrangements must fully respect devolution and must be put in place with the consultation and agreement of the Scottish Parliament.
The Chancellor had an opportunity to make a commitment to the oil and gas sector deal, and he failed to do so. Our industry needs the deal to be signed off now, particularly with the impending lack of access to labour and investment following Brexit. I am pleased that he has heeded calls to make a clear statement on the future fiscal regime, because we cannot have unforeseen, sudden tax hikes like those made by previous Chancellors.
The other part of the jigsaw that is missing is a commitment to reducing the harmful climate change effects of the use of fossil fuels. In 2015, the UK Government cancelled their £1 billion carbon capture and storage competition, just six months before it was due to be awarded, after spending £100 million on it. That left Peterhead—a key candidate for support—behind. After three years of research and development, we have missed out on this vital industry of the future. The UK Government need to make an unequivocal commitment to supporting the development of CCS.
Drew Hendry
My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about carbon capture, and about the betrayal of the £1 billion project at Peterhead. Does she agree that, if the UK Government are serious about meeting the climate change targets under the Paris agreement, spending £100 million now, when we are behind the pace after abandoning a three-year £1 billion project, is just not good enough?
Kirsty Blackman
Absolutely. The potential benefits of CCS are unquestionable and, as my hon. Friend says, we need to get ahead of the curve again. We need the UK Government to commit to putting the money in now. That is especially important because their pulling the plug means there is now a lack of trust among the companies that are developing CCS. The UK Government need to make a clear and unequivocal commitment.
On evolving technologies, Scotland is a global leader in tidal, and the UK Government must work with the Scottish Government on the contract for difference process to support the technology journey from development to commercialisation, which is particularly important for tidal.
On solar power, we have been contacted by so many individuals who are concerned about what is happening to export tariffs for homes, small businesses and community energy projects from next April. The tariff is a vital support that encourages people to invest in solar power, and it must continue.
Lastly, in order to reduce climate change and to increase the use of healthier methods of transport, this Budget was an opportunity to reduce VAT on bikes. Just as we would like to see VAT removed from digital books, reducing VAT on bikes would make them cheaper for all and would be a real statement of intent from the Government on reducing climate change.
Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
Is the hon. Lady not aware that reducing VAT is very difficult while we are a member of the European Union, but it is something that we might be able to do after Brexit?
Kirsty Blackman
Actually, reducing VAT is quite possible for a member of the EU. Zero rating things is a problem, but reducing VAT is fine.
The Scottish fire and rescue service and Police Scotland are still owed £175 million of VAT. The UK Government have recognised that the system they had in place was unfair, yet they have refused to pay back the £175 million they owe our two vital life-saving industries. It would be incredibly useful if they could see their way to giving us back that £175 million.
On the subject of the UK Government reallocating funds that should rightly have gone to Scotland, the convergence uplift of £160 million should have been paid to Scottish farmers. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has admitted that the money has been spent elsewhere. We need a commitment that this money will come to Scotland in future years, and we need the previous years’ money to come to Scotland now, so that our farmers can have the cash they have been allocated.
I am pleased that the Budget includes measures to ensure that companies pay their fair share of tax in the digital sphere, but the reality is that this is a consultation and the measures are not going to be in place yet. We also do not have a solid idea of what those measures will be. The Scottish National party would therefore like to propose two measures on digital taxation, and we hope that the Government will take them into account. First, we believe that online retailers should be held liable for tax fraud committed by their suppliers. Sometimes when people order a product from a well-known online retailer it is delivered from China with a customs declaration and a stamp that says “gift”. Large online retailers should be held responsible for ensuring that those who use their platform pay the correct customs duties. We also believe that in order to combat tech firms that avoid corporation tax by registering implausibly low UK profits, the Chancellor should levy corporation tax on an assumed UK share of worldwide profits that is equal to their UK share of worldwide revenue. That could be subject to a dispute tribunal process to ensure fairness. The SNP will submit these suggestions in the consultation process, and we hope that they will be considered seriously.
Scotland’s cities have received city deal funding from both the UK and Scottish Governments. That is welcome, but what is not welcome is the fact that the UK Government have contributed far less to those deals than the Scottish Government. In total, the Tories have failed to match more than £350 million of Scottish Government funding for city deals and growth deals in Glasgow, Aberdeen, Inverness, Stirling and Clackmannanshire, Tay Cities and Edinburgh. We believe that they should match our contribution, and we call on the Chancellor to make that commitment, as well as to fulfill the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s commitment to provide each part of Scotland with a regional deal.
I come to an ask, for the NHS, that would require only a small financial contribution but would have significant positive benefits. The UK Government could have used this Budget to follow Scotland’s lead on PrEP—pre-exposure prophylaxis. In Scotland, PrEP is available on the NHS, but England has been dragging its heels on making it available. The benefits in terms of the reduction in new cases of HIV are unchallengeable, and it is not fair that those in England cannot currently access the drug on the NHS. That change would not cost a huge amount of money, but it would make a massive difference to people’s lives.
If the UK Government are serious about taking their place on the global stage, they need to reform the immigration system. Countries will be looking for a more flexible immigration policy before signing trade deals with us, and we should start by getting rid of the fees that EU citizens will be expected to pay to acquire settled status. The OBR mentions the ageing population at many points throughout the Blue Book. The UK Government must recognise this challenge, and recognise that we need and want people to come to live and work in our communities. Last year’s Red Book said that a reduction in net migration of 20,000 would reduce GDP by about 0.2% by 2022. The Government need to be honest about the benefits of immigration and be clear that it is good for our country. They need to be clear that, with an ageing population, it is incredibly important that we get people to come to work here, particularly in the care sector and in the NHS. We also need a more flexible working visa policy that gives those who are seeking asylum the right to work, as the current system is dehumanising and unsustainable. Lastly, we should scrap the fees paid that families have to pay to get their children citizenship, which are ridiculously high and are yet another tax on families.
On health spending, the UK Government gave commitment after commitment that they would pass the full Barnett consequentials of the increased health spending on to Scotland, but they have chosen not to do so. They have chosen to short-change Scotland by £50 million. This comes on top of the fact that the Scottish Government’s fiscal resource block grant allocation will be almost £2 billion—or 6.9%—lower in real terms than it was in 2010-11. Despite the addition of consequentials and other non-Barnett allocations in 2019-20 that the Chancellor announced, Scotland’s fiscal resource block grant is still lower in real terms than it was in 2010-11 and at the start of the current spending review in 2015-16.
The Chancellor had the chance to make a real difference. He had political choices to make and at almost every turn he chose the wrong path. Is it any wonder that people do not trust the Tories? This Government need to follow the lead of the Scottish Government, who have put dignity and respect at the heart of decision making, rather than punishing those who are not born rich. The reality is that people in Scotland are faced with a choice of two futures: they can choose to continue to have a Westminster Government, who make political choices that disadvantage those who can least afford it; or they can fight for a fairer Scotland, where our Parliament has the powers and the responsibility to make choices on behalf of our citizens—choices that will make our country fairer, not create further inequality.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We now have a seven-minute limit on speeches.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
This is my ninth Budget in this place, and the majority of them have been framed by the fact that my party has had to clean up the mess left behind by the previous Labour Government in 2010. They have been framed by the comments of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne), who wrote:
“I’m afraid there is no money. Kind regards—and good luck!”
That was the position that the country found itself in. I feel that yesterday’s Budget was a turning point and we are now starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. We need to give great thanks to the people of this country for their hard work and their determination to see the course through. Yesterday’s Budget means we are now starting to repay the faith of the British people.
I want to focus on three areas, the first of which is public services. The Chancellor was clear yesterday—he was right—that local government had made a significant contribution to tackling the deficit. I firmly believe it needs to be recognised for that, and we need to make sure it is properly funded. I welcome the £650 million package for social care that was announced yesterday, and the £420 million for roads and potholes that will be going to local government.
I also welcome the fact that for probably the first time ever road tax will be paying for our roads rather than being spent on other things. As a consequence, the budget for Highways England will go up by 40%. It is great to see my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care in the Chamber because I warmly welcome the additional £20 billion that this Government are committing to our NHS each and every year. I look forward to seeing the 10-year plan for the NHS and, within that, the use of the £2 billion for mental health services, which are crucial. Mental health provision is important because the mental health challenges we are experiencing underpin many of the social challenges that we face in this country, so it will be great to see his proposals.
Security is the most important thing for and the first duty of any Government, so I really welcome the extra £1 billion for our armed forces and the £160 million that is going into counter-terrorism policing. I noted that the Chancellor referred to the police and the challenges our forces face in his Budget statement, so I hope that when the police settlement comes forward early next year, we will see positive progress. My local Warwickshire force is taking on additional officers, but it also faces challenges down the track, such as the pensions revaluation. I sincerely hope that that will be reflected in the policing settlement.
Sir Edward Davey
While the hon. Gentleman is talking about police funding, can he explain why he thinks the Chancellor did not announce any extra money, beyond the counter-terrorism policing increase, for community policing yesterday?
Mr Jones
Clearly the police have been given access this year to an additional £450 million, and an extra £160 million was given to counter-terrorism policing. I am sure the right hon. Gentleman, who was part of the coalition Government, will recognise that a process needs to be followed and that the police funding settlement will come forward in a few months’ time.
Secondly, on the cost of living, I am delighted that the Chancellor has chosen to freeze fuel duty again. It has not increased in this country since 2011, which is good news for motorists. In that time, the average motorist has saved £1,000 as a result of the decisions made by Conservative Chancellors. I am also really pleased that the rail companies have taken up the railcard for 26 to 30-year-olds, who will get a 30% reduction in fares.
I very much welcome the increase to the personal allowance. The lowest paid will now earn £12,500 before they have to pay income tax. That is a far cry from the £6,500 personal allowance in 2010, and it means that those people will have an additional £1,250 a year in their pockets compared with then. I also welcome the change to the 40p threshold, because although that rate is an important aspect of our tax system, many public servants, such as police sergeants and senior teachers, have been dragged into the 40p rate, as have been many tradespeople such as bricklayers. I do not think that that was ever the intention when that measure was introduced.
It is good to see the Under-Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), on the Front Bench, because I welcome the universal credit changes, which will further underpin the principle that it always pays to work. It is excellent that £1.7 billion will be put into universal credit year on year, and that is in addition to last year’s package. It looks as though tweaks are being made to the system constantly to make sure that it responds to some of the challenges. I hope that another look will be taken at the assessment period, because several of my constituents have had challenges with that part of the process.
Finally, on high streets, I am delighted that 30% will be knocked off rates bills for people who own small retail businesses with a rateable value under £51,000. Business rates are an analogue tax in a digital world, and I am pleased that the Chancellor has started to recognise that. I recognise that larger retailers occupying anchor positions in high streets and town centres will not benefit from that change, so perhaps in future we will need to consider those businesses, too. A £675 million fund for the regeneration of our high streets is a massive start to help high streets throughout the country to regenerate. We need to make sure that we preserve our high streets, but not in their current form. We need to make them fit for the 21st century because they are places of massive community value. They are the community centre of towns and cities throughout the country.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
The House of Commons Library tells me that I have listened to Budgets in the House 44 times, so I hope I am an experienced Budget evaluator. I always come to the Chamber to listen to the Budget, and I base my evaluation of its quality on two criteria. The first is the great global issues that we face, which for me are always the fragile planet, the environment, climate change and global warming, and the fact that the planet’s burgeoning population has to be fed, and fed sustainably. We also face the challenge of keeping the peace. Many of us thought that that could be taken for granted, but in the current global circumstances, keeping the peace has become a great concern for us all.
My second criterion for evaluating a Budget is what it will do for my constituents. I believe that I have a sacred duty to come here and represent my constituents, and to make sure that everything that I do—the contribution that my colleagues and I make in the House—adds to the welfare, health and prosperity of my constituents. Those are the twin criteria, and on both I believe that this is an uninspiring little Budget. It is lacking in passion, leadership and values. That is my sincere criticism of the Budget.
Let me go into a little more detail. I have been in the House at times when the country has been in great crisis. At a time of crisis, I have seen people whom one would have thought were pretty ordinary politicians suddenly stepping up to the Dispatch Box and showing the world that they had leadership quality, that they understood what was going on in the wider world, and that they could stand up to do the right thing. I take umbrage at the fact that a Chancellor of the Exchequer could stand in the Chamber yesterday and call the cataclysm of 2009 and the global meltdown of the world economy “Labour’s great recession.” I have to say that it must have been a very powerful Labour party and Labour Government who caused the world recession. What rubbish that the man who is supposed to be our Chancellor of the Exchequer could say such a thing—shame on him!
I saw Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling at that Dispatch Box, calm in the face of a hurricane in the world economy. They stood there and made the right decisions. They bailed out the selfish banks. They did what was necessary to save our country. This bunch over on the Government Benches should not tell us how to rise to our responsibilities. We showed leadership. We showed that we had the values. We worked incessantly to get this country back on track.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
We understand that there was a global banking crisis, but is it not right that the Labour Government did not prepare the country for problems that might occur, given their chronic overspending of money that we just did not have, which left us in a great deal of debt when the recession happened?
Mr Sheerman
I hear what the hon. Lady says, but let us be serious. I recommend that she goes away and looks at a rather good book that I have recently read called “Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed, and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon” by Gretchen Morgenson. Read it and learn it, because that was what we came through.
The Chancellor’s remarks yesterday did not really touch on many of the issues that affect my community. The fact is that we have a hospital in danger that suffers due to a private finance initiative scheme. All the Chancellor said was that Labour was responsible for PFI. I have been here long enough to know that the great charm offensive on PFIs was led by John Major. PFIs were the fashion among Members on all Benches. As Chairman of the Education Committee, I saw good PFIs and bad PFIs, but I also saw a lot of smart City types who danced rings around local authorities and local health authorities and gave them a rotten deal. That is the truth of PFIs—there were good ones and bad ones, but a lot of City spivs made a lot of money out of them. Nothing that the Chancellor said yesterday will rescue my local hospital and health trust from that burden.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that 90% of all PFIs were signed under a Labour Government? Yesterday the Chancellor took steps to make sure that there will be no more.
Mr Sheerman
The Chancellor took no steps to help those parts of the country that are in trouble due to PFIs.
Watching the television and reading the papers, my constituents are not fooled: they know that what was left out yesterday was that whatever Brexit deal is struck, it will not be as good as staying in the European Union—that is the truth of it. I come here to represent my constituents, and I know that we are moving towards a disaster for their living standards, their health standards and everything else that will touch their lives over the coming years. This is a year of crisis. Just as we had the crisis of the great depression and the crisis in 2009, this will be the next crisis, and we need people at the Dispatch Box who will take on their role as leaders. I do not mean people such as the former Prime Minister and Chancellor who, when they lost the referendum, ran away from their responsibilities and from leadership. Where are they now? Writing for the Evening Standard I suppose, or writing their memoirs in their man caves.
Being in this House and representing our constituents is a grave responsibility. The job does not come and go—we do not want people who try a bit of time as Chancellor of the Exchequer and a bit of time as Prime Minister but then disappear. The great people who have been at that Dispatch Box are the people who have had values, showed leadership, and led this country in good time and in bad times. The fact of the matter is that we are heading for a very bad time indeed if we leave the European Union on bad terms, but that was not mentioned. The Chancellor of the Exchequer, at this time of crisis and impending disaster for our country, did not have the courage to mention Brexit more than once—that is the truth, and my constituents want me to say that today.
At this time of the year, I am, like many in the Chamber, wearing my poppy. I have just been reading a lovely new history about the first world war. The fact is that right in the middle of that war, everybody knew that it was unwinnable and that more and more young men were going to die. Of course, the real responsibility for the first world war lies with us—the politicians. Politicians failed the people of this country. German politicians failed their people, as did French politicians. It was politicians who did it, and they went on killing more and more young people. That was a failure of leadership, a failure of values, a failure of responsibility and a failure to make courageous decisions at the Dispatch Box. We are heading in that direction—not particularly into war, but into the most troubled times when our people will come out impoverished, miserable and unhappy. That will hurt their health, their education and their chance of a good life. For my part, I will do everything that I can to stop the disaster that those on the Government Benches have wished on our people.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
Last year, after the disappointment of the general election manifesto process, I left the Government in order to make the case that we needed to make this a moment of much bolder national renewal, that we needed to move on from the first phase of reducing the deficit through a programme of austerity and that we needed to set a trajectory of higher growth, more public sector enterprise and innovation, and wage increases and tax cuts focused on the poorest—those on the lowest incomes—in our society. Let me start by saying that I strongly welcome the Chancellor’s Budget for all those reasons. He managed to square an almost impossible circle in a clever Budget that has done something important for some of the most vulnerable in our society.
As a constituency MP, I wish to mention in particular the measures to support the high street. In Mid Norfolk, as in many other rural constituencies, we have seen our high streets hit hard by a big transfer to online retail without the digital giants paying tax in return, and I welcome the measures that the Government have taken to support our high streets. In particular, in health and care day of the Budget debate, I want to highlight the £10 billion put aside for social care; the extraordinary announcement, which I strongly welcome, of the launch of the first mental health emergency service; the £10,000 for every primary school and £50,000 for every secondary school; the £400 million a year for our schools; and the £2 billion to make sure that universal credit is properly funded. These, I suggest, are compassionate steps taken by a Government still paying off the legacy of the appalling inheritance from the Labour party, but doing so in a way that tries to put the needs of the most vulnerable in society first.
All of that is made possible because of the extraordinary economic success over which we have managed to preside. It pains Opposition Members, which is why they are all looking away, that the rate of real income growth has been rising. In the next five years, the OBR forecasts that there will be a bigger real-terms rise in real incomes for the lowest paid than for anybody else, and 3 million new jobs. This is a success story, and nothing tells us how important it is more than the howls of derision from the Opposition, so upset are they that more and more people in this country are not in need of Labour party support. People are coming to us because they know that ours is the party that supports growth.
I want to acknowledge that after eight very painful years, there is a weariness afoot among both those on the frontline of public services, who have tightened their belts, and the lowest-paid people in work. Those two groups have tightened their belts far more than those in plum jobs in government, in Whitehall, or even in local government. We need, as a House, to say to them that they have earned it and to send a very sincere thank you. The British people have tightened their belts far harder than the Government have in the past eight years.
Talking of public sector workers and the need for public sector leadership, I want to thank the Chancellor for announcing the new public sector leadership academy—an academy to support those on the frontline of public services, who have one of the hardest jobs in our society. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Paula Sherriff) might say that is rubbish, but that is because she has never had to run anything. The people on the frontline of our public services are actually running very complex public services. They, alongside the lowest-paid people in work, are the people to we need to support in the next five years in tightening the belt and delivering the innovation and efficiency that the public want to see.
Paula Sherriff (Dewsbury) (Lab)
I note that the hon. Gentleman said that I have never had to run anything. I wonder whether he would like to change his mind given that I ran a crime management centre in a police station and two incredibly busy departments in a busy hospital. Perhaps he would like to correct the record.
George Freeman
I will happily correct that bit of the record, as long as the hon. Lady welcomes the public sector leadership academy, because, given her experience, she will know how important it is.
If we are really to tackle the structural legacy of the 13 years of a Labour Government that led to the biggest economic crisis in this country’s peacetime history—[Interruption.] That is a reality that Labour Members now shout down because it is inconvenient. The crisis that a new generation of voters needs to be consistently reminded of was the legacy of 13 years of a Labour Government. If we are to tackle that, we will have to do two important things: yes, we must continue to drive the modernisation of public service, but we must also increase the rate of growth and revenue generation in the economy by the Government. Even more powerfully, over the next five years we need somehow to make those two ambitions work together. I would like to share some thoughts on how we might do that.
The truth is that our growth rate has dropped since the EU referendum, from 3% to 1.5%. Therefore the first thing that we need to do is to get a good Brexit deal for business confidence. I hope that the Opposition will take the opportunity of the forthcoming Brexit votes to put the needs of business, prosperity and the economy ahead of ideology or party politics. We also need to create an environment in which we can unlock business investment in this country. There is £600 billion tied up on businesses’ balance sheets, and we need to trigger the confidence needed to unlock that money in the post-Brexit dividend. We will not get it unless the Brexit deal gives business the certainty that it needs in the years ahead.
We also need to go much faster on infrastructure. I am delighted that, at this point, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury has entered the Chamber, because for eight years she and I have been holding meetings to try to accelerate funding for the Ely rail junction. I want the Treasury now to recognise that, across the country, there are infrastructure schemes that could be funded by private finance. I am talking not about PFI, but about giving local authorities and mayors powers to set up infrastructure bonds to create more innovative ways of driving investment into our public services. If we regenerated rail links and rail lines, gave planning permission for stations and developed innovative schemes for capturing the value increase around those lines, we could harness that growth to fund new models of infrastructure.
I particularly welcome the Government’s continued emphasis, through the industrial strategy, on fields such as life sciences, robotics and artificial intelligence so that we can create in this country the research platform needed to support the creation of the jobs and businesses of tomorrow. But if we are to be more than just a research economy—if we are to be a genuine innovation nation that pulls innovation through into practice—we need an economy that uses innovation in the private and public sectors. The great trick is to harness the power of innovation in our public services, and nowhere more than in the NHS. If we are really to lead the world in digital health and digital medicine, and the extraordinary revolution that that offers, we will not do it with an NHS running on paper and cardboard. We need to make the NHS a genuine catalyst for UK leadership in digital health. It is the same in genomics. When I set up the UK genomics programme, the idea was not only that we would launch the world’s first genomic medicines service in the NHS, which we have, but crucially that, in so doing, we would make this country a leader in genomic research and life science investment.
This, in the end, is the key to getting out of the debt that we inherited from the Labour party—the high-debt, low-growth model that yesterday’s Budget acknowledged. We have to somehow unlock innovation in our public services and drive much higher rates of growth in the private sector. With Brexit coming to its resolution here in this House in the next few weeks, we have to make it a catalyst for the renaissance of innovation and enterprise, and the moment at which we set out a vision for public services in the 21st century.
Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)
I was really shocked when the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) said that there is weariness. It was Halloween yesterday, and that Budget was damn scary, never mind wearying. As for asking public sector workers to tighten their belts, it was not about tightening their belts—it was about going and accessing food banks. That is what that Budget was about, and what the Government continue to be about.
I sat here yesterday listening attentively to the Chancellor delivering his Budget. I was not holding my breath given this Government’s track record on breaking their promises, but I am ever an optimist, so I still sat here in hope: hoping, on behalf of my constituents of Bradford West, for this Government to deliver on their all-singing and—dare I say it?—all-dancing “end of austerity” Budget. Alas, even the Chancellor’s self-deprecating humour could not mask the reality of yet more broken promises.
No doubt we will hear from many colleagues, as we have heard before, about what this Budget really means and how it has failed to redress the balance and the crisis in the health and social care sector, with no end in sight under the Conservatives. But for now I want to talk about young people, and particularly their mental health. That is not only because I come from the great city of Bradford, which will have the youngest population in the whole of Europe by 2020, but because, as a former chair of a large mental health charity and a former NHS commissioner, I have an acute understanding of the realities that this Government continue to fail to grasp. They fail to listen to charities such as Barnardo’s, which has warned the Government that they are sleepwalking into a crisis.
Throughout this country we have seen a huge increase in the number of young people, in particular, suffering from mental health issues. Just a few weeks ago in my constituency, I met George Zito. George and his colleagues work to provide positive mental health training across schools in Bradford. George explained to me that 8,500 young people across Bradford have been diagnosed with mental health disorders, but the number with lower-level concerns is estimated to be at least double that. Implementing mental health specialist departments in every large NHS A&E is one way of tackling the crisis in mental health at the last stage, but we cannot afford to provide just last-minute crisis rescue for people’s mental health disorders, as the Government are currently doing with their Brexit negotiations.
When 50% of mental health problems are established by the age of 14, and 75% by the age of 24, making young people’s mental health a priority allows us to prevent future life problems for a whole generation. The Children’s Society has expressed concern that the Government’s plans for improving children’s mental health more generally are moving too slowly. With only one in four children being reached by school-based mental health teams in the next five years, there was nothing in the Budget to address that. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) mentioned earlier that is extremely disappointing that the Government did not put extra resource into schools to provide counsellors who can effectively tackle low levels of wellbeing and support children with poor mental health.
The reality on the ground is that people like George Zito from my constituency will not get the resources they need, and little will be done to help reach young people with mental health issues in their schools. With this Budget, the two-year waiting times for young people trying to see a specialist counsellor for issues to do with mental health will remain to a large extent in Bradford West. The Chancellor decided it was okay to trick the young in my constituency facing issues with mental health while his Budget could treat the wealthiest, who are 14 times more likely to benefit from it than the poor.
Between 2012 and 2016, this Government’s cuts led to a loss of 600 youth centres, 3,500 youth workers, and 140,000 youth centre places for young people. This Budget does nothing at all to resolve the loss of those services. It not only neglects young people’s need for direct access to mental health counsellors in their schools but, given the minimal youth services available, leaves them with little or no face-to-face support. Although I sincerely welcome the Chancellor’s cash injection of £2 billion, which has been referred to on more than a few occasions, I am afraid that it just does not cut it for my constituents, or for young people up and down the country. The Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that almost £4.1 billion is the actual figure needed to meet the necessary provision of mental health services.
Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)
In situations where there are no beds in acute mental health wards, public funds are being used to pay for private beds in private hospitals. Does my hon. Friend think that that is a good use of public funds?
Naz Shah
I absolutely share those concerns about that expenditure when we are not investing in the infrastructure we need. What we heard yesterday, and more of today, was sticking plaster options—those are the only solutions that this Government have come up with. That is one thing that the Conservatives are absolutely the masters of—saying, “We are investing £2 billion, but actually we stripped you of £5 billion the week before.” It just cannot work like that.
My concerns remain as valid as they were before the Chancellor stood up yesterday and delivered his Halloween frighteners, because the truth remains that once again this Government are using their mastery of applying sticking plasters to try to hold together a wound that they have inflicted and that, quite frankly, is not healing. The tricks in his bag were exactly those, delivered by the Chancellor on behalf of a Tory Government who are now a master of disguise. Yesterday, the Chancellor liked to refer to himself as Fiscal Phil. Although it may be humorous for the Chancellor to half-pronounce his name, it is catastrophic for this whole country when his Budget does not even half halt austerity, half provide the provision needed for mental health services, or go halfway towards providing the parity of esteem that his own Government have been promising.
With the Chancellor suggesting that he will put an emergency Budget before Parliament in the event of a no-deal Brexit, a few things come to mind. Is the Minister willing to provide assurances that the extra funding for mental health will not be swallowed up, that there will not be cuts, and that the Prime Minister’s failure to negotiate a Brexit deal will not mean collateral damage for those suffering the most?
Finally, I want to talk about the investment in the public sector leadership academy, which the hon. Member for Mid Norfolk mentioned. I concur: I absolutely value that investment. However, the problem is that it is those very public sector leaders who are having to deal with austerity. For example, there is the former chair of Solace in Doncaster, who has written an article about it. In Northamptonshire, the Tory council is having to go through bankruptcy. There is nothing wrong with the people involved as leaders. What is wrong is the cards that they are dealt in having to cut services and make decisions every single day of the week about whether a woman is not going to get a bed for the night following domestic violence, a child is not going to get a CAMHS referral, or a child is going to take home a begging letter from their school because there is not enough funding and it cannot afford food. That is the reality of austerity, and it needs to stop now.
Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown (The Cotswolds) (Con)
I am grateful to have caught your eye in this important Budget debate, Mr Deputy Speaker.
I would like to begin by welcoming the Chancellor’s statement and recognising that UK public finances are in a much better shape than they were. Despite the narrative of negativity from the Opposition, the economic facts demonstrate a much more positive reality. I thought the Opposition might welcome the fact that average real wage growth in the public sector is now 3.1%—a 10-year high—or that the Chancellor is predicting an additional 400,000 people in work by 2023. That is on top of the 3 million extra jobs we have created in the last 10 years or so. But nothing came from the Opposition, except that they have 39 uncosted expenditure pledges. That is irresponsible public policy making.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) said, we need to build on the high-tech areas of our economy, such as AI, where we are world leaders. We need to ask ourselves why, when we can do the innovation in this country—for example, inventing the world wide web—large IT companies such as Google did not emerge in this country. We need to concentrate on the high-tech sectors of the economy. As my hon. Friend said, that is the way to build ourselves out of the debt created by previous Governments. We need to encourage more students from around the world—the brightest and the best—to come to our universities to study subjects such as computer sciences, so that our universities are at the world forefront of this much needed research.
We need to relentlessly pursue a growth strategy post Brexit. I was delighted that the Chancellor was able to release some of his cushion in this Budget. I hope that we get a deal; I am optimistic that we will get a deal and that this Parliament will pass it. We can then move forward, businesses that are currently shelving investment decisions will make those decisions and the economy will start to thrive.
One thing we can do in the post-Brexit era is to look carefully at the business rates system. I held an Adjournment debate on that earlier this month, in which I pointed out that business rates are not necessarily related to the ability to pay. There are some unfair quirks in the business rates system. For example, a business with a rateable value of under £12,000 gets small business rate relief, but if someone has two businesses with a rateable value of, say, £3,000 each, they get no small business rate relief for either of them.
I welcome the fact that the Government have put £900 million into the rating system, but again, that is a sticking plaster over a system that needs to be thoroughly reformed. I also welcome the fact that there is a third off business rates for retailers with a rateable value of up to £51,000 and a fund for the sustainable transformation of high streets.
Perhaps the most important thing that we need to look at in public services over the next few years is education. As I have alluded to, education is the way that we will be at the forefront of innovation in this country. I have campaigned over a number of years as part of the f40 group to ensure that my schools in Gloucestershire get fair funding. I welcome the additional £475 million for capital spending, but that does not address the current spending problems. In Gloucestershire, we have overspent by £3.2 million on the high-needs block of the education budget. As I mentioned in my intervention on the Health Secretary, that is unfortunately because our children are getting more and more complex health and other problems at an earlier age and need more special assistance in schools.
While I welcome the additional £1.3 billion put into education as a result of our manifesto commitment, it was predicated on the basis that secondary school children throughout the country were to get £3,800 under the fair funding formula. In fact, we will only be able to afford per pupil secondary school funding of £3,600 in Gloucestershire. That additional £200 per pupil would make a huge difference to my schools. I have to report to the House the sad fact that while we had a period of years when our schools in Gloucestershire were going from good to outstanding ratings, that has begun to drop back, which is of great concern.
One way in which the Chancellor has responded to public concern over IT companies such as Google and Facebook is to introduce a digital services tax. I agree with a little bit of what Opposition Members said—I think the tax is unambitious. If we look at the Red Book, we see that the tax is only 2% on profits, with a £25 million annual allowance, and it only covers relevant global revenues in excess of £500 million. The result is that hundreds, and maybe thousands, of relevant small and medium-sized IT companies around the world will be exempt from it. The tax is only predicted to raise £440 million by 2023-24. If we raised more from that tax, we would be able to put more money into schools. The Chancellor needs to look at that carefully. He introduced the diverted profits tax to start to deal with the issue of international companies not paying proper tax in the UK, but that has only raised £388 million this year.
Infrastructure is very important in this country, and I welcome the £25.5 billion for the roads programme. I desperately hope that that extra money will finally secure the construction of the missing link on the A417 in my constituency, for which I have campaigned for 15 years. The Chief Secretary is listening, and I hope I will get good news shortly. We have consulted on it, and we have a preferred route. All we are waiting for is the Government to announce which route they want.
Affordable housing is very important, and I welcome the extra £500 million for the housing infrastructure fund. I welcome the fact that a lot more money is going into housing. Providing housing is one of the most important things that we can do for our young people, and intergenerational fairness needs to be looked at. Low-paid public sector workers in my constituency, whether they be nurses or teachers, often cannot afford to live in the Cotswolds, and we need to look at more innovative ways of providing social housing for them.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to participate in the Budget debate. There were some announcements to be welcomed yesterday, such as the tax on big tech companies. I have been calling for those changes since my time on the Public Accounts Committee, and they are long overdue. In the round, though, this Budget fell well short of what is required. After the Prime Minister’s big talk of ending austerity, what we got was too little, too late. To get the changes we need to create jobs and prosperity in all parts of the UK, there is only one solution: a Labour Government.
Today, I want to focus on a key issue that has affected families in south Wales and on which the Government have failed to act, and that is helping people to protect their pensions. Last year I called attention to a brewing steel pensions crisis. Facing a hard deadline on their future options, British Steel pension scheme members found themselves targeted by unscrupulous pensions advisers. There were nearly 8,000 transfers out of the scheme, and we know that 872 of those were advised by firms that were eventually required to stop advising. Worryingly, one financial planner has said that the high number of compensation claims submitted against just one of those firms might be the tip of an iceberg.
Too many people saw their hard-earned pension pots put at risk, including constituents of mine who were worried sick about their future. They needed an immediate, robust and decisive response from the regulators. Unfortunately, poor co-ordination, unclear consumer information and weak oversight meant that the response for those consumers has been hesitant and insufficient. It was often unclear who they needed to approach for help. Unbelievably, they were expected to take up their concerns with the advisers they suspected of fleecing them. Pensioners researching specific advisers had to go through a lengthy process to find out basic information. They needed to search the Financial Conduct Authority’s register to decipher legal notes that were sometimes closer to double Dutch than plain English. The FCA is now making changes to its register, but it still is not giving people critical information in a straightforward enough way.
The most pressing problem remains the sorry state of financial regulation and pensions oversight. As a Work and Pensions Committee report found, while interest in steel pension transfers was increasing from late April 2017, it was not until November that the FCA began to take action. At that point, a full-scale crisis was under way. Even then, it was not until December that it was taking regular action against suspect firms. While there has been some progress, it has not been clear enough for us to give concrete answers to the people affected, or to give us confidence that this will not happen again.
Nowhere is this more evident than with one of the firms most closely identified with this scandal, Active Wealth (UK), and its director Mr Darren Reynolds. The Financial Services Compensation Scheme is paying out over £500,000 for claims related to this firm alone, yet 162 claims, many from steelworkers, are still open. Mr Reynolds failed to turn up to Parliament to answer questions. The ability of his company to advise on pension transfers was restricted and the company is now in liquidation. Despite this, Darren Reynolds is still listed as an active person on the FCA register. From my inquiries, he does not appear to have been referred for more serious investigation. What needs to be done for this sector to tackle this bad behaviour and for this character to be properly held to account?
The pensions debacle that hit steelworkers last winter should never have happened. It is a stark warning that regulating these businesses is not working well enough. It happened because we have a system of pensions and financial regulation that fails to protect hard-working people. After much criticism, the FCA and the Pensions Regulator say they are working better together, and that is a positive step. However, this is not a problem of co-ordination alone; we also need stricter penalties, better information and far tighter oversight. The Government urgently need to look at what has happened to drive improvements in the future. They need to review current regulation on pensions advice regularly, make sure that any wrongdoing is aggressively dealt with and ensure that consumer information is easy to find and to understand.
I want to include this personal plea for action. Many of my family were steelworkers or miners, and our steelworkers put in decades of toil to earn these pension pots. Some have found these pension pots put at risk because of the wrongdoing of some and the inaction of others. The Chancellor needs to put this right and to get on the side of working people.
I will end by focusing on the extreme pressure that the Government’s recent proposals on pension valuations could cause our police forces. Gwent police estimate these could cost them the same amount of money as 100 officers. The Government need to give our police more funding. Instead, however, they are forcing expensive accounting tricks on them with no notice. That is not right.
Finally, I point out that there is a better path. For a genuine end to austerity, real help for our public services, and rules and systems that work for working people and those in retirement, we need a Labour Government.
Sir Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
I have been in the House long enough to remember lots of Labour Budgets, and I remember the claim that boom and bust had been abolished—only to be followed by the biggest bust that we have had in our history. It must have been a big bust, because only that would have made the Conservative party and the Liberal Democrats work together. We normally fight like ferrets in a sack, but in the context of 2010, a real crisis had to be dealt with.
If we look at what has occurred over the long term, we can see that we have made a great success of it. First, we have reduced the deficit from 10% to about 1%. That is a good thing, because if we borrow lots of money, we pay interest, which means that taxpayers’ money goes to pay bondholders and shareholders, not on the things that people want. I think that a compassionate Government is one who balance the books, because that means they can devote resources to the priorities that people have.
We have managed to do that without crashing the economy. Despite the calls that were often made about the economy going into recession, we have had eight years of a growing economy, which is actually pretty good. On top of that, we have created 3 million jobs. We all know that the best way to deal with poverty, to give people life chances and an opportunity to train, and the best thing for families is employment. If there is a challenge now it is to get wage levels and take-home pay up. When we compare our performance on employment with the EU and most of our neighbours, we can see that we have done a pretty good job. I am pleased there are signs that pay is picking up and that British workers will be paid more.
There is a lot of good to be said about the Budget yesterday. I do not think that Budgets in themselves make much of a difference. What makes a difference is long-term economic success and planning. If we look at Germany and other countries, we can see that they have pretty sane policies year after year—over seven, 10 or 15 years—which grow the economy gradually. Certainly since 2010, we have made pretty good progress, and there is more progress to be made as we exit from the European Union.
I welcome what the Chancellor has done on public spending. We all know that there are pressures with an ageing population and with mental health, and the Government have started to address some of those pressures. They have been able to do so because of careful management of the public finances. I also welcome the additional spending on defence. I am one of those who have always felt we have cut defence too much, perhaps because of the economic crisis. I think that Britain, as a world power and as a member of the United Nations Security Council, does need to spend sufficient resources on defence, so the £2 billion announced in the Budget is to be welcomed.
I think we have made good progress, and all that the Government need to do now is to keep that progress up year on year. We have a decent balance in this Budget because not only have we been able to spend more on public services—with the proviso that we need reform, and the proviso that we need productivity to rise because spending money will not necessarily in itself produce better outcomes—but we have managed to reduce taxation. Since 2010, we have doubled the allowance to £12,500 for those who pay tax, which is pretty good, and it massively increases the incentive for people to get into work. It is no accident that we have record employment, because we have made raising the tax allowances to help people get a job a very critical part of our employment strategy. It is also quite right for the upper rate of tax to go up as well, because that lifts all the tax bands for many middle earners. The fact of the matter is that, as a country, we tax people too much too early, and we need to increase incentives. There has to be a balance between incentives and extra spending, and on this occasion we have got that right.
We have a key task over the next few months in getting a good deal on Brexit. I note that the shadow Chancellor criticised the Government for contemplating leaving without a deal, yet as far as I know the Labour party are going to vote against the deal, so there seems to be a slight double standard.
Sir Robert Syms
Well, we shall see what comes back in the next few months.
The reality is that the Government have actually managed the economy well, and because of that, despite the level of uncertainty, we are still creating jobs and we are still growing. The interesting point is that, despite the soft patch earlier this year, the third quarter growth figures show that we are now growing more than the EU, so we are starting to pick up again.
I am confident that we have a good team at the Treasury and that they are listening to what colleagues are saying about their constituency concerns. I think we have had a really decent Budget, which has balanced sensible spending with reform and a sensible reduction of taxation. We are also maintaining a sensible management of the economy, certainly in the plans to have a 1% deficit, which is a massive reduction. I hope that we over-perform, and that if we do, we can reduce that further. The reality is that this Government have done well, and the country is doing well. We need not run down the country; the country’s best years are still ahead of us.
Joan Ryan (Enfield North) (Lab)
I thought I would start by picking out a few key points from the Office for Budget Responsibility report, which might have a slightly different emphasis from the points that the Chancellor would pick out. Let us start, on page 64, with household disposable income:
“Real household disposable income fell by 0.2 per cent in 2017”.
On page 65, the report says:
“We expect relatively weak growth in per capita real earnings and real disposable incomes… In 2019, real per capita disposable income growth is flat”.
On household saving and debt, on page 67, it says:
“We expect unsecured debt to rise steadily as a share of household disposable income”.
On household net lending and balance sheets, on page 70, it says:
“the ratio of household debt to income has risen steadily since the start of 2016…we expect the ratio of household debt to income to continue to rise steadily…with the ratio reaching just under 150 per cent by the start of 2024.”
On business investment and stockbuilding, on page 72, the report says:
“The latest data suggests business investment fell in both the first two quarters of this year…we expect a modest rise in business investment as a share of real GDP over the forecast period—less than would be typical at this stage of an economic cycle.”
On UK exports as a share of GDP, on page 77, it says:
“In August, the Government announced an ambition to increase the UK’s exports to 35% of GDP, but has not specified the date by which it believes that this can be achieved. The Government’s previous aspiration was to increase exports to £1 trillion by 2020—our forecast suggests that this will be missed by £320 billion. The Government is not on course to meet its current ambition in our forecast”.
On risks and uncertainties, on page 81, the report says:
“The outlook for productivity growth remains hugely uncertain.”
On page 83, it says:
“the probability of a cyclical downturn occurring sometime over our forecast horizon is…high”.
On assumptions regarding the UK’s exit from the EU, it says:
“we still have no meaningful basis for predicting a precise outcome upon which we could then condition our forecast.”
On page 91, it says:
“Real GDP Growth has been revised down in 2018”.
Now, the Chancellor, of course, would and did choose to cherry-pick a different set of headlines yesterday, but I think this is a more balanced picture than that presented by him.
I can assure the Chancellor of two things in relation to this Budget. First, the people of Enfield are sick and tired of austerity. Secondly, we have no confidence that the Government’s programme of austerity is coming to an end. The Government’s £1 billion cut to the Metropolitan police budget since 2010 has resulted in 230 police officers and police community support officers being removed from the streets of Enfield. Over the same period, violent crime has surged locally by 85%. Where was the Chancellor’s announcement to reverse those cuts, put more bobbies on the beat and help create safer neighbourhoods?
How can the Government have the cheek to say austerity is over, when they are still planning cuts of £1.3 billion to councils next year? By 2020, the Government will have slashed funding to Enfield Council by 60% in just a decade.
There is a better example in this Budget of the Government’s misguided priorities. The Chancellor announced more funding for potholes than for our schools. Pothole funding is welcome, but surely education should be a higher priority. Does the future of our children not matter? This is a slap in the face for many schools in my constituency, which are having serious problems paying for basic items such as pens and paper, let alone retaining and recruiting teachers.
Austerity is not coming to an end, and nor, as the Chancellor asserted, is the “economy working for everyone”. This year, we have seen household debt rise to its highest level on record. Over-indebtedness in Enfield is higher than the London and national averages, and we have more than 14,000 residents in real financial difficulty. One in three workers living locally does not earn a living wage, and the average worker is £800 a year worse off than they were a decade ago.
The Government’s abject failure to address the housing crisis means local families are struggling to cope with soaring rents and a lack of affordable homes, with our borough having the highest eviction rate and the second highest level of homelessness acceptances in the capital.
The last Labour Government lifted 1 million children out of poverty, but child poverty rates under the Conservatives are getting worse, not better. Some 34,000 children in Enfield are now living below the poverty line. This is a shameful record for the Government, and a record that could deteriorate still further as a result of their disastrous universal credit roll-out.
Karin Smyth
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that the failure to say anything considerable in the Budget about early years support and education and Sure Start centres yesterday represented a glaring omission, and addressing those issues would have helped families in constituencies such as Bristol South and Enfield North?
Joan Ryan
My friend is absolutely right. In fact, in Enfield, we now see a real problem, as we do in many other parts of the country, with children not being ready for school at the age of five. This has a significant impact on their achievement throughout their school careers and on their future.
North Enfield Foodbank has said that food bank usage continues to increase, with Enfield having the fourth highest rate of food bank usage in London last year. The main reason for that increase is delays in the payment of benefits and changes to them.
The Chancellor said that the Government were
“delivering on the British people’s priorities, supporting our public services”—[Official Report, 29 October 2018; Vol. 648, c. 668.]
There is no public service or institution more important in our country than the national health service. Huge pressure has been placed on doctors’ surgeries. Well over half the residents who replied to my GP services survey said they had difficulty getting an appointment to see a doctor, and we know that, going forward, Enfield is short of 84 GPs to serve our growing population.
The Government’s chronic underfunding of our national health service since 2010 means that North Middlesex Hospital, like so many other hospitals across the country, is operating with a substantial financial deficit. NHS England is trying to deal with a deepening staff crisis, while hospitals are trying to recruit doctors and nurses. This is an impossible situation. We cannot square this circle. On public health, which warranted no mention whatever, we in Enfield are facing another £1 million cut by 2020, and everybody knows the link between poverty and health.
The Government have failed to address eight years of devastating cuts to our communities, and they are failing to deliver on the priorities of the British people. Austerity is not coming to an end. Yesterday’s Budget proves it. There is no hope here that I can take to the people of Enfield from this Conservative Government. I will not be supporting this Budget.
Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan). Since the Chancellor sat down yesterday, much has been made by commentators of the question of whether austerity has indeed ended. However, surely that is the wrong question, because what the Chancellor’s speech set out yesterday was the most important point of all: fiscal prudence and careful financial management are what a good Chancellor should always focus his attentions on before all other things, so that when there is a need for more cash for urgent or unexpected events, it is possible to provide resources without jeopardising the long-term economic stability of our country.
Mr Deputy Speaker, I would like to apologise if I became agitated yesterday during the Leader of the Opposition’s reply to the Chancellor, but that was because it is so very frustrating to listen to someone who offers himself as a potential leader of our country but has absolutely no interest in its financial stability. His willingness to borrow “to invest”, as he calls it, means simply a new vast mountain of debt, binding all our children and their future offspring to huge debt interest payments—real cash from real, hard-working taxpayers being used to service debt and therefore not being used for public services, for supporting those who cannot look after themselves, or for ensuring that we invest in the most advanced and flexible defences to protect and look after our constituents. He would rather enjoy the short-term self-gratification of handing out cash that we have not yet earned, but those who would suffer most are those who can least afford it. High interest rates would cripple people with mortgages. There would be a flight of capital investment from our business community, and the small and medium-sized enterprises and larger businesses that are the backbone of our jobs, and whose hard work and risk taking generate so much of the tax we need to pay for our public services, would stop investing, move abroad, and leave a Corbyn Labour Government to bankrupt our nation, as Labour has done before.
That is a scenario that Conservative Members—and, I believe, many on the Opposition Benches—cannot bear to consider for our constituents, who deserve so much better. The last eight years of fiscal rectitude have been hard, but we can now see the benefits of that graft, and the increasing tax take that the Chancellor can use to help to grow our economy and look after those in need. A stable economy means business investment, and that means real jobs, low interest rates and real investment in our public services.
The confirmation of £20 billion for our NHS is very welcome. I hope that the NHS five-year review will invest in local services and community hospitals, and address the rural sparsity factor, which has for too long been ignored by the centre.
There is the investment in the borderlands deal, a devolution programme that allows Northumberland and her neighbouring counties—regardless of the Scottish border, which is simply a line on a map as far as we in north Northumberland are concerned—to focus our investment on the areas of infrastructure and business sectors that we, as the locals, know will help to boost our economic growth most effectively. We will be able to work with our neighbours to achieve what those pesky border reivers never did: a coherent economic and cultural community based on geography and our natural assets; and, rather than fighting each other for personal gain, working together for us all in the most wild and beautiful part of our country.
The Chancellor’s commitment of £50 million for trees—funding to purchase carbon credits from landowners who plant qualifying woodland—is most welcome. This is real support to help those who commit to the slowest-growing crops: the trees that maintain good soil health; improve the water basin; reduce the risk of flooding in the valleys; and hold carbon dioxide while they are growing and then continue to be a carbon sink when they are harvested, with the wood used in housing and the wood trade.
It is excellent news that the Chancellor will be directing all road tax receipts into road investment and maintenance. That makes perfect sense and is welcomed by those who pay their taxes to use the roads every day. I had thought I might not be able to find a way to thank the Chancellor for his support, when he was Secretary of State for Transport, of my campaigning efforts to invest in the A1 through Northumberland in order to dual it and to make it into the safe and functional 21st century road it needs to be for local users, visiting tourists and businesses moving goods. He understands the investment concept of “build it and they will come”. The first £300 million, which he committed, is now being spent to dual the first 13 miles. With the commitment to allocate £28 billion to the national roads fund, he can be assured that I shall be returning to discuss the dualling of the last stretch of the English undualled road between London and Edinburgh shortly. Before that, however, the commitment to general road maintenance and the battle against potholes is most welcome. Northumberland County Council looks after over 3,500 km of roads. The “beast from the east” managed to shred many of our roads earlier this year, so this commitment to spending the monies collected from road users makes real sense to us.
I am also most grateful that the Chancellor has heard the call from my most rural communities for investment to ensure that we can get decent broadband to every property and business, wherever it is. This will ensure that we have long-term solutions that use technology to reach everyone.
Most welcome, of course, are the cuts to income tax, which will mean that my constituents will each have a personal allowance of £12,500 from next April, as well as an increased national living wage of £8.21. Could nobody tell my son, because that will really excite him, given that he will have earned even more when he gets down to the pub at the weekend? There is much for our small businesses to benefit from. The Chancellor has made a commitment to Brexit and to giving all Departments the cash that they need to get ready for the changes that will need to be put in place.
I thank the Chancellor for listening to the voices of so many MPs about one of those areas of Government spending that most people take for granted and assume is all working fine. I believe that we need to talk about this area of critical national policy much more than we do. It is a public service like no other, because this public sector workforce puts its life on the line for us every day. The question of defence investment and why a comprehensive insurance cover is necessary is not a subject of conversation every day among mums at the school gate. However, every parent’s focus is on keeping their children safe, well fed, healthy, and able to have a happy and safe childhood, so how is it that the most important role for any Government to fulfil—protecting their population—is too often forgotten or ignored in polling and questions of day-to-day spending? It is our insurance policy, but we assume that everything is all okay. I therefore listened with pleasure to the Chancellor committing nearly £2 billion over the next 18 months to help the Ministry of Defence to ensure it can maintain all our capabilities to keep us safe.
As we leave the EU, the one thing which remains fixed is our geography. We will remain, as we have always been, an island maritime trading nation—outward facing and trading across the globe. We need to keep safe the seas across which all our trade moves. We need to ensure that international waters are free of danger so that oil and other goods can move around the globe, whether they are British products being exported, or our imports into our thriving ports of the food in our supermarkets and the oil we need every day. Without the Royal Navy’s day-to-day invisible work, our economy would be profoundly affected. I am very pleased to support this Budget.
Brendan O'Hara (Argyll and Bute) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan), who, despite being on the wrong side of the line at the border, is always entertaining.
Despite the Chancellor’s rather dead-pan delivery of yesterday’s lengthy Budget, the simple truth is that not one of us can trust or believe a single word we heard. Whether on jobs, investment, tax cuts, austerity, extra funding for the NHS or universal credit, the truth is that the Budget is little more than a wish list cobbled together by someone seriously lacking in ambition. It is, none the less, a wish list of what the Chancellor would like if everything turns out the way he hopes it will in the Brexit negotiations. If those negotiations go pear-shaped—I reckon one would get pretty short odds on that being the case—he has admitted that we will all be back here in the spring for what he described, rather euphemistically, as a fiscal event.
In short, what we heard yesterday was, “This is what I’d like to do in an ideal world, but just don’t mortgage the farm on it happening because we have absolutely no idea how Brexit will turn out, and if it doesn’t go well, everything will be up in the air and we will have to do it all again before the clocks go forward.” The Chancellor basically admitted that his Budget will not be able to withstand Brexit. What a way to run a country. What a way to run an economy. Perhaps saddest of all, given that this was his best shot, what a paucity of ambition on the part of the Chancellor.
Anyone watching yesterday who had hoped for or expected the fulfilment of the Prime Minister’s promise of an end to austerity would have been left sorely disappointed. This Budget most certainly did not sound the death knell for austerity. Public sector workers, the low-paid, the disabled, the sick and those seeking employment will all still continue to bear an unfair share of the burden of austerity. Frances O’Grady, the general secretary of the TUC, was absolutely right when she said:
“This Budget does not undo the austerity that has devastated public services. And it lacks the investment needed to speed up wage growth after the longest pay squeeze in 200 years”.
Let no one be in any doubt that, 10 years on from the financial crash, austerity is far from over. The UK Government will continue to balance the books on the backs of the poorest, weakest and most vulnerable in our society.
Luke Graham (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Con)
The growth commission that was commissioned by the Scottish Government said that there would be 25 years of austerity if Scotland separated. How would Scotland balance the books then?
Brendan O'Hara
I refer the hon. Gentleman to the commission’s report and advise him to read it, rather than simply taking the crib sheet handed out by his party.
Much has been made of the Chancellor’s announcement that £20 billion of new funding would be made available to the NHS over the next five years. We are told that that funding will be transformational for the national health service, but let us put it into perspective. The new money, which we welcome, averages out at a 3.4% increase per annum for the next five years. That is actually still less than the average funding increases received by the NHS in the first 60 years of its existence. All the Chancellor announced is that NHS funding, having been squeezed mercilessly by the Tories in the past decade, is returning to a position that is a little below its historical average. The reality is that in releasing this money, the Chancellor has simply removed the Treasury’s heavy boot from the neck of the national health service. If the Chancellor had had the good manners to remain in the Chamber until my right hon. Friend the Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) had spoken yesterday, he would have heard him ask why the Scottish national health service is being short-changed in the Budget to the tune of £50 million a year, which makes a cumulative shortfall of £250 million over the five-year period. That £50 million is enough money to pay for 1,200 nurses in Scotland.
In his Budget, the Chancellor had the perfect opportunity to do the right thing: stop the roll-out of universal credit dead in its tracks until the well-publicised faults in the system, which are hurting the poorest and most vulnerable in our society, have been fixed properly, once and for all.
Jamie Stone (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross) (LD)
Further to that point, is it not a scandal that the Highland Council has to fork out £2.5 million of its carefully hained resources to pay for the roll-out of universal credit? What might that £2.5 million have done for some of the poorest people in areas such as Argyllshire and my constituency?
Brendan O’Hara
I could not agree more. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight the cost to councils and individuals of the appalling roll-out of universal credit. The Government know that it is wrong, but they are pigheadedly determined to see it roll out. The Budget was the Chancellor’s perfect opportunity to stop it, but he refused. For reasons best known to himself, he decided instead to tinker around at the edges, with the promised money coming nowhere close to meeting the shortfall that was created by his predecessor. The Chancellor has decided to do almost nothing for those who are currently on universal credit and are struggling under the work allowance, the two-child cap and the benefit freeze.
As Gillian McInnes, the manager of the citizens advice bureau in my Argyll and Bute constituency, said:
“The Government has still not done enough to address the real problems of universal credit, which are causing serious hardship for many families. Without further support for families, many parents and children will be left in a desperate situation, with many”—
indeed, many more—
“forced into using food banks.”
This was the Chancellor’s opportunity to end austerity—he chose not to. This was his opportunity to stop and fix universal credit—he chose not to. Instead, he and the UK Government chose to hand out tax cuts to the wealthy while continuing to try to balance the country’s books on the backs of the poorest in our society. Heaven help us all if this was the Chancellor’s “good guy Budget”—the one that was based on the Government securing a half-decent Brexit deal. One shudders to think what he has up his sleeve when we are all forced to reconvene in this place early next year for his fiscal event, if and when the Brexit negotiations go totally pear-shaped.
Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)
There is much to celebrate in the Chancellor’s autumn Budget, which carefully balances the need to spend more on key services with the need not to snuff out progress in repairing our economy. Having listened carefully to the criticisms from Opposition Members this afternoon, I am left only with the sneaking suspicion that if we had announced £100 billion of extra spending, Labour Members would probably have advocated £200 billion, using our constituents’ money to hose their party in crowing virtue.
The first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens secure. In a world of rapidly changing threats from both state and non-state actors, the substantial additional money for the armed forces and the £160 million extra for counter-terrorism policing operations are timely and welcome. If we fail to retain skilled personnel or to keep up with technological changes in warfare, and if we look only at the immediate challenges while our enemies plan for the next half-century, we risk reneging on our principal commitment to the electorate.
Our vital reforms to welfare have been broadly welcomed by the public, who understand the inherent justice of making work pay. However, if those reforms are to maintain public confidence, it is vital that they are funded correctly. Universal credit is only just beginning to roll out in my constituency, and I know that my local jobcentre has been eager to use the new tools available to them with universal credit. The £1,000 increase in UC work allowances, the boost to the minimum wage, the increase in the personal tax allowance, and money to ease the transition to universal credit will make crucial differences to the credibility, and therefore the sustainability, of our welfare policy.
My main high streets in Upminster, Elm Park, Harold Hill and Hornchurch are sustained by lively independent retailers who work exceptionally hard and take risks to provide jobs and services to the local community. The cut in business rates by a third for retailers with a rateable value under £51,000 is vital to their sustainability. Coupled with cash for high street regeneration, money to repair roads and the removal of rates for public toilets, I hope that we shall begin to see a revival of small town centres.
We all know that the NHS faces massive additional cost pressures from an ageing population and expensive new medical advances. The Government have set out an unprecedented multi-year funding plan that equates to over £20 billion more a year in real terms by 2023-24. I hope that will put the finances of our major hospitals on a sustainable footing. The demographic pressures on outer London of growing numbers of children alongside a rapidly ageing population, the PFI debt burden and difficulties recruiting staff place constant pressure on the budget of my local hospital, Queen’s. Beyond that, any additional funds must be relentlessly focused on investments that ultimately bring down the cost of the NHS. In that regard, I put in a plea for a nurse training facility in outer east London to reduce reliance on agency staff, measures to boost primary care to keep people out of hospital and, as a special request from a young constituent, the full implementation of the Think Autism strategy. I also want to raise the concerns of my local hospice, Saint Francis, which is worried that the NHS pay award will make it harder for hospices to get the right staff. I ask that their needs be considered, given the exceptional support they provide to the terminally ill and their families.
None the less, I must sound a note of concern. The NHS is now consuming an ever larger slice of the national pie—it is projected to account for 38% of public service spending by 2023—and this will have consequences. Even if we removed the extra money for NHS England, however, the Budget suggests that spending pressures on our local police and councils would likely continue. We have been giving councils more power to raise revenue, and yesterday we announced £650 million to ease short-term social care pressures. That is right. The core schools budget is to rise, too, and primary and secondary schools will get some additional capital spending, but I fear that these measures will prove insufficient to keep at bay the rising costs and demand pressures in my outer-London constituency, particularly on special educational needs provision, additional employer pension contributions and increased use of statutory services that squeeze money needed for other critical elements of council work.
The NHS boost must be openly debated before the spending review and set against other public spending priorities. Health is vital to my constituents, but if they were asked whether the NHS should be the almost exclusive beneficiary of additional public funds, or whether a portion should be given to our overstretched police forces, schools and councils, I am not convinced the health service would secure all the bounty. People in my constituency are worried about crime and frustrated at the Mayor of London’s leadership of the Metropolitan police, which is seeing outer-London boroughs deprioritised against inner-London ones. Beyond the precept, we need to be confident that the Home Office is providing the funding that police officers need to meet their increasingly complex workload.
Finally, I would like to issue a word of caution about Brexit. It has been suggested in the approach to the Budget that any failure by MPs to back the Government’s eventual Brexit deal will jeopardise our ability to turn on the spending taps in the spring. Parliamentarians on both sides of the divide have expressed concerns about the Chequers strategy, as has the EU itself, and I am anxious that we avoid a deal cemented with unacceptable concessions or a proposal that slithers us into an indefinite period of limbo. Either scenario would heighten the risk of no deal and the prospect of a radical Labour Government, which would have profound implications for the public finances. The cost of Labour’s renationalisation programme alone is £176 billion.
I have heard it said that most of the electorate care little about customs unions, trade deals or regulations, and that they just want an agreement of any shape and then to move on. I caution MPs against making that assumption. One resident wrote to me last week:
“Speaking to people locally, I feel I am not alone in worrying that what we will end up with is just what we have now without any influence.”
The best way to protect our public finances from a Labour Government, unleash our economy from uncertainty and bring about the growth that can pay for better services is to negotiate a deal with the EU that is not only deliverable but gives our nation the flexibility and autonomy it needs to make the most of Brexit.
I should have liked to say much more about investment, growth and trade policy, all of which ultimately underpin the provision of strong public services, but I will conclude by suggesting that what matters above all to our constituents is not the amount spent on each service but the outcomes from and quality of those services. We must not forget value for money, the risk of false economies and the inadvertent pressure placed on other Departments amid the laudable desire to put the health service on a firmer footing.
Julie Cooper (Burnley) (Lab)
I note the Prime Minister’s recent announcement that austerity is over, although the message does not seem to have reached the Chancellor. There was nothing in yesterday’s Budget to end austerity and there is no doubt that austerity is alive and kicking viciously in my constituency. As with so many things, the Prime Minister seems to think that just by saying something she can make it happen. Her first announcement as Prime Minister was that she was going to help those just about managing. Well, the just about managing are still waiting, and the just about managing in Burnley are managing just a bit less well than they were two years ago.
When we confront the Conservative party with the dire consequences that its budget cuts have wrought on our constituents—from the rise in NHS waiting lists to the lack of care available to the elderly and disabled and headteachers struggling to manage underfunded schools—we are told that record amounts are being spent. It does not take an economist to see that the Chancellor cannot, on the one hand, take credit for reducing the deficit and, on the other, brag about increased spending, without having a better record on growth than this Government’s miserable effort.
Yesterday’s Budget failed to address the crisis in the NHS and social care—one mention of carers, but not a single penny of support; not even a mention of the WASPI women or women’s refuges; no attempt to right the wrongs of universal credit; no extra funding for the police and fire services; no attempt to provide additional funding for nursery schools, in spite of the Education Secretary’s recent warm words. The extra spending on repairing potholes is welcome, but I find it shocking that the Chancellor provided more for potholes than he did for schools, even though every school in Burnley and Padiham is facing damaging cuts.
The Government like to mislead with figures. There is a pattern of swingeing cuts, followed by the reinstatement of modest amounts amid a fanfare of celebration. However, the recent revelation from the Office for National Statistics about the Department for Education’s dubious figures really was something else. Most ridiculously, spending on private schools was counted as Government spending on education. Next, I would not be surprised to see the use of luxury spas included in public health spending.
For me, the most damning statistic to emerge over the summer was the one on life expectancy, which has fallen in parts of my constituency for the first time in over 30 years. That is a true reflection of the Government’s record in office and the price my constituents are paying for austerity. Members will not be surprised to learn that the last time there was a fall in life expectancy was the 1980s, during the tenure of another Tory Government committed to policies that resulted in the decimation of our public services. Members may recall that we were told at the time, “There is no alternative.” Well, there is an alternative: it is a Labour Government.
The Government consistently remind us of the need to be fair to taxpayers. Let us consider that with regard to taxpayers in my constituency. Consider the low-paid essential worker who earns £12,500 per annum. Every extra pound they earn is taxed at a marginal rate of 32%. Compare that with the tax paid by the multimillionaire who, barely lifting a finger, reaps the benefits of stock market wheeling and dealing, and pays capital gains tax at a mere 20%. There is nothing fair about that.
Let us consider fairness for council tax payers. The owner of a band A property in my constituency, worth as little as £50,000, has to pay a council tax bill of £1,220, while the owner of a band G property in Westminster worth £2 million gets a council tax bill £36 lower. There is nothing fair about that.
Faisal Rashid (Warrington South) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that eight years of austerity have failed completely and that only a Labour Government will provide the investment our country desperately needs?
Julie Cooper
My hon. Friend makes a good point; I agree with him absolutely.
Some 36% of the children in my constituency are growing up in poverty, and the changes to universal credit will make that much worse. Can it be fair to punish children whose only crime is to have two siblings? Five and a half thousand children growing up in Burnley and Padiham will be affected by those draconian measures. There is nothing fair about that either.
The people in my constituency know who is responsible for the growing queue at the food bank; they know who to blame when they cannot get a GP appointment; they know who to hold to account when the old and disabled are left to struggle on without adequate social care; and, perhaps most importantly, they will not forget that it was this Conservative Government who, most shamefully of all, forced record numbers of our children to grow up in poverty, short of food, warmth and hope. They will not forget.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper), but I disagree with her. This is a great Budget.
I am glad that the Chancellor has set aside substantial amounts to prepare for all eventualities as we approach Brexit. The Banbury constituency’s vote in the referendum was the closest in the country; by 500 people, we voted to leave. Now, I hear a great deal of unity locally over the need to get on with getting a deal. The uncertainty of Brexit is challenging for my constituents. With a good deal done, I really look forward to a pro-growth spending review early next year.
Locally, we can see that the economy is going well. There are great employment figures, but we need to focus on wage growth, which leads to more disposable income. I, for one, was pleased to hear the figures the Chancellor gave yesterday.
In my area, we are obsessed by healthcare. Everybody in this Chamber will have heard me talk, probably several times, about the Horton General Hospital, which we have been fighting to save for the past 40 years. The problem over the years has in fact been not financial, but structural. Small is beautiful and local, and we must not give in to the overweening ambition of Oxford to suck in more cases or more births. The German model of maternity offers choice but retains smaller obstetric units and, most importantly, excellent outcomes for mothers and babies. We have had a historical failure to recruit both midwives and obstetricians. Locally, we have had real progress with the clinical commissioning group since the fabulous new interim chief executive took over. The Horton has a very bright future.
I welcome the extra funding in the Budget—an average in real growth terms of 3.4% a year—but we need to ensure that it translates into extra people doing the right thing in the right place. Nobody is pretending that every sort of complicated surgery can be done everywhere, but A&E, paediatrics and simply having a baby with the benefit of an epidural should be provided locally. I know that the new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care agrees with this broad premise and I look forward to talking about my local situation with him.
In north Oxfordshire, we are proud of building three new houses a day. We are keen to welcome people to Banbury to fill our jobs and we are building them houses to live in. I am often asked how we are managing to make this progress: we have done so by having a consistent and strong local message and strong leadership. Cherwell District Council’s policy of putting housing generally on brownfield sites near towns, rather than piecemeal in villages, has seen new communities flourish. I also welcome the housing measures we heard about yesterday.
It would be wrong of me not to mention the public service I have worked in throughout my adult life. The Justice Committee, on which I am very proud to sit, recently heard that spending on justice will have fallen by 40% between 2010-11 and 2019-20. The Department does not have a protected budget. I was very pleased to hear what the Chancellor had to say yesterday and, more importantly, what I read in the Red Book afterwards, about the justice spend, and I welcome the £30 million to improve security and decency across the prison estate.
Faisal Rashid
Today I received a letter from the Cheshire police and crime commissioner co-signed by the acting chief constable informing me of £60 million in cuts since 2010 and a further £12 million in cuts over the next two years. There are severe pressures on policing in Cheshire. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Government have failed to provide adequate funding for policing?
Victoria Prentis
No, I do not agree, but I was able to take my local PCC’s issues up with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury directly in the last fortnight, and I encourage the hon. Gentleman to go to the Treasury with specifics; I think he will find that Treasury Ministers are listening.
We have £30 million extra to improve security and decency across the prison estate, which I feel very passionately about. We also have a whole new prison, Glen Parva, which was due to be a private finance initiative project, but the Treasury has now agreed to fund it. No specifics on the finances have been given in the Budget because it has to go out to tender and there will be all sorts of legal issues, but that is a very big commitment from the Treasury, and I for one am very proud of it. We need to put decent conditions in place for criminals so we can rehabilitate them before they are put back into society.
I also welcome the £21.5 million to be invested in the wider justice system. I feel very strongly that justice is not free; it does not just happen. The rule of law is not automatic, as we can see from the world we live in: it is a world in which people are poisoned in Salisbury, and in which the Chinese have a definition of the rule of law that does not coincide with the norms of modern international law since the second world war. I feel very strongly that we need to stand up for British justice values, and this does not happen automatically or cheaply.
We have had real difficulties in the prison service.
Victoria Prentis
No, I will not; I am sorry, but I need to make progress, and I feel very strongly about this subject. We have had real difficulties in the prison service under successive Governments which we know can only be resolved if we can recruit more staff. The prisons Minister and the Lord Chancellor, whom I am happy to see in his place, are both working extremely hard on staff recruitment, and real progress has been made. We can see that this is making a day-to-day difference on the coalface, if you like, in prisons. People are being treated more appropriately.
However, there are other areas of justice spend that are harder to justify and even to talk about in this place. We have a crisis of judicial recruitment, for example, and it is tied up with the provision of suitable judicial pensions. The quality of court buildings also matters for morale, and it is therefore important for the recruitment of the people that we need to provide justice in a way that we all too often take for granted. The justice system stands or falls as one. What we do for the most lowly magistrates court is just as important as what we do for the Supreme Court. The system must be joined up, and if we are proud of the rule of law and the separation of powers that we talk about so often, we must be careful to fund the system as an entirety.
I am glad that the Lord Chancellor has been here to listen to this. I commend him for what he is doing. I also commend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for what he is doing for the justice system. The subject does not often get talked about in the House, and it was not talked about a great deal yesterday, but the detail in the Red Book has pleased me. Thank you for your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker.
Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)
I welcome the rise in mental health funding, but people with mental health problems also need support from other Departments, not just Health, particularly when they have problem debts. A person is four to six times more likely to have a debt crisis if they have mental health issues, and half of all those seeking debt help have a mental health issue. The two are interrelated. Debt can trigger clinical depression, anxiety attacks and more, while mental illness can build debts. Universal credit is not helping. I am thinking not only about the complex and stress-inducing work capability assessment but about the wait for the first payment. Also, if people are able to get an advance payment, they struggle to pay it back. None of that will do anything to relieve their mental health issues.
If the Government really are intent on prioritising the nation’s mental health, they need to guarantee that no one will be left without sufficient income as a result of moving to universal credit. Under the rules, any advance payment could be deducted at a rate of up to 40% of the standard payment. It was also possible to have other debts, such as council tax arrears or money owed to utility companies, taken at the same rate. The Chancellor has announced a reduction of this rate to 30%, but that could still mean a combined deduction of up to 70%, which is much higher than for pre-existing legacy benefits, so actually the change will be of little help. For some people, having deductions taken from their benefits to pay their creditors can be a positive method of repaying debt and managing their bill payments, but a rate of 70% is ridiculous. What steps is the Department for Work and Pensions taking to determine whether a deduction is appropriate or even affordable for the individual? I recognise that this method can be positive, but for many people it is inappropriate and unaffordable.
Universal credit can push people further into debt. The Government’s data confirm that people on universal credit are falling into rent arrears, with more than two in five saying that that is due to problems with universal credit. More than half the recipients of universal credit that Citizens Advice helps have had to borrow money while waiting for their first payment. We know that 97% of tenants in Wigan who live in social housing go into arrears because of universal credit, and that 60% of those tenants have arrears of more than £600. It is therefore perhaps ironic that the Chancellor has finally announced a breathing space in the form of a statutory mechanism to give those in problem debt a period of respite while they get their financial lives in order.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I met representatives of Macmillan Cancer Support this morning, and they were talking about the challenges facing cancer patients in the self-same circumstances that my hon. Friend has just described. Does she think that action needs to be taken for them, as well as for people with mental health issues?
Yvonne Fovargue
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I also think that the rules on terminal illness should be changed.
Going back to the question of the breathing space, the devil will be in the detail. For a breathing space scheme to work well, it has to have minimum standards. It has to provide enough time for the person in debt to get advice on the best way to resolve their problem debts, to recover from temporary financial difficulties and enter a statutory debt solution, and to pay their debts at a manageable rate. There must also be funding so people can access free, independent and impartial services speedily, because when people decide they are at the end of their tether, they want to see someone quickly.
The Government suggest a breathing space of 60 days, but debt advisers need the flexibility to recommend an extension. I worry that if the arrangement is too rigid, creditors may well delay until someone gets out of the breathing space period so they can start chasing them again. Call me cynical, but that is what 23 years at Citizens Advice does.
There is clear consensus that a breathing space solution must cover all debts, including debts to the Government—household bills such as council tax and moneys owed to central Government. It must also offer protection against further interest and charges, and against enforcement action. Creditors must stop collection activities such as calls, letters and visits—that means no more bailiffs. Returning briefly to universal credit, there must be no deductions from benefits or other income to recover outstanding debts during the breathing space period, future deductions must be affordable, and—please—there must be no public register of people who enter a breathing space. Evidence from Scotland shows that that deters people from doing so. If there is going to be such a register, let us make it private between creditors and people in debt.
I welcome the announcement that the Government will look at no-interest loans, although the long timescale will allow many people to fall into debt. It is unfortunate that, despite the work of the Law Commission, Government time was not given to debate ending the exploitation of a Victorian law that was used as a vehicle for logbook loans.
I turn to education—in particular sixth-form funding, which is at crisis level.
Yvonne Fovargue
I have to move on, I am afraid. There is a range of new requirements, the needs of schools and colleges have increased, and under-investment in sixth-form education is having a negative impact on the education of the young people in my constituency. That simply means the Government will be unable to meet their stated objective of having a strong post-Brexit economy and a socially mobile, highly educated workforce. That is bizarre, frankly.
At least £760 per student is required to continue providing 16 to 18-year-olds with a high-quality education, but the Raise the Rate campaign asked the Chancellor to increase national funding by a more modest £200 per student. That would at least have been a start. It is disappointing that there has been no action.
Will the £400 million to provide the “little extras” be shared with sixth-form colleges? That might have helped Winstanley College in my constituency with the little extra of providing a teacher so German A-level could be reinstated, or allowed St John Rigby College to reinstate one-to-one time to support students who are struggling emotionally or academically—it might have, had that money not been ring-fenced for building maintenance and purchasing equipment.
Let me comment briefly on the raising of personal allowances. Families on the average wage in Makerfield will gain just over £12 a month, while people on more than £50,000 per year will gain just under £40 a month. It is pretty obvious who will gain the most. It certainly is not women over 50, who are still waiting for any measure to help them.
The Chancellor said he chose not to unveil the Budget tomorrow as he wanted to avoid Halloween jokes. It is a good job he did not wait until next Monday, as my constituents, having heard that austerity is over, may have expected a firecracker of a Budget that lit up their lives. Instead, all they got was a damp squib.
Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)
Our country faces some immense challenges and this Budget—from a fine Chancellor, who I hope stays for many more Budgets—does good work in tackling a number of them, but there are several others that I want to address and that some colleagues have touched on.
The first challenge to which the Chancellor and the Prime Minister have risen is the need to fund healthcare properly. A number of Members across the House have regularly made the case for an increase of about £20 billion a year to bring our spending in line with German or French levels, and this is happening. But I agree with the point made yesterday by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann)—that is, that we need to pay for this. It should not just come from additional borrowing, and we should continue to look at using hypothecated or other forms of revenue, particularly when it comes to social care.
A second challenge that the Chancellor has met—as, indeed, have employers up and down the country—is the need to increase and maintain employment, and to reduce unemployment to the lowest level in decades. The unemployment rate has fallen from 8% to 4%. In many constituencies, including mine, it has fallen much further than that, but every person out of work is still one too many. It is also welcome that on the whole jobs are gradually becoming better paid.
The third area in which the challenge is being met is defence and our global role, particularly in international development. The UK is one of the only major countries in the world—if not the only one—to maintain both the 2% defence commitment under NATO and the 0.7% official development assistance, and I welcome that. In difficult times, we can be proud that the UK will meet our international commitments as well as the commitments to our own people on safety and security.
Now, what about the challenges? The big and immediate one is clearly exiting the EU. It is absolutely essential that we reach a deal. I am a member of the Exiting the European Union Committee, and the more I hear of the consequences of no deal, the more apparent it is just how damaging it would be to the EU and to the UK. The Chancellor recognises this, and I sincerely hope that he does not have to come to the House with his alternative Budget. But this is not just about exiting the EU; it is about the future of the economy.
My hon. Friends the Members for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman) and for The Cotswolds (Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) have mentioned the challenges we face and the future opportunities. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) and I recently produced a book on the future of work, looking at countries around the world that are meeting these challenges, including South Korea, Singapore and Argentina. Lots of people across the country are trying to meet these challenges, but they also exist globally.
It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue), who was right about funding for 16 to 18-year-olds. The years from 16 to 18 are a critical time, and funding dropping off at that stage poses some severe challenges to colleges and schools.
Mr Jim Cunningham
Like me, the hon. Gentleman is a west midlands MP, and knows that the west midlands economy is very important to the country. I am not sure whether the Government have clarified whether there will be more money for further education. Further education is the backbone of things such as apprenticeships, and we need more apprenticeships. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we should be focusing on this important area?
Jeremy Lefroy
Indeed, and I think I just mentioned that. In my constituency, Newcastle-under-Lyme College and Stafford College do excellent work, as does South Staffordshire College, but they are underfunded, particularly at that level.
A further challenge is balancing the Budget. The OBR report refers to the Chancellor in terms of St Augustine, as it describes the Budget as Augustinian—“make me chaste, but not yet.” I believe that it is nearly 20 years since the UK has run a Budget surplus, and we are now pushing that back by a further two years. This is not the way to go. We have to look carefully at how we can return to a balanced Budget or a surplus, which can only come from growth, more efficiency or allowing tax rates to rise—we have some of the lowest revenues as a percentage of GDP in the G7—but that has not happened this time. If we are to maintain a sound fiscal policy, it will have to happen soon. The country needs to build up assets in better times to meet the challenges of hard times, and one of those assets is a surplus Budget and a reducing deficit.
Local government finance has been mentioned today. This is a great challenge because I believe, as do pretty much all colleagues in this House, in the importance of devolution and making decisions locally. However, the Government are placing more and more pressures on local government, without giving it the means to deal with them. Local authorities, including Staffordshire, have done excellent work to reduce spending while maintaining services over the last eight years. That cannot go on. Local government has reached the bottom. I welcome the additional money, but we need to see more, particularly in terms of loosening up the requirements for referendums.
The right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) rightly said that the Office for Budget Responsibility report talked about the low savings rate and rising personal debt. That incredibly important area has not been focused on, and I am extremely concerned about it. We need to help households rebuild their balance sheets. People cannot always look to Government to support them in times of difficulty. Personal assets are vital, and I urge the Chancellor to look at ways of encouraging saving, difficult though that is—including efficient lifetime savings accounts that people can draw on in times of difficulty, financial education in schools and further support for credit unions.
We have the biggest current account deficit in the G7—from memory, it is about 3.8%. That is down from 5.1%, but it is still too much. We are too dependent on resources from other countries, and we need to build up our network of foreign assets, from which we receive income. At the same time, we need to reduce our balance of trade deficit.
Finally, we have the challenge of supporting people on the lowest incomes who are long-term sick or disabled. At a time when many people in this country are seeing their incomes continue to rise and are living in prosperity, which I welcome, we need to meet the needs of those who suffer from disability, sickness or low income. I welcome the changes to universal credit, but it still does not work for everyone. I welcome the additional money, but we have to make sure that nobody loses out in the transfer to universal credit, most particularly disabled people. Others, including my hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) yesterday, have spoken about how that could be done.
This Budget is a chance to tackle long-term challenges in difficult circumstances, with the coming exit from the EU. The Chancellor has seized the chance to address some of those areas, on which I congratulate him. I believe that, but for this challenge of exiting the EU, he would have tackled other areas, too, but the challenges that remain cannot be put off for ever.
Sir Edward Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)
I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, especially with respect to renewable energy.
This might not be a Halloween Budget, but it is yet another attempt to scare Members about Brexit and to frame the Brexit question as deal or no deal. Although the Chancellor hardly mentioned Brexit, the underlying message is that there is something for us if we back this Budget—tax cuts and something for the NHS—and more in store if we get a soft Brexit. The other message is that if we do not vote for a deal, there will be a disastrous hard Brexit.
Certainly a hard Brexit would be a disaster, but so would this soft Brexit. It is just wrong of the Government, day after day, to propose a choice between the Brexit deal that the Government come back with and a hard Brexit with no deal. The truth is that there are alternatives. When we get there, this House must debate those alternatives, not just the two that the Government keep scaring us about. It is almost like the Noel Edmonds TV game show, “Deal or No Deal”. I switched over to another channel when it came on my TV, and this Parliament could switch over and have a third choice—that choice should be a people’s vote and an exit from Brexit.
The Budget forecasts show why a third option is so important. People should look at the growth forecasts, which are seriously scary. We are going to be trapped in a Brexit low-growth economy. We have had 10 years of financial crisis austerity and, with these growth figures, we are going to have 10 years of Brexit austerity. The figures should be really scary. Our economy had near to the highest growth rate of any G7 country in the four years before the referendum, and since then we have had the lowest growth in the G7. That should worry us, and that is even before we add in the risks and uncertainties. The OBR’s economic forecast could not factor in all the risks and uncertainties; it had to assume that there would be a soft Brexit.
So even these low growth figures may well not be as bad as things turn out to be. That feeds in to the spending figures. Ministers have made much of the health figures, but when one strips out the health increase, one sees that all the rest of the Departments will, on average, see 0% growth for the next few years. That is austerity continuing—it is really scary and completely not needed. According to the OBR, Brexit has already cost £15 billion in lost tax revenue, and we hear in the Budget that even Brexit preparation is going to cost more. That is why we have to escape this Brexit trap; whether it is a no-growth Brexit or a deal Brexit, we have to have a people’s vote.
This Brexit Budget was shaped to try to buy off the Back Benchers and the Democratic Unionist party, not to try to get a proper forward strategy for this country. There were deals in there for Belfast. It may deserve that money, but the timing for it is funny, and we know what the talks have been to try to get there. We know that the Government could not put forward the tax rise needed to get the Budget into surplus and to invest in public services because they could not get that tax rise through their Back Benchers. The Brexiteer Tories on the Back Benches would not have voted for a tax rise. The hon. Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) was right: we need to get a surplus, we need to invest in our schools, hospitals and police, and we need to undo some of the damage from universal credit. We need that, but we can only do it if we have some honesty on the public finances. The reality is that this Chancellor and this Government are so weak that they cannot put through the tax measures needed to get the right economic balance in this country and the right investment in our public services.
When we look at individual public services, we see that they are crying out for investment. For example, since 2015 we have lost 4,789 full-time police officers, 2,231 community support officers and 4,334 special officers. That is more than 9,400 officers lost, at a time when crime has been going up. Knife crime has increased by 62% since 2015, firearm crime has increased by 30% and homicides have increased by 33%. The Conservatives should be ashamed of themselves for not having been prepared to invest in the security of our people and safety on the streets when violent crime is going up by so much.
I have a question for those on the Treasury Bench. We have been looking in the Red Book. The Government have announced £164 million for counter-terrorism police, which is welcome, but it does not score anywhere in the Red Book. We have been making inquiries and asking the Treasury about this, and it says that it is from the reserves. I have never heard an explanation like that. The Chancellor announces £160 million for counter-terrorism policing yet it is not in the Red Book or said to be in the Red Book. That is an insult to this House, and I hope that Ministers will have an answer by the end of the day.
My constituency is seeing school funding cut, and headteachers have been marching. They do not normally do that in the Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, but they were doing so recently because they are fed up with having to lose staff, cut the curriculum and cut opportunities for young people in their charge. They do not stand for it, and this House should not stand for it. It was an insult to offer less money to schools than the Government are spending on potholes. What sort of priorities do this Government have when they put potholes before our children and their futures?
Not only did the Government get the short-term spending decisions wrong but they got the long-term spending decisions and strategy wrong. Where was the investment to tackle climate change? What about the opportunity in green growth—in our renewable energy? There are huge opportunities there, but there was nothing on that in the Budget. As for social justice, it was good to see some recognition that universal credit is causing pain out there, but the Budget did not go anywhere near enough. We are going to have to revisit this as a House if we are going to make sure that the poorest people in our country share in any future prosperity.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
There is much to digest in the Budget, so I shall focus on only a few of the announcements that were made. In line with the theme of today’s debate, I shall start with those on health.
As a children’s doctor, I work on the frontline of the NHS. Throughout my career, I have become increasingly concerned about the number of young people with mental health problems. More than half of those problems start before the child is 14, and 75% have started by the time the child is 18, so early intervention is critical to try to avoid crises further down the line. I therefore welcome the Government’s announcement of £2 billion more for mental health, which will ensure that every school has a dedicated mental health team to tackle what is becoming an epidemic of eating disorders, depression and self-harm among young people. It is a welcome step as part of the Government’s commitment to develop parity of esteem for mental and physical health problems. More work needs to be done to identify the cause of these problems so that they can be tackled earlier.
As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care thinks about how to spend the Government’s £20 billion increase for the NHS, will he consider how much money is given to children with life-threatening and life-limiting disorders? Many of their families struggle from day to day, so extra money to help to fund children’s hospices, as well as the availability of respite care, would be most welcome.
I have spoken in the Chamber previously about the challenges facing ambulance services in rural areas. My beautiful constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham covers some 433 square miles. Ambulances have to rattle along lots of little tiny winding roads, at speed, to get to patients. Increasing the number of ambulances available to East Midlands ambulance service would help.
Ambulances do not just travel by land. Air ambulances provide an incredible service to our most unwell patients. They are funded entirely by philanthropy, and such services are under constant pressure to fundraise so that they can buy and maintain aircraft and pay for staff. I welcome the Government’s announcement of £10 million of capital funding for air ambulance trusts, which will contribute towards these life-saving services.
For ambulances on the ground, the challenge is not just distance but the road network along which they travel. The additional £28 billion investment in roads will represent the biggest single upgrade of the network since the expansion of the first motorways in the ’60s and ’70s. I will continue to campaign for extra money to complete the Lincoln bypass, and to improve the A46/A17/A1 junction and areas of the A1 and A15, so that roads in Lincolnshire are safer and we can travel more smoothly.
The money for potholes has been mentioned by other right hon. and hon. Members. Potholes are a big problem in Lincolnshire, so I am pleased that extra money will be spent on them, particularly as winter is coming.
I am glad that the Government are investing in our physical infrastructure, but in the 21st century, digital infrastructure is also extremely important. We rely on the internet more and more in our daily lives, so the lack of high-speed broadband in some rural areas can create a real sense of isolation. Whether for the person who cannot download their papers, the small-business owner who cannot submit their taxes online or the studious schoolgirl who cannot complete her homework on the online maths platform, a poor internet connection affects all aspects of work, family life and opportunity for rural constituents. I am therefore delighted that the Government are providing an extra £250 million for high-speed broadband in rural areas. It will be a welcome boost, if it is ensured that the money is directed towards connecting the remaining 5% to 8% who are not yet connected rather than towards getting faster speeds for those who already have a reasonable connection.
A Government’s first responsibility is always the protection of their citizens. As we mark the centenary of the end of the first world war, we remember the sacrifices that were made by many, and also remember the sacrifices made every day by our brave servicemen and women. I participated in the Royal Air Force branch of the Armed Forces Parliamentary Scheme, through which I met many service people at all levels. I heard about their concerns and worries, and about the pressures they were facing. They do an incredible job in the most challenging and, often, the most terrifying of circumstances. It is vital that we provide them with the support that they need, and the Chancellor’s announcement of an extra £1 billion for our armed forces will help to ensure that our armed forces can continue to operate at the very highest level.
Finally, I welcome the Government’s commitment to making work pay. Increasing the work allowance and decreasing the taper rate further for universal credit will help even more people into work. Some 1,000 more jobs are created in the UK every day, and we also have one of the lowest unemployment levels in Europe, which affects young people in particular. Young people in this country have a much better chance of getting a job than those in other parts of Europe, which is something of which we should be proud.
Furthermore, increasing the personal allowance to £12,500, which fulfils our manifesto promise a full year early, allows people who have gone out to work to keep more of what they earn to spend as they wish. The best stability that someone can have is a monthly pay packet, and this Government’s effort will ensure that a record number of people have that stability.
Dr Paul Williams (Stockton South) (Lab)
I am grateful, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this most important debate on public services and the Budget. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson). I agreed with her comments about children’s mental health. As co-chair of the all-party group for the prevention of adverse childhood experiences, I agree that tackling the causes of children’s mental health problems is vital.
Today, however, I wish to talk about community safety and the public service that our police provide. My constituency of Stockton South desperately wanted a better response from the Chancellor than a Budget that ignored community policing. I cannot really imagine how it must feel to be frightened in my own home. I have heard many people’s stories of the fear that they feel, but how many Members really know what it is like? How many of us know what it is like to be woken in the night by people loudly bashing on the door looking for someone to sell them drugs; what it is like to know that, if we were to go out to walk the dog, someone might break in and steal our possessions; and what it is like to have to listen to sex workers being threatened by clients through a flimsy adjoining wall when we are lying in our beds in the early hours of the morning?
Hon. Members have probably heard these sorts of stories from looking in their email inboxes, engaging on social media and meeting people at their surgeries, but yesterday those affected were ignored by the Chancellor. Cleveland police, which covers my constituency, has dedicated professionals working hard under the exceptional leadership of Police and Crime Commissioner Barry Coppinger, a new chief constable, and a team of hardworking officers, police community support officers and support staff. I pay tribute to everyone working in our police forces to keep our communities safe. They are the people who pick up the pieces during a crisis. I thank them for everything that they do. No police officer goes to work each day not wanting to help, not wanting to prevent crime, not wanting to respond to need and not wanting to engage with communities, but our community can see that the policing in Cleveland is not adequately meeting their needs. In the past eight years, the actual cash—not real terms—budget for Cleveland police has fallen by more than 10% from £148.5 million in 2010 to £134.6 million in 2018. The money that remains buys much less today than it did in 2010. Inflation, pay awards, national insurance increases and the apprenticeship levy all increase the cost of policing.
In real terms, Cleveland police force is £39 million worse off than in 2010, and we have 500 fewer police officers as a result, but is that not the same picture as in the rest of the country? No. This Government are widening social divides by making the greatest cuts to policing in the areas of highest need. The least impact of the Government’s police cuts has been experienced in Surrey, where residents have seen an overall funding increase of 1% since 2010. Recorded crime is nearly 60% higher in Cleveland than in Surrey. If Cleveland had received the same increase, my local police force would have gained an extra £15 million a year instead. I am genuinely pleased that the people of Surrey have had a 1% increase in their police funding, but if it is good enough for Surrey, why is it not good enough for Stockton South?
Why is my community different and why is Cleveland so special? Cleveland is a great place to live. Our communities are strong, and we are a good place in which to do business, but policing our area is a challenge. We have particularly high needs: the highest levels of antisocial behaviour in the country; the second highest levels of domestic violence; an increasing level of recorded crime; the highest levels of drug abuse in the country; high deprivation; and serious and organised criminals involved in the supply of drugs. The Government promised us a Budget to end austerity, but the fact remains that Cleveland police is now £39 million a year worse off than it would have been, with more cuts to come.
Austerity has always been a political choice. Over the past eight years, time and again, the Conservatives have been able to find giveaways and sweeteners for a few people at the top while leaving communities in places like Stockton South to pick up the pieces. Think about the woman in Parkfield in my constituency who contacted me in tears because she says she has no choice but to sell her home just to get away from a small number of criminals in the area who act with impunity. Or think about the police officer who got in touch and offered me a picture of a force working its hardest, but unable to do its job, with low staff morale and significant concerns about a loss of public trust. “We desperately need the support of Government,” the officer told me. There is crime that officers want to tackle—crime that they want to fight—but it carries on with impunity because they do not have the numbers to be there when they are most needed.
Since 2010, Cleveland police has lost about 500 officers, yet next year the Government plan to make Cleveland’s thin blue line even thinner, with a further cut of an even greater £9 million. Nine million pounds of cuts means even fewer police officers at a time when our communities have never felt less safe. If the Chancellor really wanted to end austerity, he would give Cleveland police their £9 million back. Police in our county need the resources to be able to do their job. My constituents have a right to feel safe in their community and to know that the police will be there for them when they are needed.
The Conservatives used to call themselves the party of law and order. How can Conservative Members carry on saying that with a straight face to some of the people who visit me at my surgeries, and probably theirs too? This Government will carry on fighting among themselves long after the grand gestures of Budget week have been forgotten; I and my Labour colleagues will carry on fighting for the proper funding that our local police forces need to keep our constituents safe.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams), and I will pick up on one or two of the themes that he mentioned. I want to touch on the NHS and policing before turning to employment and, finally, the family.
I know that my constituents will welcome the additional funding for the NHS, with £20.5 billion more by 2023-24 —£394 million per week—and average real growth rates of 3.4% per annum. That is significantly more than Labour promised at the last general election. Importantly, with this money there will also be reforms and improvements. That will be welcomed and will make a big difference to our NHS in Dorset and Poole. I look forward to further announcements from the Secretary of State clarifying exactly how this will affect our area.
On policing, I was pleased yesterday when the Chancellor specifically mentioned the submission by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). The Chancellor said that he recognised that policing is under pressure from the changing nature of crime. Furthermore—the hon. Member for Stockton South did not mention this—the Chancellor told the House that the Home Secretary will review police spending powers and further options for reform when he presents the provisional police funding settlement in December. I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire in his campaign for a fairer funding formula for our policing, because that will make a difference in my part of the country, Dorset. I look forward to working with him on policing.
I want to focus a little on employment, and then on the family. I welcome the Chancellor’s comments and revised estimates on future employment growth. I have the privilege of chairing the all-party parliamentary group on youth employment. Each month, we look at the statistics on employment and unemployment relating to young people—not just because statistics are important but because they affect individuals’ lives, including young people moving on to the first rung of their career ladder. At our meeting this month, we celebrated the fact that youth unemployment is now at its lowest level since comparable records began, at 10.8%. Of course there is more to do and further that we can go, but for interest and comparison purposes, the EU average is 14.8%.
Our current all-party inquiry is on social mobility—another theme that has been mentioned in this debate—and in particular we are looking at young care leavers moving into work. In that regard, I very much welcome the Department for Education’s announcement last week about the care leaver covenant. I look forward to hearing more about that from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), when he comes to our all-party group in December. At this month’s APPG meeting, we heard from two care leavers about the importance of stability and having a consistent mentor figure in their lives. Stability and family support are so often crucial when young people move into the world of work.
I turn to the family. I am grateful for the work that the Centre for Social Justice does in this area. I have learned from the CSJ that despite the increased risk of poverty, it is estimated that the Treasury spends about £1 on preventive spending for every £6,000 it spends on responding to the consequences of family breakdown. Furthermore, it appears that marriage is disappearing in policy making, just as much as it is disappearing in our poorest communities. Some 87% of high earners marry, and 24% of low earners marry. The rich get married and stay together, and the poor do not.
Why does that matter? Because where there is poverty, family breakdown is often not far behind, and while poverty is often a driver of family breakdown, crucially so too is family breakdown a driver of poverty. According to the Department for Work and Pensions, children who experience family breakdown are twice as likely to fall into poverty—[Interruption.] Despite the chuntering from those on the Opposition Benches, the public really get this. A recent CSJ poll confirmed that young people aged 14 to 17 aspire to a lasting relationship just as much as they aspire to a long-term career; they find that just as important. It is clear that support for the family is important for social mobility and for alleviating poverty. Marriage and the family should not be disappearing from Government policy making. When it comes to the Budget and our public services, it seems to me that more could be spent on preventing family breakdown, which would mean that less was spent on the consequences.
Finally, I welcome the increase in support for universal credit—a policy that I have wholeheartedly and repeatedly supported. When it was last debated in the Chamber, almost the moment that I sat down, I received an email from a resident in Dorset, of which it is worth reading a significant part. The email reads:
“I have just seen Michael taking part in a debate today on universal credit”—
people do actually watch these proceedings, strange though that may seem. It goes on:
“I have been in receipt of universal credit since March this year and have generally had a very positive experience. I greatly appreciate the guidance and support from my work coach, the simplicity of use of the online system”.
It is not starry-eyed, because it mentions a concern about moving into part-time work and the relationship with council tax support, but it concludes:
“I love the fact that all aspects of my life are dealt with centrally. It is crucial that Michael emphasises the positive aspects of the universal credit system and that the Government continues to roll it out.”
Given yesterday’s Budget statement, universal credit will make it even more worthwhile to be in work. The work allowance increase is progressive, and Opposition Members should welcome it. I look forward to more positive comments about that policy, possibly even from those on the Opposition Benches.
Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)
This was a Budget for
“the strivers, the grafters and the carers who are the backbone of our communities and our economy.”—[Official Report, 29 October 2018; Vol. 648, c. 653.]
Or so we were told—I would like to extend an invitation to the Chancellor to come to my weekly advice surgery and say that to the dozens of families I meet every single week who are trapped in insecure gig economy work, who are being failed by universal credit and who cannot afford to put a private rented sector roof over their head. I will talk about each of those issues in turn.
Let us start with workers’ rights. The Chancellor stated that delivering higher wages for those in work is core to his mission, yet our national living wage is littered with loopholes and used by some of the biggest organisations to cut terms, conditions and take-home pay. Those organisations should be named and shamed—I am referring to the likes of Marks & Spencer, Zizzi, Ginsters, Le Pain Quotidien, Caffè Nero and countless others that have sought legislative loopholes, against the spirit of the law.
Only this morning, I heard from one of the thousands of B&Q staff members being forced to move from nights to days. Just two years ago, one lady lost her annual bonus and her Sunday premium. She works the twilight shift to enable her to care for her two children. If she keeps her job, by the end of the month she will earn £1.50 an hour less than she currently does, but she cannot work the new shift because she cannot care for her children as well. She is not being offered redundancy. I ask those on the Treasury Bench to use their influence to encourage B&Q to offer redundancy to the 441 twilight shift workers who cannot at the moment take the hours that are being offered to them.
The Chancellor talked about protecting employment for lower-paid workers. Does that mean that the Government will follow the lead of British Telecom and the Communication Workers Union by calling for the abolition of exploitative “pay between assignments” contracts that keep agency staff on low pay for years at a time, even though they lack a gap between assignments?
On housing, which is a supposed Government priority, I was expecting a little more than the few lines that we heard yesterday. I welcome the proposed measures and money, but they are simply not of a scale that will make the difference that is so desperately needed. Solving the housing crisis is the politics of “and”: we should lift the housing revenue account cap, for sure, but is it not time to argue that all public sector sites that have been disposed of should be used first for the purposes of social housing, to introduce more punitive action for empty properties and to increase the surcharge for the one in six over-55s who own a second property? What about councils such as Merton that do not have a housing revenue account? In the past year, Merton has had one four-bedroom property to offer, and there are 441 families chasing that one four-bedroom property.
What about the green belt? The Budget states that revised planning reform ensures
“more land in the right places…for housing.”
Do Treasury Ministers agree that we should de-designate the 19,334 hectares of unbuilt green-belt land within a 10-minute walk of London train stations? This supposed green belt includes a car wash, a waste plant, a disused airfield and even a lap dancing club. At no environmental cost, that is enough space for almost 1 million new homes.
Finally, I turn to universal credit. I appreciate that I do not have much time left to speak, but I must ask those on the Treasury Bench for their help with Mr C, who applied for universal credit at the beginning of September. As the result of a routine operation, he had an artery severed, and the likelihood is that his foot will now have to be removed. He lives in one room above a shop, which he shares with his sister, who is in her 50s. Since the beginning of September, we have attempted to get a home visit for him so that he can claim the money he is entitled to. More than eight weeks later, in spite of getting the help of the local jobcentre manager, and in spite of numerous calls and letters to everybody we can think of, that man is still awaiting his appointment. Surely that is absolutely wrong.
This is a Budget with an absence of hope. The era of austerity is said to be coming to an end, but for now it continues to proceed, dragging almost a decade of damage in its wake, affecting people without homes for their children, people trying to claim benefits and people who just want a fair week’s pay for a fair week’s work.
Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh).
I thank the Chancellor and his team for their efforts in making this Budget possible. In particular, I am immensely grateful to him for his consideration in cutting business rates for small businesses. This issue is important both to my constituents and to businesses in Southport, and I am grateful to him for mentioning this in his speech yesterday. It seems to me that we should be trying to play to our strengths as a country. That is the way we are going to attract investment, keep employment at a record low, provide jobs and prosperity for people in the future, and create increased funding for our public services.
One of Britain’s, and indeed Southport’s, strengths is its small businesses that provide the majority of jobs in the private sector. One of the benefits of being the Member of Parliament for Southport is that I get to meet some extraordinary entrepreneurs and small business owners. They are the people who form the backbone of our economy, and over the past year I have had the pleasure of meeting many of these hard-working individuals. I therefore deeply welcome the new tax reforms set out by the Chancellor in his Budget speech yesterday, which will provide unparalleled relief to many small business owners in my constituency.
However, things have been all the more difficult for small businesses in Southport because they are having to work without the support of Labour-led Sefton Council, which is more interested in punitive charges than in building a strong economy. Lord Street, in particular, is suffering under the Labour Council, but it is now set to be handed a fighting chance under this Conservative Government and this autumn Budget.
There are a number of things I want to talk about in the time I have available. The first is the Chancellor’s plan for our high streets, which will provide up-front support through business rates, while implementing a package of transformational initiatives, including a £675 million future high streets fund. Then, specifically, there are those things that can make a real difference to small businesses in our communities: how we can get out of their way in terms of tax and regulation; how we can stand up for them by regulating the online marketplace and digital businesses to create a level playing field with the marketplace on our high streets; and then, finally, how we can create growth so that we can continue to put record investment in our public services.
Cutting the deficit is still important, because only if we continue to deal with the debt left behind by a reckless Labour Government will we be able to safeguard our economic future and invest in all those things that are so essential. We are making good progress—the UK economy has grown every year since 2010, and unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975. But we have to be honest: there is still more work to do to ensure we live within our means. We have to stick to our plan, making difficult decisions about spending that will get the debt and the deficit under control but that do not penalise the wealth creators and businesses in our country. We need to invest tax receipts, not waste them like the Labour party does.
We also have to provide a much needed boost to small businesses that were left behind by the last Labour Government, to ensure unemployment remains at a record low and that the longevity of our high streets is maintained. Again, that takes difficult decisions, so I welcome the announcement in yesterday’s Budget to provide up-front support through the business rates system, cutting bills for retail properties with a rateable value of below £51,000, which will benefit 90% of retail properties. I also welcome the addition of the £675 million future high streets fund. That means that someone running a small business will see their tax come down by a third and their high street restored.
It is not just about getting out of the way of small business but about standing up for those specific issues. It is about making sure that those same small businesses are not disadvantaged by an overbearing digital marketplace that is not paying its fair share—a real David and Goliath battle. I was therefore delighted to hear in the Chancellor’s statement yesterday that the Government will introduce a new 2% tax on the revenues of certain digital businesses to ensure that the amount of tax paid in the UK reflects the value they derive from their UK users, ensuring an even ground between businesses on our high streets and online. It is not Amazon or Facebook that are the lifeblood of this country; it is the small businesses in constituencies like mine.
That is why small business is important. It means more business and more tax collected and more economic growth, and, yes, a strong economy means more money for our public services. I therefore welcome the Chancellor’s announcement yesterday of additional funding, and an indication that the hard work is starting to pay off. This means £2 billion more for mental health, and the long-term plan for the NHS will commit further funding to help achieve parity of esteem between mental and physical health services. That means anyone experiencing a crisis can call the NHS line 24/7, and it means more mental health ambulances, increased community support and comprehensive support at every major accident and emergency by 2024.
I have discussed school funding with headteachers in my constituency. This Budget means £400 million more for schools this year, with £10,000 allocated to the average primary and £50,000 to the average secondary to help schools buy the equipment they need. It means £1 billion more for defence across this year and next, ensuring our world-class armed forces can face the new threats and build on the UK’s record of spending more on defence than any NATO member except the US.
With unemployment at its lowest since 1975 and employment at a near record high, the years of financial hardship endured by the people of this country due to Labour’s inability to fix the roof while the sun was shining is now a thing of the past. With this Budget and a strong economy, constituents and businesses in my constituency of Southport can be assured that this Government are delivering for them and that their hard work is paying off.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The financial health of industry in my area is absolutely critical. The attempts yesterday by the Chancellor to bury the bad news for industry, in particular energy-intensive industries, did not help at all. He did not mention it, but he did not bury the news very deep either: it is there for all to see on page 47 of the Red Book. If the changes in carbon taxes materialise in response to Brexit, it will cost individual firms millions of pounds. The carbon emissions tax is significantly higher than the average emissions trading scheme price over the past 12 months, which was just £12.30. This would increase the cost of carbon for UK installations across the country, currently covered by ETS, by 30%.
The Chancellor acknowledges the increasing high total carbon price, but proposes to freeze it at £18 a tonne of carbon dioxide for 2021. He might think that that is an ambitious move, but these plans come with little notice and a particularly high cost for industry. Firms like CF Fertilisers in Stockton are significantly exposed to the additional extra costs. The EU energy trading scheme is a market-based instrument for which companies had developed a strategy over time to ensure they were able to comply. Now, on top of the perfect storm of high electricity and gas prices, this carbon tax, coupled with the doubling of the gas climate change levy, is a very real issue for energy-intensive industries.
The Government did publish a document on this last night. It betrays a fundamental change in policy since the Brexit vote, with no consultation with industry along the way. In the worst Brexit scenario of all, EIIs are being given an expensive fait accompli with no notice, no discussion and no impact assessment. This makes industry very nervous. Rolled together, all this serves to make the UK an unattractive place for EIIs to do business in the future.
The Chancellor could have helped an industry facing such a dilemma by giving some indication of Government support for carbon capture, use and storage, but he did not. As I have said on numerous occasions, Teesside is ripe for investment in carbon capture, use and storage. The industry needs some indication that the Government are capable of making the right call on this matter. Perhaps once the task group on CCS reports we will hear something more positive from the Chancellor in the new year.
This is my ninth speech in a Budget debate, and in every single one I have talked about health inequalities in my area and the need for a 21st century hospital in Stockton to help tackle them. Stockton was promised a new hospital, but in 2010 the coalition Government scrapped it while making sure that similar plans went ahead where there just happened to be Government MPs of both the blue and yellow. Let me outline why we need to solve the social care crisis and build a new hospital in Stockton.
Nationally, on average, a boy born in one of the most affluent areas of England will outlive one born in the poorest parts by 8.4 years. In Stockton, where life expectancy for a man in the town centre ward is 64, that gap is around double at 15 years. Incidentally, that life expectancy age is the same as in Ethiopia. Our children in these inner-city areas are living in poverty. They are more likely to be undernourished, more susceptible to all manner of illnesses and more likely to end up in care. Older adults are more likely to be ill, given a lifetime of hard work in the heavy industries. One in five babies in Stockton is exposed to cigarette toxins in the womb because their mother smokes while pregnant. That was in 2015-16. That year, there was a significantly higher rate of hospital admissions attributed to smoking than the national average. According to the British Lung Foundation, people in the north-east have the highest chronic obstructive pulmonary disease mortality ratio in the country. The English average for children achieving a good level of development at five years old is at 60%. In Stockton, this is just 50%.
Dr Paul Williams
Does my hon. Friend agree that the cuts to public health funding have had a significant impact on Stockton Council’s ability to deal with some of those health inequalities, and is he as disappointed as I am not to have heard about increases in public health funding in the Budget?
Alex Cunningham
Most certainly. My hon. Friend and I represent between us some of the most difficult areas in Stockton, with high levels of smoking and drinking that make the national average pale into total insignificance. We desperately need that additional funding, so I most certainly agree with him.
Our local North Tees hospital does an exemplary job in the most difficult circumstances, yet it could do so much better in a modern building with services that are required cheek by jowl and where people can be treated in wards rather than converted corridors. That is why we need a new hospital in Stockton and why I will mention that in every Budget speech I ever make until I get it.
Still on health, the police and crime commissioner for Cleveland has been doing excellent work on the introduction of heroin-assisted treatment in neighbouring Middlesbrough—a project that the experts believe will help to save lives and money and reduce crime across Teesside—but he needs Government support to make it the best that it can be. I hope that there will be a full Government commitment to that initiative.
On policing, I am really worried, like my colleague next door in Stockton South, about policing in our area. Like most others, the Cleveland police force area has been short-changed by this Government over many years and the police know that they can no longer deliver the full service that is needed. As my hon. Friend said, over the last eight years, the Government grant for policing and crime in Cleveland has been cut by around 24%. He also outlined in detail why we need that extra money, yet Cleveland is harder hit by cuts than most other forces because of how it is categorised. The county is largely rural, but the vast majority of the population is in inner-city areas, with the same challenges of the cities, yet we do not get the same level of funding. Let me be clear: there will be severe repercussions for public safety and criminal justice in Cleveland if the people do not get more funding.
On education, the Chancellor announced some one-off funding for schools to pay for little extras, but it is teachers and action on pay that they need. Stockton’s branch of the National Education Union visited my surgery on Friday. It wants to see the Government fund the full pay award rather than leave schools to do it. It also wants all teachers treated fairly, which the pay award fails to do. I hope that they will hear something better from the Government in future.
I simply plead again with the Chancellor to do the right thing by Stockton: help us to tackle the health inequalities that we have; help us to deliver the public health programmes that help to educate people about the choices that they have in life; and please find a way to build us a new hospital.
Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in favour of this Budget, which continues the important work that was begun in 2010. A lot has been achieved. We have record employment, with 3.3 million more jobs and 1,000 more people in work every single day. I am particularly proud that we have halved youth unemployment, meaning that more young people can get a good start in life. I meet them all the time in Harborough, and it is a huge pleasure.
Incomes are now rising the fastest that they have in a decade—most rapidly at the bottom end of the labour market—and the national living wage has already increased the wages of people on it by £2,750 a year. That will go up to about £5,000 a year, and combined with increases in the personal allowance, that has raised the income of someone working full time on the national living wage by 44% since 2010 alone. That is one reason why inequality is now lower than at any time under Labour.
The deficit is also down by nine tenths and debt is falling as a share of the economy—in fact, debt as a proportion of GDP is now forecast to go down by a whopping 11 percentage points. The corner has definitely been turned. In the Budget, the Chancellor has helped small businesses in my constituency. He has helped with the cost of living. He not only has debt falling but has a lot of headroom to respond to the needs of our public services. I will come back to that point in a moment, but first, let me note some of the progress we have seen in our public services in recent years, starting with schools.
The proportion of pupils in good or outstanding schools has gone up from 66% to 86% since 2010, which is a huge improvement. Thanks to the national fair funding formula, we are addressing the historical unfairness that has seen places such as Leicestershire do badly. As a result, funding in my constituency over the next two years will go up twice as fast as the national average—and, through things such as the sugar tax and the condition improvement fund, we have seen big improvements such as the new school hall in South Kilworth.
We have also seen many improvements in our schools that are not to do with just spending more money. We have ended the right of appeal against exclusions so that we protect teachers and other pupils against disruption and violence; we have introduced year one phonics screening to nip problems in the bud; we have ended grade inflation and restored rigour; we have stopped Ofsted being so overbearing, which many teachers will welcome; and we have enabled innovations such as the brilliant free schools, which are now the highest-performing type of school in our system.
The improvements go beyond schools and into further education. FE colleges in my constituency can now teach the new T-levels, a new, more rigorous qualification with 25% more funding per student and 50% more hours taught and worked.
Emma Hardy
Would these be the same T-levels that the Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills said she would not allow her own children to sit?
Neil O'Brien
The new T-levels will fix a problem that has been known about for 100 years and give us a more technical system that will be more like the German one and will be the envy of the world.
I welcome the £20 billion for the NHS—a staggering £400 million extra a week—and the fact that we have a vigorous new Health Secretary who is bringing new technology into the NHS in order that it will no longer be the place with the most fax machines and pagers in the world. If you really love something, you want it to be the best it can be and you make it the best it can be.
I welcome the fact that crime is down since 2010 and that we protected police spending in real terms in the 2015 spending review, and I welcome the £200 million a year extra in the Budget to counter serious youth violence and the money for counter-terrorism, but I hope that those are a down payment on a strong settlement for law and order in the spending review. I have been unhappy with the lenient sentences people have received in recent cases, such as the motorcyclist who repeatedly kicked a police officer in the head but was spared jail—that was a mistake; an unprovoked assault and wounding in Market Harborough that did not lead to imprisonment. Assaults on prison officers in HMP Gartree were not even prosecuted. We should be jailing more people for longer, and if we need to find additional resource to do it, it will be money well spent.
In the battle to get our terrible deficit under control, a corner has been turned. In the 2010 spending review, annual average real growth in departmental spending was minus 3%; in 2015, it was minus 1.3%; and from next year, it will be plus 1.2%—a clear difference in direction. Some people now argue that, if we exclude everything that is going up, such as health, defence and aid, other things are going down. I have two things to say about that. First, yes, absolutely the NHS has been prioritised—because it is the people’s priority. Secondly, the Chancellor has sensibly left himself some headroom. With national debt as a percentage of GDP now forecast to fall by 11 percentage points over the forecast period, compared to 7.5 percentage points before, we now have some headroom.
Only through a thorough spending review can we find out how much money we need on top of more efficiency. Once that review is complete, if the Chancellor feels he needs to use some of that headroom to invest in strong public services, he will have my full support, but while such a balanced approach has my support, the country is in no position to go on a massive spending spree. To use a diet metaphor, we have been through a difficult diet to stop the country having a heart attack and we have got the weight off, and some people say that we should get back on the burgers and the cream buns. No, we need to stay fit for the long haul and have a strong economy. That is what we will do.
Now that the partisan part of this debate is over and the real cognoscenti are here, let me finish with a couple of points we do not talk about enough in these debates. Labour sometimes says that this is an ideological choice and that we did not need to reduce spending. Why then did Labour’s last Budget propose to reduce total managed expenditure from 48% of GDP to 42% of GDP? We in practice reduced it to 41% of GDP, but the idea that the difference between 42% and 41% is the difference between a massive ideological crusade and sensible socialist cuts is ridiculous. We should be clear in the House that the differences are not so great as they are sometimes made out.
Secondly, we must be careful about promising people a huge spending splurge. We are an ageing society, and the OBR’s fiscal sustainability report forecasts that, in the absence of no policy changes, debt-to-GDP will start to rise because we are all living longer and using the NHS more, and that this will take debt to more than 250% of GDP in the second half of the century. Let us not promise people things we cannot deliver.
Thirdly, let us not be complacent about managing our debt. Sometimes people say, “Oh well, after the second world war we had huge debts that were 250% of GDP and that was fine.” I say to them that we used to have 25% inflation in this country, which cut through our debts pretty quickly, we did not have index-linked debt and we did not have an independent central bank. We must recognise in this House that if we run up big debts, it will be much more difficult than it ever was before to get them down. We must have a prudent approach.
To conclude, if Members on either side of the House say that we should use some of the headroom that we have earned to invest in strong public services, I agree with them. However, if Members want to pretend that there was an easy alternative to what has been done over the past eight years, that is just not the case. If they want to pretend that we can use magic money tree-ism to fund everything we want and not worry about the deficit ever again, that is just not true. The most sensible Opposition Members know that, and if the Opposition ever find themselves in government they will experience it. I plead for an honest debate in this House. We have to have a balanced approach and we must not promise people things that simply cannot be delivered.
Karen Lee (Lincoln) (Lab)
Austerity has been inflicted on the UK for the past eight years. Austerity was, and still is, an ideological and political choice. The absolute truth that we cannot get away from is that true austerity would not have allowed for further tax cuts for the wealthy, while the rest of us bear the burden. We do not hear a lot about those tax cuts from Government Members.
The Government were lying to us when they said that austerity was a necessity, and they are lying to us now when they say that it is over. Tax cuts costing £2.8 billion will benefit high-income households at the same time as we see a cash freeze on working-age benefits. The idea that this Government are strong and stable on the economy is ridiculous. The economy they have presided over for eight years is one of low investment, low growth and low pay. After eight years, economic productivity is on its knees, local government is at breaking point and the cuts are not forecast to end any time soon. Calling this Budget the end of austerity is a mockery of those who have taken the brunt of the cuts over the past eight years.
I am very concerned that no extra funding has been provided for regular policing, because the cuts to policing budgets have hit Lincolnshire hard. I am also worried that three quarters of the £12 billion of welfare cuts announced after the 2015 election remain in place. It is not tinkering around the edges of income thresholds that will address the callous and chaotic roll-out of universal credit in my constituency of Lincoln. Proper funding and a route out of poverty are needed. I hope that the links between poverty and ill health need no explanation. It is a national disgrace that, thanks to this Budget, food banks will remain a feature of our society.
Under this Government, the NHS has experienced the slowest spending growth in its history. After eight years in which NHS budget increases have averaged just 1.4%, the Government’s 3.4% increase is, to quote the Health Foundation, “simply not enough”. This Budget will barely keep our NHS afloat, let alone reverse eight years of neglect. As a nurse, I saw at first hand the appalling damage the Government have done to our health services. I get fed up with hearing people say how good our health workers are and, “Let’s give them a pat on the back.” Actually, let’s pay them properly, because they cannot spend a patronising pat on the back; they cannot pay their rent with it or buy food with it.
An estimated 4.3 million people are on NHS waiting lists and last year 2.5 million people waited four hours or longer in A&E. With 41,000 nursing vacancies in the NHS in England and more nurses leaving the profession than joining it—some of them are my friends—the Government must reinstate nursing bursaries to reverse the 32% drop in applications since they were scrapped in 2016. I support nursing apprenticeships, but they are not delivering the numbers. We have to reinstate bursaries if we want the numbers. It is all right saying that we will fund however many places, but we have to train those nurses and we have to give them the money to be able to afford to train. I know; I have been there. I remind the House how expensive the current reliance on agency nurses is. That expense is coming out of the public purse. It just makes no sense not to have bursaries and trained nurses.
The insufficient funding increase for the NHS is further undermined by the Government’s disregard for public health services. Public health budgets have decreased by 5.2% since 2014. Those cuts have consequences for our local communities; 85% of councils are planning to reduce their public health budgets this financial year.
The Government have been similarly short-sighted in slashing funding for social care, which has been cut by an estimated £7 billion since the Tories came to power. While the Chancellor allocated an increase to social care grants, that will not close the social care funding gap, which could be over £2 billion by 2020. Age UK estimates that 1.4 million older people do not have access to the care and support they need.
In conclusion, I welcome the Government’s commitment to increase mental health funding by £2 billion, but the Institute for Public Policy Research estimates that double this amount is needed to achieve true parity of esteem between mental and physical health. That sum is meaningless; it is simply not enough. With one in four of us experiencing a mental health problem each year, there is no excuse for the Government’s half-hearted approach. The Government’s cuts to mental health, social care and public health also drive demand for NHS use, creating a bleak cycle in which underfunding places further strain on staff and service delivery. I know that; I have been there first hand.
This Budget shows that austerity is part of the Conservatives’ political ideology and make-up; it is central to their small state, low public investment approach to managing the economy. We should not expect anything other than austerity while we have this Government. To truly end austerity, we need a general election and a Labour Government, and we on this side of the House say, “Bring it on.”
Rachel Maclean (Redditch) (Con)
It is, of course, a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee), but unlike her, I choose to welcome the Budget, which will deliver genuine benefits to my constituents in Redditch.
First, I welcome the overall framework of this Budget—the fact that the money being spent for my constituents comes from growth in the economy. It comes from jobs and lower taxes, which means that my constituents will have more money in their pockets.
I am glad to see the shadow Chancellor back in his place. He referred to leafy Surrey, and we are very proud of our leaves in Redditch, but I doubt that that was what he had in mind. This is a Budget for middle England. My constituents come from all walks of life, and we cannot get much more middle England than somewhere like Redditch. We welcome the £20.5 billion to be spent on health up to 2023-24, a massive increase of 3.4% every year.
Members will know that I have spoken often about the acute trust that services my constituents—or rather, that lets them down on a regular basis, unfortunately. This matter is dear to my heart because the trust is one of the worst performing in the country. As the local MP, I inherited a flawed process that involved the removal of services from our local hospital, the Alex, before the trust as a whole was ready to take them on. We are coming to the end of that painful process and seeing more money being put into our local trust, with £16 million already delivered to it, but I want that trust to hurry up and get itself out of special measures. I consistently advocate that and lobby for it. I am meeting the trust and urging it to submit its business case so that it can give my constituents the good services they need and deserve.
To sound a note of positivity, there is capital investment in that hospital and a new urgent centre for the Alex. These steps are to be welcomed, but there is more to do, so I welcome the fact that money is coming into our NHS more generally.
I want to pick up in particular on the fact that we are focusing on technological investments in the NHS more widely. I would like the Health Secretary to come to Worcester and Redditch to see what we are doing there with the innovative bed capacity app. That is helping the flow-through of patients, which will of course help more patients to be seen more quickly at the front door.
The Government have made up to £10 billion more available for social care in the three years up to 2019-20. There are lots of pressures in Worcestershire in adult and children’s social care. There is rising demand in children’s social care. I note that local authorities are able to make bids for a fund, and I would like Worcestershire to be able to do so, as it has rising need and demand.
As the daughter of a dementia sufferer, adult social care is close to my heart, and I have seen how much pressure there is on that service. The number of people over the age of 85 needing 24-hour care in England is projected to almost double to 446,000 by 2035, so I welcome the fact that there will be a long-term solution in place following the Green Paper on health and social care.
Many colleagues have touched on mental health, and I am going to touch on one specific aspect, about which I have already spoken in the Chamber: the menopause. We had a fantastic debate on that subject not long ago in this very place, and it was a real pleasure to be supported by colleagues from all across the House. I pay particular tribute my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams), who responded to the debate for the Government. In fact, two male MPs spoke, and they put a real focus on the issue of mental health at the time of the menopause. That focus is really welcomed by women up and down the country.
I would like to make a plea for some of the additional mental health funding to be used for issues relating to the menopause, because that is a time when women battle with mental health issues. Surely if two men in this Chamber can talk about the menopause, businesses and other organisations up and down the country can do so as well. I want to put on record my thanks to my male colleagues from all parties who have pledged to support me further on this so that we can stop the stigma of the menopause and stop it being a taboo subject. We need to raise awareness, because this affects people’s mums, wives and partners, and the women they work with. It is good that we are raising awareness around this critical issue.
There were a number of welcome announcements in the Budget, and I want to focus on the air ambulance service. I have been privileged to meet a wonderful woman called Jenny Ashman, who is a volunteer from Inkberrow in my constituency. She is known locally as “Jenny from the chopper”, because she has raised nearly £2 million for the midlands air ambulance services, and I am sure that she will be jumping for joy at the announcement of £10 million for the air ambulance services up and down the country.
There is a lot to welcome in this Budget, but as time is short, I shall finish by saying that the Budget speaks to the aspirations of middle England. It is a practical Budget that puts more money back into the pockets of my constituents in Redditch. We are seeing tax cuts for 30 million people, which will mean that they have more money to spend. That will put money back into the economy.
I have been dismayed to hear the negativity coming from the other side of the House. The Opposition have no answers to the problems facing our country. We remember the legacy that was left by their Government when they crashed the economy, and the note from their Treasury Minister that there was no money left. That was the legacy that we inherited, yet all they have come up with in the intervening time is a plan that would cost every man, woman and child in this country £3,500. They would load £1 trillion of debt on to our hard-working citizens, and they are still blind to the misery that they inflicted on my constituents. Their comments are outdated and patronising. People should come to Redditch. They would see that, although my constituents are not rich, they are rich in spirit. They come from all walks of life, and they will welcome this Budget.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
I should like to highlight some of the facts and figures that the Chancellor missed yesterday before I move on to discuss some of the taxation and public spending measures. First, a record 8 million working people are now living in poverty. There are also 4 million children living in poverty, two thirds of whom are in working families. That number is going in the wrong direction. There are also 4 million sick and disabled people living in poverty—twice the number of non-disabled people. Our life expectancy is flatlining, and for women it is actually going backwards, but what do this Government do? They increase the state pension age. We also know that infant mortality has increased for the first time in 100 years, and that four in 1,000 babies will not reach their first birthday, compared with 2.8 per 1,000 in Europe.
Many epidemiologists have linked this reversal of the generations of health improvement with the austerity that this Government have wrought on the country as a whole and on people on the lowest incomes in particular. Resolution Foundation analysis published today and yesterday’s Budget book show that people on the lowest incomes will be hit disproportionately hard. The Government have not reduced inequalities. Have Ministers assessed the Budget’s impact on life expectancy? Will it continue to flatline, will it get worse or will it increase? I doubt they are able to say it is on the road to recovery.
On tax, I am pleased that small businesses, particularly those on the high street, will have their business rates reduced—that has been a particular issue for a number of my constituents—but what will that mean for councils’ revenue, and how will they be recompensed? My council has lost nearly half its budget from central Government. The digital services tax sounds great, but the OBR says it will affect around 30 tech giants, which will pay about £15 million each. How will that address the fundamental issue that, for example, in 2016, Google paid £36.4 million in corporation tax on declared UK sales of £1 billion, whereas according to its US accounts those sales were £6 billion?
On public spending, the Chancellor confirmed that the NHS would be given much-needed cash. That is welcome, but a range of think-tanks, from the King’s Fund to the Nuffield Trust, say it actually needs £30 billion by 2020. Again, the additional £2 billion for mental health crisis is welcome, but what about emphasising prevention? What about assessing the Government’s own policies on sanctions, work capability assessments and the personal independence payment process, which make the mental health of many claimants worse?
The £1 billion for social care is important, but it does not address the £2.5 billion funding gap since 2010 and does not help the 1.2 million people who need care but cannot get it. I worry that after the publication of the social care Green Paper, which is being consulted on, a new funding regime involving a social care insurance scheme will be announced. That would have disastrous implications for the NHS, as we see closer integration between the NHS and social care.
I could go on about the derisory figures for education and the fact that my local police force and our emergency services will receive nothing substantial, but I want to talk about homelessness, which is rising but was not mentioned in the Budget. We see rough sleepers on our streets in towns and cities up and down the country, but we hear nothing about the families who live in temporary accommodation or people who sofa-surf, as they are not deemed as having priority need for housing. That is the Government’s biggest shame. It epitomises their neglect of too many citizens and reflects not just their failure to ensure that enough houses are built for us all, with social and affordable homes as part of the mix, but their ill-thought-out social security policies, such as universal credit.
Universal credit has been a disaster from start to finish, and it has now been revealed to be driving homelessness. One shelter says UC is the reason why a third of its residents are in it. UC tenants of the housing association First Choice Homes in Oldham are in more than £2.5 million of rent arrears. Research suggests that nearly one in five people in Oldham struggles to pay a social rent. UC is part of that problem. Policy in Practice estimates that the changes to UC announced in the Budget will not have a significant effect. It says 345,000 more households will still be worse off and 29,000 will be no better off. Disabled people will still be worse off. People in employment will see some improvements, but self-employed people will see none at all.
Karin Smyth
My hon. Friend is a well-known expert in this area, which she has spoken up about many times. Does she agree that the Government’s inability to look at people in the round—particularly at their mental ill health, their disability, their poverty and their lack of access to work—drives some of the problems she highlights, including those with universal credit?
Debbie Abrahams
My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head. The human misery caused by such an inhumane policy cannot be underestimated.
L contacted my office recently after her UC was suddenly stopped because her son, B, has severe learning difficulties and L, who is the main carer, did not realise that he would have to make a separate claim once he had reached his 19th birthday. When the money stopped, L had nothing—she did not know why it had stopped and nobody contacted her. It was an absolute disaster for her, and she said:
“At times I just want to end it all…it’s just so hard and I get no support or respite.”
L is a candidate for the new mental health crisis fund that the Government have set out—a product of their universal credit policy. On top of this, the investment in UC does not offset other cuts to social security, with welfare spending set to fall in the next couple of years.
Most worrying are the cuts affecting disabled people, which have not been addressed in the Budget. In fact, according to the OBR, disabled people will be worse off. As the United Nations said last year, this Government are presiding over a “human catastrophe”. The Equality and Human Rights Commission estimates that families with a disabled adult and a disabled child will have lost 13% of their income—£5,500 a year—by 2022. This is on top of colossal cuts across other Departments. What about their help from the Chancellor? What about their bright future?
We have done a lot—the former Labour Government did a huge amount to improve life expectancy, and to lift disabled people and children out of poverty—but we need to do more. The inequalities in our society are getting worse, not better. These inequalities are socially reproduced, so they can be changed, and that should give us all hope. But political will is needed to tackle them, and I am afraid that this Government just do not have it in them.
Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)
May I start by apologising for being absent for much of this debate because I was chairing the Health and Social Care Committee? I also declare a personal interest, as three members of my immediate family are employed as NHS doctors.
We need to take a whole-system approach to health— to think of it not just as the NHS, but as a system including social care, public health, the prevention arm and training budgets. I return to a point that I made in an intervention: I wholly welcome the uplift in the NHS budget, but the increase in the NHS England budget that will take place between 2018-19 and 2019-20 is £7.2 billion, whereas the uplift in the wider health budget in the Red Book is only £6.3 billion. It concerns me that this might indicate that some of the uplift in the NHS England budget will come by way of being taken out of other aspects of the health budget, particularly the Public Health England budget, as we have seen in previous years. I hope that the Minister will touch on that in his response.
Jonathan Ashworth
I think that the hon. Lady may have left the debate to attend her Committee when I re-emphasised her point directly to the Secretary of State, who told us that we would have to wait for the spending review. Would she share my disappointment if the Government tried to pull the same trick that they pulled three years ago, and actually misled us or gave us bogus figures for NHS spending that did not include public health expenditure, capital and training?
Dr Wollaston
We need absolute transparency around health spending, and to take not only a whole-system approach but a long-term view.
Public health is the prevention arm of the system, and taking money out of public health has a serious impact on future spending and our ability to tackle health inequalities. It would be very troubling indeed if much of this uplift came directly from a public health cut. We need to be specific about that, and it is not sufficient to wait for the spending review to clarify that point; I hope that the Minister will be able to tell us further about what it means. People need to plan for the future, so if £900 million is going to be taken out of public health grants, we need to know that now.
When we ask the public which parts of the system they prioritise, public health tends to be at the bottom of the list. It is up to the Government to look at the evidence, and they must be clear that the evidence shows that we must focus unrelentingly on the prevention arm of healthcare. That is the right thing to do, and it is where we have the greatest chance of tackling the burning injustices of health inequality, so it is an important point to address.
The other aspect I want to touch on is social care. The Health and Social Care Committee has just had a sitting with the Care Quality Commission on its excellent “State of Care” report. The report comments on “fragility,” and the report of a couple of years ago talked about “a tipping point.” The CQC told us that that tipping point has been passed for many people in social care. The interaction between social care and the health service is so close that, if we do not focus on social care, we are simply tipping more costs on to the health service.
Of course it is welcome that there will be an in-year increase for adult social care of £240 million this year and £650 million next year, but it is widely recognised that, because of the extraordinary increase in demand and pressure—driven not just by the welcome fact that we are living longer but by the great increase in the number of people with multiple long-term conditions living to an older age and by younger, working-age adults living with multiple complex needs—social care needs more than £1 billion a year just to stand still, so we need to go further.
I recognise that much of this will come alongside next year’s social care Green Paper, which we are all looking forward to, but the system is under considerable challenge. I hope the Minister will recognise in his closing remarks that we are not there yet on social care. He needs to say what we are going to do in the long term to address our social care needs. As I have said before, we will require an approach that involves the Labour Front Benchers, too. We need to see political consensus, otherwise the politically difficult decisions on funding will not get through the House.
If there are to be cuts to public health, the Government will have an even greater responsibility to provide other levers in their public health policy to reduce demand in the system. The Chancellor specifically referred to wanting to reduce the tragedy of lives lost to suicide. Unfortunately, at the same time, the delay in the reduction of the maximum stake for fixed odds betting terminals means that we have passed up on an important opportunity to address the misery of gambling addiction. That is a hugely wasted opportunity. Likewise, there is a missed opportunity to look at what has happened in Scotland on minimum unit pricing to make sure we are addressing some of the key drivers of public health problems. The Government cannot duck that if we are to see cuts to the public health grant.
Finally, there is the impact of Brexit. The Chancellor has said that there will be £4.2 billion for preparations for a no-deal Brexit. I am afraid that the costs will be far higher. The Health and Social Care Committee recently heard from the pharmaceutical industry that it is having to plough hundreds of millions of pounds into preparing for no deal. That is phenomenal and inexcusable waste; it is money down the drain. I hope the Government will rethink their policy, because no version of Brexit will provide more money for the NHS. There is a Brexit penalty, not a Brexit dividend, and I hope both Front-Bench teams will come together and agree that, ultimately, we need the informed consent of the British people for whatever version of Brexit we come up with, with the option to remain and properly use the money instead for tackling austerity and improving the lives and the health of our nation.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who made a characteristically thought-provoking speech. This year’s Budget, like last year’s, comes after my annual community consultation, where I use the three weeks of the conference recess to talk to people across the constituency. Last year, the view I shared with the House was:
“Like towns and cities across the country, Sheffield is at a tipping point.”—[Official Report, 27 November 2017; Vol. 632, c. 123.]
It was at a tipping point because of the collapse in the social fabric and in the ability of services to deal with the problems people were facing. So where are we 12 months on? In more than 60 hours of discussion at more than 40 events in this year’s consultation, all I found was greater concern and the feeling that we are closer to that tipping point. There was greater fear of the rise in violent crime and antisocial behaviour. We have some really impressive and committed police officers leading the fight against knife crime in Sheffield, supported by some great community groups, but we need to recognise the perfect storm that has been created by a combination of Government policies. Eight years of deep cuts to local services have decimated youth provision, led to rising school exclusions and seen falling police numbers—we have lost about a third of our police staff across South Yorkshire.
From the National Audit Office to the Police Federation, and to the Home Secretary himself, everyone agrees that police forces are underfunded. So when the Prime Minister promised the end of austerity, we might have anticipated that things would change in the Budget, but they did not change—not a bit. There was not a penny more for core police funding, nor were there any funds to rebuild youth services.
Nor was there an adequate response to the crisis in mental health, which was another significant issue raised right across my constituency. People told me of their difficulties in accessing services and of treatment waiting times that are simply too long. Young people in particular told me that they were waiting more than six months from referral to their first appointment with child and adolescent mental health services. So although I welcome the extra funding for mental health, we must recognise that it is simply mental health crisis provision, as the Chancellor described it. Of course, such provision needs to be properly funded, because we have a crisis in mental health, particularly for our young people. They want to know why they need to get to crisis point in their mental health before the system responds. A mental health crisis hotline is no substitute for proper face-to-face support. And what has happened to parity of esteem between mental and physical health? The £2 billion going to mental health is just 10% of the funding allocated to the NHS overall, so there is no parity of esteem there—in fact, we are moving further in the wrong direction, and that is a missed opportunity.
The Chancellor missed another opportunity to do the right thing by pushing back the start of the £2 maximum stake for fixed odds betting terminals to October 2019. That delay means that people will die—people like my constituent, Jack Ritchie, who took his own life aged just 24, having been, in the words of his mum Liz, “groomed by gambling companies”. Jack began gambling while at secondary school, playing on fixed odds betting machines at the nearby bookies. We all know, and the Government have admitted, that these machines are the “crack cocaine of gambling”, with players winning or losing up to £100 every 20 seconds. So what is the Chancellor’s answer for Jack’s grieving family, whose charity Gambling with Lives is to be launched here in Westminster in a couple of weeks? What is the explanation for the decision to push back the introduction of the lower stake? The Budget has no answer for Jack’s family, who are to be hugely commended for their work to try to prevent other young people from getting to crisis point. It has no answer for the young people who tell me that they have to get to crisis point before their mental health problems will even begin to be addressed, and it has no answer for my constituents who increasingly fear the violent crime and antisocial behaviour that corrodes our communities.
This is a cruel Budget, not only because of the lie that it marks an end to austerity, but because it fails the strivers and grafters of whom the Chancellor spoke, giving priority to higher earners. His tax adjustments reduce tax for basic rate payers by £130, but we MPs, like other high earners, will gain £860 a year. It is part of a pattern, as the Resolution Foundation has pointed out. In total, the tax and benefit changes since 2015 have given the richest fifth of households an extra £390 a year, while the poorest fifth have not simply gained less, but have lost £400 a year. Failing to end austerity and failing on social justice, this Budget fails our country.
Fiona Onasanya (Peterborough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) in this important debate.
It is important that we pay attention to the fact that the Prime Minister announced the end of austerity, yet yesterday it was announced that austerity is “coming to an end”. Which is it and when will this be? Austerity was a political choice, not an economic necessity. How will the Government alleviate and redress the devastating impact of austerity? Austerity has not tackled the deficit; rather, the onus of who pays has been shifted to teachers, police and nurses. After eight years of this Government’s hard austerity, too many people are suffering and too many vital public services are in crisis.
Yesterday, we heard not a penny announced for the day-to-day costs of schools, even though school funding has been cut by 8%; not a penny for regular policing, even though 21,000 officers have been cut and violent crime is on the rise; and not a penny for local councils to close the funding gap of £7.8 billion by 2025—and they are facing cuts of £1.3 billion next year, too. The Government are not fixing the fundamentals. Must it always take a tragedy to effect meaningful change?
Take a look at our fire service: rather than fighting fires, it is having to fight for funding. It is beneath contempt not to pay those who work in our fire service properly. Indeed, real wages are lower today than they were in 2010, while CEOs are paid 143 times the wage of the average worker.
The late Audrey Hepburn once said: “As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands: one for helping yourself, the other for helping others.” When will the Government stop and realise that? Rather than help, the Government have shown again through the Budget that they know the price of everything, yet the value of nothing. Once again, they are saying, “Your price is way too high; you need to cut it, cut it, cut it, cut it.” It is like the emperor’s new clothes: the emperor seeks to describe an elegant, flamboyant gown that he is wearing, but he is actually completely naked.
This Budget does not mark the end of austerity. The NHS has experienced the slowest spending growth in its history. When the Government created the Budget, clearly ignoring the issues caused by their austerity, it seems they had 99 problems but did not consider the state of the NHS to be one if they believed that £20.5 billion was sufficient to repair the damage caused by eight years of under-investment.
According to the Health Foundation, the £20.5 billion promised is simply not enough. The £2 billion that has been announced for mental health is welcome, but it is half what is needed, and let me be clear: this is not new money and these are not new resources. These financial gimmicks fool no one. The Health Secretary has said that it would take a generation to establish parity of esteem under this Government. However, people with severe mental health conditions cannot afford to wait five years for meaningful action from this Government. Too many people, including children, are already waiting months to access the treatment that they need, leading to a devastating mental health crisis.
In my constituency, there has been a real-terms cut of 10.6% in adult social care, almost double the national average, and the Government consider their announcement of £650 million for long-term adult social care services an accomplishment when it is less than half what the King’s Fund estimates is required to meet demand. Nearly 1.5 million elderly people are not getting the care that they need—an increase of 20% in just two years. The sum of £84 million over the next five years to expand children’s social care programmes is pitiful compared with the £3 billion needed by 2025. Services are over- stretched, and the recent trends in the level of funding are unsustainable and unacceptable. The needs of Peterborough —my constituency—have been attended to on the cheap for far too long. As a consequence, cracks are beginning to appear in our services. Our needs have not been properly or adequately assessed, or indeed addressed, and the current settlement is blatantly below par.
Dr Caroline Johnson
Does the hon. Lady agree that one of the biggest challenges facing Peterborough hospital, which serves her constituency and in which I work, is the financial burden of the PFI that was used to build the hospital? It is a beautiful hospital, but so much money was spent on it that we are burdened with this PFI. It was a Labour Government who did that and we are now having to pay for it.
Fiona Onasanya
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. Yes, I know that very well about the PFI, which is why Labour is seeking to end PFIs. [Interruption.] Before she says that we signed it, I would like to talk about now and the fact that PFIs actually came in under John Major. Talking about now, Government are pursuing efficiency to the point of ineffectiveness. I end on this poignant note: investment now is lower in relation to GDP and we are ranked 22nd in the world. The time for warm words is over. Austerity has dire consequences and a little extra just will not cut it.
Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)
Writing earlier this week in the Welsh edition of The Sunday Times, I labelled yesterday’s fiscal event a “fantasy Budget”. That is because, of course, it did not mention the big elephant in the room, which is Brexit. If the withdrawal agreement does not make it through the House of Commons—that is working on the assumption that there will be a withdrawal agreement between the British state and the European Union—the Chancellor will be back here in a matter of months with an emergency Budget. I hope that, in such a scenario, more sensible minds might prevail with a policy put forward based on extending article 50 coupled with a people’s vote at the end of it with remain as an option.
As always, the most interesting part of the Budget came with the accompanying OBR report. Its projections are based on the most optimistic Brexit scenario envisaged by the British Government, and, basically, it envisages no change in its growth forecasts. Indeed, page 9 of the OBR report shows the UK’s projected economic growth at the bottom of the advanced economies of the world. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its green budget, emphasised the decoupling that we have seen between the British economy and the other advanced economies of the world since the 2016 referendum. Growth is now at around half of pre-recession levels, and that is as a result of eight years of austerity, which has permanently sucked out demand from the economy, and now the Chancellor faces Brexit, all of which lead to anaemic levels of business investment.
The British Government are trying desperately to pivot away from their austerity narrative. They know now, in the new climate, that that is a political vote loser. However, yesterday’s spending commitments fell far short. The IFS puts the price of ending austerity at £19 billion per annum by 2022-23, and the Resolution Foundation puts it at about £30 billion. Yesterday’s spending commitments did not match those sorts of sums. Once extra spending on the national health service in England is stripped out, most other Departments faced a flatlining budget, if lucky, or real-terms cuts. We will have to wait for next year’s comprehensive spending review to have a full picture. I look forward to that fiscal event next year. Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP is now basically at the levels seen at the end of the Thatcher years—about 38%. Austerity has enabled the British Government to achieve their objective of remodelling the state but at a huge cost to public services and support for the most vulnerable in society. Far from ending austerity, austerity is now entrenched in the UK taxation and spending model.
Turning to Wales, the vast majority of spending decisions were England-only, highlighting the fact that the major fiscal event for my country is the Welsh Government’s budget. A huge amount of work needs to be done by politicians in Wales and by the Welsh media to promote that event to its rightful status. The BBC proclaimed a half a billion pound bonanza for my country, neglecting the fact that these were Barnett consequentials resulting from spending in England. A magic-money cash giveaway, as portrayed, it most certainly was not. The key point of interest is the remaining inherent unfairness in the Barnett formula as it applies to Wales. The Welsh Government responded by saying that the vast majority of the £500 million was old money previously published following the enhanced funding announcement for the NHS in England over the summer. Funding per head in London, the richest part of the European Union by a country mile, is higher than it is in Wales. The geographical wealth inequalities within the British state should shame Westminster, and there was little in the Budget that is going to lead to a meaningful rebalancing.
I was very disappointed that there was no announcement on the shared prosperity fund. The communities I represent form part of the West Wales and the Valleys European region. We receive £2 billion in convergence funding within the current EU multi-annual financial framework, which runs between 2014 and 2020. During the referendum, we were promised not a penny less. However, it looks increasingly likely that the communities I represent will be significant financial losers and that the British Government will take away powers from Wales over the use of shared prosperity fund money. I put the Treasury on notice that unless it honours the promises of the Brexiteers, it is walking into a political firestorm, and that political control of the powers over that money must reside in Wales.
The Budget highlighted the north Wales growth deal, with £120 million of funding, but neglected to mention that that accounts for only about 10% of the total funding. We saw a similar scenario with the Swansea Bay city deal, with only 10% of the funding coming from the Treasury. Therefore, 90% of the money associated with these growth deals comes from the Welsh public sector and the Welsh private sector.
It was interesting to see that there was no mention in the Budget of the Secretary of State for Wales’s pet project, the western powerhouse. I can only presume that it has gone down in the Treasury as it has in Wales—not particularly well—and I was glad to see its omission yesterday.
We saw the announcement of the £900 million business rates cut. The Secretary of State for Wales immediately called on the Welsh Government to match that promise. I have to be honest—I was completely unaware that tax cuts by the British Government for England led to Barnett consequentials for Wales, but perhaps that shows my lack of understanding of how the Barnett formula works. I would be very grateful if the British Government outlined whether there is indeed some compensation money for English local authorities for the loss of revenues they face as a result of those business rate cuts, because that would then lead to Barnett consequentials that could be applied to Wales.
A major brewing political storm today is the enhanced borrowing powers that were included in the Budget—some £300 million. The British Government are trying to tie that to the M4 relief road. It would completely undermine devolution if those borrowing powers were constrained by being limited to what the British Government want the Welsh Government to spend the money on.
Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards).
A little earlier, the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) accused Labour Members of being rather negative and sending out negative waves. Well, I have some positive waves, but they are radiotherapy waves, and some ideas. I am delighted that the Minister for Health, the hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay), is on the Treasury Bench; I am sorry he could not join us for the debate earlier, because there were some really good suggestions as to how we can improve the service.
I was disappointed that, despite numerous debates and questions on the cancer strategy, the Chancellor did not mention any further funding for advanced radiotherapy. He said in the statement:
“we agreed that the NHS would produce a 10-year plan, setting out how the service will reform, how waste will be reduced, and exactly what the British people can expect to get”—[Official Report, 29 October 2018; Vol. 648, c. 656.]
I declare an interest, as a cancer survivor who was successfully treated with both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. I am also now a vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on radiotherapy.
I am not alone in having benefited from radiotherapy. About one in four people receive some form of radio- therapy during their lives, and almost half of us will be diagnosed with cancer in the UK at some point in our lifetime. Those stark facts will, I hope, remind the Government how important it is that we invest in modern and accessible cancer treatments. Delivering the recommendations set out in the cancer strategy is crucial to improving care and support for thousands of people affected by cancer. I like to participate in the knockabout and the political point scoring as much as anyone, as Members probably know, but I am not trying to make a party political point about the nature of this policy. I am simply trying to emphasise that it requires resources, a plan, a strategy and commitment.
I have regularly raised advanced radiotherapy and its benefits and have advocated further investment in research into it. Given the cost, investment and research should be evidence-based, but there are some very exciting areas. I went to see the new proton beam therapy machine at the Rutherford Cancer Centre in Northumberland, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). I saw the installation of a proton beam therapy bunker and the advanced equipment there, as well as stereotactic ablative body radiotherapy, or SABR; adaptive radiotherapy based on advanced imaging, which is a form of magnetic resonance imaging combined with a linear accelerator; combinations of radiotherapy and new drugs; biomarkers, so that radio- therapy can precisely target cancer cells; and molecular radiotherapy.
I also recently visited the Elekta facility in the constituency of the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), in the company of my fellow vice-chair of the APPG on radiotherapy, the hon. Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), and Professor Patricia Price from the Royal Marsden Hospital. We saw these machines being built and developed. This is very impressive technology and it is being developed here in the United Kingdom.
Not only does SABR treat cancers that conventional therapy cannot but the advanced nature of the treatment is such that patients need only be irradiated four or five times, rather than 20, as was the case with conventional radiotherapy. It is not only more effective, but it would save our cancer centres money. More importantly, it can dramatically reduce the number of times that patients are exposed to radiation while still destroying the cancerous tumours.
Although it is needed in over 50% of cases, access to radiotherapy in England is patchy, varying from 25% to 49% depending on the region, with the average being around 38%. Ideally, according to research by Cancer Research UK, patients should have to travel no more than 45 minutes to access this form of treatment, and considerable investment is going to be needed to achieve that. Only 5% of the NHS cancer budget is currently spent on radiotherapy—5% of the cancer budget, not of the total NHS budget—which is £383 million. More investment is needed to increase access to modern radio- therapy because that will increase cancer survival.
I encourage all Members of the House and Ministers to read the “Manifesto for Radiotherapy”, which highlights the importance, and the important benefits, of increasing the percentage of spend on radiotherapy. Increasing it quite modestly—from 5% currently to 6.5% of the cancer budget—would secure a world-class radiotherapy service. Let us not forget that one of the justifications for the huge health and social care reforms put forward by the Government was the poor cancer survival rates. Currently, our cancer survival rates are the second worst in Europe, so there is a deal of work to do.
I suggest that investment in radiotherapy would not only enable treatment of large numbers of cancer patients, save lives and achieve better outcomes but bring positive economic benefits. I commend it to the Minister for Health and urge him to look at it as part of the cancer strategy.
Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)
An end to austerity cannot come soon enough. It is disappointing that the Chancellor chose yesterday just to kick the can down the road, and that he has committed only to starting to end austerity—maybe—in a spending review next year. Families and children in my constituency cannot wait until then; they have waited long enough.
The Chancellor says that this is a Budget for hard-working families. I take issue with that term because we should not judge people on such a basis. Many families cannot work because of their circumstances and feel stigmatised by the “strivers and skivers” narrative that the Government continue to use. However, universal credit means the disgraceful reality that many families are actually in work but still facing poverty. Cuts to universal credit mean that they will not be able to work themselves out of that poverty trap.
That situation is compounded by the Chancellor’s pretendy living wage, which leaves 16 and 17-year-olds facing an increasing age pay gap. In 2017, the gap between the pretendy minimum wage and the rate for 16 and 17-year-olds was £3.45 and this year it was £3.63. Next year their rate will £3.86 less, but 16 and 17-year-olds still have the same bills to pay. They can be in the same job and doing the same task as somebody on the higher rate, but this Government do not value their labour, which is an absolute disgrace.
The reality is that the UK Government’s cuts will see welfare spending in Scotland cut by 3.7 billion. The Scottish Government are trying really hard and making changes to make the system fairer in the limited way we can, but we are working with one hand tied behind our back.
My constituency voted for independence in 2014 and to stay in the EU in 2016. We did not vote for austerity, and we did not vote for the choices this Tory Government are inflicting on us. This Government are doing nothing to convince these voters that their vote in 2016 was wrong. Acknowledging that austerity should be over, but taking no action to end it is a disappointing move for even the most hardened of cynics, and the possibility of crashing out of the EU without a deal fair focuses the mind.
Economic policy is not just about adding pennies here and there on fuel and alcohol but about the building blocks of what we want our society to look like. Austerity embeds inequality—there is no safety net for people who find themselves on hard times, and people feel punished for being disabled—and this is no way to build a fairer society. The UK Government also fail to acknowledge that austerity is gendered and discriminatory at its very core. The Government should be looking at inclusive growth policies to increase wages and to engage women in the labour market, but they are not doing so.
Women are more likely to claim benefits. This is not because they are lazy or workshy, as the “strivers and skivers” narrative would have us believe, but because a societal expectation still exists that women will look after the children, the elderly and the sick. Even now, the majority of unpaid labour is almost always performed by women. When benefits are cut, it is frequently women who will go hungry to make sure their children are fed. Women also go into low-paid and part-time work to meet their caring obligations.
What did the Government do? They cut and they cut and they cut. We have seen huge cuts to breastfeeding support across England. I mention that because it leaves women with very little choice. If they want to breastfeed and do not get support for that, they are forced to buy infant formula, but infant formula has risen in price by 9.6% since the Brexit vote. With real-terms cuts to benefits, where are these women supposed to find the extra money? Healthy Start vouchers have also not kept pace with the increase. On top of that, if the baby happens to be the third child born into a family, that family will now be nearly £3,000 a year worse off because of the two-child cap on universal credit. Something so arbitrary as the order children are born in should not affect their chances in life.
A freeze on fuel duty does not help many working families or those with caring obligations who are still struggling to make ends meet. People on very low incomes often do not own cars—in Glasgow, 51% of households do not have access to a car. Nor are people on very low incomes likely to benefit from an increase in the personal allowance, because they do not earn enough. Two thirds of them are women. What is the Chancellor going to do to help those women?
Some 3,400 women in my constituency are affected by the increases to the state pension age. These women have a contract with the state, and the UK Government are not holding up their end of it. Some parts of my constituency still have a life expectancy that is below average. That is a legacy of previous Tory policies, which forced people into poor life choices. Most people affected by this pension policy will not even live long enough to get the full benefit of their state pension.
The impact of this policy is starting to show in the statistics. The recent annual survey of hours and earnings showed that the gender pay gap for over-60s had increased by nearly 3% in a year. WASPI women are having to postpone their well-deserved retirement and take up low-paid jobs just to keep their heads above water.
Austerity means difficult choices for the lowest earners in our society. People are at risk of getting into debt to feed their families, pay rent or buy Christmas presents for their kids during the five-week wait on universal credit. As I have said in this place before, somebody making a claim in Shettleston jobcentre when universal credit rolls out on 5 December will be without money until 9 January—a cold, lonely Christmas, with no money coming in. The response of the Chancellor and DWP Ministers is to say, “It’s okay. They can get a loan.” People in my constituency do not want more debt; they want fair wages and a high standard of living, and they do not want to be dragged down by this Government’s policies.
Funding for managed migration does not help the people who will be part of the roll-out on 5 December in Calton. These people will miss out if there are any managed migration funds. That is why universal credit must be paused now. I am begging Ministers to look at this, because I do not want children in my constituency going with nothing at Christmas.
Austerity will not be over until the benefit freeze is lifted, the two-child cap is abolished and there is a focus on policies that actually increase wages. Last week I called on the Chancellor to end the benefit freeze. The Tories have rightly received harsh scrutiny over universal credit, but the benefit freeze could be just as damaging to low-income families. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has estimated that, by 2020, it will cost families as much as £800 a year.
There is a huge disparity here. The Government have a choice between big businesses, tax cuts and low earners, and their priorities have been made perfectly clear in this Budget, which does nothing for so many people in this country and will put them further in poverty.
Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss).
I had an amusing conversation with a Conservative MP the other day. He argued that I think he and his Conservative colleagues wake up each morning planning how to make people’s lives more difficult. Madam Deputy Speaker, you will be pleased to know that I reassured him that I do not actually think that. I actually believe that, at their core, people are fundamentally good. But I also believe that our actions and experiences are shaped by our experiences of the world: what we see, hear and feel informs our understanding and, therefore, what we believe to be right. That is the only generous explanation I can find for why the Chancellor has failed to give our public services, education and local government the sustained and substantially increased funding they desperately need. He has failed to listen and understand why it is needed. Surely if the Chancellor had seen the levels of poverty that I have seen in Hull, he would not be so quick to disregard our requests. My first ask for the Chancellor and the Minister is this: walk a mile in my constituents’ shoes, and see, feel and hear what they have to experience every single day. If I am right and people are, at their core, fundamentally good, surely the Minister and the Chancellor cannot ignore our call for greater investment and a change for our constituents.
Hull has a higher need than other places, yet has been disproportionately affected by austerity. One child in three lives in poverty in my constituency. My area has more children than average with special educational needs and disabilities, yet the budget for Hull has been cut by a third compared with the national average of just over a quarter. Only one unitary authority has been hit harder than Hull. But those are just numbers, and numbers do not explain the very human cost and the very human stories. Here are just two of my more recent ones.
My constituent Steve is disabled with an advanced case of multiple sclerosis. His care bills rose from £50 to £86 a week because of the cuts. He could not afford to pay them and ended up being chased by East Riding of Yorkshire Council for the money he was unable to pay, which caused him extreme distress and upset.
Diane is 60. She has been affected by the changes to state pension rules for women. She was recently refused a benefits award because apparently she is not poor enough. She has been working for 42 years—since she was 16. She wrote me an email saying that she was a proud woman who did not want to be asking other people for help, but that she could not afford to buy new glasses because she did not have enough money.
Put simply, because of the cuts, people in our country are not getting the support that they need and the support they have worked their whole lives for and deserve. The consequences of austerity are being felt up and down the country. Public services are being stretched to breaking point. The tough choices we hear people speak about are easy to say here in this environment, while we are in our cosy lives going back to our warm beds. It seems that tough choices are only tough for the very poorest in society.
Public services are a good thing. Funding them is the right thing to do, because that gives everybody, or tries to give everybody, the same chances in life. My life has been shaped for the better because of the public services I have used: from the NHS who helped to deliver my children to the health visitor, Ann, who came to help me in those first weeks, which are terrifying as a new parent; and from my teachers in my local comprehensive who made me believe in myself and that I could do things to make the world a little better to the Sure Start centres that offered me so much support with my youngest. I could go on. My life experiences—what I see, hear and feel—have been made better by the public services around me. This is my truth, and it is why I stand here today demanding that those services are saved.
Public services are not like private care. They are not just about benefiting me; good public services benefit everybody. The Budget so deeply patronised and angered our parents, teachers and governors in mainstream schools with the promise of a “little extra”. Many schools are sending out begging letters to parents asking for funding for basic supplies. Done right, investment in public services can save money in the long run, for example by enabling children to stay at school and preventing off-roll exclusions through investment in pastoral care and family support.
I have significant and deep concerns about how our vulnerable children can be exploited. I fear for their future. Today, Barnardo’s issued a statement saying that our excluded children are at risk of being groomed and exploited by criminal gangs. Those children might not have had to be excluded if the schools had the money for the pastoral care and support they needed, and if our social workers had the money for early intervention and family support. There is no mystery to why the number of exclusions has increased along with austerity. As I tell my children, actions have consequences. In this case, the Government’s inaction has a consequence.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission published a report that asked, “Is Britain Fairer?”, and I will quote from the executive summary. It said:
“Disabled people are…more likely to be in poverty… They…face poorer health and lack of access to suitable housing.”
It said that “Child poverty has increased” and that infant mortality has risen
“for the first time in decades.”
It said that tax and welfare reforms continue to have a
“disproportionate impact on the poorest in society”
as well as on some ethnic minorities, women and disabled people, and that the reforms are “weakening the safety net” for
“those unable to work, or stuck in low-paid or precarious work.”
It said:
“Homelessness is also on the rise”.
In society, in government and in Parliament, we reap what we sow. There are huge consequences of pushing a policy that leaves people behind for not only the people themselves, but society more widely. Where austerity is being pushed the hardest—in cities such as Hull—the consequences will be even worse. It is time for the Chancellor to think again. The cost of austerity is simply too high.
Karin Smyth (Bristol South) (Lab)
It is an absolute pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), who made an excellent speech.
We have had the usual smoke and mirrors about the real money that is going into the NHS through this Budget, but I think that everybody outside the Chamber agrees that it is not enough to meet the increase in demand that we all know about. Equally as concerning, however, is the fact that the percentage of the NHS budget that will be part of public spending over the forthcoming years will rise to roughly one third of overall spending. That says an awful lot about what we are not spending money on, as well as what we are spending.
Sometime soon, we will have the 10-year plan. The taxpayers, whom the Secretary of State was so concerned about earlier, will have absolutely no say in that plan, the priorities or how the resources are allocated. It is a completely missed opportunity to treat the public as grown-ups in the debate about health funding so that they are clear about the cost of health services, the extent of spending and the quality that money can buy, and understand what they are prepared to pay for.
Let me speak briefly about VAT. Page 50 of the Red Book refers to some tinkering around the edges of VAT, but the Government make no mention of closing the loophole that has been exploited by some NHS trusts. I visited a Treasury Minister recently to talk about wholly owned companies saving VAT. The Treasury seems unconcerned about the loss of income from VAT on wholly owned companies, and the Department of Health and Social Care seems totally unconcerned about the competing fragmentation of our services. It would be really good if both Departments had a chat with each other, decided what the policy should be and sorted it out.
I want to concentrate now on the Budget. Bristol is a city of high employment, and also a city with high rates of ill health and disability. The greatest inequalities are in my constituency, with people living on average for 19 years in ill health. The Marmot review on health inequalities estimated that between £36 billion and £40 billion are lost in taxes, welfare payments and costs to the NHS through health inequalities. This is a huge opportunity for us to do better.
I want to touch on universal credit and social care. Some 5,900 of my constituents currently claim employment and support allowance and the Government intend, at some point, to migrate them on to universal credit. In successfully claiming ESA, my constituents have been subject to the work capability assessment. Many have been initially refused, but then have successfully appealed that decision on one or more occasion. They will have proved to the Department for Work and Pensions that their long-term disability or ill health means that they cannot work and need financial support. There is still no recognition or understanding that these constituents will never work again. They do not need incentives or sanctions to work. The DWP agrees that they cannot work, but universal credit offers them no benefit, only a loss of income. Surely it is time to halt the migration of anyone currently claiming ESA and allow new claimants with an illness or disability to claim that benefit. We need a proper rethink about how we support those who most need our help.
The problem on social care is well documented. We know how many people are losing support, but it is still a silent misery for thousands of families, because until someone goes into the system, they do not understand how bad it is. The King’s Fund said that public awareness of the system is very poor and that
“As long as the public view the issue from behind a veil of ignorance, it is easier for national politicians to trade on…rivals’ proposals”.
I do not want to trade on fear and misinformation; I want us to set a path for what we need. I would like the Budget to have helped, but it has not. The language needs to change. Spending on social care is not a drain, a time bomb, a burden or a threat to assets. It is an investment in people and in our future. Every business, every public service and every family is struggling to cope with social care, and investing in it is an infrastructure issue. It is essential to our prosperity.
The cycle of ill health, disability and poverty is well known, as is the problem of low productivity, and poor educational attainment does not help. Last month, one of my colleges came up with the Love Our Colleges campaign to talk about underfunding in further education and the need to bridge the skills gap. College funding has been cut by 30% since 2009 at the same time as costs have increased dramatically, including for pensions. At the same time, however, the number of adult courses has dropped by 62% and the number of health and social care courses by 68%. How can that be a priority when there is that level of disinvestment? This is a huge problem in Bristol South because we do not send youngsters to higher education—further education is the driver of prosperity for our people.
As I highlighted earlier, also not mentioned was the OECD report on early years education. There was nothing in the Budget about this, despite evidence that early years education is a driver of prosperity. Nursery schools, which are under the control of local authorities, were forgotten even in the Chancellor’s miserly throwaway comment. He has not given them anything. They do not even get the pittance he threw away in the Budget.
Finally, I want to say something about our police services. Some 75% of recorded incidents are currently non-crime and include missing persons reports and issues relating to people experiencing mental health crises, all of which are highly resource intensive. I am currently on the parliamentary police force scheme and spending a lot of time with our police force, so I have seen this at first hand. The police funding formula has not been updated for a decade and does not reflect current demand. The police and crime commissioner has been clear about this. In Avon and Somerset, we have a very good system for analysing demand and the associated resource needs, but we are still not getting the money, even though we have proved we need the resource.
In conclusion, the Government are ignoring all the data and evidence, and not linking up their policies in order to deliver the improved productivity that this country needs and which will drive prosperity for all our constituents.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth). Yesterday, the Chancellor made his Budget speech and told us that the era of austerity was nearly over, that schools would be getting money for the “little extras” and that all would be rosy as he increased tax thresholds, but that it would all be off if there was a no-deal Brexit.
The Budget was telling for another reason, though: the areas that it did not mention. There was no mention of funding for policing. We have lost more than 21,000 police officers since 2010. The Home Affairs Committee, in its recent report, “Policing for the Future”, said:
“Without additional funding for policing…there will be dire consequences for public safety, criminal justice, community cohesion and public confidence.”
The report also told of recorded crime having risen by 32% in the past three years and of the number of charges and summons having decreased by 26%. Why are the Government not concerned about public safety and fighting crime?
There was also no mention of extra funding for local authorities. The Chancellor said that austerity was nearly over. Why, then, does my borough of Enfield, which has had to find £161 million of cuts since 2010, still need to find an extra £31 million? Local councils are embedded in their communities and perform many vital roles—they do not just fill in potholes. Why was there no extra money for youth services, social care and local authority CAMHS to meet the needs of children at school? We know what the Government think about local authorities. Rather than supporting councils, they let councils such as Northampton go bust. They should be ashamed of the way they are destroying local councils, which are at breaking point, and slashing their funding. It is death by a billion cuts.
On education, the Chancellor made mention of additional funding for schools to pay for the “little extras”, as he described them. I wonder whether he has spoken to any headteachers, staff, governors or parents. Many schools in my constituency are facing huge cuts in the hundreds of thousands of pounds to teaching assistants, support services for children, school trips and non-curriculum subjects. The Chancellor is delusional if he thinks that £10,000 for “little extras” will go any way towards stemming the tide of cuts to schools. Those cuts are real, and they are having a detrimental effect on children. I have nothing but respect for the headteachers, staff, governors and parents who are trying to keep things together for their schools. What an insult to provide more money for potholes than for schools—the Chancellor could not have been more patronising if he tried.
On universal credit, the £1.7 billion the Chancellor announced to fix the failing system is a fraction of what his predecessor took out of it. What would he say to a local resident I spoke to who is a single mother—not through her own choice—working part time, who will be £50 a week worse off as she migrates from tax credits to universal credit? Why is he not putting money in to make sure that no one is worse off under universal credit? Why are people who are being migrated to universal credit not being protected? The legacy of the Government’s austerity is the prevalence of food banks, homelessness and poverty across the country.
The Ministry of Justice has had its budget cut year on year. The cost of processing women in the criminal justice system is £1.7 billion a year. One of the most successful ways of stopping reoffending is to provide support in women’s centres, yet they have been cut and do not receive the funding they need, leaving many in a precarious situation. Women’s centres have been picking up the pieces from the failing privatised rehabilitation centres, which have been rewarded for their failure.
There is nothing in the Budget for legal aid, which means that people will not get the representation they need and that there will be more injustices. Having proper representation in criminal proceedings is becoming the preserve of the rich. The Government seem totally uninterested in support for the criminal justice system and content to allow injustices to continue.
The Chancellor may think that the era of austerity is over, but it is not over for schools, for councils, for people on universal credit, for the homeless, for those caught up in the criminal justice system or for victims of crime, and certainly not for those who are poor. This Budget is a façade; it does not stand up to scrutiny, and it could all be scrapped by Christmas.
Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)
After the Government have been taken to court and lost three times over air quality, and following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stating that we have just 12 years to avert climate change catastrophe, I expected this Budget to deliver the investment we need in clean, green infrastructure for our lungs and our planet. In a quest to bring down costs, the Chancellor has not looked to capitalise on the opportunities that a modern, green economy would bring to the UK. Instead, he has focused on miserly cost-cutting measures. This is a Budget of abject complacency in the face of climate catastrophe. As usual, the Government’s obsession with low-cost public services and their lack of any serious investment have left our environment, the water we drink and the air we breathe off the agenda.
Not only are we on track to miss our air pollution targets, but the Government have lost three court cases and had their policy on air quality ruled unlawful. It has been left to local councils, which have been subject to extreme funding cuts, to deliver change in this area. Where is the commitment to clean air? Air quality affects our health and the health of our children and grandchildren. A recent study linked air pollution to more than 40,000 early deaths in the UK—that is 40,000 people dying before their time because the air they breathe in the fifth richest country in the world fails the required standard.
This is a public health nightmare. The Government have left our national health service strapped for cash as it is. Public Health England has estimated that air pollution costs could rise to £18.6 billion by 2025. If we do nothing and the quality of our air does not improve, there could be 2.5 million new cases of air quality-related illnesses such as lung cancer, asthma and heart disease by 2035. It is not cost-effective to ignore this problem; it is short-sighted austerity politics yet again.
The UK needs to lead the fight for cleaner air and carbon reduction. To do that, we need to incentivise a just transition for health, jobs and the environment. Why, then, has the Chancellor cut subsidies for plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles? How does he expect British drivers to make the switch from petrol and diesel cars if they are not encouraged to do so? Why does a Nissan Leaf have the same VAT rate as a Hummer? Should clean cars not be VAT-exempt? Where is the investment in the electric vehicle infrastructure that we so desperately need? In my constituency there is not a single public charge point; this is fourth time I have raised this issue in the House, and there are still no charge points. There are very few rapid charge points on British motorways, too. That does not build confidence in the new technology, and it leaves EV drivers with charge anxiety. There is no point in encouraging people to buy electric or hybrid vehicles if we do not provide the necessary infrastructure. The Government must do their bit. We need charge points in every community, rapid charge points across our road network and real investment in EV infrastructure and affordability.
Further, we need proper investment in northern heavy rail infrastructure to ensure that people have an alternative to using their cars. Clean rail is lacking in my constituency, where the Harrogate line is still running dirty diesel as the Government first promised then scrapped the electrification programme—a shameful example of this Government’s craven disregard for the north of England.
I recently submitted my consultation response on the plan to scrap feed-in tariffs. This incredibly short-sighted plan will end a scheme that has been successful in encouraging communities, councils and individuals to take ownership of their energy and carbon footprint. While the Government cite increased energy bills to justify their position, they have no plan to replace the scheme with anything other than business as usual for the big six energy companies, which they have conveniently left out of their analysis of consumer energy bills. Where is the investment in proper insulation of UK homes to reduce energy consumption and take so many people out of the fuel poverty they are suffering? All this, and we are still on course to miss our next carbon budget target. When will the Government wake up and realise that we are in the midst of an environmental and public health crisis, and take the necessary action to change course at international, national and community level?
Of course, this debate is about the Budget and health. We have a health service in which our Government’s health economics put the interests of the private sector above those of the public. NHS trusts, including my own, have set up wholly owned subsidiary companies so that private companies can reclaim VAT. In Leeds it is just a service company, but many other trusts have set up wholly owned subsidiary companies that have transferred thousands of NHS staff into the private sector. The solution I had hoped to hear from the Chancellor was that he would put our hard-working public servants on an equal footing and allow the NHS to reclaim VAT in just the same way as those private companies do. But we have a Chancellor who finds a way to put the private sector ahead of our hard-working hospital porters, administrators and cleaners in the national health service.
In short, this Budget has come up short, put the interests of the few ahead of those of the many and put the planet on notice from which it might never recover.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab/Co-op)
With your indulgence, Mr Speaker, may I preface my remarks by briefly mentioning the awful tragedy that took place at Leicester City football club in my Leicester constituency this weekend? My city—the city I represent—is grieving. We have lost a much loved friend who enjoyed the respect, affection and admiration of not just Leicester City football fans but everyone across our city. Our condolences go out to the loved ones of all who lost their lives in that terrible helicopter crash, and again I pay my tribute to our extraordinary emergency services—the police, the fire and rescue services, the NHS and all other staff—for their quick response, their dedication and their professionalism.
This was supposed to be the Budget that ended austerity, but instead, as my right hon. Friend the shadow Chancellor outlined, we have more of the same. Cuts to public services will continue. Poverty will increase. The very poorest households in society will lose out. Austerity has not ended; we know austerity has not ended because that is the headline in George Osborne’s Evening Standard this evening.
Members have spoken in this debate with great passion, and I am sure the House will forgive me if I cannot mention each and every one of them, but some did catch my attention. My hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) began the debate with a tour de force and reminded the House that PFI was a Tory policy begun by—[Interruption.] Conservative Members are chuntering. Perhaps they should have a word with the International Trade Secretary who from this Dispatch Box used to urge us to pursue PFI because it was
“exclusively to fund private capital projects”—[Official Report, 8 January 2003; Vol. 397, c. 181.]
Perhaps they should have a word with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster who used to give a “warm welcome” to PFI. Perhaps they should have a word with the former Brexit Secretary; I know he is on the Back Benches now, but he used to say in this House:
“The PFI has many virtues—after all, it was a Conservative policy in the first instance.”—[Official Report, 10 March 1999; Vol. 327, c. 429.]
Perhaps they should have a word with the Business Secretary, who said:
“PFI was initiated by the previous Conservative Government.”—[Official Report, 12 February 2013; Vol. 558, c. 787.]
Perhaps they should also have a word with the Scottish Secretary, who said that PFI was a “successful basis for funding”, or with the Welsh Secretary, who said:
“I am a fan of PFI in general.”—[Official Report, 4 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 1124.]
We will take no lessons on PFI from the Tories.
We have heard other welcome contributions to the debate today. My hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris), who is no longer in his place, spoke eloquently about the need for investment in radiotherapy and cancer treatments. It was a very constructive speech and I saw the Health Minister on the Front Bench nodding at the time; he has obviously had to leave the debate now. The hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean)—I do not know whether she is still here—mentioned the importance of more investment in and recognition of the menopause. I entirely agree with her on that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) talked about the terrible and devastating consequences of gambling addiction. As someone who has spoken out about how addiction has taken a devastating toll on my own family, I completely endorse what my hon. Friend said today. The Government really need to push ahead with changes to fixed-odds betting terminals. My hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) and others talked about health inequalities and how the advances in life expectancy were beginning to stall for the first time in 100 years, and were indeed going backwards in some of the poorest parts of our country. This should shame us as a society, and I endorse the calls for an inquiry. If we had a Labour Government, we would have a specific target for narrowing health inequalities.
The hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) spoke eloquently about the effects of the Budget on children. I commend all her work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on infant feeding. It is shameful in our society that, as we saw on Channel 4’s “Dispatches” last night, one in 100 families are now turning to baby banks in our constituencies for access to baby clothing, food and toys. That is absolutely disgraceful. The hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) complained about chuntering from our side as he spoke about the importance of marriage. I agree that marriage is an immensely important institution, but I say to him that children should take priority in social policy and that the Government should be investing in children regardless of the marital status of their parents.
I hope that Members will forgive me if I do not mention everyone, but I did enjoy the passionate speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) on the value of public services. At one point, she said, “This is my truth.” I do not know whether she was referring to the Manic Street Preachers or to Aneurin Bevan, who also said:
“This is my truth, tell me yours.”
My hon. Friend’s speech was a superb successor contribution to some of the speeches that Bevan would have made from the Dispatch Box when he created the NHS and the Conservatives voted against its creation.
The Health Secretary does not seem to be in this place to hear the wind-ups, but I am sure that he is on his way. I am told that he is a fan of horse-racing, but I am afraid that his speech fell at the first hurdle day. You see, Mr Speaker, it is not just the Chancellor who can do rubbish jokes in the Chamber. The Health Secretary forgot to tell us what eight years of austerity had delivered for the national health service and what eight years of the deepest and longest financial squeeze in the NHS’s history had delivered. We now have 4.3 million people on the waiting list and 2.8 million people waiting for more than four hours in A&E, of whom more than 600,000 are designated as trolley waits. Over 25,000 people are waiting beyond two months for cancer treatment, which is twice the number in 2010.
Winters are now so bad in the NHS than they were branded a “humanitarian crisis” by the Red Cross. Last winter, 186,000 patients were trapped in the back of cold ambulances and not even able to be admitted to an overcrowded hospital. Hip replacements, knee replacements, cataract treatments and rounds of IVF are being rationed and restricted. There were 84,000 cancelled operations in the past year, including nearly 19,000 cancellations of children’s operations for broken bones, for the removal of rotten teeth, for eye surgery and even for cancer.
Nowhere is the disgraceful neglect of children in our health service more prevalent than in mental health services. Three in four children with a diagnosable mental health condition do not get access to the support they need. The numbers of young people attending A&E with a recorded diagnosis of a psychiatric condition have trebled in the past eight years. A fifth of children and young people referred for an eating disorder wait more than four weeks for treatment, while more than 1,000 children are sent far from home—sometimes more than 100 miles away—for in-patient care. That is what happens after eight years of cuts, closures, service privatisation and failure to invest in staffing. That is what austerity has done, and it will continue.
One really must examine the small print of the spending readjustments for the NHS. The Health Secretary talked about £20 billion extra for the NHS over five years, but there is no new money for the winter ahead, which hospital bosses are already warning will be even tougher than last year’s. According to Ministers, the NHS budget is set to grow by 3.6% next year. If the shadow Chancellor were Chancellor, it would grow by 5% next year.
Let us look at what is not included in the health budget, which the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), who chairs the Health Committee, and others alluded to. First, even though the Health Secretary tells us staffing is his priority, we have 107,000 vacancies across the NHS. We are short of 40,000 nurses and midwives and of 10,000 doctors. The number of GPs is down by 1,000, the number of district nurses by 43% and the number of mental health nurses by more than 5,000. And what has happened to training budgets? They were excluded from that 3.6% allocation and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) pointed out, the Chancellor failed to reinstate the nursing bursary. There is no plan in the Budget to increase NHS staffing.
Secondly, the Health Secretary promised us a “technological revolution”. Our NHS faces a £6 billion repair backlog, relies on 12,000 fax machines and uses at least 1,700 pieces of outdated and often faulty equipment, yet capital budgets are excluded from the 3.6% allocation. In fact, according to the Red Book, capital will be cut by £500 million. The Chancellor boasted that he was ending PFI—I do not why he thought that would embarrass the shadow Chancellor or the Leader of the Opposition; he has obviously not followed the history of the Labour party in recent years—but the Government’s response to the Naylor report on infrastructure needs for primary care signalled that £3 billion would be raised from private finance investment. If PFI is abolished, where will that £3 billion for primary care transformation come from? Or is the reality that the Chancellor has not abolished private financing of public capital projects, but has simply abolished an acronym?
Thirdly, despite the Health Secretary’s hollow commitment to prevention, public health services are still being cut. We have seen £700 million of cuts so far, with another £96 million to come. For example, substance misuse services in our constituencies will be cut by £34 million next year at a time when we have some of the highest drug deaths and alcohol-related hospital admissions on record. Sexually transmitted infections are on the increase, yet sexual health services are set to be cut by £17.6 million next year. We are falling behind internationally on children’s health outcomes, from obesity to immunisations and support for new mums with breastfeeding, and the numbers of health visitors and school nurses are falling, yet early years health services will be cut next year because of cuts to the public health grant. Those cuts should have been reversed in the Budget, not endorsed.
Taken together, there will be £1 billion of cuts to public health, training and capital, which means this health settlement represents an increase next year not of 3.6% but of 2.7%. That is not enough to deliver the level of service that patients expect.
Let us look at what the £20 billion will fund. We have been told there is £2 billion extra for mental health, but growing mental health spending in line with the increase in overall health spending costs an extra £2 billion. That is more spin and smoke and mirrors. The Institute for Public Policy Research says we need £4 billion extra. NHS England advises us that NHS activity increases by 3.1% a year. Demand is rising, the burden of chronic disease is rising and the number of patients with multiple chronic conditions using the NHS is increasing. Those demographic changes and the rising burden of disease will take up £16 billion of that £20 billion. The pay increase, which the Government have been forced into because of campaigning of staff, the trade unions and the Labour party, will take up another £3.5 billion. That is £19.5 billion of the £20 billion already taken up—and still no plan to reduce waiting lists, tackle the A&E crisis, invest in general practice, or deal with the £4.3 billion of underlying deficits of hospitals and loans owed by NHS trusts.
The Chancellor’s answer in the Red Book is to say that we should have 1% efficiencies a year in the NHS. What does that mean? It means more cuts and greater rationing of treatments. In the Red Book, the Chancellor also says that we can create savings through prevention—even though he is cutting prevention budgets—and integration of care. How can we integrate care with the health sector when billions of pounds have been cut from social care? Some £7 billion has been cut from social care, so 400,000 people now go without care support and over 50,000 over-65s with dementia are admitted to hospital because of a lack of social care.
The Chancellor said yesterday that he is giving more to social care, but he is cutting local authority budgets by £1.3 billion with one hand and is offering councils £650 million to be shared between adult and children’s social care with the other. He is literally asking councils to choose between supporting vulnerable children with social care and supporting vulnerable adults with social care. That is not a serious choice; it is callous, cruel, nasty politics. We need a comprehensive settlement for social care, not the ongoing short-term drips from this Government.
We need a plan for the NHS. Yesterday was an opportunity to turn around our greatest institution, but it is not enough to deal with waiting lists or the crisis in recruiting the staff we need. There is no plan to bring waiting lists down and end rationing of treatment, no plan to recruit the doctors and nurses needed for the future, no plan to reverse the cuts to children’s health services and end privatisation, no plan to rebuild social care and improve care for those living with dementia, no plan to expand community health services and general practice, and no plan to transform services for the future. The record will show, yet again, that you simply cannot trust the Tories with the NHS.
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mel Stride)
May I begin by associating myself and Government Members with the pertinent comments made by the hon. Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) in respect of the terrible tragedy that has befallen Leicester City football club in his constituency?
In 2010, we inherited an economy in disarray. It has been the discipline of a Conservative Government that has brought that back on track, combined with a monumental national effort on the part of millions of determined people in our country. Together we have turned the economy around. We now have near record levels of employment and near record levels of women in employment. Unemployment is at its lowest level since 1975, and we have halved youth unemployment since 2010. Debt is falling, and of course the deficit has been reduced by no less than 80%. Those points were all quite rightly made by my hon. Friends the Members for Harborough (Neil O’Brien), for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan).
In yesterday’s Budget, we showed the British people that their hard work has paid off, because the people of this country now deserve the rewards that are available in our strengthened economy. This Budget is a demonstration that we are coming out of austerity and into a brighter future. Today we have had a full and thoughtful debate on health and public services, and this Budget provides significant additional investment in our precious national health service, our carers, our schools and our police—those serving on the frontline, helping and caring for our families and communities, and working to build a better, safer and healthier Britain.
This Government have ensured an increase in NHS funding every year since 2010, including a pay rise for more than 1 million workers. We took this commitment still further in the Budget, delivering on the Prime Minister’s announcement in June of the largest single public services cash commitment ever made by a peacetime Government —the biggest cash boost to the national health service in its history. Of course, it is essential that every pound of that money is spent wisely so that the national health service is put on a more sustainable footing, and we look forward to Simon Stevens’s 10-year plan setting out exactly what the British people can expect to see.
The Chancellor announced yesterday that within the NHS settlement we will provide a significant uplift in funding for mental health, to the tune of at least £2 billion a year by 2023-24. We are committed to record levels of spending on this vital area, and the NHS plan will include up to £250 million a year by 2023-24 to support people living with poor mental health. It is time to address the stigma and the suffering of those affected by mental health issues and to work towards achieving parity of esteem between mental and physical health. Mental ill health is a pressing need to be addressed, and yesterday’s Budget committed to doing precisely that.
Alongside our NHS settlement, the Budget’s commitment to social care will give a much needed boost to councils, families and patients. The Government will provide £240 million in 2018-19 and a further £650 million next year for local authorities. This money will help people leave hospital when they are able, freeing up hospital beds. All of this builds on the additional £2 billion set aside in last year’s spring Budget for councils to spend on adult care services.
Along with health and social care, a vital pillar of our public services is our world-class education system. Our children deserve the best, so we are already funding schools at record levels—schools will receive over £42 billion of core funding this year—and the results are showing: 86% of schools are now rated good or outstanding, compared with 68% in 2010.
We know that school budgets often do not stretch as far as we would like, so this year’s Budget provides even more support. That is why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced a one-off £400 million in-year funding bonus for schools and sixth-form colleges in England, which means that the typical primary school will receive £10,000 and the typical secondary school will receive £50,000. All of this tops up our existing commitment to invest £23 billion in improving, refurbishing and replacing school buildings between 2016 and 2021. This is a Conservative Government committed to giving every child the greatest possible start in life, and we are investing in education to make sure that happens.
This Budget is the start of a new era for our country. After eight hard years of clearing up the mess left to us by the Labour party, we are now in a position to substantially increase our support for our vital public services. We have done that by facing up to the challenges laid before us in 2010. The crippling deficit, the highest in peacetime history, was the fallout from the wanton and reckless profligacy of the Labour party. A party that is always quick to blame, to point, to impugn and, of course, to promise without the inconvenience of having to deliver. A party that now finds itself captured by those who would return us to the dark days of the crash, and far worse. A party utterly incapable of facing up to the serious responsibilities of government.
It is we, this Government, who took the tough choices and did what we always knew to be right—to be responsible even when that was the hard way, not the easy way. Those tough choices were taken not for reasons of ideology but for reasons of compassion. For we knew all along that if we stuck the course, if we kept our nerve, if we could be brave and true to our values, then we could spare the country from the cruel impossibility of the Labour party’s promises, and bring us to a place where better times were in reach.
That is where we are now. The deficit is fading, real wages are rising, better times are returning and there, right at the heart, lie those things we hold most dear: our national health service and our public services. This is a Budget for them, and I commend it to the House.
Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Michelle Donelan.)
Debate to be resumed tomorrow.
Business Rates Reform
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of 1,459 constituents from across York and a further 400 online; 1,859 residents and business owners are calling for a transformation in business rates. Although some progress was made in the Budget, it is absolutely clear that a fundamental reform of business rates is still needed, as some will lose out as a result of yesterday’s Budget.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of the United Kingdom,
Declares that the current business rates system is out-of-date, unfair and is undermining the viability of our high streets, our hospitality industry and many small businesses across the UK.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to carry out an urgent review and reform of the Business Rates system to help protect the future of the UK High Street and create a level playing field for all businesses.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P002282]
Local Authority Budget Reductions
(6 years ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on the effects of the reduction in local authority budgets, Mr Speaker. I rise this evening as someone who, both as a Member of Parliament and also now as the Mayor of the Sheffield City Region, works closely with our local authorities. Not only do I get to chair the mayoral combined authority of Barnsley, Doncaster, Rotherham and Sheffield, with the Derbyshire Dales, North East Derbyshire, Chesterfield, Bolsover and Bassetlaw as non-constituent members, but, through the Yorkshire Leaders Board, I get to work closely with all of Yorkshire’s local authority leaders, many of whom will be very well known to the Minister. I can tell the House that the work that those local authorities do is of the highest standard of public service, but for too long the reputations of local authorities have been smeared with accusations of profligacy; their councillors have been accused of a lack of concern for value for money and their workers have faced accusations of idleness. In my experience, all these allegations are unfounded, and have served only to undermine the important role that local authorities play in our communities and to serve as justification for eight years of budgetary cuts.
Councils and councillors are improving people’s lives, every day. The work that they do is community-led public service at its best. Although austerity has forced them to make difficult choices, councillors have stretched and continue to stretch every pound available. They listen to the communities that they both serve and live in, and they work tirelessly to shield the most vulnerable from the worst of the austerity agenda. Labour councils, in particular, have refused to buy into the narrative that they are simply “managing decline”.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I apologise for missing the first minute of this debate, Mr Speaker. My local authority in Torfaen has been doing precisely that—cushioning the impact of universal credit. Does my hon. Friend agree that one problem is that if austerity continues in the way it is, local councils simply will be left with only the money to fulfil their statutory functions?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend is exactly right. That is the risk. The stakes in all this are incredibly high.
It is important to make the point that even at the height of austerity, Labour councils’ innovations have seen them deliver new community facilities, form groundbreaking energy networks and use technology to improve social care services.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
If funding continues in the same way, local authorities may not even be able to fulfill their statutory duties. Britain’s adult social care system is deteriorating; the reduction in funding is leading to fewer people getting care. That affects quality and increases pressure on the NHS. Does my hon. Friend agree that local authorities need increased Government funding to place adult social care on a stable and sustainable footing? If things continue like this, we will not even be able to provide the basics in the 21st century.
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend makes an important point. The reality is that councils receive more than 5,000 new claims for adult social care support every single day. The additional funding on offer from the Government is the equivalent of £350 for each new claim. That is significantly less than the cost of a week’s stay in a care home. The announcement of an additional £650 million of grant funding for adult social care is not even half what is actually needed. That only serves to show that the Government are not addressing this massive public policy challenge.
We have seen some examples of innovation by local authorities throughout the country, despite the difficult economic circumstances in which they find themselves. I include among them my own local council, Barnsley, which has established a warm homes campaign that seeks to tackle fuel poverty. Doncaster Council has set up an education and skills commission, with a view to shaping a system that works both for the people of Doncaster and for local businesses. Local authorities are making a difference and giving people in our communities support in difficult and testing times. Their accomplishments are a testament to the hard work of councillors and staff. That should be recognised, not only by the local communities that they serve but by a national Government prepared to trust and empower public servants at the most local level of government.
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
Does my hon. Friend agree that things are particularly difficult in two-tier areas such as Gloucestershire, where my local authority, Stroud District Council, lost all its rate support grant? Although we are part of the business rates initiative that the Government have introduced, we are still very much on the back foot and have had to cut back on staff and a lot of local initiatives.
Dan Jarvis
I absolutely agree. My hon. Friend makes an important point about a common experience right around the country. The reality is that councils are facing a funding crisis. In my area, since 2010, Doncaster and Barnsley councils have both had to make £100 million of cuts; Rotherham has had to make £177 million of cuts; and Sheffield City Council has had to make £390 million of cuts.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour on securing this important debate. On his point about funding cuts, he will know that our local council is doing a fantastic job, despite difficult times, but has he, like me, noticed the number of charities—often small, volunteer-led charities offering bereavement services, youth services or support for victims of domestic violence—that just cannot rely on the previous level of funding so have had to cut back the support that they offer to our local community?
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour is absolutely right that the cuts to council funding have a much wider impact on our society. They simply mean that councils do not have the vital match funding that keeps so many worthwhile local organisations going. The reality is that austerity has caused huge damage to communities up and down the UK. It has undermined the way we protect children at risk, disabled adults and vulnerable older people. It has reduced the quantity and the quality of community services, such as street cleaning, libraries and rubbish collection. Reduced funding also means reduced capacity to invest in prevention and, as such, these cuts represent no more than a false economy. If councils are unable to fund sufficient support for older people—
Dan Jarvis
If councils are unable to fund sufficient support for older people, more of them will end up being admitted to hospital. Less money for children’s services means that our young people will only get by rather than thrive. Failing to invest in public transport stifles economic growth, isolates communities, reduces social mobility and damages our environment. These are just a few examples of an austerity agenda that lacks any form of long-term strategy.
I am proud of the way in which Labour-run councils have dealt with these challenges, even in the face of unfairly distributed funding. The poorest local authorities, which tend to be Labour run, have had their spending cut by £228 per person since 2010, while the richest councils have had their spending cut by only £44 per person. These cuts are not just affecting local residents. Years of pay freezes and below-inflation increases mean that some of our council workers are resorting to food banks, are over-reliant on credit and are asking for financial help from family and friends. Unpaid overtime is now essential to keep services going. Nearly half of our council staff are now thinking about leaving to do something less stressful.
Recent research by my union, Unison, found that 83% of council staff do not think that the quality of services delivered for the public have improved and seven in 10 council employees across South Yorkshire think that local residents are not receiving the help and support that they need. Those are figures that should concern us all.
Following eight years of austerity and some £7 billion of cuts, yesterday’s Budget offered little comfort to our local authorities. Local councils face a funding gap of £7.8 billion by 2025 and are still going to be cut by £1.3 billion next year. Yesterday’s Budget offer of £650 million for the coming year is nowhere near enough to close even the funding gap for social care, let alone address the shortfall in other services.
Once again, local authorities have to make do with short-term fixes. The creation of yet more short-term funding pots is no way to get value for money from public spending. Unless meaningful changes are made, the most vulnerable in our communities will continue to suffer. Central and local government need to work together on the fundamental reform of the way community services are funded. If the era of austerity is truly coming to an end, it needs to feel that way to our local residents.
It seems to me that we live in a time of increasing disenfranchisement and distrust. Across the UK, only 27% think that our system of government is working well and only a similarly small number feel that ordinary people have a big say in decision making. When I look at my home county of Yorkshire, it is easy to understand why. Government spending is nearly £300 per person lower than the national average; transport infrastructure investment is one 10th of that in the capital; and income is only 80% of the national average. These concerns cannot be addressed by the piecemeal redistribution of income that we saw yesterday. They can be addressed only by redistributing power. The Government should be working to empower communities by devolving decision-making closer to the places that it will affect.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank and congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing this matter forward. Just yesterday, the Chancellor announced £350 million for the Belfast city deal, which will benefit my constituency of Strangford. My council of Ards and North Down got together with adjoining councils to make this deal a reality. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, where possible, if councils can come together to secure a city or a regional deal, it is a great and a good way of securing extra funding for the local areas? I spoke to him beforehand, and he knew that my question was coming.
Dan Jarvis
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention; he makes a very important point. I think back to many of the conversations I had with members of the public during the referendum campaign, many of whom used it as an opportunity to vent their frustration against a political system that they felt had not served them well. If we are going to address those feelings of disenfranchisement and alienation, the closer that we can place political decision making to the people who will be affected by those decisions, the better. That is why devolution provides a really important opportunity for the Government to engage with those communities and place not just political power but resources closer to the communities who will be affected by the decisions that are taken.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does he agree that we are also seeing greater inequality as a result of the way in which devolution is being dished out? Some places are advancing with a devolution deal, yet for Yorkshire, where the local authorities desperately want to advance into devolution, it is apparently being denied.
Dan Jarvis
My hon. Friend makes a really important point to which I will return in a moment. I am very grateful for her intervention.
I was talking about the redistribution of power and how, together with investment, this will lead both to better public services and to the re-engagement of people in a common sense of community purpose. I believe that devolution does offer the opportunity to do this. Whether it is a mayoral or an assembly model, when we get devolution right, it offers a fairer and more democratic means of governing and delivering—one where working people have a greater say in the choices that affect their lives and a greater stake in the services on which they rely. We can seek to achieve radical transformative change in the communities that we serve only if those communities control their own destinies. That means this Government listening to those communities, and to the leaders they have elected to represent them.
My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) referred to devolution. Will the Minister say when the local authorities of Yorkshire—I know that he will take a very close interest in these matters, for obvious reasons—will get a response to the recent Yorkshire devolution proposal submitted by me and the council leaders? It is not just a matter of basic courtesy that this happens soon; it is in everybody’s interests—the Government’s and all our local authorities across Yorkshire—to move it forward as quickly as possible.
I said that it was important for the Government to listen to the communities that they are there to serve. Well, I have been listening to what the Government have been saying. I know from ministerial responses to parliamentary questions that I have recently tabled that the Minister’s Department intends to publish what is being referred to as a devolution framework. When will this be published, and what consultation has taken place to underpin it? The Minister is obviously very welcome to say what is going to be in it, although I suspect that he may not wish to take up that opportunity. Whatever is in it, I very much hope that it will be driven by what communities actually want. “One size fits all” will not work in this regard.
If we are to enable the right level of devolution to take place, we need to abandon an economic and political model in which the only hope is for wealth to trickle down and prosperity to ripple out. We must replace it with a three-tier system of government—local, regional and national—giving each tier the powers and resources it needs to make a difference in the communities for which it is responsible. Only if we do this correctly will we put the right people at the heart of decision making, end the status quo whereby so many people have become disenfranchised, and allow communities to overcome the challenges they face and to thrive. Greater funding and stronger powers for our local authorities should be the first stage of that journey—but yesterday’s Budget represented, I am afraid, another missed opportunity.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) on securing this important debate. His pride and commitment to his local area is clear. I share his passion for local government and join him in paying tribute to the incredibly important work that our local councillors up and down the country do every single day. As someone who is passionate about local government, I thank him for sharing his knowledge and experiences of his area. It is always important for me to hear from colleagues about their areas and what they feel is happening on the ground.
Before I respond to the hon. Gentleman’s points, I will set out my vision for the role of local government, which consists of three broad areas: first, driving economic growth; secondly, helping the most vulnerable in our society; and, thirdly, building strong communities. I will take those three areas in turn and deal with the questions and points raised by the hon. Gentleman, as well as talking in particular about the area that he has the privilege to represent.
I will start with economics and finances. In this financial year, councils in the Sheffield city region, including Rotherham, Sheffield, Doncaster and Barnsley, had aggregated core spending power of just over £1 billion. Core spending power is the standard measure of a local authority’s financial resources. It rightly includes money not just from the central Government grant, but from locally raised council tax, the local area’s share of the business rates pot, and specific Government grants for things such as adult social care and the new homes bonus. Core spending power across the Sheffield city region is up every year since 2016, and across the country core spending power will see a real-terms increase in this financial year.
Beyond grants from central Government, driving economic growth is the only sustainable way to ensure the vibrancy of our local communities and to raise the vital money that we need to fund our local public services. Business rates retention is one such opportunity. Indeed, across the Sheffield city region, local authorities will generate around £16 million in additional funds this year as a result of keeping the proceeds from the economic growth that they have helped to create. Next year it is estimated that that figure will increase to £24 million.
That is not the only incentive for local growth, however, as it sits alongside the Government’s other work to support local authorities’ wider ambitions through local growth and devolution deals. For example, £52 million has been invested in a business investment fund, which will unlock direct investment in small and medium-sized enterprises across the Sheffield city region. An additional £3 million has been invested to speed up the delivery of the state-of-the-art Supertram network, which I was delighted to see launched last week by the hon. Gentleman and the rail Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson). Finally, a further £36 million has been invested in the region’s integrated infrastructure plan, opening up new employment sites, delivering new homes and fuelling the growth of the advanced manufacturing innovation district between Sheffield and Rotherham. As evidenced by the devolution deal, which I know the hon. Gentleman is passionate about, and the £30 million a year in incremental funding that will come with that deal, the Government will continue to work hand in hand with the new Mayor to back the Sheffield city region and to drive local economic growth to fund local services.
I turn to my second theme. One of the most undeniably crucial roles that local government continues to play is helping the most vulnerable in our society. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is local authorities that support the elderly, the disabled and our children in need. We owe councils an enormous debt of gratitude for the incredibly important work that they do, and this Government are backing local authorities to carry out those vital duties. Last year’s Budget provided an additional £2 billion for social care. Just last month, another £240 million was announced for social care winter funding this year, and at yesterday’s Budget, the Chancellor announced that a further £650 million will be provided for care services in the next financial year.
It is not just about money. The increased collaboration that this investment has fuelled between local authorities and the NHS has delivered real benefits on the ground in local communities. I am pleased to say that social care has freed up 949 beds a day since the February 2017 peak, which represents a 39% reduction in social care delayed transfers of care. In the Sheffield city region, Barnsley is among the best performing local authorities in the country, achieving zero social care delayed transfers of care according to the most recently available statistics. I pay tribute to the local authority, and others in places such as Doncaster and Sheffield, for their terrific work in this regard.
The Government’s troubled families programme is another area in which we are making amazing strides to support our society’s most vulnerable families. Indeed in Barnsley, the safer neighbourhood service and the early start, prevention and sufficiency service are bringing together council services—including family centres, targeted youth support, education and the youth offending service—to improve outcomes for local residents. We have heard about the importance of prevention, and indeed across the Sheffield city region the troubled families programme is working with over 13,000 families and benefiting from the more than £25 million of available funding.
One of the unique privileges I have as the Local Government Minister is to travel around the country to talk to families participating in this programme and to see at first hand its life-changing work. I am proud to say that £1 billion of funding has been committed to the troubled families programme over this spending cycle. Nationally, more than 130,000 families are already achieving significant and sustained progress. For example, for families on the programme six to 12 months after the intervention, the proportion of children designated as children in need has decreased by 14% compared with the period just before the start of the intervention. In almost 17,000 of these families, one or more adults had succeeded in moving into continuous employment. The programme has ensured that work, and the transformative effects that it can bring to a whole family, is never off the table.
Finally, we can all see that local authorities’ work in building strong communities that thrive and move forward together is beneficial not just to them, but to wider society as well. This work, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned, is absolutely vital. Strong communities are cohesive. It is with that in mind that the Government have announced a £19 million fund to help to ease pressures on local services resulting from recent migration. The fund has already committed £484,000 to Barnsley Council, partly to support activities to understand communities’ concerns and to help to address them.
Strong communities need to be connected. The roads that our constituents travel on every day form a key part of our daily experiences. That was why my right hon. Friend the Chancellor announced yesterday that £420 million will be made available this year for local authorities to fix potholes and carry out other road repairs, which will ensure safer and better roads across our communities. Strong communities also need vibrant high streets to bring us together and to ensure that our towns have beating hearts. That is why the Government have just announced a £675 million fund to support high streets, which local authorities will take the lead in developing.
Lastly, strong communities nurture and celebrate their open green spaces—providing sanctuary from the busy world, enabling us to come together to keep fit and healthy, and helping to make our areas more pleasant places to live. The pocket parks fund, which was launched two years ago, has helped to transform neglected and derelict spaces. It has led to the creation of more than 80 new green spaces for communities to enjoy in urban areas across the country. I am delighted that Barnsley is home to one of these pocket parks—the community pocket park at Bradford Forster Square. I am also pleased to say that the Government intend to build on this success with a second round of funding for pocket parks, which will provide access to new smaller parks and vital green spaces for our communities in areas where there are limited opportunities today.
The hon. Gentleman asked a specific question about devolution. He will know that I am not the Minister with particular responsibility for that, so I hope he will bear with me when I cannot give him the exact response he wants. My understanding is that the Government and the Minister responsible are considering the matter of One Yorkshire devolution, which the hon. Gentleman rightly identifies as being of some personal interest to me. There is no fixed timeframe for a response that I am aware of, but if there is one, I will be sure to write to him in short order.
On the hon. Gentleman’s broader question about the devolution framework, my understanding is that the Minister with responsibility for devolution and the northern powerhouse will publish that towards the end of this year. However, again, if the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will write to him when I can get the exact date from my colleague, if one has been published.
On that note, I agree wholeheartedly with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s argument about devolving power to local people. He is obviously an exponent of that, and I hope he will agree that this Government have undertaken an ambitious and significant devolution programme to bring government closer to people up and down this country. I think that we are all excited to see that programme continue.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Gentleman again for calling this important debate. It is a real privilege for me to have this job and to champion local government in Westminster. Whether it is driving economic growth, caring for the most vulnerable or building stronger communities, local councils in Barnsley, throughout the Sheffield city region and across the country do an important and incredible job. I am grateful for their dedication, and I will continue to ensure that their voice is heard and that they get the support they need and deserve.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Freedom of Information (Designation as Public Authority and Amendment) Order 2018
(6 years ago)
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The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Freedom of Information (Designation as Public Authority and Amendment) Order 2018.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson, I believe for the first time.
The purpose of the draft order is to bring the public functions of the National Police Chiefs Council within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act. That is to ensure continuity in the scope of the Act by extending it to the council in the same way as it included the predecessor organisation, the Association of Chief Police Officers.
As to the detail of the draft order, section 5(1)(a) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, as amended, enables the Secretary of State to designate any person as a public authority if they appear to the Secretary of State to exercise functions of a public nature. Where a body is designated as a public authority, it is also necessary—under section 7(5) of the Act—to specify each of the body’s functions as appear to the Secretary of State to be of a public nature. Only those functions specified in the schedule in relation to article 3 of this order will be subject to the Act.
As with the ACPO, it appears to the Secretary of State that the NPCC exercises functions of a public nature in relation to all its functions. The council provides national police co-ordination and leadership, and brings together police forces throughout the UK, as well as in the armed services and the Crown dependencies. Some of the council’s co-ordination and leadership functions are delivered in conjunction with the College of Policing, the professional body that provides the policing skills and knowledge necessary to prevent crime and to protect the public.
The functions set out in the draft order reflect those in clause 7 of the collaboration agreement that established the NPCC. The Secretary of State considers that each of those functions makes a fundamental contribution to the policing of the state in such a way that they are, together and individually, functions of a public nature that are eligible for inclusion in an order made under section 5 of the Freedom of Information Act.
I confirm that the NPCC has been consulted about the functions covered in the draft order. It views its inclusion under the Freedom of Information Act positively and is in agreement with the Secretary of State about the scope of the order. We welcome the constructive way in which the NPCC has engaged with the Home Office in drawing up the order.
In addition to designating the NPCC, this draft instrument removes the designation of ACPO. That is a question of legislative tidying up, because ACPO has been liquidated and no longer exists. This amendment will update the statute book to reflect that. The liquidators of ACPO were consulted, as required, and are content.
I recognise that the draft order has taken some time to get to this stage. I made a statement on 6 November last year that the Government would introduce an order to ensure continuity in transparency following the winding up of ACPO and the taking on of its functions by the NPCC. As I have mentioned, there has been a statutory consultation with the new body to ensure that all necessary functions were covered by this order as appropriate.
I should make it clear that the NPCC ensured against any retraction in transparency during the transition period, when taking over the functions of ACPO. The council publishes large amounts of information proactively and responded to information requests voluntarily during the short period that it was not formally covered by the Freedom of Information Act. I am sure the Committee agrees that that is highly commendable.
The draft order builds on the solid foundations of the order that brought ACPO under the Freedom of Information Act by providing a legally enforceable right to request information of the NPCC. I hope that hon. Members on both sides of the Committee agree that the order is an important step to maintaining transparency, and that they welcome the new rights of access to information that it will bring.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hanson.
The previous Labour Government introduced the Freedom of Information Act, and the Opposition wholeheartedly support the draft order. As the Minister suggested, he responded to my parliamentary question back in September, so Labour has been calling for the measure for some time, as has the NPCC. As he rightly said, the NPCC has been behaving as if it were already covered by the Act, which we agree is thoroughly commendable.
I want to push the Minister on his point about the information that the NPCC publishes proactively and question the extent to which the Home Office can require information to be published or the NPCC to respond. For example, in the past 18 months or so, the NPCC has been collating and publishing information on acid attacks. I believe there is a commitment to continue publishing such information. Was that at the request of the Home Office? Is the NPCC obligated under any statutory instrument to publish such information at the request of the Government?
The NPCC has published statistics on Operation Hydrant, which is the investigation into historical child sex abuse, but the statistics it is publishing are headline stats on the number of individuals involved. How often is the NPCC required to report on that? What elements should it be reporting on? For example, should it be reporting on the progress or length of the investigations?
The NPCC also reports on automatic number plate recognition and its functions. Is that a Home Office request, too, under proactive publication? Given the reasons it publishes on ANPR—the invasion of people’s individual privacy—would it not be beneficial for it to report on facial recognition and the implications for privacy and security? It is being used by police forces across the country, particularly the Met and South Wales.
Finally, will the Minister confirm that the extension of the Freedom of Information Act covers correspondence between the NPCC and the Government? For instance, does it cover the letter that the NPCC reportedly sent to the Treasury last Tuesday, threatening legal action on the basis of the Government’s proposed pension changes? I would be grateful for that clarification, and we wholeheartedly support the order.
Mr Hurd
I thank the hon. Lady for her support and her constructive approach. It has taken too long to get to this point. While I think we can all agree on that, I hope we all also agree that the NPCC is now formally bound into the Freedom of Information Act. It is a particular pleasure to see the chair of the NPCC gracing us with her presence today. She missed the recognition from all parts of the Committee of the extremely constructive and commendable way in which the council has behaved in this interim period.
There is no statutory obligation to publish statistics. I am not aware of any specific requests from the Home Office, but I will check and reply to the hon. Lady. As I pointed out, the NPCC already voluntarily behaves as if it is covered by the Freedom of Information Act. Since 2012, ACPO and the NPCC have, on average, received 250 to 300 requests a year. If the legislation is passed, it will take effect almost immediately. The NPCC will then be covered by existing legislation.
What is available to the public to request is as per the rules. The hon. Lady can be congratulated on her cheeky and opportunistic attempt to bring up the issue of police funding and pensions, but there is no need for the public to request that under the Freedom of Information Act because they can simply read about it in the newspaper.
Question put and agreed to.
Agriculture Bill (Sixth sitting)
(6 years ago)
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The Committee divided: - Ayes: 6 / Noes: 9 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 9 / Noes: 6 - Question accordingly agreed to.
The Chair
I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing amendment 70, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert—
“(h) supporting the delivery of improved public health outcomes.
(1A) Support under subsection (1)(h) may include, but is not limited to, measures to:
(a) increase the availability, affordability, diversity, quality and marketing of fruit and vegetables and pulses,
(b) reduce farm antibiotic and related veterinary product use, and antimicrobial resistance in harmful micro-organisms, through improved animal health and improved animal welfare,
(c) provide support for farmers to diversify out of domestic production of foods where there may be reduced demand due to health concerns,
(d) reduce harm from use of chemicals on farms, and
(e) reduce pesticide residues in food.”.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I was going to share with the shadow Minister what I have just consumed for lunch, which I think will make my point. In the Members’ Tea Room, I had a bowl of delicious vegetable and pearl barley broth, which I am sure would be categorised as a good thing to have. I had two Ryvita, which I believe are also quite good for one; they certainly look like they do the trick, whatever the trick might be. I had a plum, which I was assured by Gladys was a Worcestershire plum, which will please my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire. It is all going well so far. I had a cube of delicious west country cheddar. Despite what the wretched “Eatwell Guide” says, we know that dairy products are very good for our diet and that we need dairy, so that was quite healthy.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I am just checking that the hon. Gentleman knows that his contribution will be on the record. I, too, had a lovely, delicious lunch in the Tea Room, but I am mindful that at our workplace we have high quality, nutritious food that is—people forget this—subsidised.
Simon Hoare
Of course; one is always on the record. I then spoiled my lunch by having some blackcurrant and English apple cake. The point I make, by sharing my lunch menu with the Committee and, as the hon. Lady reminds me, the whole world, as people tune in agog from every time zone to watch the Committee— [Interruption.]
Simon Hoare
“Gripped”, says the hon. Lady. The point I make is serious: we cannot put an onus on our food producers for what consumers choose to consume or what the processors decide to process.
Simon Hoare
I will not give way. There have to be Food Standards Agency regulations and all the rest of it, but to put the onus of responsibility for foodstuffs on the food producers who produce but do not sell themselves is either Stalinist or draconian. The shadow Minister has a great knowledge of the vagaries of left-wing thinking, and I may be entirely wrong to call him a Stalinist—he may be a Maoist, a Leninist or a Trotskyist. I am not quite sure.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
I do not intend to disclose what I had for lunch. However, on the point made by the hon. Member for Darlington, I should say that Members have access to a wide-ranging diet and the money to buy healthy food. Why, then, is the body mass index of Members on the green Benches so representative of the country as a whole?
Simon Hoare
My right hon. Friend makes a valid point; I say that with some smugness, having lost three stone since the start of the year. I have another two to go, and the cake did not help.
Simon Hoare
I am unleashing my inner Tom Watson, which is a scary prospect. However, this is a serious point. We as policy makers should focus our attention on the educators. People need more education. We are entirely wrong to knock our supermarkets, which are the principal food retailers in this country. They provide food on the shelves at all price points and of ranging quality, allowing people access to the fullest and widest range of foodstuffs ever available to food consumers in our history.
Simon Hoare
I will not give way. I am also told by my local branch of the National Farmers Union that at no time has a lower percentage of domestic income been spent on food than today. I take that as a rather good piece of news.
We have to ensure that people have education and a range of choices on the shelves. That is why it is important to have a diverse agricultural sector and food production industry in this country. To put the onus on those producers would be entirely inappropriate. If the hon. Member for Stroud pushes his amendment to a vote, I will oppose it.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
I rise to support amendments 70 and 51. In response to the hon. Member for North Dorset, I should say that it is unfair to say that either amendment places an onus on the producer regarding what goes on to the plate of individuals who decided what or what not to buy.
Both amendments, in particular amendment 70, seek to increase the availability, affordability, diversity, quality and marketing of fruit, vegetables and other items. The Bill seeks to take a wider view of the agricultural sector—to see it right from the start to the end. We are looking now at where the Secretary of State can place moneys to emphasise and promote. When we talk about public health, one aspect is the food itself but another is the overriding story—and I use that word carefully. There is the mental health approach that flows from good quality food, when people understand the nutritional value of the purchase and the story back to the individual farm or farmers who produced it.
This country’s health should be broader than just the narrow nutritional value and include children’s understanding of where their meat, vegetables and fruit come from. One aspect, raised and agreed across the House, is the importance of the educational element. That is the responsibility of farmers but also of communities, parents and the Government. Should our farmers not benefit financially if they open their farms, against some very strict health and safety protocols, to allow children in to see where the potatoes and carrots grow in the fields, as they do in my constituency of East Lothian? That is an important element of growing up that, along with seasonality, has become separated from a lot of children’s and citizens’ understanding of the availability of food.
Both the amendments, in particular amendment 70, lend emphasis to that, to give the Secretary of State the opportunity to provide support to that wider educational and nutritional need. It is not a case of the Secretary of State dictating what does or does not go on to somebody’s plate or what they choose to do with food when they purchase it; the issue is about the ability to put that holistic view envisaged by the Bill and to allow farmers to receive payments and support for the good work that they can do at their stage.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
The amendment proposes allowing the Secretary of State to enhance payments to farmers. If there were a vegetarian, or even a vegan, Secretary of State who decided, after reading one report one week and another the next, that eating meat was no longer in the public interest and no longer healthy, would the amendment also allow the Secretary of State to remove all payments to the red meat industry?
Martin Whitfield
I hark back to the vote we previously had on the difference between “must” and “may” and probably leave it at that.
The only other point that I want to raise is that the producers, as well as being under an obligation to produce, would, under amendment 70, be allowed funding for research and development for improved crop varieties and cultivation methods. That will be important going into the future.
The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
I want to take the amendments from this group in turn, starting with amendment 51. Elements of the policy and the purposes that we have spelled out will often lead to incidental improvements in and contributions to public health, which I will come to describe.
A number of hon. Members have pointed out that this is predominantly a consumer choice issue. The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England do a lot of work to promote healthy eating.
Sandy Martin
I said on Second Reading that certain horticultural products, such as broad beans, are not easily found in the shops. We may well have a situation where, because of a change in demand and education in this country, people want to move to different foodstuffs, but it is not easy for farmers to change over. Does the Minister accept that there may need to be investment in farms to enable them to change over to other foodstuffs? Where does he see that investment coming in this Bill, if not in this amendment?
George Eustice
I was going to say that that could be provided for under clause 1(2), which enables us to support businesses to improve their productivity if that were necessary. Broad beans, as a leguminous crop, often need less or no fertiliser at all, so that can be an environmental benefit. The current EU scheme enables broad beans and other leguminous crops to be used as one of the contributory factors to the environmental focus area. That is already recognised in the existing scheme, and there would be nothing to prevent us from recognising that in a future scheme.
Under subsection (2), a lot of things can be done to support the delivery of the local sustainably produced food objective. In the last 20 years, there has been exponential growth in consumer interest in food provenance, large growth and expansion of farm shops, and growth in box schemes and farmers markets—I know the hon. Member for Stroud has a well known farmers market in his constituency. There has been huge growth in consumer interest in this area. Under subsection (2), it would be possible for the Government to design a grant scheme to support farmers to open farm shops and to develop their own marketing and box schemes.
Subsection (1) is on the purposes for the delivery of environmental goods. We can pursue a lot of policies under those purposes and objectives that would deliver increased health outcomes. For instance, under subsection (1)(f) on animal health, we could support schemes that lead to a reduction in the use of antibiotics, which would have an impact on public health and safeguard some of our critical antibiotics for the medical sphere.
Under subsection (1)(a), as I described earlier, it would be absolutely possible for us to support an integrated pest management approach, leading to a reduction in the use of pesticides where they were seen to be of concern. Under subsection (1)(a) we could also support a pasture-based livestock system; there is some evidence, although mixed, that livestock such as sheep and cattle raised on pasture and grass have higher levels of omega-3 oils, which are good for public health. There are a number of areas where the purposes we have set out under clause 1(1) also reinforce public health measures.
Martin Whitfield
I apologise for my slight slowness; the Minister discussed subsection (2) and suggested that productivity extended beyond the productivity of the field or produce to a wider concept of the word. Is that correct? The end of that paragraph mentions
“agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity.”
Should that not therefore read “business” rather than “activity”, which suggests the activity of growing and maturing livestock?
George Eustice
I discussed that with parliamentary counsel. The issue is the subject of a later clause and no doubt we will debate it in more detail then: this is not a narrow economist’s definition of productivity—it is not part of the so-called “productivity puzzle” that people are trying to solve. We are using productivity in its rounder sense, which could include reducing costs, reducing inputs, adding value and increasing the price of things. It could also include—it is very explicit about this—setting up a new business, which could be a retail business allied to a farm business.
Jenny Chapman
In the Minister’s desire to resist our amendment, he keeps referring to the clause, saying that he could do this and it is possible to do that already, and therefore our amendment is not necessary. He does not seem to want to have his boss’s hands tied—his boss to be told that he ought to do something or that he needs to do something. I just want to know why that is.
George Eustice
As a Government, we have set out our approach and what we intend to do with these powers. We have already published some policy papers alongside this Bill, which address many of those issues. The Secretary of State has talked about public access to the countryside and the role of farms in educating children, so we have set out clearly in the policy documents that accompany the Bill what we intend to do with these powers. Come the next election, I am sure that the Opposition will have manifesto commitments that will set out their approach and what they intend to do with the powers.
Another issue was raised by a number of hon. Members: that, fundamentally, the decisions about public health and healthy eating are very much around consumer understanding, consumer knowledge and consumer choice. That is why Public Health England has the “Eatwell” plate that it promotes. We have obviously already implemented the first chapter of the childhood obesity plan. We have introduced a levy on sugary soft drinks. We are currently working on the sort of second chapter of the childhood obesity plan.
We take the issue very seriously. Work on it is led by the Department of Health; it is very high up on that Department’s agenda. It is for the Department of Health to lead on and for us to support, and it goes outside the scope of this particular Bill, which is very much about schemes to support farming, the farmed landscape and our environment.
I will give a final example about sugar, which was raised by some Members. When quotas on sugar beet production were removed, some people said, “Shouldn’t we keep sugar beet quotas? That would be a way of restricting the growing of things that we think are bad for public health.” However, the reality is that the most powerful thing was the introduction of a levy on soft drinks; the value of the sugar that goes into a soft drink is actually tiny, and messing around with the price of sugar is not what delivers the outcome. What delivers the outcome is a levy on sugary drinks that drives policies of reformulation, and that is why the levy has been a success.
We know that some of these measures to try to mess with the supply side of the chain are actually blunt instruments when it comes to delivering public health outcomes.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I mentioned in the few moments that I had earlier the recent research into food deserts. Particularly in urban areas, there are vast estates where it is very difficult for people to get access to healthy food. As I suggested, we could use this Bill to address that. It is not about the growing of the food; it is perhaps about setting up shorter supply chains, so that the food can get to these places. Maybe it could be about setting up farmers markets in local areas that do not normally have access to them. That would also help local farmers who produce the goods to find a market that would probably pay them a bit more than the supermarkets might.
George Eustice
There will be a place for those sorts of enterprises, although not for all. However, as I said earlier, we are looking at what we could do alongside, for instance, a county farms offer to support some of those peri-urban schemes. Sometimes they are box schemes, but they are community-led schemes in particular areas, quite often in our cities. I made it clear earlier that we believe we would be able to support those farms, under both subsections (1) and (2). That option exists, so it is there already if we should want to support it. We have been clear that we are exploring this idea and considering it. It will not be for everyone. There will always still be a place for larger-scale productions supplying the supermarket multiples where most people will get their food and where there is already quite a wide choice. However, it will be an option for some and we have kept the door open to supporting it.
To conclude, these are unnecessary amendments and many of the health benefits we have alluded to in our White Paper are dealt with through the existing measures in clause 1.
Kerry McCarthy
The Minister does not seem to have mentioned the food policy or food strategy or whatever it is called. I heard on the grapevine that it has been kicked into the long grass. Will he confirm that that is not the case and that work is still being done?
George Eustice
The food strategy is alive and well. The hon. Lady is right and it is in my notes and I intended to mention it. We have a food entrepreneur, Henry Dimbleby, from the Leon food chain, who is doing a piece of work at the moment on the food strategy that will obviously complement what we are doing here. However, we believe we have the powers in the Bill to do the things that we want to do in this space.
On that basis, I hope that those who have spoken to amendment 51 and 70 will consider withdrawing them, because I believe that the issues they are trying to cover are already covered in the Bill.
Dr Drew
To start with, I declare an interest: my wife has a stall on Stroud farmers market every fortnight. Please come along to see the wonderful wares that she sells. I had to get that on the record.
This has been an interesting and wide-ranging debate. Clearly, we are not going to come to a meeting of minds, but the issue will come back. I keep reiterating the fact that the White Paper, “Health and Harmony”, and the issue of public health which it identified as a crucial element in the way in which the food chain functions in an Agriculture Bill, are not going to go away. It may be that this is not the time to force a Division. I make that clear, but we make no apology for saying that we will come back on this because it is important that we understand that people out there may not understand the legislative process but they understand what they think should be the elements of what we do for the future of the policy.
I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East says on the food strategy. It would be helpful if the Government were clear on when it comes forward, as it should be with the environment Bill, because these are interrelated. This is the problem with legislation. We only have one side of the coin, when we need both sides to make sense of the totality of the Government’s approach.
It is important that somehow health is in the Bill and I hope the Minister will reflect on this. Public health matters because what people eat depends entirely on their access to food and its availability and what they can afford. It is also to do with the fact that to some extent we have an influence, through production and distribution.
I hope the Minister has listened to the debate. We will not push the matter to a Division at this time, but it will come back because people feel very strongly about it, whether it concerns food poverty, or purely obesity and diabetes, or the reality of how food is increasingly the reason people’s life expectancy is determined. I understand what the Minister has said and I know there are lots of contingent points in his argument. However, I hope we can extract that and at a future time clarify where public health is in relation to the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Jenny Chapman
I beg to move amendment 74, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert—
‘(1A) No financial assistance may be given by the Secretary of State in relation to the purpose under subsection (1)(f) unless the practice for which financial assistance is to be given pays full regard to the welfare requirements of animals as sentient beings.”
This amendment would ensure that any financial assistance provided in relation to ‘the health and welfare of livestock’ purpose in Clause 1 recognises the welfare requirements of animals as sentient beings.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 75, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert—
‘(1A) No financial assistance may be given by the Secretary of State in relation to the purpose under subsection (1)(e) unless the practice for which financial assistance is to be given complies with—
(a) any part of retained EU law (within the meaning of section 6 of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018) relating to the protection of the environment which has not ceased to have effect as a result of any agreement between the UK and the European Union setting the terms of the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and
(b) any standards which were enforceable by an EU entity or a public authority anywhere in the UK before exit day, including principles contained in Article 191 of TFEU, and which will be enforceable by an entity or public authority in England after exit day.
(c) the principles contained in Article 191 of TFEU, for the purposes of this subsection, are—
(i) the precautionary principle as it relates to the environment,
(ii) the principle that preventive action should be taken to avert environmental damage,
(iii) the principle that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source, and
(iv) the principle that the polluter should pay.”
This amendment would ensure that any financial assistance provided in relation to ‘environmental hazards’ would ensure that environmental principles continue to apply in the UK after exit day.
Amendment 71, in clause 1, page 2, line 18, at end insert—
‘(5) Financial assistance under subsection (1) for protecting or improving the welfare of livestock shall only be given to farmers who have—
(a) demonstrated that their livestock welfare practice meets or exceeds the higher animal welfare standard specified by the Secretary of State for the welfare of livestock, or
(b) given, to the satisfaction of the Secretary of State, an undertaking to achieve the higher animal welfare standard specified by the Secretary of State for the welfare of livestock.
(6) Any standard specified by the Secretary of State for the purposes of subsection (5) must set standards that are higher than those required by legislation governing the welfare of livestock.”
This amendment would ensure that public money is only be used to support genuinely high standards of animal welfare. The Government has confirmed it will define a ‘higher animal welfare standard’ by 2020.
Jenny Chapman
Mr Wilson, it is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship as your constituency neighbour. I know that you have many farmers in your constituency so I hope that you are finding our deliberations interesting and stimulating.
I have particularly enjoyed the contributions of the hon. Member for North Dorset. He has made insightful remarks on amendments 44 and 45. However, I take issue with him when he talks about a rural-urban split between our parties; that is not something that I recognise. Part of our reason for tabling many of these amendments, including the ones to which I am about to speak, is that we want to future-proof this legislation. We want to make sure that the outcomes that we probably all desire are more assured, that we can be more confident and, more importantly, that farmers and those involved in agriculture can have more certainty about what the future might mean for them. It is important that we get this right.
It has been said to me several times that the Bill is a huge opportunity for the sector and I agree. This is the first time for many years that the UK has had the opportunity to decide precisely how it wants to support farming, food producers and those involved with caring for our landscape. We need to take this opportunity seriously and grab it with both hands. I know that many interested parties are watching carefully what we say and the tone in which we say it—and also what it is that finds its way into the Bill. It is no good to the sector to hear warm words from Ministers and be given hints at possible future decisions.
Things laid out in consultation papers are very interesting, but they do not provide the certainty that is going to be needed. Until now, support for farming has come from obligations that we have had as a member of the European Union, which have been very clear and long term, though imperfect in very many ways—I would not dare to argue. Those obligations will now become discretionary, to a certain extent, and it is possible that at the next general election, whenever that may be, there will need to be a chapter in every one of our manifestos about what we think we ought to do to support farmers and agriculture. It would be helpful if we had a clearer framework, which could be laid out in the Bill and is currently lacking, within which those policy decisions and priorities could be placed. Unless we do that farmers are going to be left in an uncertain position, subject to the whims and competing priorities of different political parties—and, perhaps, pressures from minority parties. That is not a secure framework within which to proceed.
I am not a Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs farming agricultural specialist, as the Committee will know. I am here because I have been involved with our Brexit team. I have been asked not to bang on too much about retained EU law and that side of things in my contribution. I am also mindful of the fact that if we maintain the pace that we have achieved so far in our considerations, we will actually conclude in the first week in April, and given that the purpose of the Bill is to prepare us for our departure from the EU, that would be far from satisfactory; so I will try to get on with things.
As well as speaking to amendments 74 and 75, I wish to speak in support of amendment 71, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East. I must say that since I was elected in 2010 I have been inspired and encouraged by the approach she takes to many of these issues, particularly food, reducing waste and the availability of quality food. She has an incredibly impressive track record on those issues and it is great that she is here. I hope the Government will benefit from her observations as we proceed with the Bill.
Mr Goodwill
The hon. Lady is making some very good points. Does she agree that on animal welfare, it was the European Union that was holding us back, and when we legislated on veal crates, dry sow stalls or battery cages it was the Europeans who prevented us from blocking goods coming into the UK that were not produced to the same high standards as here? Indeed, when live sheep exports were going to be blocked it was the EU single market rules that meant we could not do that.
Jenny Chapman
The right hon. Gentleman is right—we are world leaders, and we are very proud of that. What I am trying to achieve with these amendments is that we maintain that position. I will go on to explain why later, but it is not difficult to imagine a future Government, under pressure perhaps to secure trade deals, feeling pressure to diminish our world-leading standards. None of us here today would want that to happen, but an assurance from a Minister in Committee or even at the Dispatch Box has nothing like the same weight as something written into our law. That is the issue; it is about maintaining the position that the right hon. Gentleman quite rightly highlights.
To explain this simply, rather than banging on about retained EU law, once the UK leaves the EU we will no longer be subject to EU law. As many of our laws and, importantly, the principles that underpin them are or have been previously held within EU law, the UK now can decide which EU laws it wants to adopt fully into UK legislation. EU laws on animal sentience, environmental standards and animal welfare standards are among the laws that have not been adequately taken back by the UK; I expect the Minister is thinking that, and it was indicated when we had the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 as it went through the House of Commons. I say “adequately” because they have been transferred to some extent and I understand that, but the status of the laws now means that they are too easily amendable and do not provide the same safeguards as primary legislation does, or as they would if they were amendments that had been put into this Bill.
It would be a mistake on the part of the Government and Parliament to allow that situation to continue. We could take this opportunity now. It was hinted that the Government would do this when they could, and they could be doing it now. Why are the Government choosing not to take this opportunity at this stage?
My hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) made a good speech on environmental standards when we debated the EU (Withdrawal) Bill in Committee of the whole House. Several of my hon. Friends in this Committee contributed to that debate, and Members on both sides were concerned about the issue—I do not know whether the Minister remembers this. We are trying to ensure that the environmental principles set out in article 191 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union are enshrined in our law. These are the precautionary principle in relation to the environment, the principle that preventive action should be taken to avert environmental damage, the principle that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source, and the “polluter pays” principle. We feel—I think most of us here would agree—that these need to continue to be recognised and applied after exit day.
It is not unique to EU law to have these principles enshrined in this way as they are enshrined in law in other policy areas, and there is no good reason why these should not be included in this Bill. The principles are not there to make us feel good so that we can look to them and say, “We put this into law and that shows what a great country we are,” although it does do that. They have three key roles: they are an aid to the interpretation of the law, they guide future decision-making, and they are a basis for legal challenge in court. The EU (Withdrawal) Act did not allow us to replicate the legal certainty that we currently have. At the moment, we have that legal certainty, but when we leave the EU at the end of March that legal certainty—depending on the deal that has been achieved—will no longer be in place. As my hon. Friend said when we debated the Act, we need this
“to be effective custodians of the environment and to be world leaders when it comes to environmental standards.”—[Official Report, 15 November 2017; Vol. 631, c. 495.]
It is very important that we embed the principles in the way our policy operates. I have to say that to his credit the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recognised this, but the Government continue to argue that environmental principles are interpretive principles, and that as such they should not form part of the law itself.
I do not think that they are simply guidance. The environmental protection requirements should be integrated into the definition and implementation of our policies and activities, in particular with a view to promoting sustainable development. They are a vital aid to understanding the role and function of existing legislation, as well as being, as the Secretary of State said, an interpretive tool for decision makers and, if necessary, the courts.
There is also an important aspect to all of this around devolution. The principles provide the beginnings of a framework within which the devolved nations, as well as England, can operate. There is significant anxiety, which we may get on to in later clauses, about how exactly support for farming and agriculture might work in the future when we think about the Welsh Government, the Northern Ireland Assembly or the Scottish Government’s desire to do things—as they have done previously, to be fair—slightly differently. Why would they not want to do that? There needs to be a shared and agreed framework within which that can happen.
Another point is that the UK’s duty to comply with the environmental principles does not end when we leave the EU, because they are contained in other treaties that have nothing to do with our membership of the European Union. The way we comply with those treaties needs to be somewhere in domestic law. I will listen to what the Minister says, but there is a risk that in the future that it will not. That is why we think it is right that these principles be incorporated into this Bill. There are clear examples of other laws where this kind of approach has been taken. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 talks about it being
“the duty of every employer to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, the health, safety and welfare at work of all his employees.”
The Countryside Act 1968 confers functions on an agency for it to exercise for the
“conservation and enhancement of the natural beauty and amenity of the countryside.”
It is not unusual to have this approach.
The environmental principles set out in article 191 of the treaty form an essential component of environmental law. If the Government’s stated aim of equivalence on day one of Brexit is to be achieved, these principles need to be part of domestic law on day one and the public should be able to rely on them. The courts should be able to apply them and public bodies need to know that they have been following them. I appreciate that we are talking about transitional arrangements, but that only makes it all the more uncertain for people and shows all the more need for clarity. In the absence of any of the other promised legislation so far—we are anticipating several Bills that are yet to materialise—this has been our only opportunity to get the principles in a Bill so that they can be enshrined in UK law.
Amendments 74 and 75 would impose duties on the Secretary of State. We are going to come back to this again and again: we are not satisfied that powers are sufficient to provide us with the confidence we need to give this Bill support. What we want are duties. The principles that safeguard the environment ought to inform the way taxpayers’ money is spent. The way the public view all this in the future is going to change and the Government need to be ready for that. They have had a buffer in the EU until now, and much as members of the public might shake their heads or roll their eyes at some support for farmers, they are one step removed. That is not going to be the case in future. People are going to turn up at Members’ surgeries saying, “I am not happy with the way my taxpayers’ money is being spent” if they feel it is being distributed for things that they do not believe are appropriate. Having a legal framework underpinned by the principles we are proposing would provide some confidence and a safeguard for the public. That argument has not yet surfaced sufficiently, but we are going to see a very different tone to the way these sorts of issues are debated in the future.
Simon Hoare
That is an incredibly important point and I think farmers are right to pay as much, if not more, attention to those issues than even to the Bill. However, does the hon. Lady accept, as I do, the statement made in incredibly good faith the other week by the Secretary of State for International Trade that the fear and anxiety she is talking about will not be part of this—that we will not be lowering our food hygiene or animal welfare standards as a way of trying to get trade deals signed? I thought that was very clear. It has been echoed by the Prime Minister and I think we should take them at their word.
Jenny Chapman
It is welcome, but I think that Members have to understand that that is not sufficient. Welcome though it is, it is not enough to reassure us, because the Secretary of State is not accountable for that. There is no way of holding a Member to a statement like that, unfortunately.
Mr Goodwill
As a former shipping Minister, I reassure the hon. Lady that I have been to Felixstowe and seen those containers coming in, including fridge boxes containing that sort of produce. There is already very detailed scrutiny of what is in those boxes. Tests are carried out particularly on pesticide residues, mycotoxins or any other health hazards that the UK might be exposed to. That is already in place for imports from third countries.
Jenny Chapman
I note that that is because we are in a customs union. That is my point: we have those high standards now, and I want to ensure that we have them in the future, and I do not see any way of doing it other than putting it on the face of a Bill—I accept that it does not need to be this Bill, but we need to know that this will happen.
George Eustice
On a point of clarity, my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby is right that we have border inspection posts around the UK. They are a port of entry currently for the EU, and when we leave the EU they will still be a port of entry, with all the broader inspection facilities we need, for countries outside the EU.
Jenny Chapman
That very much depends on the terms on which we leave the EU. Whatever those terms are we need to be absolutely clear about our standards on animal welfare, food safety and all the rest of it. If we are not, there is scope for these very high standards of which we are all proud to be watered down in some way. That is the sole motivation behind the amendment. It is not intended to ridicule the Government, or to try to show that we care more about animals than Government Members do or any of that. It is about making sure that, in the future, the UK maintains its position as a world leader on these issues.
Dr Drew
My hon. Friend will remember my interchange with Jason Feeney of the Food Standards Agency when I pressed him on the degree to which the FSA looks at food quality. He argued that it mainly looks at hygiene and safety. However, that clearly shows the organisational changes that will be required, because somebody has to look at quality, and if it is not the FSA, some other agency will have to be invented to do so. At the moment, that responsibility is subsumed within the European Food Safety Authority.
Jenny Chapman
That is another example of how difficult this issue is and of the work that will be involved in making sure that we keep current standards as they are, or raise them higher than they are today. There is absolutely nothing in the Bill that enables us to be confident of that, which is why we encourage the Government to accept our amendments, or if they will not, to bring forward measures that they find acceptable.
This is important. It is about the reputation of our country around the world. The people with whom we seek to trade in the future will be mindful of the legal framework in which our food is produced. It will be a lost opportunity should the Government not agree to bring something forward that will provide clarity for our producers.
Martin Whitfield
Is it not also the case that, if such a measure were in the Bill, in any future trade negotiations both sides will understand our bottom line and will not attempt to change it, because of the significant challenges in removing something from an Act? Indeed, it would empower the Secretary of State to build on the assurances that have been given.
Jenny Chapman
That is right. I am not cynical, but I hope that that is not part of the motivation for not including these principles in the Bill. However reassuring the Minister undoubtedly is, we are not only legislating for today. This legislation has to stand the test of time, and it has to provide the protections that we think we need for the future. I hope my hon. Friend is wrong, and that that is not at the back of the Government’s mind, but we are being asked to take an awful lot on trust, which Opposition Members are not generally inclined to do.
Another useful contribution in evidence came from the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association, George Dunn. He said that, if we set domestic environmental and animal welfare standards for food production and do not allow farmers to invest in the necessary fixed equipment required to produce those standards, we are not supporting them in the supply chain to ensure that they get adequate returns for those standards. He also asked how sucking in stuff from wherever, produced to whatever standards that we are unable to attribute, creates food security for our nation, and said that we will simply be exporting our environmental and animal welfare problems abroad. I think he speaks for many of the farmers I have spoken to. That is not something that any of us would want. The best way to prevent that from happening is to put these measures into the Bill—or, if not this Bill, a different Bill.
Minette Batters spoke brilliantly about the politicisation of support for agriculture in the future, and how it will be different. She pleaded for spending not to be politicised, but with the best will in the world, it will be, because spending on support for our agriculture will be in direct competition with spending on the health service, policing and pensions. When the Chancellor delivers his Budget in years to come, he will have to say what he will do for farmers and for agriculture that year. There is a real danger of instability and lack of confidence. The logical response from investors would be to hold back and not invest long term in their own farms because they risk making a long-term investment and, with a change of Government, the support they had anticipated might not be in place. That is not something that any of us would wish to see. This is the best Bill for including some legal safeguards to prevent that from happening.
Minette Batters says that this will not work if it gets politicised and that we need a long-term approach, with cross-party support for the ambition. She says that otherwise—I think she is understating this—there will be a lot of challenges ahead. We can bet there will be a lot of challenges ahead. If I were a farmer, I would want far more clarity on what was expected. Having been told there was an Agriculture Bill, I would expect there to be clarity for me as a producer.
I noticed in the “Health and Harmony” document that the Government talk about the regulatory framework within which they will inspect and maintain standards around the Government’s policy. That is another area of concern. We would probably feel a lot better about it if we had that kind of legal certainty in the Bill.
Unless the Bill is substantially more explicit than the current rather loose and discretionary “it would be nice to do this if we want to” powers, we will leave farmers at considerable risk. They absolutely need to know what is needed to comply. How compliance is monitored will also matter. The “Health and Harmony” document rightly says:
“Farmed animals are an integral part of our countryside. We have a responsibility to maintain their health and welfare”.
Yes, that is so. It also says:
“Excellent standards of animal health can reduce reliance on veterinary medicines”.
To be fair to David Cameron, although I am not sure why I would be, he did talk about antibiotic use and prioritised getting to grips with that, which is a good thing. The “Health and Harmony” document says that at the moment there is a strong regulatory framework in place that ensures that health and welfare standards are maintained.
It is troubling to see other points in the same document. I can see why this is the Government’s mood but, when it comes to animal welfare and environmental standards, we ought to be doing much better. That, combined with the lack of legal certainty in the Bill, causes me anxiety. On page 49, “Health and Harmony” mentions
“seeing how inspections can be removed, reduced or improved to lessen the burden on farmers while maintaining and enhancing our animal, environmental and plant health standards”.
We would all love to maintain the same standards, with no legal framework and light-touch regulation. That would be fantastic—I want to live in that world, but I just do not think that we do. The document says:
“We also have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world: after leaving the EU we should not only maintain but strengthen those standards.”
So, where is that ambition in the Bill? Everybody on the Opposition side has it, as I am sure everybody on the Government side does, but where is it in the Bill? It is okay to say that we all want to be nice people, look after our animals and have a lovely countryside—of course we do—but the Government need to say how they are going to do that and exactly what they will do, as opposed to what they could do if they felt like it. We can do much better than that for our food producers.
Mr Goodwill
Does the hon. Lady accept that despite the fact that European treaties contain that recognition, we still see foie gras production in France and bullfighting, so it would be no protection against that sort of thing?
Jenny Chapman
I do, to an extent, but the fact is that we have had that provision up to now and we want to keep it in the future. It is the right thing to do and it provides some protection. How we implement it as part of our UK law is entirely up to us—I think that was the point of the exercise for some Conservative Members, was it not? I look forward to hearing from hon. Members about how they would seek to make the best use of the opportunity.
Simon Hoare
The hon. Lady will be aware that the RSPCA is the oldest animal welfare charity in the world. Although I take her point that the European Union has been incredibly helpful, does she not share my confidence that we in the UK—the Government, the Opposition and the populace at large—are fully alert to those important issues and will do what is right? As somebody who voted remain, I do not think that we need another group of people to tell us how important the issue is or to set our standards. We can do that ourselves, and we will get it right.
Jenny Chapman
Why the reluctance to have this provision in the Bill, if we are all so clear, certain and confident about it? I do not see the problem. It is important because, in a sense, it would act as an instruction to future Governments when they create legislation. It has previously been, and ought to be, the basis of law-making on animal welfare. I accept that there has been a lot of noise and confusion around the debate, and I hope that we do not get sucked into that kind of confusion as we discuss this topic.
Just as an example, one Tory MP—I hope it was not the hon. Member for North Dorset—said:
“This government, and in fact all governments, are deeply committed to continuing to protect animals as sentient beings. That law is already written into our own law.”
But it is not written into our own law—that is the point—and it would be so much better if it were. The reason we are bothering with this Committee is to make the Bill better. I do not think any Minister who has served on a Committee has ever said, “My Bill is perfect. Don’t bother discussing it; let’s all go home.” The idea is that we improve the Bill as we go forward, and I notice that the Government already have many amendments, so they are obviously open to improving the Bill. This amendment would be one way to make the Bill better.
How people feel about this topic, I suppose, depends on whether they think it is important that animal sentience should be specifically recognised, or that the law as it stands goes far enough. There might be differing views on that, but the Opposition think that animal sentience needs to be recognised in law. If the Government wanted to bring forward their own wording on this—I expect the Minister will tell me why mine is deficient any minute now—we would be interested in working with them on it, because this issue matters to so many people around the country that we need to be constructive about it. Should the Government want to do the right thing, we will work with them. I will leave it there for now, and listen to what the Minister has to say before I speak further.
Mr Goodwill
The hon. Member for Darlington has made some well-argued remarks, and I am confident that the Minister will be able to reassure her on a number of the points that she made. We are all on the same page.
I will briefly concentrate on one aspect. Who could argue with the four principles in amendment 75? My slight problem is that, having served on the European Parliament’s Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety for five years—and being partly to blame for much of this legislation, no doubt—the precautionary principle looks, on the face of it, like a good principle. In practice, sadly, it is often misused. My experience was that increasingly, it was being used as a fall-back to ban some activity or substance for which there was not any scientific evidence to justify a ban, or insufficient scientific evidence. For example, if I were to use the precautionary principle when I decide whether to cycle home on my bicycle tonight, I would almost certainly decide not to do so, because I could not prove beyond any reasonable doubt that I would not be knocked off or fall off, and end up in St Thomas’s hospital or worse. Sadly, that type of approach is used all too often.
I can give you an example from my time in the European Parliament, to do with the group of chemicals known as phthalates. They are used to soften PVC—the sort of plastic that is used in babies’ dummies, feeding bottle teats, and many medical devices. Phthalates are chemicals that have effects on human health; they are endocrine disrupters that affect how hormones in the body work. Some sought to ban the use of phthalates as a PVC softener in such products, but the problem was that the medical industry said, “If we cannot use those plastics, the devices that we will have to use will not be as good for operations”—those devices include complex catheters that are inserted during more complex operations. That was an area in which we needed to look at the risks and benefits in the round, rather than issuing a ban based on some risk that might have been unquantifiable, and certainly was not scientifically proven.
The most recent case that shows us why, when we move forward with our own legislation, we need something better than the precautionary principle—something that is much more scientifically based and that can, if necessary, be taken to judicial review and proved one way or another—is the prevention of the introduction of genetically modified crops across the European Union. Many farmers and enlightened environmentalists would have liked such crops to be introduced, to reduce our reliance on pesticides and fertilisers and to make food more nutritious and safer. That is how those crops are used around the world, but we cannot do so in the UK. The precautionary principle has been used to block such technologies, and that was a bad use of that principle.
Rather than accepting amendment 75, we need—now that we can, as we have heard, make our own legislation—something that does the same thing as the precautionary principle but in a more effective way, based on science and not, as is sadly often the case, on prejudice and misinformation.
Kerry McCarthy
I will confine my remarks mostly to amendment 71, although I will say that it is really frustrating that the animal sentience Bill disappeared into the ether after the agreement that it would be split from the sentencing Bill. We have not heard anything about it since then. It is not enough to get assurances from the Minister; we need to see that legislation if we are to be convinced that it will really happen.
My amendment is about higher animal welfare. I have seen a timeline from DEFRA that says that a definition of higher animal welfare standards will be set by 2020. I would like to know why it cannot be set sooner, because it rather complicates things if we do not know the parameters that we are dealing with. The key point of my amendment is to ensure that we are not rewarding farmers who just do what is required of them by law.
We are a little too self-congratulatory and complacent about animal welfare standards in this country. There have been numerous exposés of even some of the higher assurance schemes where the letter of the law was clearly not being followed and standards were being breached. We should always be vigilant about that, particularly as we know that future trade deals might result in a race to the bottom, with food that has been produced to lower animal welfare standards, food safety standards and environmental standards flooding into the country. There will be a temptation to cut corners. I know Ministers have said that they will not allow British standards to fall, but I cannot get them to say that they will not allow into the country, for example, US food that is produced to lower standards. Once what I would call substandard produce is allowed into the country, the pressure will clearly be on to compete by, as I say, cutting corners.
At the heart of the amendment is the fact that the Bill does not have a regulatory baseline, and we will lose cross-compliance as we leave the common agricultural policy. I am not quite sure how we will monitor whether farmers are meeting the regulatory baseline. Because we cannot do that, how will we reward them for meeting higher standards? At the moment, I think farmers get their payments withheld if they do not meet certain standards. The current wording of the Bill would make it possible for a farmer to break the law when transporting calves, for example, but still to receive payments for higher animal welfare. Are they going to be judged in the round, or just by particular things that they have cherry-picked?
I want to ensure that financial assistance under clause 1 will be given only to farmers whose welfare standards are higher than those required by law. The definition of higher animal welfare will be very important to that, and it should take into account the desirability of both preventing negative experiences and promoting opportunities to give animals a positive quality of life; those are two slightly different things. Scientists are increasingly recognising the importance for animals’ physical and mental wellbeing of their ability to engage in exploration, investigation, problem-solving and play. That is recognised by the Farm Animal Welfare Committee as well.
A second condition for receiving funding should be that the farmer is a member of a comprehensive assurance scheme.
Colin Clark (Gordon) (Con)
The hon. Lady is making a powerful point. It was interesting that she brought up the question of single farm payment. As I have declared, I am a recipient of that and I am aware of the cross compliance rules. Does she not take some comfort from the fact that we recognisably have the highest welfare standards, not just in Europe but probably in the world? That gives us some encouragement that our culture is not just about working towards respecting legislation, and we need a carrot as much as a stick. In many ways, I agree with her, but does she recognise that we have the highest standards?
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Gentleman has plenty of carrots, although I do not know about sticks. For those who do not know, he is in the carrot business. I have already said that I get a bit fed up with the constant refrain that we have the highest animal welfare standards in the world, because I think it suggests a slight degree of complacency and we should constantly aim higher. The Minister is probably sick to death of the number of written questions that I table about slaughterhouses and conditions on farms, but we have seen from undercover investigations some of the conditions under which the more intensive farms operate. I am by no means tarring all farmers with the same brush, and it is good that we take animal welfare so seriously in this country. However, there are a lot of examples of when we do not, and we should not be too complacent about it.
Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady. I should declare that I am a livestock farmer and am in receipt of single farm payment. I understand that she may not have had much experience of visiting livestock farms, though she might have done so as a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. She would be welcome to come and see the livestock on my farm—both cattle and sheep—and how they are looked after. That might encourage her to consider whether she wants to continue to be a vegan.
Kerry McCarthy
I have visited quite a few farms. The hon. Gentleman is completely missing the point. Anyone could take me to a farm with happy cows or happy sheep, by his definition, but that does not mean that there are not places where abuse occurs—where animals are not kept in the best possible conditions or treated well. That is exactly the point I have just made. I accept that we have high animal welfare standards generally, but I am also saying that we should not be complacent. As for the vegan thing, I have been a vegan for 27 years, so the hon. Gentleman would have to do a lot more to change my mind than simply show me his cows.
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Member for North Dorset wants to interrupt. He said earlier that we need dairy to be healthy. I do not know quite how I have managed to stay on my feet for this long; clearly, I ought to be wilting away, languishing and looking pale and anaemic.
Simon Hoare
I will leave that question as being rhetorical. I do not think it is complacent to say that we have the highest standards. It would be erroneous and complacent to say there were no breaches of those standards, but it is a statement of fact that we have the highest standards. We all appreciate that not everybody adheres to them, and there are responsible penalties for those who are identified as breaching those standards. However, it is not complacency to say we have the highest standards in the world; it is a statement of fact.
Kerry McCarthy
I think it is complacent to just respond, whenever questions about animal welfare are raised, that we have the highest standards, because that means that we are not engaging with the problem being brought to our attention, namely the breaches. If I raise the conditions on a mega-farm where there has been an undercover investigation showing all sorts of horrendous conditions—and in some instances even cases of cannibalism, which I have seen footage of recently—I do not want the response to be: “We have the highest animal welfare standards.” To any problem across the piece that we ever bring to the Government’s attention, we could say, “Well, we’re doing really well 90% of the time.” That is not what we are here to do. We are here to highlight where the system has gone wrong and to try to encourage people to do better.
I notice that the hon. Gentleman did not come back about whether I am healthy or not. Perhaps we should challenge each other to something—
Simon Hoare
The hon. Lady radiates health from every pore. I suggest that she would radiate still further were she to have dairy in her diet, but her hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson) does not radiate anything.
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West is now vegan as well—in fact, three of the four Bristol MPs are vegan. She is completely vegan and a model of good health.
The second condition for receiving funding should be membership of a comprehensive assurance scheme. The RSPCA assured scheme covers all aspects of welfare and has genuinely high standards and rigorous monitoring arrangements. I am not so sure about other assurance schemes, which have been criticised. We need to clarify what the criteria would be.
I want to finish by talking about a few things that Compassion in World Farming has mentioned as additional standards and perhaps the sorts of things that farmers should get additional funding for. On pigs, it says:
“Funding should be available for farmers who achieve intact tails”—
that is, neither docked nor bitten tails. It continues:
“Getting pigs to slaughter with intact tails is recognised by the Farm Animal Welfare Council and others as a reliable outcome based indicator of good welfare.”
In Lower Saxony, I am told, farmers are paid €16.5 per undocked pig under its curled tail bonus scheme. Is that the sort of thing that we could look at rewarding farmers for here?
Mr Goodwill
A local pig farmer told us the other day that he had 235,000 pigs. I am sure he would be very interested in a scheme like that.
Kerry McCarthy
I went to a higher-welfare pig farm when I was shadow Secretary of State and was appalled to learn that while it could make money selling the pigs to local butchers, any pigs that it could not sell to local butchers or restaurants for local consumption had to be sold to the supermarket, at a loss of £80 per pig. Something is clearly very wrong with a farming system where higher-welfare farmers cannot be funded that way. I also went to a higher-welfare chicken farm that was making 2p profit per chicken, which I thought said an awful lot about the broken market model. Perhaps the pig farmer who the right hon. Gentleman met would like to be paid per intact pig tail—perhaps he could raise that with him.
One of the problems with the pig sector is that it is quite easy to move into or increase numbers, therefore the market fluctuates. If farmers get a good price, people start moving in, and before we know it, too many pigs are on the market and the price dips again—we could spend a lot of time on the economics of farming.
Funding could be available for farmers in the dairy sector who keep their cows on pasture during the grass-growing season. That is a requirement of the pasture promise scheme, which is being developed by a group of farmers. There is a wide range in the welfare quality of laying hens provided for by free-range farms. We know that ordinary free-range systems are supported by the market and are very successful—once eggs started to be marked as free range, the public responded. However, some free-range systems have much lower stocking density, a low flock size, and trees and bushes around, so there are welfare differences among different free-range providers.
At the moment, only 1.2% of UK broilers are produced to RSPCA assured standards. There is an argument for saying that we should provide support only to broiler farmers who are members of the RSPCA assured scheme, so as to encourage others to move away from the lower standard of broiler production. I am not saying that the ones outside the RSPCA assured scheme necessarily have poor animal welfare standards, but clearly there is a higher benchmark to which people could aspire, and we ought to be encouraging them to do that.
Will the Minister say how cross-compliance will work and how we will monitor basic animal welfare standards? How is he going to come up with the higher animal welfare definition, what sort of things will it include, and will he promise to bring it forward a little sooner?
Sandy Martin
I want to add briefly to what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East said about amendment 71. I worked in a British-built chicken broiler plant in Israel. It was some time ago, and no doubt improvements have been made since, but it was sufficient to make me a vegetarian, although I have not yet gone as far as to become a vegan. Ipswich is rather a long way from Bristol, but if I was a bit closer, maybe I would be a vegan by now.
Kerry McCarthy
Thursday is World Vegan Day, and I think there will be people outside between Committee sittings giving out free vegan pizza. If my hon. Friend wants to join our hon. Friend the Member for Bristol West and me to get a slice, he would be welcome. In fact, all Members can come.
Sandy Martin
I would very much welcome a slice of free pizza, whether it had cheese on it or not.
Sandy Martin
Or whether it was vegan cheese or cheese made from milk.
I want to focus mainly on amendments 74 and 75. On amendment 74, as Members may know, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee had extensive evidence and debate on the Secretary of State’s proposed Bill covering animal cruelty sentencing and incorporating animal sentience into UK law. The Committee took the very sensible view that it was important to stiffen the sentences for cruelty without further delay. We therefore advised the Secretary of State that it would be sensible to separate the sentence on sentience from the section on sentencing. However, we felt that the whole issue of animal sentience needed to be taken seriously, and that a way should be found to take on board the significance of the issue and incorporate it into UK law once we had left the European Union. I believe that the proposed new subsection in amendment 74 covers just one of the vital areas where an adherence to the concept of animal sentience would have a material effect on agricultural practice in this country and ensure that the default support for animal welfare implied by the concept of sentience is not lost when we have left the EU.
It is not just me who believes that, but the Secretary of State as well; otherwise why did he want to pass a Bill that supported the concept of animal sentience? If he did wish to pass such a Bill—and he clearly did, because otherwise he would not have put it forward—why would he not want it to have a real effect on actual animals and their welfare? Amendment 74 is a way of ensuring that the concept of animal sentience actually has some effect, and I cannot really understand why the Government are not happy to accept it.
I am sure that the hon. Member for North Dorset made some of the comments that he has with the best of intentions, but the overall feeling appears to be, “We intend to do the right thing, so leave it to us.” That is not the way that law works; it is not the way that Bills are meant to work. The whole point of having Bills, Acts, debate, amendments and so on is to make sure that things are written down in such a way that people know what will happen and do not just have to rely on the good will of the Secretary of State.
We need to look at what amendment 75 says. Clause 1(1)(e) refers to
“preventing, reducing or protecting from environmental hazards”,
which should be good things, but only so long as they actually meet up with the protection of the environment, as we provide for in amendment 75. I will give a good example of supposed prevention, reduction or protection from environmental hazards that clearly does not meet up with the proposals in our amendment: the flood defences in Ipswich, where serious amounts of concrete and large sheets of metal were shoved in on either side of the river to prevent flooding. Clearly, I do not want Ipswich to be flooded, and I am very glad that we have flood defences. In fact, Ipswich was seriously flooded before the war, before those defences went in. However, they are not in the slightest bit environmentally friendly, and I am quite sure that flood defences in other parts of the country are seriously damaging to the environment too.
There are far better ways of doing these things now, and there are all sorts of other activities that people might want to undertake that would be damaging to the environment, even though they protected us from environmental hazards. All that we are asking for is that work done to offer protection from environmental hazards is not done in an environmentally damaging way. Again, I cannot really understand why the Government are not willing to support that amendment.
George Eustice
I will begin with amendment 75, as the other two amendment both pertain to animal welfare. This amendment effectively says that people have to abide by retained EU law before they can be eligible for any assistance. Retained EU law is coming across through the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. It will apply to everyone, whether or not they are in a scheme. We do not believe the amendment adds anything or is necessary, as retained EU law will become UK law and will be enforceable as such to everyone. The important thing about the new schemes from our point of view are the conditions attached to them. We deal with that very differently, in clause 3, which we will no doubt debate later and which has all sorts of provisions for checking, enforcing and monitoring. It requires provisions for the keeping of records and allows us to impose penalties, establish appeals processes and refer powers of entry, for instance. Clause 3 sets out clear enforcement powers and the ability to set conditions on access to such schemes, which in our view is the right way to approach this.
There is also a technical problem with amendment 75. The hon. Member for Bristol East at least said that everybody should abide by the legislative baseline, whether that be retained EU law or any other domestic legislation. The problem I have with the amendment is that it treats retained EU law as if it were the only law that matters. It is mute on other national law. If we were to require people to abide by the law—which they might believe they would be required to do anyway—why would we require them to abide only by retained EU law, rather than any other class of law? To me, that does not make much sense.
Jenny Chapman
We do not want it to be retained EU law; we want it to be primary UK law. That is our point, because we think that has a different status to retained EU law.
George Eustice
The provisions that I am reading are very much around EU law and retained EU law, but I take the hon. Lady’s point that she may have intended the measure to be broader.
There is a third point, however. We are clear that we accept some of these principles. We will provide for a new environmental body to police them. We have already said that we are committed to those principles coming across. There is a difficulty, however, in the practice of a scheme where financial incentives are being paid. It is not always black and white. For instance, the “polluter pays” principle sounds great in theory, but what if there is a diffuse pollution incident somewhere in a water catchment that might involve small contributions from a number of farms that are difficult to locate? It is not always easy to just say, “We need regulation,” or, “We need enforcement,” on this farm or that farm.
In recent years we have successfully paid farmers to support them in investing to improve slurry infrastructure. We have had a successful scheme in the past two years to pay farmers to put lids on slurry stores, so that they can reduce ammonia emissions, for instance. If we are serious about tackling complex environmental issues such as diffuse pollution, we have to be willing to venture beyond what can be achieved with a blunt regulatory instrument and instead be willing to have financial incentives, rewards and grants to support good practice. A requirement to abide by the “polluter pays” principle will often be used, as in this case, by people who want to sit on their hands and not spend money. If we are serious about doing payment for public goods properly, we must be willing to exercise judgment and to support schemes that may fall into the grey area between what would normally be covered by regulation and what would be covered by an environmental purpose.
Amendment 74 relates to animal sentience, on which we have already published draft legislation. The Government are absolutely committed to making the necessary changes to UK law to ensure that animal sentience is recognised. This country has always been a leader in the field. In 1875, we were the first country in the world to pass legislation to regulate slaughterhouses. The Protection of Animals Act followed in 1911, and in 1933 we updated a lot of our regulation, particularly of slaughterhouses. The Animal Welfare Act 2006 recognises animal sentience. We would never have passed any of that legislation if we did not believe that animals were sentient beings. That is beyond question; both sides of the House and all Governments have believed it for at least 140 years. We are committed to introducing a Bill to recognise animal sentience.
George Eustice
I cannot guarantee that that Bill will be introduced by March, but obviously we are working on the basis that there will be an implementation period, in which case all those principles will apply. More importantly, however, I can guarantee the hon. Gentleman that all retained EU law—the entire body of legislation that governs everything from slaughterhouses to transport regulations—will be brought across. That is already happening in a large wave of statutory instruments made under the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Every single piece of EU animal welfare legislation will be effective and on our statute book by the end of March.
Dr Drew
There is the rub. We know that something like 80 SIs are coming our way. We may not choose to object to them all, but even if we object to only eight or 10, it will wear the Minister out, wear me out and have huge implications. Effectively, it will mean that we cannot do anything else, because that is what the nature of the SI process implies. It is all well and good saying that secondary legislation is the way forward, but it will not necessarily be very practicable.
George Eustice
I think it is probably best if I answer one intervention before I take another.
We are in the middle of a huge decision to leave the European Union. An enormous amount of work is needed under the withdrawal Act to ensure that we have a functioning statute book on year one; we all recognise that, and it will necessarily take priority in the months ahead. However, I reassure the hon. Member for Stroud that all the EU regulations that bind us on this issue will still be in force in UK law when we leave the EU at the end of March. That will be unaffected by whether a Bill that recognises animal sentience has been introduced, because none of the regulations that we are bringing across are contingent on the overarching principle of animal sentience.
Mr Dunne
I have the distinct privilege of serving on the European Statutory Instruments Committee. The Leader of the House has reassured us that the volume of work for us in determining whether the forthcoming statutory instruments should be laid under the negative or the affirmative procedure will be very similar to that of scrutinising the routine number of statutory instruments that the House considers year on year. The forthcoming SIs should not give rise to the kind of concerns that the hon. Member for Stroud has voiced.
George Eustice
As a member of that Committee, my hon. Friend has to digest those points, so he probably has a clearer idea of the work that will be involved, but we recognise that it is a big exercise.
The hon. Member for Darlington raised an important point. I can reassure her that the Government are committed to publishing legislation that will recognise animal sentience. We do not believe, however, that it is right to bring that into the Bill in the way that she has by linking it only to the narrow issue of how payments are made, when we are talking about purposes that inevitably recognise animal sentience, because that is why we are incentivising farmers to adopt high standards of animal welfare.
Amendment 71, tabled by the hon. Member for Bristol East, also seeks to establish an additional rule that says broadly that financial assistance cannot be given unless it is over and above the regulatory baseline. I understand her point, and it is a legitimate question to ask, but it is wrong to try to prescribe it in that sort of amendment, for reasons that I will explain.
As a country, we have done something new in including animal welfare as a public good. I have been clear that I wanted to do that for the last couple of years. I have worked closely with the RSPCA, Compassion in World Farming, Farmwell and other organisations. We are trying something new. Just last week, I met Peter Stevenson from Compassion in World Farming.
We are considering several things in the design of a future animal welfare scheme. One of those is the possibility that we could financially reward farmers and incentivise them to join some kind of United Kingdom accreditation service-accredited higher animal welfare scheme—perhaps the RSPCA one or others that may form. We may also choose to support farmers to invest in more modern housing that is better for animal welfare. In the pig sector, there are some issues with outdated housing that does not lend itself to providing for modern welfare needs such as enriched environments and straw in barns. We may also have a third category of payment for the adoption of particular approaches to husbandry, such as lower levels of stocking density, systems that are more free range or even pasture-based systems.
Finally, we are interested in the potential for payment by results. Farmwell has done some work on that. The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned Compassion in World Farming and its view about payments for curly tails. If pigs go to slaughter with intact curly tails that have not been damaged, that is a good indicator that they have had a higher-welfare existence. Likewise, Farmwell has developed a feather-cover index for a depopulated flock of laying hens, which is a good indicator as to how well people have approached farm husbandry. In a free-range system, there can be good and poor farm husbandry.
It is a complex area. If there is a mixture of payment for capital items to renew housing, which may have higher welfare outcomes, payment for joining accreditation schemes and, potentially, payment by results, it is not always obvious how that would be benchmarked against a regulatory baseline, which by definition does not cover everything.
If the hon. Lady is concerned about money being spent in that area in a way that simply pays farmers for what they are already doing to comply with the law, I guarantee that there will be no shortage of push-back and pressure from within the internal machinery of Government—the civil service, the Treasury, the Cabinet Office and other Departments—to ensure that money is spent only to get additionality. We will not have the problem that she perceives, which is that we would spend money on things that are already a requirement by law, but if we were to accept her amendment, we might have a different problem, which is that we would place barriers in the way of policy innovation. For that reason, I hope she will not press amendment 71.
Mr Goodwill
The Minister talks about paying farmers for what they are doing already, and having had experience of the entry-level environmental scheme, that is precisely what it did. He might recall, however, that one of the questions I asked the farmers unions was how we should get the balance right between rewarding people who have always been doing the right thing and incentivising improvements on land that has not been looked after in the same way.
George Eustice
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. I am conscious that on animal welfare and in the agri-environment schemes, a lot of farmers have already done a huge amount of work, and it is important to recognise that and to continue to reward them for that. The baseline, such as it is, should be anchored somewhere around the regulatory baseline. Even then, I do not think we should have a hard and fast rule, for the reasons I have explained on issues such as investment in slurry management. In this innovative new field of animal welfare, there are grey areas, and it is not always right to have a hard and fast rule.
The hon. Member for Bristol East mentioned the issue of cross-compliance. The conditionality on new schemes is provided for in clause 3. If somebody enters a new scheme and is in breach of it in some way, there are provisions for financial penalties and for the powers that we would need to be able to do that.
Having been farming Minister for five years, and having wrestled with cross-compliance, I am not a great fan of how it works in practice. It is a rather dysfunctional system. There is literally nothing—bar one thing—in cross-compliance that is not already in our domestic law. All the requirements on ear tagging, animal health and animal welfare, or the issues around TB testing and good environmental condition for land, are already requirements in our national law. All that cross-compliance really gives us is a sort of easy and rather unjust way to claw penalties out of farmers without really giving them a chance for a fair hearing in court. In my view, it is not a very satisfactory system. We would need some sort of system of fixed penalty notices in future, so that there are ready remedies for minor breaches, but we could design something far better. Cross-compliance will remain in the legacy scheme that we will come on to debate, but we will have the opportunity to modify and improve it and to remove some of the rather unnecessary administrative burdens that can get in the way.
I hope that I have managed to persuade hon. Members that the Government remain absolutely committed to amendment 74 animal sentience, but we believe it should be in another Bill. We have already published draft legislation. On amendment 75, retained EU law will already be binding on anyone, whether or not they are in a scheme. I hope that the hon. Member for Bristol East will not press amendment 71, as it would be counterproductive to the cause that I know she believes in very strongly.
Jenny Chapman
I am not surprised by any of the Minister’s comments. His attempt to reassure the Committee on EU retained law and SIs was not particularly effective. As we said at great length during the passage of the withdrawal Act, the ability to amend the Act is of deep concern to us. We think it is far better that the provisions should be in the Bill now, so that everyone can see exactly where we are. We are not happy with the approach that the Government have taken, and not just in these areas but in many others.
The Minister invited me to look to clause 3 for reassurance. Again, we come back to the powers that have been given to the Secretary of State, which are so wide-ranging. Although there are suggestions in the Bill about what those powers may be used for, the lack of precision is astonishing. Clause 3(2) states that “under subsection (1)” the Secretary of State
“may (among other things) include provision”.
It is extraordinary that the Government are attempting to proceed in this manner and expect the Opposition to go along with it. We are just not going to do that.
I might not be minded to press the amendment to a Division today, but I do not want the Committee to interpret that as demonstrating any kind of satisfaction on our part; it absolutely does not. We intend to return to these issues, which is one of the reasons why we will not press the amendment today. That might increase our chances of being able to return to the issues, which are fundamental to why we think the Bill is so flawed. I take the point about linking the issues to financial assistance. There might be something in that, although taxpayers want to know the principles by which their hard-earned cash will be spent in this area. I do not think that the Minister has responded adequately to our concerns. I expect that in the other place, and on Report, we will go over those issues again.
As for amendment 74 and the promised new Bill, we want and need to see the Bill, not just assurances that it is on its way. The Secretary of State said, “I want this to happen because I too am a sentient being.”
Jenny Chapman
Yes, there are degrees of sentience. It is not good enough, and there is no justification for not having introduced the Bill already. I am not going to divide the Committee, because we are pressed for time, but I expect that the issue will be debated again as the Bill proceeds. I want to restate our dissatisfaction with the whole approach to the Bill. It is not good enough, and the Government could have done an awful lot better. However, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Dr Drew
I beg to move amendment 52, in clause 1, page 2, line 4, leave out subsection (2), and insert—
“(2) The Secretary of State may also give financial assistance for or in connection with any of the following purposes—
(a) starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity;
(b) supporting businesses or communities in rural areas; and
(c) supporting persons who are involved in the production, processing, marketing or distribution of products deriving from an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity.”
This amendment would extend to England the powers provided to Welsh Ministers in Schedule 3 paragraph 1(2)(a) and (c).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 88, in clause 1, page 2, line 4, leave out subsection (2) and insert—
“(2) The Secretary of State may also give financial assistance for or in connection with any of the following purposes—
(a) supporting businesses or communities in rural areas;
(b) starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity;
(c) supporting persons who are involved in the production, processing, marketing or distribution of products deriving from an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity;
(d) supporting the production of such part of the nation’s food and other agricultural produce as it is desirable to produce in the United Kingdom.”
Amendment 89, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
“(2A) Financial assistance under subsections (1) and (2) may only be given to—
(a) persons who are involved in the production of products deriving from an agricultural or horticultural or forestry activity, (including recognised producers organisations, associations of recognised producer organisations and recognised interbranch organisations as established in part 6 or as recognised under the CMO Regulation at the date of enactment of this Act); or
(b) those with an interest in agricultural land, where the financial assistance relates directly to that land.”
Amendment 90, in schedule 3, page 30, line 17, at end insert—
“(2A) Financial assistance under subparagraphs (1) and (2) may only be given to—
(a) persons who are involved in the production of products deriving from an agricultural or horticultural or forestry activity, (including recognised producers organisations, associations of recognised producer organisations and recognised interbranch organisations as established in part 6 or as recognised under the CMO Regulation at the date of enactment of this Act); or
(b) those with an interest in agricultural land, where the financial assistance relates directly to that land.”
Dr Drew
I shall try to be a bit briefer on this amendment, partly because the hon. Member for Ludlow has three amendments to our one. I make no apology for the fact that it is more of a probing amendment. There has been some discussion about the relationship between supporting environmental goods and what remains of helping farmers or people who work the land. Paragraph (b) is quite important to me, having done quite a lot of work on rural policy over the years. We have not really spent much time looking at how rural fits alongside agriculture.
One of my worries about the legislation is the way we are changing from the common agricultural policy, of which, as the Minister rightly said, I was a critic. There were many things wrong with it, but one of its strengths was pillar 2, and the way in which pillar 2 was able to enhance and, dare I say it, rebuild rural communities. One of the problems with the Bill is that rural communities hardly seem to feature at all. Yet the strength of agriculture is in the context of the rural communities in which farmers and others live. It is quite important that we tease out from the Government how they see pillar 2 being reframed in a British context.
I would argue from the outset that the previous Labour Government, the coalition Government and this Government have not done enough to support rural communities. Too often money was forthcoming only in a grudging manner. We frequently failed to match-fund the moneys that were available through pillar 2, which meant that very often schemes did not go forward. Part of my reason for tabling the amendment was to raise the issue of rural communities, and to say that hopefully there will be opportunities for us to put something more definite in the Bill to say that we really want to enshrine pillar 2 in the legislation. Otherwise, all will be lost. There is no other opportunity; there is no forthcoming rural Bill. We may have a sentience Bill, we may have a sentencing Bill, and we may have a Bill to ban animals in circuses.
Dr Drew
We may; we might; we must—some time, over the rainbow. Lots of bits of legislation are possible, but they are not necessarily going to be introduced very quickly, so rural affairs must feature.
The amendment is more of a probing amendment. As we move towards environmental support payments, we must consider what that means for farmers. I have always been a doughty champion of smaller farms and tenant farms. Given what my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington has said, I worry that there are holes in the legislation, with regard to how it will actually work. In the evidence session I referred to the regulatory underpinning, which is important but, as yet, not at all clear. That is why we wanted evidence from the Rural Payments Agency, despite all its failings, and from the Groceries Code Adjudicator, and indeed from Dame Glenys Stacey, to know what the format is. We have had her interim report but no final report yet on how the regulatory regime will operate for farmers. That is important because, although we are debating primary legislation, that is what will underpin it. Rural communities are important and we need to know what the Government will say about that.
In terms of the national interest and social justice, we must be able to feed ourselves. We feel strongly about food security, and I have argued for that. It has not really featured in the past decade, although it did in the previous one—it drove agricultural policy. It was one of the reasons we changed at European level from the previous regime. We strongly felt that it was better to pay farmers—in this case, landowners—and that may be where we dug ourselves into a problem. I always argued that there should be a de minimis and a de maximus payment structure. Colleagues did not necessarily agree with that, but that is why we have ended up with some of the problems we have had in respect of the area payment scheme. We need to look at how we can encourage our farmers to produce more of their own produce, and that is a reason for probing this. It is about good-quality, healthy food—we have had that debate already. We need to look at how that is coming forward.
That all sounds theoretical, and like good things for good people, but that is what we have committed ourselves to in the Welsh schedule, so they are getting this. We may well say, “Lucky old Wales” and feel disappointed that England does not have the same. It would be interesting to know how we will defend the interests of England. That point was made at great length at Second Reading by the hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood). Who speaks for England? Wales certainly has greater flexibility in how it can use its money in its schedule. I have said that it is likely that we will end up with four different agricultural systems—nuanced, but different. We must understand where England stands, particular in relation to Wales. Should Scotland and Northern Ireland come forward with the same proposals, they would need to be looked at. We must look at how payments will be allowed as well as for what, and to whom. That is why agriculture, horticulture and forestry are crucial in how we look at who gets the money and for what reason. That is about public interest, and it is about putting what we really want people to do on the face of the Bill.
Mr Dunne
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson, and to follow the hon. Member for Stroud, whose amendment bears a striking resemblance to mine. The prime difference between my amendment 88 and his amendment 52 is the order of the subsections, and I do not think that is substantive. As he just described, my amendment came from the wording in schedule 3 relating to Wales. My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset, who inexplicably left the room just before I rose to make my contribution, asked me to assure the Committee that he supports the amendments.
One reason for tabling the amendment was to pick up on some of the comments made in the evidence sessions, in particular from the representative of the farming industry in Scotland. They welcomed as close an alignment as possible of the regimes that will stem from the Bill, and once we leave the CAP regime, to try to minimise difference among the four schemes. I am conscious that we do not have any of the regulations that will implement the schemes but, in terms of the regulatory environment and the legislation, the more commonality we have between the four nations, the better for farmers and the industry.
I must remind the Committee of my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests; I am a farmer who will be affected by the regime, in common with other farmers. The purpose of the amendment is to probe the Government’s intent in relation to agricultural support. I agreed with much of what the hon. Member for Stroud said. We are designing a scheme that replaces the legislative environment of the 1947 Act, which put in place an initial set of agricultural support. We are also replacing the CAP system that we have been operating under since the 1970s. The legislation is designed to set in place agricultural support for the future. Yet the challenge to us, as members of the Committee, is that the purposes as set out under clause 1, thus far, are not agriculture-heavy; they are agriculture-lite; or barely existent.
There is a challenge, which I think we will see when the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs comments on the Bill. It is keen to see specific references to agriculture, horticulture and forestry in the purposes of the Bill. That was what lay at the heart of my amendment 88, and in particular proposed new subsection 2(d) of clause 1, which refers to
“supporting the production of such part of the nation’s food and other agricultural produce as it is desirable to produce in the United Kingdom.”
When I intervened on the Secretary of State on Second Reading, I asked him what his view was about food security being an important purpose of the Bill. As a former journalist with an ability to encapsulate pithily what he means in as few words as possible, he replied with four words: “Food security is vital.” That is why I felt that it was important to probe where the Government stand on the issue, because that objective is not as apparent in the drafting that has emerged in the Bill as the Secretary of State was on Second Reading. Amendment 88 would help to make that objective explicit.
The Secretary of State went on to describe how he sees food security providing the opportunity for UK-based farmers to compete internationally by way of exports. Of course, the UK competes internationally in global food and food product markets. At the moment, we produce about 60% of the food we consume in this country, so we are importing 40%—not quite as much as we are producing. There is clearly a risk that once we move to more internationally competitive markets, we will find imports coming in to a greater degree. We are now setting up a legislative programme that will allow for unforeseeable events in the future, and future Secretaries of State may therefore find it advantageous to have a power on the face of the Bill that allows future Governments to design or redesign a scheme in the event of market conditions changing.
We will talk about exceptional market conditions later in our consideration of the Bill, and I welcome the clauses that deal with that topic. They represent a very good idea. However, when responding to the amendments, I urge the Minister to consider whether it is desirable for Secretaries of State to have that power, which may—rather than must—be used. At some point in the future, in the event that there are challenges to local production, that power may be called upon. Food security is not just about how much food we grow in this country; it is about how readily accessible food is to our populations in the event of difficulty. We have already seen from previous incidents of industrial disturbance and severe weather that, on occasion, distributing food to the population is not as easy as it is during normal times. Having the ability to grow as much food as we can in this country will be of benefit for the future.
Mr Goodwill
Is it not the case that the amendment is absolutely in line with the 1975 Government White Paper entitled “Food from Our Own Resources”?
Mr Dunne
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his encyclopaedic knowledge of previous agriculture Bills.
I move on to some brief remarks about amendment 89 and the consequential amendment 90, which would amend schedule 3, “Provision relating to Wales”. Those amendments seek to make it explicit that agricultural support should be payable to those who are responsible for managing the land. Under the previous system, that support has been paid to farmers. We are trying to devise a system of public goods for farmers to do things of environmental benefit that will replace income that they would otherwise derive from growing food, food produce or horticultural forestry products on the land. That aims to provide farmers with some incentive to generate environmental benefits. It is the farmers—all 83,500 of them—who currently receive direct payments through the RPA basic payment scheme who are most deserving of the support that will be made available in the future, rather than other worthy, worthwhile groups who will be able to advise them and generate benefit for the environment. But they are the people who are responsible for delivering most of that public good; that is, the people who manage the land.
That was explained by the Secretary of State in a letter that he sent to MPs when the Bill was published last month. He said:
“For too long our farmers have been held back by the stifling rules and often perverse incentives of the CAP… Our new Agriculture Bill marks a decisive shift. It will reward farmers properly at last for the work they do to enhance the environment around us. It recognises the value farmers bring as food producers.”
He was very clear that the Bill is designed to provide support to farmers in lieu of what they would otherwise do in managing the land by trying to stimulate a greater public good.
I therefore encourage the Government to respond on whether the Bill seeks future support to be able to make payments to those who deliver public benefit from stewardship of the land, or whether it should go to other bodies that do so only indirectly, and for which there may be benefits through subsequent legislation, such as the environment Bill, which might be a more appropriate place for it.
Sandy Martin
The House of Lords Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee report stated that if the Bill is passed in its present form,
“Parliament will not be able to debate the merits of the new agriculture regime because the Bill does not contain even an outline of the substantive law that will replace the CAP after the United Kingdom leaves the EU”.
What the House of Lords was looking for and what, I believe, farmers are looking for is a far clearer expression of the support that farmers will get and the activities for which they will get that support than is expressed in the Bill.
However, at least one thing is clear in the Bill as it stands. The Secretary of State does not envisage rewarding farmers just for being farmers. They need to be supporting the public good. I think farmers would support that, but the problem is defining exactly what the public good is and the extent to which any definition should be left entirely to the Secretary of State, rather than laid out clearly in the Bill. If the hon. Member for Ludlow supports the idea that access to healthy local food grown sustainably is a public good, I am a little mystified as to why he could not support our amendment.
We all want what is best for this country. One of the supposed benefits of Brexit was that it would enable us to decide for ourselves what would be the best agricultural support regime, rather than having to rely on the common agricultural policy. However, I am afraid that amendments 88, 89 and 90 fall down at that hurdle, because they very much advocate supporting farmers simply for being farmers. In the words of amendments 88 and 89, following the meaning across from one amendment to the second:
“The Secretary of State may also give financial assistance”
to
“those with an interest in agricultural land, where the financial assistance relates directly to that land.”
In other words, that means paying farmers for being farmers or, indeed, paying landowners for being landowners, which neatly expresses the worst aspects of the current operation of the common agricultural policy.
I have been a keen advocate of much of the support and protection that we have achieved through our membership of the European Union, and I fear that we will lose a good deal of it when we leave. However, even I would never claim that the common agricultural policy is perfect, and the UK has been at the forefront of attempting to reform it over the years. I think that that reform was intended to ensure that any financial support through the common agricultural policy aligns better with the support of the public good, but I do not believe that it was altogether successful. Payments to landowners simply for being landowners is one of the aspects of the common agricultural policy that this Bill was designed to end, so amendments 89 and 90 would be a serious step backwards.
Colin Clark
I rise to speak in support of the amendments in my name, but for the sake of time I will not go over the points already made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow.
I have stated on the record my belief that the Bill should address food and farming. I have been open about my registered interests, my involvement in food and in conventional and organic farming, and the fact that I receive the single farm payment from the Scottish Government. On that point, I should note my disappointment that the Bill does not include a schedule about the Scottish Government, because it is important that Scottish farmers have clarity, too. If the Bill is trying to achieve anything, it is a framework to give farmers greater clarity. Through the Bill I hope that we can achieve a common framework with the Scottish Government, as well as the authorities of Wales and Northern Ireland. We have to protect the unitary market, because we have shared values in farming and agriculture, and it is important that we continue to protect them. I embrace the opportunity to design UK agricultural policies. I listened closely to the hon. Member for Darlington, and I sympathise with her desire for clarity for the farming industry, so I would like to hear from the Minister that farming will have a clear shared priority, with public money for public goods.
I passionately believe that we should make farming in this country more productive. As someone who has been involved in the agriculture industry for 30 years, I know that productive farming and the environment go hand in hand, and I have seen leaps and bounds from the darker days on the 1970s. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about how farming and the environment will continue to go hand in hand, which is certainly the ambition of Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish and English farmers.
Ben Lake (Ceredigion) (PC)
I will keep my remarks brief, but I must speak against amendment 90, tabled by the hon. Member for Ludlow. I appreciate that it is not dissimilar to his amendment 89 to clause 1, but it relates instead to schedule 3, which outlines the powers that I understand were requested by the Welsh Government. Those powers should not be amended or in any way interfered with by the Committee, or indeed by this House.
I oppose amendment 90 on a point of principle because it should be for Welsh Ministers to formulate proposals for Welsh agricultural policy and for the Welsh Assembly to give or reject its consent. As the hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire will know, my colleagues in the Welsh Assembly are vociferous in expressing reservations about some of the Welsh Government’s proposals for agriculture policy. However, it is unacceptable for the Committee to consider any amendment that would omit the requested provisions in schedule 3 or interfere with their operation in any way.
I will not return to the argument that we had this morning about the distinction between “must” and “may”. I will say only that I am not entirely sure what purpose the amendment serves in stating that assistance “may only be given” to certain persons, other than restricting the Welsh Government’s ability to pursue and operate their own policy preferences. I am not sure how that would do anything to enhance the powers currently set out in schedule 3, which states that the Welsh Government “may give financial assistance” for a broad range of purposes.
I recognise that amendment 90 is probing, and I appreciate the opportunity it presents to think again about UK-wide common frameworks, as the hon. Member for Gordon said. The agricultural industry is inevitably closely intertwined across the United Kingdom. The circumstances by which we remove ourselves from the European Union’s CAP make us go back to the drawing board on how this common UK market will operate. I have raised this matter on previous occasions and I make no apology for being quite a broken record in that regard. Where common frameworks are concerned, they need to be drawn up, agreed to and implemented upon the agreement of the three devolved Administrations and the UK Government. In that regard, I am not inherently averse to the alignment of agricultural policy across the United Kingdom—far from it. I am making a point of principle that it is for the Welsh Government, in conjunction with the UK Government and the other devolved Administrations, to decide on that alignment, and not for this Committee or, indeed, this place to act unilaterally.
I attempted to spell that out in new clause 11, which I acknowledge will not be debated, but I am sure that we will have further opportunities to discuss the need for common frameworks, and I know that Members on both sides of the divide are concerned about them. Just for the record, unless amendment 90 was something that was requested in any way by the Welsh Government, I am struggling to see how, as it stands, it enhances the powers of schedule 3 and why it would be in any way necessary for the schedule’s effective function.
Chris Davies
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I, too, have taken great pleasure in supporting amendments 88, 89 and 90. I think that farmers—I am sure that the many farmers glued to the TV watching this debate will feel the same—are now back in the debate and back in the Bill as a result of these amendments. We have emphasised the environment today—quite rightly so, many would say. This is an agriculture Bill, and it is important that our farmers out there are respected and represented within the Bill.
I am disappointed that the hon. Member for Ipswich disagrees with the amendments. Our greatest environmentalists in this country are our farmers. The landscape that we enjoy was created by them over not just decades, but centuries. They know exactly where the water flows when there are floods, they know on which bank the soil is better for their grass, and we should be listening to them. These amendments put farmers back in the game.
Sandy Martin
The initial problem with the common agricultural policy was that it was producing unsaleable gluts of certain foods. We have moved from that to a common agricultural policy that has the opposite problem, whereby people are being paid simply for owning land. That, I assume, is the main motivating factor behind the Secretary of State’s desire to move towards a system based on public goods, which we support. We believe that helping farmers to produce food is a public good, but we are not here talking about that. The main thrust of the amendments is about paying landowners for owning land.
Chris Davies
There are many faults with the common agricultural policy. The hon. Gentleman seems to be well versed in the written word, but we on the Government side of the Committee understand how it is implemented. There are many farmers on these Benches who completely understand how the agricultural world works. There are many issues with the CAP. These amendments do not state that we should have direct payments to farmers. They are probing amendments that clearly state that farmers should be part of the package and part of the discussion as we go forward, and I am happy to support them.
I class the hon. Member for Ceredigion as an hon. Friend, even though he is on the other side of the Committee, and he and I agree on many things. My constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire shares a boundary with Ceredigion, and our farmers cross that boundary regularly. We have similar faiths, meanings and needs—certainly for our agricultural and rural communities.
On schedule 3, we agree on most things, but it is important, if not vital, that the framework enables the devolved nations to work exceptionally closely together. I fear that it will have to be led by one particular region, with everybody coming to a consensus rather than a clear agreement, and I would like to see it led by Westminster. I share a border not only with the hon. Gentleman in Wales, but with England, and it is clear that we need a common framework for cross-border farming, whether it relates to Wales and England, or to England and Scotland, so that everybody works together in the same direction. We have one market and one new agricultural policy, so it is vital that the four devolved nations work together closely and in the same way for the benefit of agriculture throughout the United Kingdom.
Ben Lake
I thank the hon. Gentleman, who is my constituency neighbour, for giving way. I wholeheartedly agree that we must ensure that the internal UK market functions effectively, particularly for our farmers and for agricultural produce. One of the reasons why we need this discussion now is because the overarching framework of the EU CAP will no longer exist. I wholeheartedly agree that we need such co-operation, but we will have to agree to disagree about how we get to it.
Chris Davies
Bringing my thoughts to a conclusion, I reiterate that these are probing amendments, and I am sure the Minister will take them on board.
Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Wilson. I am pleased that this is a probing amendment because it is a good example of why the schedules relating to the devolved Administrations do not protect or guarantee respect for the devolved settlements. If accepted, it would surely restrict who the Welsh Government can pay out to. That point was ably made by the hon. Member for Ceredigion. It is a proposed imposition on the devolved Administrations that would restrict how they can spend their money. It does not even come from the Government; it comes from a group of—without being rude about it—random MPs.
Jenny Chapman
I may have got the wrong end of the stick, but my impression, having raised this matter with the Welsh Government, is that they agreed to schedule 3.
Jenny Chapman
The hon. Lady is referring to the schedule. It has not come from the Government; it has come from the Welsh Assembly.
Deidre Brock
Forgive me, but I am speaking about amendment 90, which makes it clear that it would impose financial restrictions on the schedule. I am objecting to it because, from the Scottish Government’s point of view, that is not desirable.
I note that paragraph (b) would allow payments to be made to landlords and others who have an interest in the land but do not actually produce anything, rather than farmers. That is certainly a concern. I feel strongly that these kinds of decisions should be made by the Ministers setting up the scheme, rather than by people in this room.
George Eustice
I will take each amendment in turn. I am delighted that the shadow Minister described amendment 52 as a probing amendment. I will explain why the Government have chosen not to take that approach for England. He asked what Wales did to get this. I can clear up the mystery: there is no mystery. This is a fully devolved matter. The Welsh Government have the power and ability, if they want, to introduce their own Bill. They have taken, in my view, the very sensible decision to say that, for the time being, they want to make sure they have legal clarity, so they wanted a schedule that effectively mirrored the Bill for England. At a later date, they will consider additional primary legislation. The clause is in the Bill not because they won an argument; it is simply because they asked for that additional clause.
George Eustice
No, not at all, and I will return to that point. We have an alternative plan for rural support and support for rural communities.
Paragraph (c) of amendment 52 states that financial assistance can be used for
“supporting persons who are involved in the production, processing, marketing or distribution of products deriving from an agricultural, horticultural or forestry activity.”
That could open the door to Unilever being paid grants for its manufacturing or a haulier with a chill chain operation being paid to take food to Tesco. It would even enable money to be paid to Tesco itself. I am not sure that the amendment would achieve what those who suggested and promoted it hope to achieve. In fact, it would open the door to a severe dilution of the Bill’s intention.
That said, we understand from our discussions with the Welsh Government that they are a little uncertain how they will use the power. They wanted it as a fall-back provision and envisaged using it for a short time until they could replace it with something else. It may be a provision in the Welsh schedule that is used in a very limited way, if at all, depending on the development of Welsh policy.
I turn to our plan for delivering for these areas, which is the shared prosperity fund. It will have a rural strand. The shared prosperity fund will replace the plethora of EU structural funds. We are working very closely with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government and other Government colleagues to ensure that there is a rural programme within that shared prosperity fund and to ensure, for example, that LEADER and other grants have some kind of successor scheme.
George Eustice
One Bill at a time. When legislation is introduced on the future shared prosperity fund—I understand that there will be a consultation later this year—everyone will then have an opportunity to participate in that debate, but it is a debate for another time. We have enough issues on our hands at the moment.
Amendment 88, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow, is similar to amendment 52, with the exception that he has added a paragraph (d) that would effectively require us to have regard for self-sufficiency. I note that he has borrowed the language in paragraph (d) from section 1 of the Agriculture Act 1947. Obviously it was a very different time—1947 was immediately after the second world war. We still had rationing books; we did not end rationing in this country until 1954. Our levels of self-sufficiency in the run-up to the second world war had been woefully low.
To put that in context, self-sufficiency today is very high by historical standards. In the late 19th century, and up until the second world war, our level of self-sufficiency hovered between 30% and 40%—far lower than it is today. It was a series of interventions, including the 1947 Act and others, that meant that it peaked at somewhere close to 70% in the late ’80s. As a number of hon. Members pointed out, there was a cost to self-sufficiency at that level: appalling levels of intervention, perfectly good food being destroyed, and production subsidies to produce food for which there was no market. The old-style production subsidy regime that used to pertain to the common agricultural policy was totally dysfunctional and severely discredited, and was therefore dismantled some time ago.
It is important to recognise a distinction between self-sufficiency and food security. Sometimes people conflate those terms. Food security depends on far more than self-sufficiency. We know that to deliver genuine food security both nationally and internationally, vibrant and successful domestic production and open markets are necessary. Just look at this summer, when we had an horrendous drought and crop failures across the board. That happens. It is the nature of farming, and it is therefore important, in order to protect food security, that we have open markets and trade. That has always been the case.
The other reality is that in a modern context the greatest threat to food security is probably a global one. We have a rapidly growing population, set to reach 9 billion by 2050, and we have the countervailing force of climate change and a lack of water resources, which means that in parts of the world where we are currently producing food it may be more difficult to do so in 10 or 15 years’ time. Scarcity of water could be a global challenge. The issue of food security is less about national self-sufficiency in case there is another world war—our negotiations with the EU are challenging but we do not envisage it getting to the state of our requiring something like the Emergency Powers (Defence) Act 1939. The challenge on food security, insofar as it exists, is ensuring that we can feed the world.
Another question is how best to deliver food security and a successful farming industry. Is it best to do so through direct payments—subsidy payments based on how much land farmers have? Direct payments were decoupled from production some 15 years ago, so those who suggest that direct payments are somehow a guarantor of food security are wrong. Many hundreds, or possibly thousands, of people own a bit of land, have a job in the City where they earn their income, mow the grass a couple of times a year and keep a few pet sheep on the land, but nevertheless hit the collect button on their single farm payment. That cannot be a viable, long-term approach.
The question therefore is how do we best support a vibrant and successful farming industry? Our view is that we should not do it through subsidies of the old style, but by supporting farms to become more profitable, to reduce costs, and to produce and sell more around the world. That is why the approach that we have taken to deliver food security, such as it is, is included in subsection (2), which covers the power to give grants to help farmers to invest, and the power to support research and development so that we can see the next leap forward in plant breeding or in animal genetics. There are powers later in the Bill that we will debate at a future date to allow producer organisations to be formed so that farmers have more clout in the marketplace and get a fairer price. There are powers to improve fairness and transparency in the supply chain. Where we want to end up is with a successful, vibrant, profitable farming industry that is able to produce more food.
Sandy Martin
I am listening carefully to what the Minister is saying, but subsection (2) does not mention food. It mentions some of the activities that may be invested in in the production of different foods, but there are all sorts of people who would want to produce very good, sustainably produced, healthy food, who would not be able to get any support whatsoever from the Government under subsection (2).
George Eustice
I do not agree. Subsection (2) is very clear. It gives us the power to
“give financial assistance for or in connection with the purpose of starting, or improving the productivity of, an agricultural, horticultural...activity.”
It could not be clearer. It gives us the power to invest in the way that I have described.
Jenny Chapman
This is problematic. I do not think the Minister knows how to answer his own questions about how best to support farmers. Clause 2(2) says:
“Financial assistance may be given subject to such conditions as the Secretary of State considers appropriate.”
I do not know how much wider we could get, and my hon. Friend the Member for Ipswich is worried about its being too narrow. That is the problem with the Bill.
George Eustice
I do not accept that criticism of the Bill. We have discussed many times the romantic attachment of some hon. Members to the 1947 Act. Let me just read from it again. It describes Ministers being able to do things that they deem “expedient”. We have a concern about giving the Government and Ministers power to get things done, but that is what has been missing in our time in the European Union. We should embrace the fact that we are now able to get things done as a country.
My final point on food security is that, if we look at the evidence, the sectors that contribute the most to our self-sufficiency as a nation are the ones that are unsubsidised, not those that are subsidised. We are 96% self-sufficient in carrots, which is traditionally an unsubsidised sector for which the current single farm payment is irrelevant. We are 92% self-sufficient in cabbages and 95% self-sufficient in peas. We have seen a big increase of 15% in the production of vegetables since 2010 and a 50% increase in top fruit and soft fruit production. The unsubsidised sectors have been the most innovative and have done most to contribute to our self-sufficiency.
I turn to amendment 89, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow and is supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon. It seeks to limit the eligibility for financial assistance across the board to people who are in farming or food production. I understand the intention behind the amendment. The concern, if I could caricature it, is that in future a Government may just give all the money to green non-governmental organisations, which will buy a large fleet of Land Rovers and employ a large army of regional officers to go around chivvying farmers to do things differently. That is not our intention at all.
We have been very clear that we envisage a future where there will be an environmental land management contract principally with the farmer or the landowner. There is a very important reason for that. We cannot deliver any of the public good benefits unless the landowner or the occupier of the land—the tenant—are fully on board and fully signed up to do so. That is why virtually every one of the paragraphs of clause 1(1) refer to the farmland or the farmed environment and managing land in such a way as to promote the environment. To do that, the landowner or the tenant has to be the main recipient of that funding and the person with whom we have the contractual arrangement.
What we do not want to do is rule out the scope for there to be, for instance, some lower level facilitation work to get regional level co-ordination, which a group such as the RSPB or the Wildlife Trusts might engage with. There could be a role to design schemes to have some facilitation funding, as we do now under the EU schemes, for some of those third-sector organisations. In some national parks or areas of outstanding natural beauty, we might find that there is a collective body that could do that in partnership with farmers.
While we cannot accept this particular amendment, I understand the concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. With the policy papers that we have launched, I can reassure him that we absolutely intend that it will be farmers, landowners and tenants who receive the lion’s share of these funds. They might choose to subcontract certain responsibilities and tasks to third-sector organisations, but if we want to ensure that there is delivery, our relationship must be with that landowner or land occupier.
Dr Drew
As I said at the outset, this is—from us, at least—a probing amendment, so we will not push it to a vote. I was intrigued by some of the Minister’s arguments; the nuance between self-sufficiency and food security was interesting. I have always thought that with more self-sufficiency came greater food security, but maybe I am naive about that. The Minister dealt with the issue of farmers’ lack of forage during the recent drought. It does not matter whether farmers are more self-sufficient or trying to work out a more secure supply—the reality is that there was no supply. It is all well and good to talk about open markets, but farmers were looking everywhere for sufficient forage for their animals for the winter. Lots of them are facing real financial difficulty; if they bought at the wrong time, they are paying through the nose because of their problems in not being able to get sufficient grass from their land.
I take the Minister’s point—it is a clever argument, but when it comes down to the practicalities, I am not sure it is one that I would buy completely. Likewise, he lauds the fact that, for some of our foodstuffs, there are greater movements towards what I would see as self-sufficiency. The market I know best is milk, because I have a former Dairy Crest factory at the bottom of my garden, which is now owned by Müller Wiseman. The milk industry is classic—we should be 100% self-sufficient, and we are not only because of the craziness of the relationship between the farmers, the processors and the retailers. The reality is that it is a very difficult market, and we cannot provide enough of our own milk because that relationship has never been good. That is a reason why, right at the beginning, we had the milk marketing boards, which functioned well for many years. They were seen as very state-led, but we produced enough of our own milk, as was reflected in the price.
Mr Goodwill
While I can understand some of the advantages of the milk marketing boards, was it not the case that during the era of intervention buying, the milk marketing boards—because of their size—were the ones making milk, butter and skimmed-milk powder interventions, while our competitors across the channel, with their co-operative structure, were developing new, innovative products that are now seen in our markets?
Dr Drew
I agree. That is why, on the back of the milk marketing boards, we created Milk Marque, which was a co-operative. Sadly, it did not stand the test of time. Talking to farmers retrospectively, many of them believed wrongly that there was a better, private solution. We have seen a monopsony grow up, which has caused the producer to face all the same problems, except that they are more subject to the whim of that marketplace, where we should be producing as much of our milk as possible. We will not get delayed on this too much, but it is a classic case of the Government’s needing to recognise that they have a role to play. They still set the parameters, even if they do not intervene in the ways in which they used to do, by controlling that marketplace completely. I hear what the Minister says. Parts of his argument are highly believable; I am more sceptical about other bits, but as we go through the Bill, no doubt we will see where the Government are going.
To go back to the start, food security is an important issue, and we need to recognise that it will keep coming back. This was a probing amendment that we will not push to a vote, but we have had an interesting discussion. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 41, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
‘(2A) The Secretary of State shall also give financial assistance for, or in connection with, the purpose of establishing, maintaining and expanding agro-ecological farming systems, including organic farming .—(Kerry McCarthy.)
This amendment would ensure that new schemes support agroecological farming systems, including organic, as a way of delivering the purposes in clause 1. Agroecology is recognised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as the basis for evolving food systems that are equally strong in environmental, economic, social and agronomic dimensions.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Kerry McCarthy
I beg to move amendment 73, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert “, provided that such financial assistance also furthers and does not undermine the purposes in subsection (1) above.”
This amendment would ensure that future funding allocated to improve productivity does not support activities which would damage the natural environment/objectives set out in clause 1(1).
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 53, in clause 1, page 2, line 18, at end insert—
‘(5) The Secretary of State must hold a public consultation on—
(a) how “productivity” should be defined for the purposes of giving financial assistance under subsection (2); and
(b) the definition of “improving productivity” in subsection (4).
(6) In the consultation under subsection (5), the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) persons, or bodies representing persons, who are in any part of an agri-food supply chain, within the meaning of section 13(3);
(b) persons, or bodies representing persons, who are—
(i) engaged in horticulture;
(ii) consumers of horticultural products; or
(iii) in the supply chain between persons described in sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii).
(c) persons, or bodies representing persons, who are—
(i) engaged in forestry;
(ii) consumers of forestry products; or
(iii) in the supply chain between persons described in sub-paragraphs (i) and (ii);
(d) persons, or bodies representing persons, who are not engaged in agriculture, horticulture or forestry but who advocate particular methods of managing land or water in a way that protects or improves the environment,
and may consult any other person or body the Secretary of State thinks fit.
(7) No financial assistance may be given under subsection (2) until the Secretary of State has laid before both Houses of Parliament a report setting out—
(a) in summary form, the views expressed in the consultation held under subsection (5); and
(b) the definitions of “productivity” and “improving productivity” which the Secretary of State proposes to adopt for the purposes of giving financial assistance under subsection (2), with his or her reasons for doing so.”
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to consult on the definition of “productivity” and “improving productivity” and report on that consultation before giving any financial assistance for that purpose under Clause 1(2).
Kerry McCarthy
The Minister will be delighted to know that I am going to be very brief on this one. There is concern that it is not very clear in the Bill whether the public goods that are identified in clause 1(1) will be the primary focus for any payments, as we have already said that there is a limited pot of funding available. The Bill needs to reflect the fact that the Government have made a commitment that future policies will be underpinned by payment of public money for the provision of public goods.
The public goods are listed in the Bill, but it does not actually indicate whether they will be a funding priority—it just says that these are things that money can be spent on. It does not specify that any payments for productivity should contribute to the delivery of public goods. The two things could be entirely separate.
We have already discussed the fact that the Bill contains powers and not very much on duties, which means that it is vulnerable to change or being dropped entirely by a future Secretary of State. As I understand the Bill, there would be nothing to stop him or her from implementing payments for productivity only, without any reference to the public good. There is no indication as to how the pot of money would be divided up between the two, so there is concern, and Greener UK and the pesky environmentalists that people have talked about have been working on the amendment. They just want some assurance that a future scheme would not be weighted in favour of productivity payments, with no requirement to reduce environmental impact, and to make sure that the delivery of the public goods listed in clause 1 would not be undermined by the productivity clause.
Dr Drew
I have very little to add to what my hon. Friend has said. Basically, the amendment seeks to clarify what is meant by “productivity”. We believe the Government have quite a narrow definition of productivity that undermines the environmental sustainability that the Bill is based upon. We hope the Minister will say how he would interpret productivity and that he will take a wider view since we are looking at different aspects of productivity besides the purely agricultural and limiting definition that could be implied. For us, the issue is about improving quality and efficiency, but also about how we go about doing that. Again, that is the weakness of the Bill. It says a lot about what it might want to do, but not much about how it will do it, so we want that clearly defined. Reducing dependence on pesticides, weedkiller and fertilisers is implied in the way in which the Bill is being promoted, but exactly how that will be attained is not in the measure.
Sustainability, a primary feature of the Bill, needs to be spelt out more clearly in terms of how the legislation is entailed, otherwise there will be a misuse of public money. For example, we are not really spelling out how we want to minimise the carbon impact of agriculture. We know that agriculture could achieve carbon sequestration much more fully than it currently does.
On climate change, we are looking at issues to do with restocking levels and how they would impact on emissions levels, and at the antibiotic issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East identified. Amendment 53 would require a proper consultation on the meaning of “productivity” and a much broader understanding of sustainable productivity.
George Eustice
I will try to be brief in dealing with the two important points. First, the impact of amendment 73 would be to subordinate subsection (2) to the purposes in subsection (1), which is problematic on numerous levels. I can reassure the hon. Member for Bristol East that when it comes to the payments that we will make for the delivery of public goods, which we envisage being the cornerstone of the future policy under subsection (1), there will be conditions attached to those and requirements for entering such schemes. There will be enforcement provisions, as I said, in clause 3 to deal with that.
I understand the hon. Lady’s concern that we do not want to support something on the one hand that might undermine objectives on the other, but it is inappropriate to link the two in the way that she does because the right way to do it is to apply conditions on both. It is possible for us to apply entry-level conditions for the payment of productivity grants so that they explicitly do not undermine some of our other objectives. That will change from case to case depending on what is being supported. If there was something that dramatically improved yields but had an impact on the environment, we might be cautious about supporting it. If we supported, for instance, robotic technology to aid harvesting, it might not have any natural crossover with the provisions in subsection (1). I think the correct way to approach this is to put the right conditions on schemes under both subsection (1) and subsection (2), so that they complement rather than undermine one another. The amendment is unnecessary.
Kerry McCarthy
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 7—Environmental land management contracts—
‘(1) The Secretary of State shall, by regulations, make provision for environmental land management contracts.
(2) A person who manages land may enter into an environmental land management contract with the Secretary of State to deliver one or more benefits under section 1(1).
(3) A person who manages land and who seeks to enter into an environmental land management contract with the Secretary of State must first submit a land management plan.
(4) The Secretary of State must approve a land management plan submitted by a person who manages land before entering into an environmental land management contract with that person.
(5) Regulations under this section may provide for—
(a) one or more persons or bodies to act on behalf of the Secretary of State for the purposes of entering into an environmental land management contract, and
(b) requirements which a land management plan must meet if it is to be approved by the Secretary of State under subsection (5).
(6) Regulations under this section are subject to affirmative resolution procedure.’
This new clause would require the Secretary of State to make provision for environmental land management contracts.
Given that the Committee has thoroughly debated the amendments to clause 1, I hope that comments in the clause 1 stand part debate will be brief, and will not rework arguments that we have already heard today.
George Eustice
We have debated a wide range of topics and there have been amendments moved to, and discussions on, virtually every conceivable aspect of clause 1. The Government believe that clause 1(1) has a broad range of purposes and outcomes that enable us to deliver all the schemes we want, and that clause 1(2) has all the powers we need to support a profitable, vibrant and growing agriculture and horticulture industry.
Dr Drew
I shall not say that much more. We have our misgivings about “must” and “may” and some of the issues that arose in the wider debate. It was appropriate to debate clause 1 in considerable detail, because it is the clause that sets the Bill in the direction of travel that it is taking.
I shall confine my remarks mainly to new clause 7, which is important. Not least of the remarks I want to make is that the Government have been clear about setting a lot of store by environmental land management contracts. The White Paper, “Health and Harmony” contained a quite long piece on environmental land management. Hon. Members will be pleased to know that I will not quote the whole of it, but it does say:
“The government will work with farmers and land managers who wish to improve the environment by entering into environmental land management contracts, which could span several years.
These contracts will make sure that the environmental benefits farmers help deliver, but which cannot be sold or bought, are paid for by the public purse.”
This is about money and how we pay farmers and others to do things on the land. The White Paper gives lots of examples, including
“helping deliver high air and water quality”
and
“protecting and enhancing biodiversity on their land, by providing habitats for wildlife, for example”.
We feel that new clause 7 is worthy of inclusion because it tries to identify from the Government exactly how environmental land management contracts will operate and the way in which moneys will be paid. The danger is that such things will slip by if we do not draw attention to them. Various organisations support what we are trying to do, including the Uplands Alliance and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee for the lowlands. The Ramblers are keen to ensure that access to the land is a crucial part of any contract that is negotiated, so that when public moneys are granted, people have the right to access the land.
The previous Labour Government spent a lot of time on access arrangements. Sadly, we did not get as far as we wanted on coastal access, but land was made available for what is figuratively called “the right to roam”. That was done in perhaps a more persuasive manner than was necessary—the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 introduced legislative bite—but there was solidity in how access was allowed. That is why it is important that we link access to the debate on clause 1.
I do not have much more to say about new clause 7. We are not happy with some aspects of how clause 1 has been dealt with. There have been lots of promises and good intentions, but there are holes in the Government’s approach to the Bill. It is not just me saying that; the House of Lords Committee was scathing about the way in which so much depends on statutory instruments, rather than being in the Bill. We will vote against the clause, because we feel that it is important to get some of the detail we have been arguing for into the Bill.
We have spent a lot of time—more than five hours—on clause 1, but it is effectively what the Bill is about. If clause 1 is not right, the rest of the Bill is pretty unimportant. We will be tabling other amendments, but we have spent a lot of time on the clause to try to get the Bill right. Sadly, the Government have not moved as far as we want them to. Hopefully, they will get other chances on Report and Third Reading, and things will happen to the Bill in the House of Lords. We are trying to be helpful. We not trying to wreck, but to improve. With that in mind, I hope the Government will understand why we are not willing to vote for the clause.
George Eustice
Briefly, the Government regard new clause 7 as unnecessary because clause 1, as it stands, gives the powers necessary to design schemes. The lesson we have learned from decades of working with these schemes is that the environment is inherently complex, so we often need an iterative approach to the design of schemes so that we can add, remove or refine options as we move forwards.
The system that we have had with the common agricultural policy has been completely dysfunctional and unsuited to that aim. We have ended up with a morass of regulations that define everything from the minimum and maximum width of a hedge, to the maximum width of a gateway, what size a buffer strip should be, what type of flowers people can grow, and what type of plants people can grow on top of a hedge. It is a ludicrous morass of regulation and we do not want to recreate it. We need the powers that will enable us to design contracts that really work, farm by farm, at local levels.
Dr Drew
I hear what the Minister says, but those environmental land management contracts will be even more complicated. A whole-farm approach is great—we want that to happen—but we are going to look at every bit of woodland and watercourse, and all the ways in which field boundaries are currently maintained. That will all be wrapped into the contracts, and somebody has to manage and monitor that. Will that be any easier than the current system?
George Eustice
Yes, I believe it will be easier, because our vision is that there will be an expert on the ground. That might be somebody from one of our agencies, such as Natural England, or it might be an agronomist with whom a farmer works, who visits the farm, walks the farm, and sits around the kitchen table with the farmer to help them put the scheme together. Having given it their assent, there is then a presumption that it is supported through the system.
We want less emphasis on mapping, and fretting about a bush in a field in Derbyshire and whether it is an eligible feature, and whether a farmer claimed something that he should not have claimed. We want to get back to a human relationship between an adviser and a farmer, and I believe that we can make the systems work far better. To do that, we must avoid trying to define too much in regulation, since it hampers the ability for judgment on the ground.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Agriculture Bill (Fifth sitting)
(6 years ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Committee divided: - Ayes: 7 / Noes: 10 - Question accordingly negatived.
The Chair
Today we begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill, but first I have a few preliminary points to make. I remind Members that electronic devices should be switched to silent mode and that tea and coffee are not allowed in Committee sittings.
The selection list for today’s sitting, which is available in the Committee Room, shows how selected amendments have been grouped for debate, generally on the same or similar issues. Decisions on amendments take place not in the order in which they are debated, but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper; the selection list shows the order of debate, but decisions on each amendment will be taken when we come to the clause that the amendment would affect. I shall use my discretion to decide whether to allow separate stand part debates on individual clauses and schedules after debate on the relevant amendments.
Clause 1
Secretary of State’s powers to give financial assistance
Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)
I beg to move amendment 44, in clause 1, page 1, line 4, leave out “may” and insert “must”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance for the purposes listed in Clause 1.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 45, in clause 3, page 3, line 5, leave out “may” and insert “must”.
This amendment would require the Secretary of State to make regulations for the checking, enforcing and monitoring of financial assistance in Clause 3.
Dr Drew
I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. Clause 1 is in some respects the centrepiece of the Bill, and I imagine that the Committee will spend quite a lot of time on it today, because it will put the Government’s approach into practice.
Let me say at the outset that the Opposition have no difficulty supporting the notion of public money for public goods and ensuring that the environment is central to agriculture. However, we have some problems with the way in which the Bill has been put together. Certain parts of it lack substance, and it certainly lacks a mechanism not just to allow our environment to flourish, but to give us a food supply and safeguard health. As I said on Second Reading, the White Paper was entitled “Health and Harmony”, but health seems to have disappeared from the agenda.
The Opposition will move amendments to bring into the Bill the areas that are not covered. Later today, for example, we will move an amendment on climate change, which is not formally mentioned in the Bill, just as it was not mentioned in the Budget speech yesterday. Given the role that emissions play in agriculture, we think that it is essential that climate change is addressed in the Bill.
We believe that the Bill does not safeguard our food supply or tackle inequalities. Sadly, it follows as a syllogism that bolstering the environment is no good unless we can combine it with protecting food and health. We need to look at food inequality in particular. Amendments 44 and 45 address a point that we will make several times during the passage of the Bill, which is that this is about powers. We believe that the Bill needs some real bite. We might trust the Minister—we believe him to be a very good Minister—but he will be here only for a period of time. It is vital that we put some duties into the Bill so that a future Secretary of State will have to deliver the things that we want.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
I am following the hon. Gentleman’s remarks closely, and I have huge sympathy for what he says. Does he agree that a possible benefit of changing “may” to “must” is that if a more urbancentric Secretary of State were appointed, that imperative would ensure that he or she supported our agricultural sector, rather than saying, “Perhaps I might, but I don’t choose to”?
Dr Drew
That is exactly the point I am making. We are seeking to strengthen the Bill. We come not to wreck it or to make it impracticable; we come to improve it. We believe that one way the Bill would be improved is by the inclusion of duties. As the hon. Gentleman quite rightly said, there may be a future Government who are less partial towards agriculture, and it is vital that we fetter them. That is why we have legislation.
Mr Robert Goodwill (Scarborough and Whitby) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman not think that his amendments would, in fact, be a lawyers charter? It would be open to any pressure group to take the Government to court for not doing something that they said they must do. It would take away the element of judgment from Ministers in any forthcoming Government of whichever colour and give it to the courts.
Dr Drew
I do not agree with the right hon. Gentleman, as much as I respect him—we have had many hours together in this place. The reality is that all we are doing—the Bill will probably last as an Act for the next 50 or 60 years—is including in the Bill a requirement that the Secretary of State must provide financial assistance. That is what legislation is about. It is not: “the Minister might want to do it and they might not want to do it.” This is about ensuring that the Minister is very clear that when they have to introduce these major changes, there are some parts that they must deliver.
Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)
Is not the main point that if we have laws that allow Secretaries of State to do things or not to do things in the future, then to a certain extent we are reducing the ability of this place to scrutinise law? In some ways, we are moving law making or regulation into the hands of people rather than into the hands of the law itself.
Dr Drew
That is the point. The argument I am advancing is nothing other than something that has been advanced in the other place. I do not know what the Minister thinks about the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of the House of Lords, but it is hardly a strong supporter of the Government’s approach. It reported:
“We are dismayed at the Government’s approach to delegated powers in the Agriculture Bill.”
That is a cross-party Committee, and as much as we will do our bit in this place, I suspect that the Government are not looking forward to taking the Bill through the Lords, because the Lords will certainly make those points, following their current investigation. In the 36 clauses, they identify 26 powers of Ministers to make law, including five Henry VIII powers, which we always tend to question. Perhaps it is the Opposition’s job to be the lender of last resort to ensure that we do not allow things to slip through in any way. We make no apologies for concentrating on this important issue early on. We are not asking for everything to be turned into duties—that would be silly. Clearly, a future Minister will need discretion, but unless they know what the law is, it will be totally down to discretion. That is not a good thing.
It is interesting that we are now undertaking legislative scrutiny, because the Select Committee is looking at the Bill at the same time as us. If we had had pre-legislative scrutiny, perhaps we would have ironed out some of these issues. This was certainly one of the dominant themes during the evidence sessions from different groups. I do not think that any of them would argue that they were happy with the powers currently left in the Bill; some duties are needed. I have no doubt that we will debate this over the course of the morning, but we regard it as a missed opportunity. According to the explanatory statements, amendment 44
“would require the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance for the purposes listed in Clause 1,”
and amendment 45
“would require the Secretary of State to make regulations for the checking, enforcing and monitoring of financial assistance in Clause 3.”
Those are pretty important things. If the Secretary of State is not asked to do those things, they do not have to do them. They may want to do them—the Government may feel it is their duty to do them—but, sadly, there is no legislative enforcement. That is why we want to put this in the Bill.
This is once again about the way in which the House should operate, and we challenge the Minister to promise to place duties at the centre of the Bill, so that it will do what we—certainly on this side of the House—want it to do, which is to cement the relationship between environment, food and health. The Minister has a duty to look at issues such as public health and the safety of the industry, which one would have thought is what the Minister for Agriculture should be doing—it is central to their whole being.
We hope that the Government are listening and that the debate gets off on the right foot. We would like to work with them on this, but we make no apologies for pressing the amendment to a Division if there is no consensus. If the Minister makes concessions, we will listen to him. It would be interesting to know why the Government are unwilling to put duties in the Bill; is it because they are worried about some of the powers, which they might not want to use? If so, perhaps the Minister would say which powers the Government really need discretion on, and we will listen and see if we agree.
The finance and the regulation of finance should be a duty, and something that the Minister of Agriculture should have to face Parliament about because of the nature of their responsibilities. We are strongly in favour of the two amendments because they would make sure that there are duties on the Secretary of State and the Minister for Agriculture in clause 1. Amendment 45 would impose a duty to look at the way in which we regulate finance.
After Brexit, the common agricultural policy will no longer provide our regulatory system, so it is even more important that we get the Bill absolutely right. Whatever one’s views on Brexit, agriculture is the major industry that is most dependent on the EU for both budget and regulatory framework, so we must get the Bill right, today and in subsequent sittings. As I have said, the House of Lords has a fair amount to say in the paper that it produced—I am sorry that I have only a photocopy, but we all have photocopies because they do not produce hard copies any more—which is a pretty devastating critique. The Lords are worried about how much the Government are leaving to statutory instruments.
We all received a copy of the Agriculture Act 1947, which is well worth reading, in case anyone has not read it. [Interruption.] The Minister is waxing lyrical about it. The 1947 Act put into primary legislation the way in which the agricultural system in this country was to work for generations. All we are saying is “Let’s do the same with this.” This Bill replaces the 1947 Act. One could argue that the changes in 1975 and 2005 were minor compared with 1947 and 2018. Let us start on the right footing and know what we expect the Secretary of State to do, because that is what we are here to do. Parliamentary scrutiny is meant to improve legislation, not wreck it. We think that our proposals will fundamentally improve the Bill and make sure that we get off on the right foot and that we have a better Bill at the end of Committee.
The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)
We should not adopt the amendment. I disagree with the shadow Minister—we have chosen to use the term “may” rather than “must” because that is how we draft all of our legislation when it comes to powers to pay. The approach we have adopted is absolutely consistent with our constitution. I want to give the Committee a few examples. The Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006, introduced by a Labour Government, contains the following provision:
“The Secretary of State may give or arrange for the giving of financial assistance in respect of expenditure incurred or to be incurred in any matter related to or connected with a DEFRA function.”
If we go back further, the Science and Technology Act 1965 states:
“The Secretary of State...may defray out of moneys provided by Parliament any expenses which, with the consent of the Treasury—
some things never change—
they may respectively incur”.
The 1965 Act that created powers to make payments uses the term “may”. I know that the hon. Member for Stroud has a romantic attachment to the Agriculture Act 1947, which is a good Act—I have read it. How about this for giving powers to a Minister:
“Where...it appears to the appropriate Minister expedient so to do, or if it appears to him otherwise expedient so to do in the public interest, he may by order fix or vary any such price or other factor as aforesaid notwithstanding that under the enactments regulating the operation of the arrangements in question”?
So “the Minister may” is used throughout the 1947 Act. We are simply being consistent in the approach that we take when it comes to spending powers.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend is making a strong case. May I say gently that times have clearly changed? The hon. Member for Stroud is probably disappointed by this fact, but times have changed since 1947. It was immediately post-war, rationing was still in place, the understanding of the importance of British agriculture was readily understood between all of the parties, and we were a far less urbanised media, culture and political class than we are today. “May” may have sufficed in 1947 when there was a more common agreement on the importance of agriculture. Given the competing philosophical thoughts bouncing around at the moment, particularly in a post-Brexit environment, what harm would “must” do to the Bill?
George Eustice
I disagree with my hon. Friend on this point because, as I said, I was not simply citing the 1947 Act. I also cited the Science and Technology Act 1965, which predated our membership of the EU. Even more recently, the Natural Environment and Rural Communities Act 2006 used “may”, and things have not changed much since then.
Mr Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con)
My hon. Friend has given the Committee a history lesson on different Governments introducing different powers in different scenarios. To help the Committee, will he remind us whether there is any unifying theme in those three Acts? Which party, for example, was in government on each of those occasions?
George Eustice
I think, if memory serves, a Labour Government were in power in each of those three examples. That point is well made. We have to understand the sentiment that lies behind the concern for duties on Government rather than powers for Government to exercise, as is traditional in our constitution. A lot of this stems from the fact that we are leaving the European Union—from a sentiment that says, “Whatever will we do when we have not got the EU to tell us what to do, to impose regulations on us, to launch infraction proceedings against us and to send in auditors to complain about the width of our hedges and gateways or about how we record payments?”
The answer is that as we leave the European Union, we should, as a country, embrace self-government—as we used to, and as we did in the 1947 Act. We should have more confidence in our ability to translate powers in an Act into actions and commitment for Government.
Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)
Does the Minister not agree that “must” is a stronger word than “may”? He talks about taking back power and government. We are talking about how it looks to agricultural communities outwith this place. The word “must”, which I agree does not define how much money will be paid, but requires that it be addressed, would surely put agricultural communities in a stronger, more confident position than “may”, which leaves it all up in the air.
George Eustice
Ultimately, reassurance is given to people in the farming industry, and others with an interest in the farmed landscape, through manifesto commitments and Government commitments. We have a commitment to keep the agricultural budget at the current level until at least 2022. We also have a manifesto commitment to roll out a new scheme to replace the current basic payment scheme, and the Bill sets out a transition period that implies an ongoing budget well into the future. That is what gives farmers the reassurance that they need, not sophistry about whether we should have the word “must” or “may”. I respectfully suggest that we should pursue the approach to drafting that we have always had, that has stood the test of time and that worked wonderfully well in the 1947 Act and in other Labour Acts since, and accept that “may” is the correct terminology to use, as a point of legal drafting.
I will touch briefly on amendment 45, which is linked, and which the hon. Member for Stroud also addressed. The amendment creates a requirement through changing the word “may” to “must”, converting a power to make provisions for enforcement on issues such as eligibility into a requirement. I simply say to the hon. Gentleman that I do not think it is necessary. We have in this country well established procedures that put enormous scrutiny on the spending of public money. We have the National Audit Office, and codes of governance within the civil service and the Cabinet Office. We have very detailed procedures in place to ensure that we check eligibility and look after public money.
Say we were to introduce a scheme and have no type of enforcement or eligibility checking whatever—literally handing out money. As all hon. Members know, it would not be long before we had National Audit Office reports, Public Accounts Committee hearings and accounting officer issues from within the civil service. The reality is that converting the power into a requirement is unnecessary in the context of all the other requirements that we already make on Government. What we seek in this power and in the Bill—what we need in the Bill—is simply a power to be able to introduce those checks.
I hope that I have been able to give the hon. Member for Stroud reassurance. I hope he will accept the approach taken by previous Labour Governments in such areas and also that the existing drafting—using “may”—is entirely consistent with the past. I hope that he will withdraw both amendments.
Sandy Martin
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson.
The Bill is intended to facilitate the support of agriculture and the countryside after Brexit. The situation at the moment is that all sorts of supports are in place through the European Union, so all sorts of changes, discussions and votes will be needed to change them. The Government have characterised that process as deeply bureaucratic, but it enables farmers and those engaged in agriculture to know what they will receive money for and how much they will receive well in advance, so that they may make decisions about how to carry out their business.
If the Secretary of State ever decided not to give any financial assistance of any sort to agriculture in this country, that would change the entire nature of our society. It would be inconceivable for the Secretary of State to be able to change the decision to award any financial support to agriculture without the consent of Parliament, yet by making this a power rather than a duty, the Bill does exactly that.
We heard about flexibility and the need for it. The Secretary of State, however, has plenty of flexibility even with our amendments. We are not tying the Secretary of State down to any particular way of offering financial assistance; we are only asking that he should have to do it. The flexibility that remains if our amendment is adopted is the flexibility of our Parliament to repeal the resulting Act if ever it decides to do so. Anything else puts the power to support agriculture in this country in the hands of the Secretary of State and not in the hands of Parliament. I do not believe that people were voting for that when they voted to leave the European Union. I believe that we need to tell the Secretary of State that he “must” give financial assistance to agriculture in this country.
Simon Hoare
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson.
I shall be incredibly brief. I feel that the issue is one that the Minister has addressed in terms of the historical precedent in legislation of using “may” over “must”. In the interests of the speedy progress of the Bill, if the shadow Minister presses his amendment to a vote, I shall be voting for the Government side of the argument—the Whip will be relieved to hear that.
Simon Hoare
There was an audible exhalation of breath there.
I suggest to the Minister, however, that this issue is likely to come back as an amendment in the other place and that we are likely to debate it on Report. I therefore make this point gently to my hon. Friend: the environment—not in the green sense of the term, but the political environment—and the circumstances in 1947 were very different from now with respect to the understanding of the importance and the appreciation of the need to have a vibrant agricultural sector. One can attribute all sorts of reasons for that, but it happens to be a fairly basic statement of fact.
I hear what the Minister says about the historical precedent, but I am not certain that changing “may” to “must” fundamentally weakens or alters the Bill. I think it would strengthen his elbow. Unfortunately, he will have successors in due course, as will the Secretary of State. He and the Secretary of State both have a very clear commitment to a strong agricultural cycle; I think that is beyond debate.
Martin Whitfield
Is there not more certainty in amending “may” to “must” than perhaps we would find in manifestos past, present and possibly future?
Simon Hoare
The hon. Gentleman tempts me down a path of debate that, without pre-judging your intervention Mr Wilson, I am pretty certain is likely to be ruled out of order. The hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not venture down the tantalising sylvan glade of a debate about the language used in manifestos.
The point I want to make is that the commitment to UK agriculture of the current DEFRA team is beyond peradventure, but that is not a safeguard that we can bank forever and a day. I do not say this as a party point, because I think Labour Members would agree that currently the Labour party is a more urban party than the Conservative party, but that could easily change. One could easily see a debate turning round, saying, “Hang on a moment—that lot did not give a huge amount of support to coal or steel or any other heavy industry. Why should we, as an urban party, support something that is predominantly rural and possibly Tory-voting?” The amendment would take away the temptation for more urbancentric politicians to turn their face against agriculture.
The amendment also might strengthen future DEFRA teams in debates with the Treasury, because the agricultural sector and population are smaller than the urban ones. They are possibly less powerful in a lobby of the body politic. In a difficult spending round when money is tight, as it will be in future years, to be able to say to the Treasury, “This is not an add-on or a nice-to-have. It is an imperative enshrined in statute law and I, as the Secretary of State, must have policies to deliver the things set out in section 1 of a future Act”, will—at a stroke—shoot the fox of a hawkish future Treasury Minister, who is trying to clamp down on public expenditure.
George Eustice
I understand the point my hon. Friend is making, but does he not accept that even if we change the word in the way the Opposition suggest, there will be nothing to prevent a future Government dramatically changing the amount of money they make available? Ultimately, it will always be the job of elected Members of Parliament at that time to hold Her Majesty’s Treasury to account, to ensure that it takes its responsibilities seriously—and to do that whether or not the word is “may” or “must” in this particular Bill.
My hon. Friend will be aware that we have a 25-year environment plan. An environment Bill will come from that, which will set out targets, objectives and commitments to get trends moving in a particular direction. It will give a longer term commitment and buy-in, which successive Governments will work towards.
Simon Hoare
My hon. Friend the Minister makes an incredibly powerful and telling point, with which I cannot disagree. Inexorably, that may take us on to potential further amendments or a debate in the other place. I know the Treasury is moving away from ring-fencing, but I think there is a sustainable argument that one can deploy: that a certain percentage of the contribution to GDP created by the agriculture and food sectors should be ring- fenced for precisely the purposes set out here. We have it in other areas of protected expenditure, and for good and clear reasons.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right that if the Treasury is only giving the Secretary of State £5.50 a year to spend, that will not buy a huge amount of agriculture or environmental support whether this legislation says “must” or “may”. There may be future debates during the progress of the Bill about some form of ring-fencing; I make that point, knowing that the Minister and Front Bench Members are alert and alive to the issue.
Dr Drew
It has been an interesting debate. The hon. Member for North Dorset put his finger on one of the strong reasons for moving the amendment. To some extent, we want to fetter future Governments, whether Labour or Conservative. It is important we understand that one of the great changes brought about by Brexit, as I mentioned in my initial remarks, is to agriculture.
Let us be honest: agriculture is a centre point of the EU. We pay a higher contribution because we were not able to change the nature of a pro-agricultural budgetary arrangement. We may have wanted to, but we did not. Now that that is gone, there is a real danger that agriculture will slip further down the Budget agenda—there was no great mention of agriculture yesterday—so it is important to use legislation to bolster the accountability mechanism and to make sure money is spent in this area. I have some knowledge of the history of why we ended up with a cheap food policy, but that policy had two sides to it. It was about keeping the urban proletariat fed, but also guaranteeing farmers that they would get a price, whether through deficiency payments or the minimum income guarantee, given the way in which the Common Market set up its pricing mechanism.
I am sure the Minister has been working overtime on the old word search to find a few “mays” and he has done very well in terms of cherry-picking. Some of us were in Parliament when the NERC Act was passed, and I am sure there are “mays” in it; any piece of legislation will have the word “may”. I challenge him to find one that does not have the word “may” in, but it will also have the word “must”. I will say, with the best of intentions, that to compare the NERC Act with the Bill is to undermine the importance of the Bill. NERC was a very good piece of legislation; it tidied up BOATs and RUPPs and the way in which we had access to our countryside and it set up the replacement for the Countryside Agency. It was important in its own way, but it pales into insignificance in comparison with the Bill, which is about our food, our future health and, dare I say it, the way in which we want the countryside to be protected. Yes, we can find examples of where powers have been used in preference to duties, but most pieces of legislation have some duties at their centre point. The Bill does not.
George Eustice
Of course some legislation has duties but my point is that in the context of payment powers, the power to design schemes and make financial payments, “may” is the appropriate word to use. That is what is used in the NERC Act in the context of making payments. Through all of our legislation that relates to agriculture from the Agriculture Act 1947 onwards, that has been a consistent approach to making a payment.
Dr Drew
I hear what the Minister says, but of course that has been nothing to do with the British Government. Since the mid-1970s, agriculture has been entirely subsumed within the EU. We have not had any discretion. The budget has been fixed in Brussels, and it has been fixed in the way we had to make our contribution. As the Minister feels strongly, that may be a good reason to get out of the EU, but it is not right to see the Bill as a parallel. This is a very different time. Post Brexit, the British Government will be setting their budgetary arrangement for agriculture, and unless they are compelled, they can just say, “We don’t really want to give much money to agriculture.” That is up to the Government, of course, and it has to deal with the consequences. The Minister quite rightly says that we can repeal anything, but to talk about repealing legislation is a strange way of passing legislation. Let us get it right in the first place.
George Eustice
I very much hope that, like the 1947 Act, the Bill stands the test of time. My point is that a Government hostile to our environment or animal welfare or commitments in these areas could repeal the legislation if they chose to. The hon. Gentleman knows that I was on the leave side, and my recollection is that when he was previously in Parliament, he was on the sceptical side of the Labour party—campaigning against membership of the euro, for instance. Does he not agree with me that this is an opportunity for us to embrace self-government and that we should not fear doing so?
Dr Drew
That is a good reason to introduce the Bill, but it is also a good reason to make sure that we have duties at its centre point. If we do not have those duties, all the other things that the Minister has talked about—commendable though they may be—are subject to the whim of the Government, and more particularly the Secretary of State, who may have no time for agriculture. That is quite possible.
We will press the amendment to a Division because we think it is important to make it clear that duties should be at the centre point of the Bill—not throughout the Bill, but on the most crucial part: the financial arrangements and accountability for them. The hon. Member for North Dorset says that the matter will come up on Report, but I dare say that, given what has been said in the House of Lords, their lordships will give this more than a going over.
It is important that we have this debate today. I always used to get really riled when my party was in government and I was told, “Don’t worry, we’ll sort this out in the Lords.” I felt that it was important that we sorted it out in the House of Commons—the democratically elected Chamber. The House of Lords can scrutinise and improve but we should be making the fundamental decisions in this place.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 72, in clause 1, page 1, line 6, at end insert “and enhances soil health”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 49, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after second “heritage”, insert “, including farming systems where they underpin delivery”.
This amendment would include farming systems in the land or water management activities for which financial assistance can be given in Clause 1(1)(c).
Amendment 41, in clause 1, page 2, line 6, at end insert—
‘(2A) The Secretary of State shall also give financial assistance for, or in connection with, the purpose of establishing, maintaining and expanding agro-ecological farming systems, including organic farming.
This amendment would ensure that new schemes support agroecological farming systems, including organic, as a way of delivering the purposes in clause 1. Agroecology is recognised by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation as the basis for evolving food systems that are equally strong in environmental, economic, social and agronomic dimensions.
Kerry McCarthy
I should begin by declaring that I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group on agroecology for sustainable food and farming and have been for some time.
In amendment 72, we call for soil health to be mentioned specifically in the list of public goods. I hope the Minister will be receptive to that—he has made noises that suggest he might be. We know that soil fertility has collapsed in this country. There have been a couple of inquiries in recent years, including a very good one by the Environmental Audit Committee, which looked into soil degradation and the impact on, for example, food productivity and flooding due to run-off.
Mr Goodwill
We currently have record wheat yields in this country. Surely that is not evidence of lower soil fertility?
Kerry McCarthy
In some places, there is fertile soil. There are measures that one can take—we heard evidence from Helen Browning, I think. I apologise that I am slightly confused about whether I heard evidence in this Bill Committee last week or as a member of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee, because the same people have been giving evidence to both.
There is a lot that we can do to increase biodiversity in fields; for instance, we can take some land out of production, which adds to soil fertility and yield. We heard evidence from Helen Browning of the Soil Association about that.
Kerry McCarthy
Before Conservative Back Benchers try to suggest that I am not talking sense, let me say that the Secretary of State has estimated that the UK is just 30 to 40 harvests away from the fundamental eradication of soil fertility in parts of the country.
Colin Clark
The hon. Lady is making a powerful case, but I remind her that when the EU forced set-aside upon us, all that did was create a weed bank. It did not improve the fertility of our soil. I am from north of the border, where traditional rotations are still very much part of farming. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Scarborough and Whitby, who says that yields are increasing. Does the hon. Lady not believe that in the last 20 years, agriculture in the UK has made great leaps to improve soil fertility? Perhaps she is speaking about something that is more historical.
Kerry McCarthy
No, I do not believe that. The hon. Gentleman is a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, but I do not think he was a member during its inquiry into soil health. I suggest that he goes back and reads that report, which is quite devastating. The APPG held a three-part session and produced another report. I think that there is consensus on this and am surprised that Conservative MPs are challenging it.
As I said, the Secretary of State has acknowledged the impact of soil degradation. We can always point to examples where that is not the case, but in general this is an issue across the country. During the evidence sessions last week, the Minister indicated that he might be prepared to look at this. His view was that soil health is already covered in the Bill, although not specifically. I am saying that it is such an important issue that it should be specifically mentioned, rather than it just being assumed that it comes under public goods.
The amendment was drafted by the farming organisation Linking Environment and Farming and has support from the Soil Association, Innovation for Agriculture, and the Royal Agricultural Society of England. During our first oral evidence session, witnesses such as Caroline Drummond, chief executive of LEAF, and Vicki Hird from Sustain, agreed on the need for soil health to be separately listed as a public good. The importance of soil health is mentioned in the documents accompanying the Bill.
The explanatory notes state that
“Subsection (1)(e) will enable the Secretary of State to provide financial assistance for activities…to prevent…hazards to…the environment,.”
It could therefore
“be used to reduce flood risk by incentivising good soil management.”
I was shadow Secretary of State at the time of the devastating floods a few years ago. The people responsible for land management in any of those farming communities will say that soil mismanagement contributed to the scale of the problem.
Sandy Martin
I well remember that in 1972—when I was still quite young, I hasten to add—in Suffolk we had strong windstorms in the summer, and a significant amount of soil blew off the wheat fields. It was a notorious case at the time, and the farmers—including major farmers—learned a lot of lessons. Agriculture is a lot better than it was in the 1970s, but we continue to learn and to improve. I would have thought that any sensible agriculturalist would support any amendment that enhances soil health.
Kerry McCarthy
I think there is a consensus, at least on the Conservative Front Bench, that soil health is incredibly important and under threat. It should be specifically added to the list of public goods because it is critical to biodiversity, productivity, and mitigating and adapting to climate change—we have not mentioned that yet. The carbon sequestration function of soil is incredibly important. The hon. Member for York Outer (Julian Sturdy) said in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee:
“I just cannot understand why it is not specifically defined in the Bill. There is so much good that is there, but it is underpinned by delivering on actually improving the soil and the huge environmental benefits that flow from that.”
As Vicki Hird from Sustain rightly said, there is also a risk that farmers are getting paid for doing things on one part of the farm or on the edge of a field, but are not protecting the soil elsewhere. That is part of the regulatory process, and bringing it into the fold would make sense to ensure that it is part of the picture. I think we are on the same page, but I would like those three words to be added to the Bill to make clear how important soil is.
I tabled amendment 41 with two other officers from the APPG, the hon. Members for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—again, the amendment has cross-party support. It was drafted with the help of the Soil Association and Sustain, and is also supported by the Landworkers’ Alliance. Last week, the Minister suggested that he was fairly receptive to the amendment, which suggests that instead of a focus on individual public goods, allowing cherry-picking and just pursuing one or two, there should be a focus on a whole-farm approach, which is by far the best way of delivering many public goods at the same time as producing food.
The “Health and Harmony” consultation paper asked respondents to prioritise a list of public goods. I thought that was the wrong approach, because to prioritise public goods fails to recognise that intersect and that pursuing one public good will help to achieve public goods in another sense. For example, without a reduction in the use of pesticides and without maintaining soil health, water and air quality will suffer. Without output diversification, there will be no improvement to local biodiversity or crop resilience.
The worry is that a limited pot of funding could be focused on edge-of-field nature restoration within an unsustainable wider system. The system should be targeting what happens in the middle of a field, not just around the edges. Approaches to farming such as agro-ecology offer bigger picture approaches that would provide the largest amount of public goods. A whole-farm approach may also be easier to monitor, because the metrics of working out what is going on with individual public goods could be incredibly complicated.
In Committee, Helen Browning said:
“That is why I have been an organic farmer all my life: I do not want to be farming intensively in one place and trying to produce public goods in another… We will still need to do special things in special places so that we can preserve species, manage floods and so on, but the agro-ecological approach should be at the core of our farming system.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 91.]
Agro-ecology is not just about organic farming. That is one method, but there are also things such as agroforestry, pasture-based livestock systems, integrated pest management, low-input mixed farming and biodynamic agriculture. Agroforestry is a prime example of an innovative approach to farming that produces benefits across several categories of public goods.
The “Ten years for agroecology” project in Europe, which was led by top scientific experts, shows that agro-ecology can address the apparent dilemma of producing adequate quantities of food while protecting biodiversity and natural resources and mitigating climate change. Although it is seen as a bit niche, France has become one of the first industrialised nations to make agro-ecology a central plank of its agriculture policy. In 2014, a law was passed to promote agro-ecological approaches actively. It set a target of implementing such approaches on 200,000 French farms by 2025.
If the French can do it, I dare say there is absolutely no reason why the British cannot. The law also added agro-ecology to the curriculum in agricultural colleges across the country. It has a triple performance: it achieves environmental objectives; it achieves economic objectives by improving yield and efficiency, especially for small and medium-sized family farms; and it has a societal impact, including health and nutritional benefits.
In evidence to the Committee, Ed Hamer of the Landworkers’ Alliance gave an example of how an amendment along such lines would work. He said:
“the integration of whole farm agriculture and agri-ecological principles would incentivise farmers to produce food on the field in addition to introducing ecological focus areas or diversity around field edges.”
He concluded that, with such an amendment,
“it is the farming system itself that delivers the public good.”––[Official Report, Agriculture Public Bill Committee, 25 October 2018; c. 116, Q160.]
The Minister was encouraging about that, saying that the Government are considering empowering agro-ecology under clause 1. Such farming methods ought to become far more mainstream. Since the Secretary of State first came up with the “public money for public goods” approach, I have said that I think he is on the right page and is doing the right thing. I just think he could go a bit further to ensure the Bill is about restoring resistant services, safeguarding our long-term food security and protecting the environment.
Mr Goodwill
I oppose amendment 72, not because I am against enhancing soil health in our country, but because I believe the amendment would act against some of our other objectives. As a farmer I manage soil, and as part of my agriculture degree I spent a year studying soil science. Although it is easy to define animal health—it is the absence of disease, or a state in which production from the animal is maximised—it is much more difficult to define soil health. As an intensive arable farmer, I know that the healthiest soil is the most productive soil. Therefore, levels of nutrients—nitrogen phosphate, potash and sulphur—should be optimised to produce optimal soil health. but we need other elements within the soil as well. The cation-exchange capacity must be optimised through the use of lime and other soil treatments so those nutrients are available. The soil also needs to have the correct flocculation status, so that nutrients and roots can travel through it and drainage is optimised.
It is easy to define what productive, healthy soil is, but for some of the objectives in the Bill we need less than optimal soil health status. For example, all farmers agree that the most optimal way to enhance soil health is to have drainage schemes in place, but we have other agri-environmental schemes to try to prevent flooding, such as flood plains and areas of reed beds. Innovative schemes are happening on the North Yorkshire moors above Pickering, where the soil health is not optimised because that land is flooded deliberately to enable the delivery of those schemes.
Similarly, the North Yorkshire moors are a valuable habitat. The land is moor land because the soil is particularly acid and the soil health is bad—bad for growing most things apart from heather. Measures that could be put in place to enhance soil health there could actually act against enhancing that particular environment. We need to look at how we help farmers to manage their farms across the board. Some of their land may well be managed in a way that optimises soil health and production, but elsewhere soil health should deliberately not be enhanced, to allow certain species and habitats to develop precisely because that soil is flooded, acidified or not optimised for production.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
I observe that the amendment asks that health soil be included in a list of things to which the Secretary of State “may” give financial assistance, not “must”. The right hon. Gentleman would not need to worry so much if he accepted the amendment.
Mr Goodwill
Yes, but we have recorded that it is the policy of the hon. Lady’s party to put “must” in the Bill, which will no doubt be introduced in the Lords.
Mr Goodwill
The point I am trying to make is that it is very difficult to define enhanced soil health. Unlike animal health, where it is very easy to see whether an animal is healthy or not, there are a number of objectives, for example, looking at organic matter in the soil and the use of slurries.
Although many would wish to take measures to improve the organic matter in soils, there are downsides, particularly looking at nitrates. The Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit, looked at nitrates in water and soils. Many of the problems with high levels of nitrates, which can lead to eutrophication in watercourses and the sea, in some cases, are due to high nutrient and nitrate levels being applied to the soil, which can be associated with organic fertilisers. My view is that this is an unnecessary amendment.
Soil health is best left to farmers. If we can create the situation where farmers manage their farms correctly, they will enhance soil health in those areas where they wish to maximise production but they might deliberately degrade soil health in order to encourage species that thrive in waterlogged, acidic and other soils. Although I can understand the motives behind the amendment, I do not believe it would achieve the intended objectives.
Martin Whitfield
First, I should point out that I have recently been elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the timber industries. I support the amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East. The quality of soil sits at the foundation of farming and agriculture.
I listened to the right hon. Member for Scarborough and Whitby, but I think he reads too much into the amendment. At the end of the day, we are looking for an improvement in the health of the soil in the area where it is found; there is no intention to overdo the moor lands into high-growth, high-productivity areas. That may well not be a measure of soil health within an area. With great respect, I feel that the right hon. Gentleman is reading far too much into the intention behind the amendment.
On the nature of the Bill and the word “may”, it will always rest with the Secretary of State whether financial support would be given. The health of the soil was raised in the evidence session by a significant number of people, and it sits at the foundation of farming. There is a need to ensure that the soil that we pass on to those who come after us is in the best condition that the farmer feels is right for his land. Farmers are the experts, but to rely solely on the farmer, without being able to give support where necessary, would remove the need for the Bill. There is a requirement for the Bill, however, and for farmers in some areas to have support.
One thing the Minister should address is the health and quality of the soil and what the soil is doing. In my constituency of East Lothian, we are blessed with very fertile volcanic soil and the production rates are phenomenal. They are dealt with and handled with great care and expertise by the farmers. In other areas of Scotland and the UK, however, the soil quality is much lower. That needs to be addressed, and the farmers who work the land, whether for sheep or for culture, require support to do that. Soil plays a greater role than as simply the material out of which crops are grown. The carbon capture element is fundamental to the calculations that need to be made.
Amendment 72 would make a small change, but a significant one. It would place in the Bill the material that is most fundamental to agriculture: soil.
Dr Drew
I support amendments 72 and 41, but I shall speak to amendment 49. The Bill is about improving the environmental quality of our agriculture, and there is no better way of doing that than ensuring that we improve soil, water use and the development of our countryside to provide the most efficient agriculture. Those issues will take up much of our time on this Committee.
I make it clear that amendment 49 comes from the Uplands Alliance, which has some concerns about how it will fare once the Bill is passed unless some account is taken of the uplands. We all know how difficult it is to farm in the uplands; I am afraid that, whatever the Bill does, it will not make it much easier. Sheep farmers are largely farming on the margins. We will be careful to try to rule out anything that would undermine their ability to get a fair price for their sheepmeat. We are wary of any free trade deal with certain parts of the world, and we make no apology for making that argument.
The Uplands Alliance’s point is that the easiest way of dealing with environmental degradation in the uplands is rewilding, recarbonisation and allowing the land to go back to nature, but of course that does not give anyone a living. The people concerned do not have a living at the moment; they may get some money through direct environmental payments, but those are effectively a subsidy to keep them on the land.
Why does this matter? It matters not only because upland farmers deserve our support, but because this is about our kept landscape. Rewilding the whole uplands landscape may be attractive, but will it draw in the tourists? Will it give us a sustainable rural community? I suspect not. If we want these people to carry on farming, we have to allow for a balance between the environmental payments that they will be eligible for and their ability to farm at a profit, which can be done only if we invest in them.
Amendment 49 is important because it looks at the reality. I do not happen to represent any upland areas, but some hon. Members present do, so in a sense I am speaking on their behalf. They will know exactly what I am talking about.
Mr Goodwill
My constituency takes in two thirds of the North Yorkshire moors. The hon. Gentleman spoke about rewilding, which is precisely what would happen if the heather moor land was not managed properly. People would not be happy to see that, because they see the heather moor land as a fragile environment that they want to sustain as a public good.
Dr Drew
That is exactly why we must balance the environmental aspects of the Bill with the reality of farming in those areas. I am trying to identify the issue that the Uplands Alliance asked us to address in the amendment, which is about looking at traditional and sustainable forms of agriculture. As has been said, agro-ecology is a new term, but in many respects it is revisiting the past; it is about how we have always tended to consider farming in certain parts of the world as traditional. How we maintain that landscape—a farmed and managed landscape—depends on a relationship between what is farmed and the environment being managed by those farmers.
The alternative is rewilding or having much larger holdings. In essence, we would end up ranching those holdings; they would have to be on such a large scale because the money would not be there in any other way. That would be deleterious to our countryside, and many farmers who want to remain would have to be moved off the land.
It is important that we have this debate. I support the important agro-ecological points of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East, because we are giving the Bill some substance. We disagree with the Government: we need examples of how such agricultural improvement will work and how to deliver it. Many others support the amendments, as my hon. Friend said, such as the Soil Association. In its written evidence, which we have all looked at, the Landworkers’ Alliance very much encouraged this direction of travel, to see how agriculture can be improved, made sustainable and meet our sustainable development goals. We will talk in detail later about climate change, which is central to this debate.
I support my hon. Friend’s amendments, and I make no apology for saying that they improve, as we said we would, the status and clarity of the Bill on how agriculture should move. I hope the Government will look positively at what we are trying to do.
George Eustice
It is a pleasure to respond on this group of amendments, which all have in common the tendency, which occurs when a list of purposes such this is published, for a range of organisations to want to be name-checked. They become concerned that unless they are name-checked they are being left out. Allow me to take this opportunity to assure the Committee that all the purposes that the amendments want to include are already included.
First, allow me to set out our approach. We have set out our desired goods, outcomes and overall purposes, which we deliberately kept broad so that we did not miss things out. In clause 1 we have explicitly avoided trying to come up with an exhaustive list of every feature of our environment, every environmental asset and every type of scheme we might do under these purposes. For instance, it is true that the clause does not specifically name-check soils—one of our most important natural assets—or pollinators, bees, meadows or farmland birds. Every single one of those natural assets are assets that we seek to enhance and protect and do well for under the powers that we have within the purposes set out in part 1.
On amendment 72, I assure the hon. Member for Bristol East that I am passionate about soil health, as is the Secretary of State. As I have mentioned, people such as Sir Albert Howard, the great 20th century agronomist, who is seen by many as the father of the organics movement, recognised almost 100 years ago that we could not mine soil and, as he put it, submit it to banditry and take all the goodness out of it—we had to manage it. Good husbandry is all about recognising the cycle of life; the health of our soils is not just about chemistry. It is about not just the NPK fertiliser that we put on a field, but the complex interactions, the humus in the soil, the organic matter. It is a living ecology, not just a growing medium.
We absolutely recognise that, which is why soil features prominently in our policy paper. I guarantee the hon. Lady that when we roll out our new environmental land management scheme, it will have a plethora of interventions and schemes to support good soil husbandry and good soil health, because we know that if we get the management of our soils right, it can have implications for carbon mitigation. It can be a carbon store. It is also the case that if we get the management of our soils right, we can improve water quality and reduce our reliance on synthetic fertilisers.
I reassure the hon. Lady that the Government take this matter absolutely seriously, but we do not agree with the amendment. It is not just that it is unnecessary, because soil is already covered in the purposes in paragraphs (a), (c), (d) and (e) of subsection (1)—as far as we are concerned, soil is covered by a multitude of the existing purposes already—but that it has an unfortunate consequence. Crucially, it would insert, at the end of paragraph (a),
“managing land or water in a way that protects or improves the environment”
the phrase
“and enhances soil health”.
While the intention of the amendment was to broaden the objective to include soil health, in fact it narrows the scope of the purposes. For instance, we might have a scheme to promote and support farmland birds, but it might not be immediately recognisable how that might help soil health. The use of the word “and” as opposed to “or” would narrow the scope in a way that would be detrimental to our environment and would be bad for assets such as birds, pollinators and a range of others. On the basis of that assurance, given my passion for the subject and the guarantee I give that it will be a prominent feature of the new scheme, I hope that the hon. Lady will agree not to press the amendment.
Amendment 49 links to a number of representations, whether from the Uplands Alliance or those in the agro-ecology movement, which suggest that we should include an approach to farming systems. Although I think that is unnecessary, because individual farming systems will be covered by a multitude of purposes that we have already set out, I want to take this opportunity to assure the Committee about some of the things we are looking at.
First, on uplands, we believe that our public goods payment approach has real potential to give a rewarding, viable and stable business model to the upland areas. They are better placed than many farms to benefit from the provisions on, for instance, payments for public access. They are able to help and assist with things such as flood mitigation and there are some quite big environmental schemes they could get into. The uplands could also benefit from issues such as peat-bog restoration. If we adopt an approach based around payment on public goods, we believe the uplands would naturally benefit from that. Of course, they also look after and maintain a lot of our natural heritage—the stone walls, the hedges and the beautiful landscapes—that are referred to in subsection (1)(c). We believe that the existing purposes already cover the uplands, certainly in paragraphs (a), (b) and (c) of subsection (1).
Kerry McCarthy
That all sounds tremendous stuff. We are talking about a limited pot of money, and I am concerned that we will get people with huge stakes who cherry-pick the public goods, doing bits and pieces and getting their hands on quite a lot of that pot of money, with the result that the share for people who farm sustainably across the whole farm and adopt some of the approaches the Minister has mentioned is reduced. Does he agree that we ought to be rewarding those people? I always make an anology with a big company that has a fair trade coffee brand, but 95% of their coffee is not fair trade. However, does it really deserve credit for that 5%?
George Eustice
The hon. Lady makes an important point. That is why we have set out clearly that we intend to adopt an approach to payments built around a natural capital principle, so that those who do the most will receive the most reward and those who adopt a holistic whole-farm approach that gives us multiple environmental benefits can expect to receive more than those farmers who say, “We’ll let a corner of the farm that is less productive go”, but not do much beyond that.
The answer to the hon. Lady’s concern is in the way that we price and reward the tariffs for the interventions that we propose. That will be very much in the scheme design, and we have been clear about the principles that we will apply.
By giving a quite detailed explanation of our commitment to explore these farming systems, I hope the hon. Member for Stroud will consider withdrawing his amendment on the basis that it is unnecessary, because it is already provided for in multiple locations.
Amendment 41 is a similar amendment specifically on agro-ecological farming systems—it relates to subsection (2) on support for profitability—which we also think is unnecessary because subsection (2) enables us to support and provide grants for businesses that are starting up in organics or a different agro-ecological system, such as agroforestry. The provision and power are there.
Let me reassure the hon. Lady about some of the things we are looking at. Under the productivity strand—subsection (2)—we are considering whether we can use funds to refresh the county farm model by supporting local authorities to reinvest in their farms, helping with facilitation funding so that the farms are more of a hub for new entrants, and working with them to make it easier to move tenants out so that we have a constant pipestream of new opportunities for new entrants.
Alongside that, we are considering whether that can be broadened beyond the traditional county farm, which has existed for many decades since the war, to include some of the peri-urban farms, which often have links to the agro-ecology movement and are often smaller community-based groups. Where local authorities have land that they can make available, we might be able to support the fostering of those schemes, which can be popular.
I hope all the amendments are probing and that we shall not find it necessary to divide the Committee. I hope I have been able to reassure Members that the issues that they sought to highlight in their amendments are already provided for in the Bill.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for his response. There was a lot in there with which I agreed. I do not intend to press the amendment to a vote, not least because—as he rightly said—the “and”, rather than “or”, is problematic. I shall press amendment 41, however, because as we have ascertained, we are very susceptible to the whims of a future Government or any change in leadership. I would like to see whole farm systems recognised specifically in the Bill. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 49, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, after second “heritage”, insert
“, including farming systems where they underpin delivery”.—(Dr Drew.)
This amendment would include farming systems in the land or water management activities for which financial assistance can be given in Clause 1(1)(c).
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Dr Drew
I beg to move amendment 50, in clause 1, page 1, line 11, after “(d)”, insert
“limiting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture or horticulture or encouraging activities that reduce such emissions or remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, or”.
This amendment would add to the purposes for which financial assistance can be given that of limiting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture or horticulture or encouraging activities that reduce such emissions or remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.
I shall endeavour to speed up a little, but again this is an important part of the legislation because it refers to climate change. To be fair to the Minister, climate change appears in subsection (1)(d), which refers to
“mitigating or adapting to climate change”.
We accept and are willing to support that, but we wish to improve on it by adding the words in our amendment.
Again, this is important. If we are serious about a new Agriculture Act, we ought to be serious about how it impinges on climate change. Those are not my words but the words of Lord Deben, that well-known socialist former MP, now in the Lords, John Gummer. Some in the Committee heard, as I did, what he said in the Attlee Room when he introduced the report of the Committee on Climate Change. He was rather scathing about the way in which agriculture has failed to meet its targets for reducing emissions. He was overall pretty sceptical about the Government’s performance—as he can afford to be, given how deep-seated he is in this place—and was particularly critical of agricultural emissions having flatlined, which is not good enough.
The Opposition make no apology for tabling the amendment. We have done so to give some bite to the Bill and make climate change the fulcrum of how agriculture performs so that we see those improvements. Not only have agricultural emissions in general flatlined, but net carbon sequestration from forestry has flatlined. The United Nations has produced a report through the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, saying, “Forget 2 degrees. We should be worried about even approaching 1.5 degrees.” We can play our part by being serious about this issue and passing this simple amendment to ensure that we can do what clause 1(1)(d) says:
“mitigating or adapting to climate change”.
I hope the Minister will take note of what we are saying. The amendment is a minor change in wording but makes the important statement that agriculture has to play its part in dealing with climate change. As Gilles Deprez said when giving evidence to this Committee, he strongly believes that farmers are already paying the price for climate change, and dealing with it is not just something that they should do for the wider community. They are already suffering the effects of climate change, as we have seen this year with the drought. I am not saying that droughts are anything other than climatic occurrences that have happened through the ages, but those climatic events—whether floods, drought, or very cold winters that mean that farmers are unable to plant when they want to, let alone harvest when it is very wet—come around far too regularly for them to be anything other than an aspect of climate change.
I hope we can reach some agreement on this issue. Given who sits in the House of Lords, those Lords will spend an awful lot of time talking about this aspect of agriculture, so the Minister might as well be prepared. He cannot influence proceedings in the Lords, but whoever takes this through—presumably Lord Gardiner—will be spending a lot of time trying to deal with various people, whom we could name, who will be saying, “Come on—sort this out. We need to have some words in the Bill that show how agriculture is prepared to play its part in dealing with climate change.”
We know that farmers do not necessarily have the resources, expertise or access to investment that they need, so again, let us hope that that is where the money will go. It is crucial to deliver the budget in a way that allows farmers to make those changes. We heard in a previous debate about agro-ecology that this issue is linked to soil quality, water management and the way in which farming systems need to change to take account of emissions. Not including this amendment in the Bill would be a missed opportunity, and again I make no apology for introducing it. Climate change has to be taken seriously, including in the Bill.
George Eustice
I can be fairly brief, because I have already spelled out some of the principles behind Government’s approach. As the shadow Minister acknowledged, subsection (1)(d) includes a simple but clear purpose, which is
“mitigating or adapting to climate change”.
Why have a long, cumbersome sentence of 29 words when six words will suffice? His wording—
“limiting greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture or horticulture or encouraging activities that reduce such emissions or remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere”—
can be summarised as “mitigating climate change”, and we already have that term in subsection (1)(d).
Jenny Chapman
I am not completely convinced by the Minister’s response. Mitigating is about lessening the impact of climate change. It is not about preventing it. We are trying to reduce emissions and the impact on climate change of agriculture and horticulture. They are different things. It is not true that the only difference is the length of the sentence.
George Eustice
On the terminology, we are not talking about mitigating the consequences of climate change. The subsection is very clearly about mitigating climate change itself. Any action that is taken to reduce carbon emissions and the emission of other greenhouse gases—ammonia is a very important one in agriculture—would be mitigating climate change. The subsection also includes the phrase “adapting to climate change” in recognition of the fact that, as Gilles Deprez pointed out in the evidence session, we are already living with the consequences. For instance, we recognise that we tend to have more floods, so we may need schemes to manage the implications of that. “Mitigating climate change” means what it says. It can include any actions that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Jenny Chapman
That is not right. Mitigating does not mean that. It means to lessen the severity or the impact of something. What the Minister is doing in the clause is very different to what we seek to achieve. The definition of “mitigating” matters.
George Eustice
I do not agree. We recognise that climate change is happening, and everything we are doing to tackle it is about mitigating an event that we recognise is happening. Our efforts to change the mix of our energy, reduce carbon emissions, encourage the uptake of electric vehicles and so on, are all about mitigating the problem of climate change. Subsection (1)(d) has a very clear purpose, and it enables us to do all the things that the amendment seeks to achieve. I hope we can use this debate to clarify that. I have given a long list of the types of interventions that we intend to explore, pursue and pilot under subsection (1)(d).
Kerry McCarthy
I am slightly disturbed by something the Minister said almost in passing. He seemed to be saying that the only problematic issue relating to the importing of soya is the shipping miles. I hope he has read the evidence, including the UN report “Livestock’s Long Shadow”, work by Chatham House and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report last week, that shows that the carbon footprint of the industry goes way beyond shipping miles.
George Eustice
Yes, and I did not seek to give a fully detailed exposition of the impact of soya, but the progress that some sectors—notably the pig sector—have made in reducing their carbon footprint has been by reducing their reliance on imported soya. The hon. Lady is right that it has a range of impacts on the environment.
I recognise the intention behind amendment 50, but I think it would only lengthen subsection (1)(d) without adding any meaningful change. I hope I can reassure hon. Members that the powers outlined in the subsection already enable us to do what we all seek to do on gas emissions.
Dr Drew
What the Minister says is laudable, but it takes us back to the problem of powers and duties. The Secretary of State does not have to do any of this. The simple fact is that, according to the Committee on Climate Change, agricultural emissions are not on track to deliver the carbon budget savings required by 2022. Amendment 50 may be wordy, it may be an addition and—as my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington says—it may lead us to argue about what “mitigation” means, but we tabled it because at the moment there is no guarantee that agriculture will play its part in dealing with climate change.
The reality is that unless we put some teeth into the Bill, either the Government or, dare I say it, farmers will not have to do anything. We are putting the onus on farming and farmers to deliver their contribution towards reducing emissions. There has been much good work, but the fact is that agriculture’s contribution has flatlined. We have to do something about that, so we make no apology for saying that we will press our amendment to a vote. The issue will come back to haunt the Government in the House of Lords, where countless Members will make the point that agriculture has not reduced its emissions as it should have, so we must place an obligation on it to ensure that it does.
The Opposition believe strongly that the money that will go from direct payments into environmental support has to target emissions reduction, so the wording is really important. I hope that all hon. Members will think about the matter, because it will be brought back to the House. It will be important not only to this Bill but to the forthcoming environment Bill—I do not know what will be in that Bill, unless it says that we will actually reduce emissions. Whether it is in this Bill or that one, that commitment has to be there.
Without further ado, I ask for a vote on amendment 50. We make it clear that if the Government will not yield on these words now, they will have to yield on similar words later.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Dr Drew
I beg to move amendment 51, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert
“(h) supporting agriculture and horticulture businesses to ensure public access to healthy, local, sustainably produced food.”
This amendment would add to the purposes for which financial assistance can be given that of ensuring access to healthy, local, sustainably produced food.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 70, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at end insert
“(h) supporting the delivery of improved public health outcomes.
‘(1A) Support under subsection (1)(h) may include, but is not limited to, measures to:
(a) increase the availability, affordability, diversity, quality and marketing of fruit and vegetables and pulses,
(b) reduce farm antibiotic and related veterinary product use, and antimicrobial resistance in harmful micro-organisms, through improved animal health and improved animal welfare,
(c) provide support for farmers to diversify out of domestic production of foods where there may be reduced demand due to health concerns,
(d) reduce harm from use of chemicals on farms, and
(e) reduce pesticide residues in food.”
Dr Drew
The nature of the food we produce is another area of the Bill that needs to be improved and strengthened. This is the Agriculture Bill—although, some say that there is not enough agriculture in it—and it should take, by every stretch of the imagination, more account of access to food and the improved quality and distribution of that food. We pass legislation to try to improve the current situation.
Many of us on this side feel that the use of food banks, as well as the poor quality of food and problems with access to food, are a tragedy and a scandal. We are not here to get involved in the politics of that, but to look at the practicalities of ways in which we can help. We would all acknowledge that the distribution of food is as much of a problem as the production of food, which is why organisations such as FareShare are so important; they work with food producers to distribute food to people who cannot afford to buy it through the normal market mechanism. Recognising those problems is important to us, both as Labour politicians and as human beings. This is the appropriate part of the Bill for amendment 51.
The biggest single challenge facing the NHS is obesity, and we need to do something about that in the Bill—it may be called the Agriculture Bill, but it is also about food. We ask the Government at least to acknowledge that this is an issue worthy of discussion, debate and improvement.
Mr Goodwill
Healthy and unhealthy people shop at the same supermarkets. Is it not their choices that make the difference to their health, rather than the food on the shelves?
Dr Drew
That is an interesting view, but it depends on what food is on the shelves. Maybe I have misled the right hon. Gentleman, because it is not just about supermarkets and the retail end; it is also about fast-food business, which has to be part of today’s debate on the food we produce, who buys it, and how we can help them if they cannot afford it.
Sandy Martin
Does my hon. Friend agree that advertising, taxation, supply and various other aspects determine people’s choices about what foods to eat, and their knowledge of what foods are available to them, and that we should seek some sort of food strategy so that we know what sorts of foods we want to be available to the population?
Dr Drew
I thank my hon. Friend, because that is exactly the point we are making. This concerns not only obesity but its consequences, such as the rise of diabetes, which has doubled over the past 20 years. I am told—although I cannot source this—that the UK already has the most ultra-processed diet in Europe. I think that means we eat too much fast food, which the Bill must recognise is a huge public health issue.
Despite the title of the White Paper, “Health and Harmony: the future for food, farming and the environment in a Green Brexit”, health has been marginalised. That is disappointing. Health should be central to the whole debate on the food we produce, who it is produced for, and whether it is affordable.
Chris Davies (Brecon and Radnorshire) (Con)
I am interested in the direction of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Does he agree that this is about production, and that everything is either safe or dangerous depending on moderation? Moderation is key here; not how we produce food, or why we produce it, but eating it in moderation.
Dr Drew
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is also an issue of distribution and who is able to afford certain types of food. Clearly we are trying to move the debate towards ways that we can encourage people to eat better food and maybe less of it, which we will not manage unless we can talk about those issues in the Agriculture Bill Committee. It is not just about domestic production, but where other food comes from. We have a very successful export industry, but we import a huge amount of food from abroad that we could substitute through domestic production.
Chris Davies
I am sorry to intervene yet again, but I am interested in the hon. Gentleman’s line of direction. Could he give an example of food produced in this country that is not healthy?
Dr Drew
We should produce sugar, but we should put a tax in place to determine the amount of sugar in products. I have a producer of fizzy drinks that has had to go through the whole process of taking the sugar out—it used to do that but then put the sugar back in; it no longer does that. I will not mention it by name, but it has been quite an impingement on the business. It did that because that was what it was told to do. We do not want to be overzealous in how we treat the production of food, but if we do not do something about it, the consequences will be dire. There are consequences at the moment, with so many people suffering from obesity.
Simon Hoare
I fear that the shadow Minister is becoming some sort of food Stalinist. I do not know where he is coming from. My hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire is absolutely right; this is an agriculture Bill. What people who buy products from our farmers then do with those products is subject to all sorts of food standards and regulations, but we cannot put an onus on our farmers—apart from those who are selling direct at the farm gate, farm shop or farmers market—about what people who are adding value to a product do to it. I agree with the hon. Member for Stroud about education, but this is a draconian amendment that he is promoting.
Dr Drew
I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and we can disagree about what is Stalinist. Why did the Government call their White Paper “Health and harmony”? Why did they not just call it “Farming and harmony”? We all did our consultations, maybe more in oral form than in written form in some cases. Why did we all say, “The Government are on to something here, having linked together environment, food and health”? As we have discussed this morning, they already have some difficulties with food, but they have an even bigger difficulty with health, particularly public health.
This is a very minor amendment that would provide an additional sub-clause, supporting agriculture and horticulture businesses to ensure public access to healthy, local food, which we have not stressed. We are very much in favour of local food chains as an alternative to the globalisation of the food market, because we think it is very important that people have access to good, local food that is sustainably produced. That is very minor. It is just adding a sub-clause, which would do things that presumably the Government want to do, given their public health strategy. If they do not want to do it in this part of the Bill, where will the strategy have any bite? We should argue the case that public health is important to an agriculture Bill, and we make no apologies for pushing the issue. I am interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East has to say about her amendment. We believe this is important and should be in the Bill, and this debate is the start.
Kerry McCarthy
I entirely support my hon. Friend and his amendment 51, but my amendment 70 is a bit more detailed. I will talk first about the public health, food-related issues.
As has been said, the White Paper is called “Health and Harmony” yet there is a conspicuous lack of information about what the Government want to do to improve public health. Almost 4 million people in the UK have been diagnosed with diabetes, 90% of those type 2, which is very much associated with diet. That costs the NHS £12 billion a year, which is a good enough argument to try to do something about it.
Childhood obesity has been mentioned. We now have more children classified obese at the age of 11 than in the US, which is definitely cause for alarm. Recent research by Kellogg’s described food deserts in our most deprived areas, where it is really difficult for families to get their hands on affordable fresh fruit and vegetables. I think two of the top five areas are in south Bristol.
I am vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on school food and a member of its children’s future food inquiry, which recently published data. Members might know that the Government have an “Eat Well” guide, which is meant to indicate what a healthy diet looks like. It is not used as it should be, in that it does not inform public procurement in the way that it should, but it is out there. The inquiry’s report found that almost 4 million children in the UK live in households that would struggle to meet the official nutritional guidelines. They would not be able to afford to eat in line with what the Government recommend as a healthy diet.
My amendment also mentions the overuse of antibiotics in farming. That is not the use of antibiotics to treat illness; it is usually the result of intensive farming, with the routine over-prescription of antibiotics to compensate for the fact that animal husbandry is not as good as it could be. That is causing a public health crisis. The former Chancellor, now editor of the Evening Standard, went to the States and made a big speech to highlight that this is a public health crisis for anybody who is reliant on antibiotics.
We have seen the rise of superbugs in the NHS. I have a niece with cystic fibrosis. Cystic fibrosis patients rely on periodic applications of antibiotics, which are fast becoming ineffective. We need to take serious steps to reduce their routine use in farming. The amendment also refers to reducing the use of chemicals and pesticides on farms, and the associated health risks have been mentioned.
I very much look forward to the Government’s food strategy document. I was originally told that the outline document would come forward just before Christmas, but I have heard rumours that is has been put back further and may even have been shelved. I do not want to rely on reassurances that all this will be dealt with in a food strategy document.
I appreciate the concerns that we cannot necessarily deal with what the finished product would look like, but we could look at measures such as grants for marketing, infrastructure for on-farm processing, creating local farm supply chains and what the Minister mentioned earlier about having food production around cities, so that it would be easier to get healthy food into cities. We could also look at an equivalent to the EU fruit and vegetable aid scheme. Public procurement is incredibly important as well. There is a lot more I could say on the subject. There is a chance in the Bill to ensure that people have healthier diets. It is crisis that we cannot just ignore.
Simon Hoare
I oppose the amendment. There is no doubting the correctness of the baseline of the data that the shadow Minister has put forward. We are facing an obesity crisis.
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Ovarian Cancer: Diagnosis and Treatment
(6 years ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Lee Rowley (North East Derbyshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing the debate, as well as everyone who is here to support this important and timely event—both my colleagues in the Chamber, and everyone in the Public Gallery. The issue is extremely important, and I am privileged to open the debate. This will be the first time since 2014 that ovarian cancer has been debated in either Chamber.
Ovarian cancer is a quiet, invasive cancer, that robs wives, daughters, sisters, mothers and grandmothers of years of their lives, often unexpectedly and quickly, with devastating impacts on their families. Today about 25,000 women are living with the cancer and every day 20 will be diagnosed with it. Despite some progress in recent years the disease still takes away the lives of 4,000 women a year, and hundreds of thousands around the world. Because of its devastating effects its survival rate is, tragically, not as high as everyone would like, and 46% of sufferers do not survive for five years or more.
Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)
I warmly congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. To improve survival rates, we need earlier diagnosis. For many years ovarian cancer was known as the silent killer, but there are a number of signs and symptoms. Will he join me in encouraging anyone with those signs and symptoms to see their GP urgently?
Lee Rowley
I absolutely will. That is a timely and important point. I was on Radio Sheffield only this morning talking about the debate with someone from Target Ovarian Cancer. We spent an awfully long time talking about the symptoms, because it is important that people understand them, and are aware of them, so they can get the treatment they need if they are, unfortunately, affected.
All cancers are important. Extremely sadly—sometimes tragically—ovarian cancer tends not to receive the bulk of the attention or funding. That is partly because it does not affect as many people as other cancers, but it is also because of survival rates. The 46% rate of survival beyond five years compares unfavourably with the rate for breast cancer, which is 87%, and prostate cancer, which is 85%. There are simply fewer survivors of ovarian cancer in the UK who could highlight the importance of fighting the disease and succeeding than there are survivors of other cancers. There is a need for people to speak up about ovarian cancer. Thanks to the work of those who are doing so, it has started to receive the attention that it needs. Charities such as Target Ovarian Cancer work tirelessly every day to raise the profile of the disease, support those who have been affected, improve diagnosis and treatment, and work for a cure. I pay tribute to the work of the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer, and in particular the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who chairs it. It has been a privilege to be involved in the work and I am grateful to be able to help in a small way.
What is it about ovarian cancer that requires a particular focus? From the work I have seen, there are four things: improving awareness of the disease, as the hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) mentioned, so that it can be caught earlier; speeding up the diagnosis when it is suspected that someone has the disease; improving the data available for tracking the disease and our progress in the fight against it; and improving the treatment, allowing people to recover and be disease-free more quickly.
Nick Boles (Grantham and Stamford) (Con)
On the point about early diagnosis, my constituent and good friend Jane Sagar had a cyst of 6.5 cm, which a specialist identified. However, its removal was not recommended, although she was later told that any cyst greater than 5 cm on her ovary should automatically have been removed, because it was likely to be cancerous. As a result she is entering her fourth year of treatment for advanced ovarian cancer.
Lee Rowley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. Treatment around the country needs to be made more consistent and clearer, to put a stop to the issues that many of us have heard in stories from constituents.
Theresa Villiers (Chipping Barnet) (Con)
I apologise that I shall not be able to stay for the whole of this important debate. Does my hon. Friend agree that the additional resources that the Government are devoting to the NHS are welcome, and that it is important for it to use them wisely, which includes improving early diagnosis and treatment of cancer? Early diagnosis is crucial to successful outcomes and the raising of survival rates for ovarian and other cancers.
Lee Rowley
My right hon. Friend is right and I hope that the Minister will recognise that. It is a matter of getting a diagnosis, and encouraging people who feel that something may not be quite right to go to the doctor, so that the pathway starts. Then, if there is an issue—most of the time there is not—there can be progress, and people can get the treatment they need earlier.
The first step in improving outcomes on ovarian cancer is improving awareness among the general public, and among GPs and in doctors’ surgeries in general. As has been mentioned, the symptoms of ovarian cancer are often easy to mistake for something else. Too often it is easy to dismiss them as inconsequential or not worth further attention. Symptoms include bloating, a need to go to the toilet more frequently, pain in the tummy or always feeling full. Recognising that those symptoms are potentially problematic is a key to survival. Those diagnosed at the earliest stage, stage 1, are almost certain to be alive a year after the diagnosis; 98% of them will be. Only half of those diagnosed at stage 4 are alive a year later.
Awareness of the symptoms among the general public remains low. For example, only 20% of women can name bloating as a symptom, and only 3% can name feeling full and loss of appetite as an issue. A regional Be Clear on Cancer pilot on ovarian cancer symptoms in 2014 was promising. There was an increase in both spontaneous and prompted awareness of the issues. There were also promising findings from a further regional pilot last year, which focused on abdominal symptoms, including bloating. Initial findings showed that the campaign led to an increase in the number of GP referrals for suspected cancer. We ask that if the Government propose to run any future public health campaigns, they should include work to make people aware of those symptoms.
The second area where there is work to be done is diagnosis, not least because 45% of women reported that it took three months or longer from first presenting to their GP with concerns to recognition that they might have an issue. Diagnosis relies on two forms of assessment—an ultrasound and a blood test called CA125. In too many areas the assessments are done sequentially rather than simultaneously, which often means vital weeks are lost. We have urged the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and the NHS to review that process and extend the coverage of multidisciplinary diagnostic centres. Those centres prove very useful for the sort of cancers that hide behind vague, less common symptoms, which it is important to get to the bottom of as quickly as possible.
The third area is data. There are many calls on the Government from many sources to ensure that the cancer dashboard demonstrates the progress already being made on a variety of cancers. I understand the challenge, but we also hope that in time the Government may look favourably on the idea of including ovarian cancer data in the dashboard. We hope that that would be relatively simple, as much of the data is already collected and published elsewhere. Good data is vital in driving forward and improving early diagnosis. Huge strides have been made in its collection, and making it available would help with the continuing work to drive up standards.
Finally, treatment also requires further attention. As with many health issues, ovarian cancer treatment is invasive and often difficult. It centres primarily on surgery and chemotherapy. There has been much progress in recent years on drugs to treat the cancer, with the development of a number of PARP inhibitors, providing new tools and opportunities to improve the outcome. However, spending and research on ovarian cancer remain lower than for other cancers, and there is much work to focus on. Where surgery is required there is a strong case for specialist centres around the country, supported by a detailed service specification from NHS England.
To further drive up the quality of treatment, charities such as Target Ovarian Cancer and Ovarian Cancer Action, together with the British Gynaecological Cancer Society, are funding an ovarian cancer feasibility audit. Over the next two years, it will map and analyse existing data on ovarian cancer, and look at the treatment provided and the outcomes for women.
Liz Twist (Blaydon) (Lab)
Will the hon. Gentleman join me in congratulating Target Ovarian Cancer and other cancer charities on highlighting this issue and putting forward some very sensible recommendations for improving treatment? Does he agree that it is shocking that our survival rates in the UK are among the lowest in Europe?
Lee Rowley
I absolutely do. All these things are a work in progress, but I hope that through debates such as this, through talking about it and through all the fantastic work the charities and the APPG do we can move things forward, make progress and, in time, have fewer women suffering from this and more women getting treatment more quickly than today.
The question of ovarian cancer is, however, more than a technical discussion about diagnosis, awareness, data and treatment, as important as those are. Behind each statistic is a real person who has been unexpectedly struck down by the disease and, in far too many cases, might not be around today to tell the story of their fight. As part of the preparation for this debate, the parliamentary digital team and Target Ovarian Cancer asked people to share stories of their fight and those of their family members.
I am hugely grateful to both organisations for helping with that, and to everyone who got in touch. The stories we received were heartbreaking and heartwarming in equal measure, tragic and terrific, and whatever the outcome, they were inspiring to us all. I cannot possibly do justice to everybody who got in touch or to all the stories and experiences out there, but I will share a few today to remind us of the importance of making progress on this disease.
Danielle got in touch to tell us about her mum, who was diagnosed with stage 3 ovarian cancer in September of last year. Like many other people’s, her symptoms were fuzzy: irritable bowel syndrome, feeling full, swelling and weight loss, which could have been a hundred other things. By chance, the doctor who saw Danielle’s mum also sent her for a blood test, which quickly confirmed that there was an issue. A month or so later, Danielle’s mum started chemotherapy, and in January this year she had a full hysterectomy. After a 10-hour operation, it was hoped that everything had been caught and the focus was on recovery. By June, however, the cancer had returned; sadly, a few months later, in August, Danielle’s mum lost her battle, just 10 months after diagnosis.
Forty-year-old Sarah also had symptoms such as weight loss, feeling full and ovary pain. Before the cancer was diagnosed, she tried many times to find out what the issue was, including once being told, “Well done,” for having lost weight. In Sarah’s case the blood test that often highlights an issue came back normal, which emphasises the imperfect nature of the diagnosis. A nine-hour operation and six rounds of chemotherapy later, Sarah continues to battle her cancer while looking after her two young children.
We also heard the story of the daughter of Jean, who was diagnosed in 2011 with stage 4 ovarian cancer as a result of severe bloating and loss of appetite. After major surgery and four rounds of chemotherapy, the news came through that the cancer had spread. Her battle ended early in 2013.
Emma told us about her mum, who was told she was suffering from irritable bowel syndrome; the actual issue was found too late and she lost her battle, aged 64, just six weeks after diagnosis.
Seren started feeling unwell while at university, aged just 19. Unable to get a doctor’s appointment, she came back home and was diagnosed with cancer. Her tumour was the size of a rugby ball and her operation was pushed forward as it was stopping her eating and affecting her breathing. Chemotherapy followed and today Seren is recovered and working for a cancer charity.
Christine is also one of the good news stories. She was diagnosed with stage 2 ovarian cancer aged 35, having had to visit three different GPs to resolve the problems she was suffering from, which had initially been put down to colitis and anxiety. After her diagnosis, an emergency operation and 10 chemotherapy sessions followed. That was in 1985 and Christine is still here; she has been able to share her story in the last few days.
Finally, Linda was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in September 2017, having initially felt unwell at the beginning of summer while she was on holiday. The classic symptoms were there: bloating, feeling full and knowing that something “wasn’t right”. Multiple trips to the GP followed until, finally, a blood test was taken, confirming the cancer. Linda had a full hysterectomy that same month and spent much of the next few months recovering.
I know that many hon. Members may be wondering the obvious: why am I standing here making the case about a disease that cannot and will not ever affect my body? As with so many others, although it may not have touched me personally, it has touched my family. Linda is my mum. Up until last year, she had had relatively good health and there is no history of ovarian cancer in my family. I generally try to keep my family out of politics—I was the fool who ran for Parliament, not them—but last year was a nightmare that none of us wants to experience again, and we have no wish to see anyone else experience the same. My dad, my brother and I watched my mum live through an extremely scary diagnosis, hugely invasive treatment and one of the hidden aspects of all cancers, the brush with mortality that takes time for sufferers to get to grips with.
Happily for me and my family, my mum is one of the lucky ones. She is sitting at home in north Derbyshire right now, possibly watching this debate on the internet. She has had a hard year and we are extremely proud of her. Yet I know that for every family like mine who have had good news, there are more people who face a tragic outcome. My mum and Danielle’s mum were diagnosed about the same time and I know that my mum’s journey, like that of Danielle’s mum, could have been so different. I do not want anyone else to face what those of us who know and understand what this disease forces on sufferers have faced. Better treatment, diagnosis and a cure cannot wait. I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss these hugely important issues; I look forward to the debate and the Government’s response. Together, I hope we can beat ovarian cancer.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on securing this debate. He is right that ovarian cancer does not affect us men, but it affects people we know, and that is why we are here. I thank him for his introduction and for the extensive work he has done on the issue in his role as vice chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer. I was particularly impressed by the group’s report, “Diagnosing ovarian cancer sooner: what more can be done?”. If hon. Members have not had a chance to read it, I suggest that they do so, because it is very helpful. It was published earlier this year and contains a number of key recommendations and findings, which I will pick up on today.
Every single year, more than 7,000 women across the United Kingdom receive the devastating news that they have ovarian cancer. The hon. Gentleman, in his examples at the end of his speech, referred to those who have survived and those who have not; it is important to realise that sometimes people do survive it. Unfortunately, in my time as an elected representative, most of the people I have known who have had it have caught it at a late stage and have not lived as long as perhaps they could have. UK survival rates are among the lowest in Europe and less than half of all women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive five years or longer.
The fact that we are at the lower end of that league table is an indication that perhaps we need to do more. I look to the Minister, as we always do, for a positive response. We also know that the earlier a person is diagnosed, the better chance they have of beating the disease. More than a quarter of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed through an emergency presentation, for example via accident and emergency. The hon. Gentleman referred to those who thought they had irritable bowel syndrome, had a bad stomach or were bloated, or whatever it might be, and suddenly found it was something much greater. Over 80% of women diagnosed following a GP referral will survive for a year or more. I think if an early diagnosis can be made, the figures speak for themselves. We must do more to raise awareness about the disease, something I will come on to later.
Before I continue, I would like to share a bit of welcome news for ovarian cancer patients in Northern Ireland. As colleagues may be aware, drugs approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence for use through the cancer drugs fund in England are now being considered in line with the country’s existing endorsement of NICE recommendations and will be equally accessible in Northern Ireland. That has just been announced recently. In cases where a drug is yet to be fully approved by NICE, it can be made available for use under the CDF. I will mention one lady who is no longer with us, Una Crudden, who I got to know when she met us here, as someone who had had ovarian cancer. I think it was six years after her diagnosis. She was a remarkable lady and her story was a very real one: I remember it probably every day of my life.
CDF-approved drugs were previously unavailable in Northern Ireland, meaning that patients had to wait for their full approval by NICE, which can take up to two years. This change in Northern Ireland will help more people to survive, and for longer.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Whenever ladies go through this treatment, their aftercare and companionship with other people is important. Will my hon. Friend join me in congratulating a lady in my constituency, Mrs Maureen Clarke, who set up the Angels of Hope charity some years ago? It has been a tremendous help, psychologically and in every other way, for people who suffer from ovarian cancer.
Jim Shannon
I wholeheartedly support the tremendous work of the great many people in charities and elsewhere. Una Crudden was one of those who inspired everyone around her. We think of her often.
Without CDF approval, cancer patients in Northern Ireland have been unable to access life-extending drugs that have been approved for use in England, Wales and Scotland, such as niraparib. It is a PARP inhibitor, meaning that it blocks the action of the enzymes PARP1 and PARP2, which help to repair any damaged DNA in cancer cells while they divide to make new cells. Niraparib blocks PARP enzymes, which is incredibly important, and it is good news that we will have direct access to it in Northern Ireland. When researchers trialled niraparib on women with ovarian cancer, they discovered that the women lived for longer without the disease worsening and could go significantly increased times between treatments, meaning that they had more time between chemotherapy sessions.
Almost 200 women in Northern Ireland are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year, and more than 50% lose their battle with it. It is particularly frustrating and upsetting for patients, and their families, who did not have access to the same potentially life-changing drugs as their English, Scottish and Welsh counterparts. However, that has changed in the last month; patients in Northern Ireland are finally set to have the same access to drugs as those in the rest of the United Kingdom. According to reports, the implementation of this policy will take place at some point in this financial year. We look forward to that. I am sure that colleagues will join me and my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) in welcoming this fantastic news.
Access to drugs is one thing, but it is reactionary, rather than preventive. Evidence, including in the APPG’s report, suggest that much more needs to be done to raise awareness about ovarian cancer, which could affect the number of people diagnosed with the disease. Early diagnoses give longer life and prevent death. Although not limited to these, the four main symptoms are abdominal pain, bloating, feeling full quickly and needing to pass water. Most concerning is that only 20% of women could correctly identify those as being symptomatic of ovarian cancer, which goes back to a point made by the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire.
Ovarian cancer has low survival rates and, sometimes, delays in diagnosis, so we need a reinvigorated effort to ensure that the general public know what to look out for and when to see a doctor. The Be Clear on Cancer campaign was introduced in 2011, and I take this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to Public Health England for launching it. It is an excellent campaign that has undoubtedly played a vital role in improving cancer awareness more generally among the general population, which is part of the strategy’s focus.
National campaigns have been successfully run for bowel, lung, breast, bladder and kidney cancers, but only regional and local pilot campaigns have been launched for ovarian cancer. Does the Minister intend to launch a pilot campaign for ovarian cancer? A regional campaign launched in 2014 included the use of television, radio, online and face-to-face events and led to a significant improvement in women’s awareness of the symptoms of ovarian cancer and a greater inclination to visit their GP to discuss any concerns that they might have.
Raising awareness—especially about potential symptoms —is obviously important and can only be a good thing, so I will be grateful if the Minister indicates what discussions he has had with Public Health England about the possibility of running a national campaign for ovarian cancer that covers the four nations. We could work together to raise awareness at every level. I always think it is better to do things together. As you know, Mr Bone, we are better together in everything that we do, and I would like that to continue to be the case, especially for this.
Another way to improve awareness about ovarian cancer would be the introduction of a national screening programme. Screening programmes exist for breast and cervical cancer, but there is no equivalent for ovarian cancer. I understand that the UK collaborative trial of ovarian cancer screening looked at the possibility of an ovarian cancer screening programme, with a blood test to identify changes in the levels of the CA 125 protein, which is a tell-tale sign. If levels had risen, the patient would be sent for an ultrasound, so a system would be in place to offer early diagnosis, and it would be preventive as well. It is estimated that, if a national screening programme were rolled out, 12.5 million women over the age of 50 would be eligible to attend, with around 2% required to have a further ultrasound. Such a programme could take preventive help to the next stage.
I understand that, when women are contacted about making an appointment for a cervical or breast cancer screening, they are provided with informative leaflets that detail possible symptoms. Of course, although the screenings are vital, it is entirely up to the patient if they follow up and make an appointment. However, just having access to the leaflets is helpful in raising awareness. Does the Minister intend to produce a leaflet to raise awareness of ovarian cancer? Recognition of the symptoms of ovarian cancer remains low, so it would be helpful if women were provided with a similar leaflet that might help to improve awareness of this specific disease.
I understand that the cost of national screening programmes is high, but that needs to be measured against the long-term benefits. If people can be screened and ovarian cancer caught early, people have a greater chance of survival, and their long-term reliance on the NHS could well be reduced. That is ultimately cost-effective, because it reduces the amount of care that they later need.
I understand that one concern with rolling out a screening programme of that nature is the lack of sonographers, who are of course required to provide ultrasounds. Are the staff with those skills in place? I am interested to hear what consideration has been given to the use of artificial intelligence to fill the gap of highly skilled diagnosticians. Would it be possible to provide some sort of incentive for those considering postgraduate UK ultrasound qualifications? We often say this, and I know that the Minister is responsive to it, but if we set out the graduate positions that will be available in the future and encourage graduates to study towards those jobs, that will be helpful.
Prevention is vital. Approximately 15% of women with ovarian cancer develop it as a result of a mutation in the BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene. Identifying women with ovarian cancer with a BRCA mutation not only helps in designing their treatment plans; it enables family members to be tested. We sometimes look at the individual, which is important, but we should also look at the family circle—sisters and daughters and so on—and test them as well, which would allow them to make decisions about reducing their risk of developing ovarian cancer.
“Achieving world-class cancer outcomes: a strategy for England 2015-2020” calls for all women with ovarian cancer to be offered access to genetic testing at the point of diagnosis. That follows 2013 NICE guidelines that require all women with a 10% or higher risk of carrying a BRCA mutation to be offered genetic testing. However, in reality, testing varies between regions and between hospitals, because the guidelines are often interpreted differently. This clearly needs to be addressed, as the same testing should be available for all, without variation depending on postcode or because of the funding—or lack thereof—available in different genetic testing centres across the country. Obviously if eligible family members were tested to identify potential mutations, they might be able to take steps, including surgery, to ensure that ovarian cancer cannot occur.
Concerns have been raised about what genetic testing could mean for individuals with private health or life insurance. Members may not have thought of this, and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire did not mention it, but he and others will be aware of it. For example, does a person with private health or life insurance need to declare if a genetic test has been carried out, and its results? I am interested to hear from the Minister what work the Department is doing alongside the insurance industry to address any disparity for cancer patients and their families who undergo genetic testing, which may have an impact on their private health or life insurance.
We can all agree that, while improvements have been made in the last couple of decades, survival rates for ovarian cancer continue to lag behind other cancers. We need to do more to raise awareness of ovarian cancer, to ensure that women know what to look out for and when to see their doctor—particularly those in higher risk categories, either because of family history or because of their age.
I am very pleased about the recent news for cancer patients in Northern Ireland: as is the case with genetic testing, it is unfair for patients to access different treatments, tests or drugs simply because of their postcode. I hope that the Minister will work with Public Health England and NICE to consider national campaigns, which take in all the regions, and screening programmes for ovarian cancer, as well as to ensure that guidelines are implemented and funding made available for testing.
I again thank the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire for the opportunity to speak on this subject. It is close to my heart; indeed, that can be said of all of us who are here and many who are not here because they are doing other things. Ovarian cancer is one of those diseases on which we need to give hope and support to the people affected. We all know people who are affected and we are here today to speak on their behalf.
John Lamont (Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk) (Con)
I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on securing this important debate and on speaking so compassionately and movingly about his constituents and, indeed, his family.
Like other hon. Members present, I am sure, I was inundated with emails and correspondence from constituents urging me to take part in the debate, so I want to make a few remarks on their behalf. Of course, those emails come from the lucky ones—the women who, like Amanda Gilham from Makerstoun in my constituency, benefited from timely diagnosis and treatment. Amanda was totally unaware that she had ovarian cancer and was diagnosed only because she was fortunate enough to be given a blood test, as her GP suspected that something else entirely was wrong.
When talking about statistics, it is important to remember that the numbers on spreadsheets represent people—our constituents—and, in the case of ovarian cancer, grandmothers, mothers and sometimes daughters. Clearly, early diagnosis and treatment are crucial to tackling ovarian cancer, as they are to tackling all types of cancer. If ovarian cancer is found early, the five-year survival rate is 90%, compared with 4% if it is found late. Although survival rates have doubled in the past 40 years, survival rates in the United Kingdom are lower than the European average, and still not enough people are diagnosed early.
The NHS in Scotland is of course entirely devolved and therefore the responsibility of the Scottish National party Government. I want to spend a little time talking about the situation in Scotland and the circumstances that my constituents have to experience. Patients in Scotland are being let down. Much more needs to be done to improve diagnosis and treatment. This summer, for example, the Scottish Medicines Consortium approved the use of niraparib, but only for women without a gene mutation that affects about one fifth of women living with ovarian cancer. That restriction does not apply in England, meaning that women with a BRCA gene mutation in England and Wales have more treatment options than their counterparts north of the border, in Scotland. A postcode lottery for accessing life-enhancing drugs is unacceptable. I agree with Ovarian Cancer Action that women in Scotland deserve better.
Women in Scotland also deserve better in terms of the time that it takes to receive a diagnosis and treatment. Scotland’s cancer treatment waiting times are at their worst in six years. Only 87% of patients with ovarian cancer started treatment within 62 days of referral. In response, the Scottish Government have admitted that that is “simply not good enough”. Just last week, the Scottish Government announced that they were not planning on meeting their own diagnosis target until at least 2021. That was spun as a new “three-year plan” to meet waiting time targets—something that was supposed to be good news. Given that the SNP has been in charge of the NHS in Scotland for the past 10 years, the Scottish Government’s record, particularly on cancer treatment, deserves further scrutiny. I hope that some of the extra £2 billion a year that the Scottish Government will be receiving to spend on the NHS, thanks to yesterday’s Budget, can be put to good use to reduce those waiting times.
Ovarian cancer is not the most common type of cancer in the United Kingdom and is not easily diagnosed at the moment, but the impact of early diagnosis is significant. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire on securing this important debate. I support the efforts across the United Kingdom to improve diagnosis and treatment of this terrible disease.
Angela Crawley (Lanark and Hamilton East) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on securing the debate and on bravely speaking of his own experience and that of his mum, Linda. I am sorry to hear about the experience that his family have had in the past year and I wish Linda well.
I thank hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber for highlighting the issues faced by their constituents. They have talked about both the successes of the health service and the lessons that need to be learned for the future. Healthcare in Scotland is of course devolved to the Scottish Government, so I can only speak to that experience, but ovarian cancer is one of the most common types of cancer in women. It typically affects those who have been through the menopause, and more than 7,000 diagnoses are made each year across the UK. In Scotland, 350 women die of the disease each year. However, the survival rate for ovarian cancer is high compared with that for other types of cancer and, like other cancer survival rates, it increases with early detection.
One key issue with this disease is that awareness of the symptoms is still low among both GPs and the general population. As we have heard from both sides of the Chamber, more needs to be done to raise awareness of the early signs and to secure an early diagnosis. Most women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed when the disease has, unfortunately, reached an advanced stage.
In many regards, Scotland still leads the way on UK ovarian cancer diagnosis, but there is no denying that there is always more to do in this area. Scotland has improved its diagnostic pathway and the access to much-needed treatments. The SNP Government developed the Detect Cancer Early programme to improve survival rates through diagnosis and treatment at an earlier stage. Scotland has been able to tackle cancer through world-class scientific research. The Scottish Molecular Genetics Consortium uses DNA to detect a range of genetic disorders, including cancer. The Scottish Genomes Partnership is pioneering Scottish research in human genome discovery in four key research areas, of which cancer is one. That partnership involves the Universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee. However, although that research is saving lives, its funding is being slashed. The proportion of EU funds allocated to universities in the UK has already dropped and will continue to fall because of Brexit and the uncertainty about the future. Programmes such as those will collapse unless a post-Brexit Government are prepared to plug the funding gap.
In Scotland, the SNP wants to improve cancer care and treatment, which is one reason the Scottish Government are investing £100 million in their new cancer strategy. In addition to the SNP Government’s work on prevention and early detection, the strategy includes enhanced radiotherapy services through new technology, and recruitment drives to reduce waiting times and improve patient outcomes. The Scottish Government have outlined actions for end-of-life care needs through the “Strategic Framework for Action on Palliative and End of Life Care”, which encourages a culture of openness and dignity around dying and death.
In June, I was contacted by a constituent from Hamilton, Mr Gerard Murphy, who sadly lost his wife, Elizabeth, last year after a battle against late-diagnosed ovarian cancer. Mr Murphy expressed a lot of the sentiments articulated during this debate, calling for publicly funded awareness campaigns so that women and GPs know the symptoms to look out for, faster diagnosis so that women can start treatment earlier and have a greater chance of survival, and treatment in specialist centres such as the Beatson West of Scotland cancer centre, where Elizabeth was treated, in his words, “wonderfully well”. I am sure that Mr Murphy would welcome any advances for other families experiencing this disease.
We have heard calls from both sides of the Chamber for greater knowledge and awareness of the signs and greater investment in early diagnosis. This is something that we would like to tackle across the House. I hope that the Minister will pay heed to the comments that have been made.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) for securing this very important debate and for his vice- chairmanship of the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer, which I am extremely proud to chair. We work very well together. Indeed, earlier this year he and I shared the chairing responsibilities for two oral evidence sessions as part of the preparation for publication of our report entitled “Diagnosing ovarian cancer sooner: what more can be done?” to mark World Ovarian Cancer Day 2018. I thank him for that also.
The hon. Gentleman made an excellent and extremely moving opening speech. He shared many examples of women’s lived experiences of this awful disease, including his own experience with his mum Linda. I have no doubt she will be proudly watching him lead this debate. We are all MPs—that’s for sure—but we are also real people with lived experiences and families. Sharing those personal experiences can improve the debate, as it has done today. I thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) and for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for their contributions to this important debate. We have also had some excellent interventions.
Many of the key statistics around this awful disease have been covered so far in this excellent debate, but if something is worth saying once, it is worth saying twice. Over 7,000 women are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year in the UK, but sadly survival rates are among the lowest in Europe. Less than half of women diagnosed with ovarian cancer survive five years or more. Tragically, 4,000 women in the UK die each year because of this awful disease. Although progress has been made in diagnosing and treating ovarian cancer, there is still much more to be done and I want to highlight some ways the Government can do that.
I was extremely grateful to the Minister for meeting with me recently to discuss the key recommendations from the APPG’s report, which I just mentioned, and I will raise some of them now. Diagnosis is one of the key ways that women with ovarian cancer are often let down. Many women report experiencing delays in diagnosis. An astonishingly high proportion, 45%, say that it took three months or even longer to receive a diagnosis after first approaching their GP with symptoms. As we have heard, symptom awareness is one of the key things we must address. This is most concerning because we know the significant impact early diagnosis can have on chances of survival. Nine in 10 women who receive an early diagnosis of ovarian cancer can survive for five years or more, compared with less than five in 100 women who are diagnosed at a very late stage.
I want to share a story, as a few hon. Members have. My constituent Gail wrote to me ahead of this debate telling me the experience of her younger sister, who has stage 3 ovarian cancer that has spread to her stomach lining. Although she is currently responding to treatment, it took a long time to get the diagnosis in the first place. At one point, she was being incorrectly treated for rheumatoid arthritis. That changed only when she developed blood clots in her legs, which led the hospital to look for cancer. We can only imagine the added distress that this kind of delay can cause in an already extremely difficult experience.
As a result of her sister’s diagnosis, Gail underwent genetic testing and discovered that she had the BRCA2 gene, which, as we know, gives her a high predisposition to ovarian and breast cancer. My constituent underwent elective surgery at the start of the year to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, and is awaiting the next step with regard to the breast cancer risk. This case shows how important it is that patients are diagnosed as soon as possible, not only for themselves, but for their family members who may have to undergo further testing.
On early diagnosis, will the Minister support a review of the referral pathway for ovarian cancer, particularly in relation to the introduction of the shortened pathway that we have seen in Scotland, so that, as the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire also requested, the CA125 blood tests and ultrasound tests can be done at the same time, rather than sequentially, as they are now? What steps has the Department taken to ensure that NICE guidelines, which say that women should be offered BRCA testing at diagnosis, are adhered to? Ovarian Cancer Action found that 30% of women are not being offered this testing. I know that the new multidisciplinary diagnostic centres will also help with early diagnosis, but they are in the pilot stage and limited to 10 sites. Will the Minister confirm whether there are plans for more centres, so that everyone can have access to those services regardless of where they live?
As we know, the four key symptoms of ovarian cancer are a bloated tummy, needing to urinate more often or urgently, experiencing tummy pain and always feeling full. Anyone newly experiencing those symptoms 12 times a month or more is advised to see their GP. However, awareness of these symptoms is worryingly low. According to Target Ovarian Cancer, just 20% of women can name bloating as a symptom and only 3% can name feeling full or loss of appetite. Awareness campaigns run by Public Health England have been shown to be highly effective. The one currently running focuses on blood in urine. Considering that we know how important it is that those with ovarian cancer are diagnosed quickly, it would be helpful to know whether Public Health England has any plans to run a Be Clear on Cancer campaign that focuses on either ovarian cancer or a cluster of symptoms for a range of cancers, including ovarian.
I recently attended Ovarian Cancer Action’s research grant award ceremony, where I heard about some of the incredible work being funded across the UK. The innovation and determination of some of the projects is truly astonishing. One project—it is hard to describe, but I will give it a go anyway—had a huge number of examples of DNA that needed going through on an individual basis and labelling. Due to the sheer quantity of data that needed sifting, those in charge of the programme invented a Tinder-style app—I know it sounds unusual—that enabled people to quickly categorise the different examples of DNA by swiping left or right. That information was then fed back into the research team’s data, to build up a comprehensive body of data.
Another project that received funding was that of Dr Jonathan Krell and Dr James Flanagan of the Ovarian Cancer Action Research Centre. They are investigating how changes to our genes can play a big part in the risk of developing cancer, including assessing how feasible it would be to implement a new genetic testing model that identifies and supports families at risk of ovarian cancer because of an inherited BRCA1 or BRCA2 gene mutation. With that in mind, does the Minister’s Department have any plans to increase Government funding into medical research for the early detection, diagnosis and prevention of ovarian cancer?
Finally, I want to cover the issue of surgery. As the Minister knows, surgery for ovarian cancer is widely considered one of the biggest factors in survival rates. Surgery for ovarian cancer is extremely difficult. Someone I know well who had the surgery once described it to me as being like trying to remove a bunch of grapes, and if any of the grapes was punctured or broke that would cause huge internal damage by spreading the cancer. Although there are a number of surgical centres of excellence across the UK, there are many women who do not have access to them and are being operated on by general surgeons—no generalist will ever be as good as a specialist. Through no fault of their own, those women will have a lower chance of survival than those who receive the specialist surgery. What assurances can the Minister give that steps are being taken to ensure that all women with ovarian cancer have access to a specialist surgeon and that the regional variation can be brought to an end?
Before I conclude I want to pay tribute to some of the incredible organisations and campaigners that I have had the pleasure of working with on this issue over the years. They work tirelessly not only to combat the disease, but to provide support and comfort to those who have it. They include Ovarian Cancer Action, the Eve Appeal and Target Ovarian Cancer, which also does much to support the work of the APPG on ovarian cancer in its role as the secretariat to the group. I look forward to hearing from the Minister about the ways in which the Government can support the work of those great charities and campaigners, and support the thousands of women across the country who sadly suffer from this disease.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Steve Brine)
It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Bone. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley) on securing the debate. As vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer, the subject means a great deal to him. We also heard more about why it means a lot to him. I place on record my thanks to the all-party group and to the excellent ovarian charities. Target Ovarian Cancer is the biggest, but others work tirelessly in that space, such as Ovacome.
Watching my hon. Friend brought back memories of sitting in that exact chair as one of the vice-chairs of the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer almost exactly seven years ago, in October 2011. I was talking about ovarian cancer, which has also had an impact on my family, although sadly not with the outcome that my hon. Friend currently has. I described it as a “silent national scandal”, which was then trending—quite something in 2011. I was also present for the 2014 debate that he remembers, which was the last time the subject was specifically debated in the House. It was a pleasure to hear him today; he reminded me of me—but I put on record the warning that this is where I have ended up.
I was pleased to meet with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and Target Ovarian Cancer a couple of weeks ago to discuss the all-party group’s report, as the hon. Lady said. As she knows, I take the all-party groups very seriously. I have the report here—this is my coffee table copy in the Department of Health and Social Care, and anybody who knows my office knows that what is on the coffee table is what counts. It is an excellent report with many important recommendations and I will return to it a lot in my remarks. I have already committed to responding fully to it and the hon. Lady knows that I will do that.
I am responding to my third cancer debate in the House in less than two weeks, which demonstrates that improving cancer diagnosis and treatment is a priority for right hon. and hon. Members, as it is for me as the Minister with responsibility for cancer, the Government, the Prime Minister and the Opposition. In this job, I am fortunate to see first hand the superb work being done by our NHS staff and by our many partners and charities across the cancer community in implementing the 96 recommendations in the cancer strategy for England.
We are three years into that work and cancer survival rates have never been higher, as has been said. About 7,000 people are alive today who would not have been had mortality rates stayed the same as before Cancer Research UK and Harpal, who led the work, published the strategy. As I make clear every time I respond to a cancer debate, however, I know that we must do more and that people want us to do more, because we still lose 12,000 women a year to breast cancer and far too many women to ovarian cancer. We must do better. Despite the huge strides that I have mentioned, and the best-ever survival rates, ovarian cancer survival rates in the UK are among the lowest in Europe with fewer than half of all women diagnosed surviving five years or more, so there is much that we need to do.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
The Minister has mentioned the success rates in dealing with cases of ovarian cancer in our country compared with some of our European partners. Can he set out what we can learn from them in improving outcomes for women in this country?
Steve Brine
I will certainly cover that. Put bluntly, as I will come on to in a second, and as almost all hon. Members have mentioned, it is about early detection. That has an impact because, as the former chair of the all-party parliamentary group on cancer, my hon. Friend the Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron), has said many times, early diagnosis is cancer’s “magic key”. We have that magic key in some cancers in this country. We do very well in breast cancer, where the early-stage survival rates are well over the 75% target that the Prime Minister set out at the party conference earlier this month, but it is true that we do not yet have the magic key in enough cancers. I will come on to what we need to do.
I was pleased when the Prime Minister announced the ambitious package of measures for cancer care and treatment earlier this month, which will be at the heart of our long-term plan for the NHS. It will be backed up by the new funding that was announced in the summer and confirmed in yesterday’s Budget. We will overhaul screening programmes, provide new investment in state-of-the-art technology to boost our research and innovation capability and, critically, transform how we diagnose cancers earlier. As I have said, our ambition is to diagnose 75% of all cancers at an early stage, which will result in an estimated 55,000 more people surviving cancer for five years in England each year from 2028.
All hon. Members have mentioned early diagnosis, and many have mentioned some stats—or the same stats. The important one for me is that a quarter of women with ovarian cancer are diagnosed through an emergency presentation. When I first became an MP, I remember going to meetings with the all-party parliamentary group on ovarian cancer and the all-party parliamentary group on cancer, where I was shown the stats for my constituency of the number of people who presented in the emergency department with cancer. That really frightened and shocked me—it still does—and along with my personal history, it was one of the reasons I wanted to get involved in health and cancer when I joined the House.
Of that quarter of women with ovarian cancer who are diagnosed through an emergency presentation, just 45% survive for a year or more. That is no surprise—if someone is diagnosed in an emergency department, they have exhibited more outward symptoms, so they are at a later stage and their survival rate is lower. The survival rate is more than 80% when women are diagnosed following a GP referral, so it is crystal clear where improvements are urgently required. That is why early diagnosis is a key strategic priority in the cancer strategy. As has been said, it allows for more options for treatment and, crucially, the earlier a cancer is diagnosed, the more likely it is that doctors will be able to provide successful treatment or operate on the “bunch of grapes”—that is a good analogy, which I have heard before.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire talked about the multidisciplinary diagnostic centres. NHS England and the Department are testing new innovative ways of diagnosing cancer earlier. As regular attendees of cancer debates will know, I never tire of praising the accelerate, co-ordinate, evaluate—ACE—centres, which are the multidisciplinary diagnostic centres for patients with vague or non-specific symptoms. As the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West said, they are being piloted across 10 sites in the country. They offer patients a range of tests on the same day—a point that has been made by several hon. Members—with rapid access to results.
The centres are magnificent. I visited the ACE centre at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford earlier this year. I met the practitioners who work there, the commissioning group and the GPs who are involved in it. GPs are tremendously, and rightly, excited about the centres. They will make a huge step-change improvement in early diagnosis, particularly for cancers such as ovarian cancer, where symptoms can be vague and can appear less serious at first. The plan is for that innovation to address the delay that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West and other hon. Members spoke about, so instead of a GP having to refer for one test and wait for the results, then refer for the next test and wait for an appointment, the ACE centres will allow for a snappy, quicker turnaround. They could be a game-changer and could unearth the magic key when it comes to ovarian cancer.
The APPG’s report says that we should roll out ACE centres nationwide, so I am delighted, as I know the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West is, that the Prime Minister recently committed to doing just that, as part of our long-term plan. I do not get excited easily, Mr Bone, as you well know, but I am excited about the ACE centres and they are potentially transformative.
I turn now to early diagnosis in primary care. Other support measures are necessary to ensure that more cancers are caught in primary care. The NICE guidelines for suspected cancer referral recommend safety netting for those people who are at higher risk of cancer but who do not meet the referral criteria. Both Cancer Research UK and Macmillan have produced additional advice and support for GPs to implement those guidelines, including the safety netting that I have just mentioned, over the last few years.
I was blown away to meet Macmillan GPs at Britain Against Cancer earlier this year. They are an excellent innovation and have an awful lot to give, but they are few in number. I am very interested in them and I talk to Macmillan about the potential use of Macmillan GPs in helping to transfer specialist knowledge of cancer to wider general practitioners. I always say of GPs that they are not dissimilar to MPs when we hold our surgeries, in that almost everyone who comes to our surgeries is more of an expert on the subject that they have come about than we are, because we are general practitioners. So GPs get a hard rap, but they are general practitioners and that is the area of the profession that they have chosen to go into.
We need to support GPs better through diagnosing cancer, from our targeted lung cancer screening in the lorries in car parks in the north-west—we trialled that approach in Manchester and it has been very successful—to the ACE centres that I have mentioned. That is all aimed at supporting the NHS, especially GPs, to identify cancer earlier.
The shadow Minister asked about the review of the referral pathway. As she knows, the implementation of the faster diagnosis standard requires trusts to review and speed up diagnosis pathways for suspected cancers. NHS England and NHS Improvement are working closely together to emphasise the key principles for improvement that we need in this area, which include ensuring that the most value is derived from each appointment. The standard is being measured for a year from April 2019 to April 2020, when it comes into place. That will ensure that patients are told that they have a cancer diagnosis or an all-clear within a maximum of 28 days of being urgently referred by their GP for suspected cancer. As I always say, 28 days is not a target; it is a maximum. When someone has a cancer worry, 28 minutes can seem like a lifetime, and such things always seem to come on a Friday night, when the weekend lies ahead. Twenty-eight days is our new target, but it is certainly not what we aim for; we aim to do better than that.
We heard from several Members—including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and the shadow Minister—about Be Clear on Cancer. That campaign is one of the great successes of public policy in recent years. The APPG’s report also recommends, as the hon. Lady said, running a Be Clear on Cancer campaign to raise awareness of ovarian cancer symptoms. However, she is experienced and smart enough in this area to know that Be Clear on Cancer cannot focus specifically on a cancer type, such as breast cancer; it is about clusters. That is where we have found it to be most successful.
Public Health England, for which I have ministerial responsibility, takes a number of factors into account when deciding which campaigns to develop; of course, there is healthy competition in this space and unfortunately there is always more demand than supply. One of the main criteria in deciding which campaigns to run with is the scope to save lives through early diagnosis; that measure is what I will judge that work against.
Campaigns can be effective only if the cancer has a clear early sign or symptom that the general public can act upon if it should emerge. Being honest, even blunt, that is part of the challenge here, as has already been said and for the reasons that have already been given. So the regional Be Clear on Cancer pilot for ovarian cancer took place in the north-west of England in February and March 2014—a while ago now—with this simple key message:
“Feeling bloated, most days, for three weeks or more could be a sign of ovarian cancer. Tell your doctor.”
PHE is currently undertaking new data analysis and research to determine Be Clear on Cancer campaigns for next year, which is 2019-20. At this time, no decisions have been made, and I will take the bid from today’s debate very strongly. The outcomes from the regional pilot—and a pilot that focused on a range of abdominal symptoms such as diarrhoea, bloating and discomfort, which can be indicative of a number of cancers, including ovarian cancer—will of course be taken strongly into consideration, and that is where I think we will head with this work.
However, let me clear that PHE and NHS England have had a very clear steer from me that I want to run the campaign on lower abdominal symptoms as soon as practicably possible. We have to make sure that the operational capability is in place across the NHS, because the worst thing that we could do is create a demand without being able to meet it. That is a rather boring, practical reality, but it is a reality. I reiterated this point to the APPG recently when we met and I will of course keep Members updated; I know they follow these matters very closely.
The hon. Member for Strangford also asked about genetic testing and its role in identifying the increased risk of ovarian cancer. One area where England is very much at the cutting edge of cancer diagnosis is in the creation of the new national genomic testing network, which will be delivered through seven new genomic laboratory hubs, as we call them. They will give patients access to state-of-the-art tests that can diagnose their disease or help to inform their treatment. So the genomic lab hubs will do three things: provide consistent and equitable access to genomic tests, which is very important, as it will ensure there is a level playing field; operate to common national standards, specifications and protocols; and deliver the single national genomic testing directory, which will cover the use of all the genomic technology, from the single gene to the whole-genome sequencing for cancer and for rare and inherited disease.
The labs are in a period of transition, to embed fully the new infrastructure and the new national genomic test directory. I hope that this transition will ensure the safe roll-out of the service without disrupting clinical care. Patients will continue to receive the testing they need to inform their clinical care, and the new national test directory will also include the BRCA testing for women with ovarian cancer in line with NICE guidance, which the hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned.
While I am talking about the hon. Gentleman, or “the hon. Member for Westminster Hall” as I like to call him, I note that he also touched on screening programmes, as did the Opposition spokesperson and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire. The UK National Screening Committee is awaiting the updated results of the UK trial of ovarian screening, which is the UK collaborative trial of ovarian cancer screening, as it is known. The secretariat is in contact with the researchers and the committee will review the findings as soon as they are published.
The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to talk about the workforce. On page eight of its report, the APPG outlines the importance of sonographers. There will be increased emphasis on diagnosing cancers earlier, but we will not be able to find the magic key without those people who do the searching, who are our NHS workforce. So we must ensure that we have the right workforce in the right place to deliver that frontline care and meet the Prime Minister’s ambition.
Last December, Health Education England published its first ever cancer workforce plan, committing to the expansion of capacity and skills. HEE will follow that plan up with a longer term strategy that will be aligned with the NHS long-term plan, which seems sensible to me, and that will look at workforce needs beyond 2021. We have to look at a very long landscape when it comes to the NHS workforce. I will not pre-empt that plan, but I can assure hon. Members that it will set out how we will ensure that a sustainable cancer workforce are in place to deliver on the ambitions that we have set out.
My hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire talked about the cancer dashboard. The APPG report, which of course he was involved in drafting, also recommends including ovarian cancer data within the dashboard. The dashboard was first published in May 2016 as a tool to help the cancer alliances, the commissioners and the providers in the acute trusts to quickly and easily identify the priority areas for improvement, and to enable easy tracking of progress towards our national ambitions.
PHE is working with NHS England’s cancer programme team on the next phase of the dashboard development, and that will be informed by the needs of the key stakeholders and the cancer charities, with which I hold a regular roundtable; some of those charities’ staff are here in the Gallery today. It is no secret that hon. Members know that I am frustrated about the cancer dashboard. I am impatient about most things, as my private office will sadly attest, and I am incredibly impatient about the dashboard being limited to the top four cancers. I want to see it expanded and I intend to see it expanded: NHSE and PHE have a very clear direction from me that I will be watching their work and I expect to see it producing what I and other Members in this House want.
The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West spoke about surgery and the mixed picture around the country. I do not want to short-change her by not giving her the detailed answer I want to provide to her good point, so I will look into it and write to her and the other Members who have been in the debate today. We obviously must diagnose early, as that gives us better and less radical treatment options, but for some surgery is a sad reality. We must ensure that the NHS is good at not only sharing best practice but implementing it, and that is as true in surgery as anywhere else.
I pay tribute to the hard work and professionalism of our dedicated cancer workforce, and to the Members who care so passionately about the subject and have brought it to the House today. Ultimately, it is our workforce who will determine the success of the cancer strategy and the long-term plan for the NHS. We can only set the direction and the ambition and ensure that the resources are in place, and I believe that I am doing that, as Minister for cancer.
I am excited by the huge potential for the next 10 years of cancer diagnosis, treatment and support. We have fully established the 19 cancer alliances. We have backed them with the funding they need to transform services, and will go on doing that, to ensure that the NHS long-term plan can be delivered on the ground through the alliances, with cancer at its heart. The plan can turbo-charge all that we have achieved through the cancer strategy. I have said before, and I will say again, that I want the alliances to be much more open and accountable and much more approachable, especially by Members of Parliament in England, who should be able to call them to account much more than they do. I suspect that many Members here have the chief executive of their local trust on speed dial; I hazard a guess that they do not have the leader of their cancer alliance there also, and that should change.
It was interesting to get the Scottish perspective from my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont). We would like to see the ambition in England matched across the whole United Kingdom and we absolutely stand ready, as always, to work with Scottish Members and the Scottish Government. If there is anything we can do to help share that ambition, we will do it.
NHS England, Public Health England and I, with the tireless support of our cancer community—team cancer as I always call it—are committed to making a reality the ambitions that the Prime Minister has set out. That will ensure, as I said in this place not two weeks ago, that we continue to make huge leaps forward over the next 10 years to a future where cancer has no future.
Lee Rowley
I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to this exemplary debate. It has been one of those debates that we all aspire to have, in which we talk about the detail and leave out a lot of the politics, and in which there is unity regarding wanting the same outcome: we all want to be able to treat the disease more quickly, with better outcomes and fewer people experiencing it. I am grateful to everyone for entering into the discussion in that spirit.
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for attending this morning, for highlighting the importance of the issue to him, and for mentioning all the work being done in Northern Ireland—particularly for raising the point about genome testing. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) for sharing his experience north of the border. He, like so many others, provided some of the most important elements of the debate—examples of constituents’ own experiences. I also thank the Front-Bench spokespeople: the hon. Member for Lanark and Hamilton East (Angela Crawley) for also sharing her experience north of the border; and my colleague on the all-party parliamentary group, the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who spent so much time highlighting the group’s great work. It has been a privilege to be part of that work over the past few months; the report is a great piece of work and I hope to see improvements coming out of it.
I also thank the Minister. I am a relatively new Member, but I can often tell in debates when Ministers are going through the motions and when they actually care, and today I have heard a speech that demonstrates a genuine interest. It was great to hear about the Minister’s personal connection and about how he cares about the issue, and it was interesting to hear some of the things he highlighted. “Lots to come” is the summary I think it is fair to say we can take from the speech, with regard to the ACE centres, the potential for more public health campaigns, the genome point and the screening. I was particularly glad to hear about the dashboard, which I hope, in time, will give us an opportunity to push forward and demonstrate greater transparency.
Although they are not all still in their place, I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and for Nuneaton (Mr Jones), my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers), and the hon. Members for Blaydon (Liz Twist), for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and for Upper Bann (David Simpson). I am incredibly grateful for their contributions. I also thank everyone in the Public Gallery, who has listened and provided support. I am aware that there are Members in the room to whom the matter means much but who, by convention, are not able to speak: my hon. Friend the Members for Erewash (Maggie Throup) and you, Mr Bone. You are undertaking a different role today, as Chair, but you were so kind in supporting me when we applied to the Backbench Business Committee for the debate. I am grateful to you and my hon. Friend for your silent but heartfelt support.
This is an important area. It has affected me personally, but it is not about the personal effects; it is about ensuring that we make progress as a country in sorting out the disease and resolving the issues, reducing the number of people out there who get a diagnosis. The debate has shown that a lot has been achieved, that a lot can be done, and that there is a lot of progress we can make, and I look forward to seeing that progress in the coming years.
Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)
I thank all Members for the excellent debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered ovarian cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Leaving the EU: Port of Sheerness
(6 years ago)
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Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered use of the Port of Sheerness after the UK leaves the EU.
I will try to keep my remarks in order, Mr Bone, and I hope everyone else will, too. Whether or not the Government agree an acceptable post-Brexit deal with the European Union, something will have to be done to relieve pressure on the port of Dover. As my hon. Friend the Minister will know, most of the roll-on/roll-off traffic in south-east England is via the Dover-Calais route. That means that Dover handles a huge volume of business. It is one of the world’s busiest passenger ports. In 2017, some 11.7 million passengers, 2.6 million lorries, 2.2 million cars and motorcycles, and 80,000 coaches passed through Dover. In addition, Dover’s cargo terminal handles 300,000 tonnes and 9,000 containers every year, and business is increasing. As you can imagine, Mr Bone, with all that traffic heading in and out of Dover, the local roads are badly congested, even at the best of times. When there is a problem with the ferries—often caused by strike action at Calais—that congestion gets even worse and Dover becomes gridlocked.
The Dover traffic assessment project, otherwise known as the Dover TAP, holds around 1,000 lorries on the A20 just outside Dover and has been used hundreds of times recently. Thankfully, Dover TAP has been preventing a repeat of Operation Stack. I am sure my hon. Friend will recall it bringing the roads in Kent to a near standstill for a month in 2015. If the UK leaves the EU without a deal, what happened to Kent’s roads in 2015 could look like a walk in the park. Indeed, unless a contingency plan is put in place to combat a no-deal scenario, the situation could become critical and have a huge impact not only on Kent’s economy, but on that of the UK as a whole.
Highways England has been looking for an alternative to Operation Stack, including closing the M26 and using it as a car park. In my opinion, such an option would not solve the problem, but simply move it from one part of Kent to another. Some days, 10,000 lorries pass through the port of Dover in a 24-hour period. If those lorries were held up, that would be equivalent to a queue more than 90 miles long. That is a lot of potential traffic congestion, and it could see whole swathes of the south-east grind to a halt, but such a scenario is avoidable. Parking up thousands of lorries does not have to happen, because there are other solutions. For instance, rather than relying on Operation Stack or similar parking arrangements that have not worked in the past, would it not be better to provide lorry drivers with alternative routes to and from the continent? The port of Sheerness offers one such alternative.
Mr Bone, you might ask, “Why Sheerness?” Well, it has a number of advantages. For a start it has a ro-ro terminal that is available for use today. It was built to service the Olau Line, which ran a ferry service from Sheerness to the Netherlands. Although that ferry service stopped running in 1994, the ro-ro terminal is still in perfect working order. The port of Sheerness has other excellent facilities and is already one of the major ports for the importation of cars into the UK. Unlike Dover, it has plenty of spare space and room to expand. Although Sheerness is further away from Calais by sea than Dover, it is closer by road to London and the midlands, so the longer sea journey from France would be counter-balanced by a shorter road journey to the lorry’s final destination. In addition, Sheerness is closer than Dover to the Netherlands, which opens up the possibility of routing more freight via the Dutch ports, such as Rotterdam.
It is worth pointing out that Sheerness is the only port in England with water as deep as that at Rotterdam, so it would make a perfect partner. Another advantage of encouraging a Rotterdam-Sheerness route is that the road journey from Germany and eastern Europe to Rotterdam is shorter than that to Calais. Once again, although the sea journey would be greater, there would be a saving on road travel at both ends. While having a longer sea journey might seem a disadvantage, in a post-Brexit world it would be an advantage, because it would give more time for the customs paperwork to be sorted out electronically at either end. That is what is happening at Felixstowe, which manages to import £86 billion of goods every year from inside and outside the EU without the need for lengthy customs checks. Such a system replicated in other ports, such as Sheerness, would ensure frictionless borders and no hold-ups.
One final advantage of using the port of Sheerness is the amount of commerce that already takes place in the area. In my constituency, I have the Morrisons regional distribution centre; the new Aldi regional distribution centre; the Kemsley paper mill, which is the second largest fibre-based paper operation in Europe; and the Sittingbourne Eurolink, which is one of the largest industrial and manufacturing estates in southern England. As you can imagine, Mr Bone, all those industries generate a lot of lorry movements, many from the continent. Routing those lorries via Sheerness would reduce pressure on Dover and makes a lot of sense logistically.
Making better use of the port of Sheerness post-Brexit would require some investment. For example, the A249 dual carriageway would have to be extended half a mile into the docks. An improved electronic customs system like that at Felixstowe would have to be installed to ensure lorries could be cleared with as little delay as possible. I appreciate that that would come at a cost to the Exchequer, but when we consider the wider impact on the country if goods are held up at either Calais or Dover and the costs involved with providing an alternative to Operation Stack, the investment would be a small price to pay for what would effectively become a safety net for Dover.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson) on securing this important debate. It highlights an issue that is topical for both his constituency and the wider economy.
Our ports are key to our economic success. They deliver 95% of our exports and imports. I hope that we can agree that first and foremost, the United Kingdom ports are exemplary. My experience visiting our ports as Maritime Minister has reinforced my belief that our ports are the best in the world. We have the most liberalised ports sector in Europe and arguably the world, with the private sector predominating and ports competing to attract and facilitate trade with both the EU and the rest of the world, all on a fully commercial basis with minimal expense to the taxpayer. This responsible sector has invested vigorously throughout fluctuating conditions in world trade and the domestic economy. It has adapted to changing patterns of demand, including radical changes in the requirements for energy generation over recent years. Consequently, it is well placed to meet the challenges and opportunities that the country will welcome as we resume our position as an independent trading power.
The Government have set a highly facilitative context for private investment through the national policy statement for ports, which was designated in 2012. It sets a strong presumption in favour of socially and environmentally responsible development. The sector has long recognised its environmental stewardship duties as it often occupies sensitive sites at the land/water interface. Moreover, ports have permitted development rights that help to facilitate modest adaptation of port estates in a nimble way where that has no adverse environmental implications.
Our ports have many strengths, especially being nimble and flexible, so the ports sector as a whole stands ready to meet challenges. As the ports sector is such a competitive one, I must remain neutral in that commercial arena, so I hope my hon. Friend will understand if I do not sing the praises of Peel Ports or of any other individual port operator at the expense of others.
Many other hon. Members will doubtless be quick to point out that they have equally alert and vigorous ports in their constituencies, which I know to be true as I have had the privilege of seeing several in operation at first hand.
Gordon Henderson
I want to make it clear—I thought I made it clear in my speech—that I was using Sheerness as an example only because it is in my constituency and I know a lot about it, but the case could apply to many other ports. We should point out to those who are filled with doom and gloom about what will happen post-Brexit that we have ports other than Dover. That is all I am trying to say.
Ms Ghani
My hon. Friend makes an important contribution. He is absolutely right. We must seize the opportunity and recognise that we have many productive and flexible ports up and down our country.
One of the reasons prompting this timely debate is the success of the port of Dover, along with the channel tunnel, which is why any sizeable proportionate reduction in their traffic would be so challenging to replace elsewhere. My hon. Friend talked about the level of traffic and freight going through the port of Dover, and he also referred to the port of Felixstowe. That remains the largest UK container port and is another example of a world-class port capable of accommodating today’s ultra-large container vessels. Its sister port, Harwich, is a versatile ro-ro facility that handles both accompanied and unaccompanied ro-ro trailers. Also, Associated British Ports has advertised the strengths of its Humber ports for unaccompanied ro-ro and is also investing in short sea container capability at Immingham. Those are just a few examples. The Government are involving the whole UK ports industry in discussions on resilience issues directly and through the UK Major Ports Group and British Ports Association. Nevertheless, the initiative of Sheerness in promoting its ro-ro facilities is a good example of an enterprising and positive transport sector.
My hon. Friend will have heard from Ministers that we are confident of securing a withdrawal deal with the European Union that is in the interests of both the UK and the EU member states as trading partners, for this is not a zero-sum game. All the participants in international trade stand to gain, and that applies as much to the UK’s ro-ro business with the EU 27 after we leave as it does to our trade with the rest of the world, so we expect an agreement and a transition period that will enable a sensible adaptation to the inevitable technical changes in border arrangements. However, as a responsible Government, we must plan for all eventualities.
There has been a great deal of speculation, especially in the past week, about the Government’s intentions in the event of a no-deal outcome. The Government have made it clear that UK border controls—those that we control—will continue to enable trade to flow as frictionlessly as possible, which is what we are working towards.
Gordon Henderson
I am sorry to interrupt again. I accept everything the Minister says, but, because the Calais-Dover route is so short, it does not lend itself to electronic trans-shipments at the moment, so we have to upgrade those facilities. My understanding is that the software used at Felixstowe could be changed to accommodate Dover. When asked how long it would take, someone said a few minutes, and we should explore such options.
Ms Ghani
Once again my hon. Friend makes a positive intervention on how our ports can continue to be flexible and take on board new technology to ensure that all the checks are made in good time, especially when we consider the very short journeys to Dover.
Certain checks and controls, including those already undertaken from time to time on EU goods, have to take place at the frontier to be effective, and that will continue to be the case. But there is much that we can and will do to expedite flow, especially where checks can be undertaken away from the physical frontier. We cannot control what controls the EU will require or what member states will do in response to those requirements in the event that we leave without a deal. We can seek to influence such things, of course, but ultimately there remains a risk that the flow of traffic will be affected.
The Dover strait, encompassing the channel tunnel, concentrates the greater part of accompanied HGV trade with the continent. It is a 24/7 operation that includes a stream of ferries departing at half-hourly intervals. Inevitably, such a dense flow of HGVs could become subject to some constriction in the event that prolonged checks feed back into the queue of arriving vessels. We would be failing in our duty to the public if we did not take such possibilities very seriously and prepare for all eventualities.
On the opportunities proposed at Sheerness, earlier this year Peel Ports issued its pamphlet, “Brexit unlocked—A Contingency Option Using Uncongested Ports”. That report highlighted the ability of ports that are geared up to welcome and handle unaccompanied trailers to provide a service to customers whose cargo is not perishable or otherwise necessarily quick to the market. That can have further benefits, allowing a little more time to clear border controls in either direction and within commercially agreeable bounds to use temporary storage on ports rather than increase stockholding in the customer’s onsite warehouse or distribution centre.
Of course, unaccompanied cargo is nothing new. Indeed, the pamphlet itself points out that more than 70% of unit-load traffic from ports in France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands already travels unaccompanied, whether in trailers or sea containers. Equally, of course, Dover and the tunnel will remain open for business whatever the outcome on borders, and along with the ferry operators will themselves continue to attract a powerful commercial pull through geography as well as customer service, especially on the more time-critical traffic, although not limited to that. It is not my job to pick winners or direct traffic. Decentralised decision making by traders who are best placed to weigh their own needs and time pressures will continue to do that. However, it is my and my Department’s job to consider all reasonably possible outcomes and pursue the overarching objective for traffic to be as frictionless as possible. That is what we have been doing and will continue to do. I am glad that port, ferry and rail operators are also engaging with those challenges.
My hon. Friend raised the issue of traffic management. My Department, Highways England and other partners are working closely with the Kent Resilience Forum and other partners to develop contingency plans that will replace Operation Stack. First, we have established the Dover TAP—traffic assessment protocol—which has successfully avoided the need to deploy Stack since 2015. That will continue and Operation Stack will be superseded by Operation Brock, which will ensure that the M20 can be kept open and that traffic will continue to flow in both directions at times of cross-channel disruption from whatever cause.
Operation Brock consists of three phases: a contraflow queuing system between junctions 8 and 9 of the M20, with holding areas at Manston airport and, if necessary, on the M26. This represents a significant improvement on previous deployments of Operation Stack when junctions were closed and traffic diverted off the M20 on to local roads, adversely affecting local communities and businesses in Kent. We will therefore have substantial truck-holding capacity while maintaining flow of traffic on the M20. Obviously, we hope that none of that will be needed, but I hope my hon. Friend will be reassured that the Department and the agency are working hard to cover all eventualities and improve the quality of our collective response.
Gordon Henderson
Although we have been talking about the implications of Brexit, I said at the beginning that we have to solve the problem whether or not we have a no-deal scenario. It is bad for Kent and for the country. Whether or not we have Operation Stack, we need more lorry parks. Every constituency in Kent suffers from all its lay-bys being cluttered with lorries. Lorries are parked on the M2 every night. We have to do something about that. I have been working with Kent County Council and Highways England, and I have offered sites in my constituency for lorry parks, but nothing ever happens. I hope that the Minister can encourage something to happen on that.
Ms Ghani
My hon. Friend again raises the important issue of lorry parks. We know we need more, but no Member would like them in their constituency. I value his contribution, and I will ensure that his passion for ensuring that we have lorry parks is passed on to the Roads Minister.
I know that the A249 is important to my hon. Friend. Road connections are vital to any ro-ro port, and indeed to most others. Our port connectivity study, published just last April, surveyed the situation in England nationally. It acknowledged that there is a good case for strengthening sections of the strategic road network and specific potential to upgrade sections of the A249 near Sheerness. The study is a platform for future investment in worthwhile improvements at a range of ports including Sheerness, but of course the port is open for business with its existing connectivity. I would welcome another meeting with my hon. Friend to try to take that forward, especially with the Roads Minister.
Gordon Henderson
I am sorry to intervene yet again. The A249 and the link I mentioned into the port are important. I mentioned it to the Secretary of State a year ago, and he instructed Highways England to go down and have a look at it. The response from Highways England was that it is not necessary because it is not busy enough. Highways England does not seem to understand that we will make it busier only if we get the road link in. That is where it is sadly not always singing from the same hymn sheet as the Department for Transport.
Ms Ghani
I hope Highways England will acknowledge my hon. Friend’s intervention. Our port connectivity study made it clear that that part of the A249 requires investment to ensure that our ports continue to do what they do best, which is not only bringing freight in but moving it up and down the country.
I thank my hon. Friend for raising an important topic. He has rightly highlighted the potential of an important port business in his constituency, as well as of other significant businesses up and down the country. I am sure that he and I agree that it is part of a wider picture of readiness to seize commercial opportunities across the UK ports sector. I look forward to working with him in flying the flag for UK ports. I have no doubt that you will agree, Mr Bone, that the UK was a great maritime trading power for many years before we joined the European Union, and we will continue to be a great maritime nation after Brexit.
Question put and agreed to.
Beauty and the Built Environment
(6 years ago)
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Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered beauty and the built environment.
It is a great pleasure to speak on this subject. I am prepared to be corrected if anyone knows better, but I imagine that this is the first House of Commons debate specifically on beauty for a very long time indeed. Yet the journey through life should be the pursuit of the sublime. It should be a search for absolute truth. In it we should experience and rejoice in all the exposure to beauty that characterises each and all of our journeys.
Beauty, whether in the laughter of a child, the scent of a rose, a glorious landscape or the setting sun, makes life richer and more fulfilled. In doing so, it does not merely satisfy our aesthetic needs; it takes us closer to the understanding of truth. As Keats wrote:
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all”.
What Keats meant was that absolute truth is exposed to us—explained to us, one might say—through the experience of beauty. It is very hard for human beings, who are frail, faulted and fallen, to understand that truth except through the means that I have described: those touches or experiences of something pure, special and magical.
Sadly, we live in an age that is dull and utilitarian and in which mystery and magic are extraordinarily unfashionable. It is odd that that should be, for it was not true for most of our history, and has not been so for most great civilisations. It is unusual to be as utilitarian as we are, but now it is time for a change—for a renaissance. It is time for beauty to be put back at the heart of Government policy. I am delighted that the Minister shares that view, as I know from our conversations. It is a delight to have a Housing Minister who cares about the quality of housing, and all that says about its look and feel and our sense of place, rather than simply the quantity of houses that we build. I shall say more about that in my long and fascinating speech.
The scale of the housing problem means that some may dismiss concerns about style, regarding them as indulgent or even irrelevant. “Aren’t there more important things to worry about?”, we hear people say. Indeed, the focus of housing policy has long been on targets for quantity rather than quality. We risk having a competition across the political spectrum to build the most houses the most quickly by stacking them high and selling them cheap, regardless of their quality or what they look like. That is not good enough. It short-changes our countrymen and the generations to come. Everyone should have the opportunity to live in a place of which they can feel proud and through that to develop a sense of place that informs their sense of worth, which in turn feeds social solidarity through fraternity.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend in the flow of such an elegant speech, but does he share my view that we gave ordinary people the ability to concentrate on the essence of good design as one of the key things in putting together neighbourhood plans? I am disappointed that very few have taken that up. Will he help me to try to instil it in the minds of those who are conducting neighbourhood plans?
Mr Hayes
That is a good and important point that relates to something I shall say later about taking a bottom-up approach to delivering better-quality housing, rather than imposing top-down targets. My hon. Friend is right that we need to inspire a new generation to believe that this can be done, because there are some who say that it does not matter or even that it cannot be done—that it is no longer possible to build wonderful, lovely things, and that we are no longer capable of imagining what generations before us created. I just do not believe that. I think we can and should do better, and my hon. Friend rightly describes one of the mechanisms that might achieve that.
To dismiss concerns about the quality of what we build is both wrong and, ultimately, destructive. We cannot hope to change the public perception of new development unless we fundamentally change its very nature. Beauty should be at the heart of the public discourse. It should be part of our conversation about housing and development. As the great philosopher Roger Scruton puts it,
“we are losing beauty, and there is a danger that with it we will lose the meaning of life.”
If I am right that the journey through life requires us to experience beauty to build the personal fulfilment and communal contentment necessary to make a society that works, ignoring beauty does not merely short-change future generations; ultimately, it will destroy our chance to make a nation of which we can all feel proud. There is a close relationship between the sense of place and the social solidarity necessary to build a harmonious society. I could say a lot about harmony, but that is a subject for another time or another debate and His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales has spoken about it far more eloquently than I ever could, so perhaps I should defer to him.
The first misconception that I would like to quash, which sometimes prevents the debate about quality from taking place at all, is that the kind of approach that I am trying to articulate, which concentrates on beauty, is both marginal and gets in the way of getting things done. According to that view, constantly demanding more of development—I am talking about commercial as well as domestic buildings, because this is not wholly about housing—somehow acts as a barrier, an impediment, to delivering the bigger objective of building to provide a basis for growth and prosperity. I just do not believe that. Actually, I think the opposite is true.
When Her Majesty the Queen came to the throne, her reign was marked by talk of a new Elizabethan age. After the destruction caused by the war, people looked to new development with optimism. They believed that we could create a society that both looked better and was better to be part of. How curious and how sad that during Her Majesty’s reign, attitudes to development have diametrically altered. Whereas people once anticipated development with joy, they now very often look on it with despair. Frankly, that is the result of successive Governments and local authorities of all political persuasions; I cast no slur on any single party in this House.
Mr Cunningham
As usual, the right hon. Gentleman takes a difficult topic and makes it understandable—to say the least—in a very jocular way. I am sure he will remember as I do when Governments used to announce at general elections that they would build about 300,000 houses a year. That has gone by the board now.
Planning is one issue when we talk about housing, and particularly social housing, in this day and age, but, more importantly, many years ago we used to have the Parker Morris standards for social housing. That is all gone now. Even in the private sector, we very often see houses that are nothing better than boxes. They look okay on the outside, but inside they are very small indeed. I do not think people are getting value for money. There is the design, but there is also the importance of bringing local people’s views into the discussion as well, and Members will probably have heard me talk of the King’s Hill area in Coventry, which is a beauty spot with lots of history where they now want to build houses. Before I sit down, I would just add that when we had a problem in Coventry with council houses, we let residents take part in the process of the design of alterations. That went very well. We have to get back to times like that—
Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Mr Cunningham, that is a speech, not an intervention. I call Mr Hayes.
Mr Hayes
I am delighted to say that I agree with every word that the hon. Gentleman said. I think of where I was brought up in south-east London. It was a council estate built, as so many were, in that period during the war and just after. Houses were not only well built—they were attractive. Care was taken about the design of the house. There were a variety of house styles across the estate. There were houses of different sizes to accommodate different kinds of people; there were smaller properties, suitable for elderly people, and large homes suitable for families. The variety of houses, the look and feel of the development, the street layout, the presence of a widely used parade of shops, the church, the school, the community hall, and so on, were the component parts of a functioning community, of which everyone felt part. I am not sure that can be said of many developments now.
The hon. Gentleman is right that privately owned, but also rented properties, are often soulless, ubiquitous and indistinguishable from one another, looking the same from Penzance to Perth, with no sense of the vernacular, no sense of local personality and thereby, incapable of inspiring the local and particular sense of place necessary to build communal feeling. That is where we have got to. It is extraordinary that we have, given the opportunity that existed in the post-war years after the bombing of many of our cities. The redevelopment could have been not only regenerative, but inspiring. I have to say that we, as a nation, failed. Now, this Minister in his time in this job has the opportunity to put that right.
In my roles in the various offices of state, I have tried to influence the quality of development and what we build. As Energy Minister, I acted to ensure that wind turbines were constructed in appropriate locations after proper consultation with local communities, which is critical. Consideration about the impact on landscape became a vital part of the approval process. Some then simply dismissed the argument I made as irrelevant, on the basis of the easily grasped but utterly crass notion that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The notion that beauty is relative has been used to justify much of the ugliness imposed on our towns and cities by architects, planners and developers since the war. Such developments have succeeded only in undermining public confidence in new housing. What is often not appreciated is how the public’s perception of development has changed.
I think what I have already described would be agreed by Members across the House of Commons, and certainly beyond it, but the sad fact is that planners by and large still have not learned their lesson. Even today, for example, some still laud the idea of streets in the sky. Plans are apparently afoot to extend the misconceived network of elevated walkways constructed in the City of London after the war. Streets in the sky were never a substitute for real streets—for architecture on a human scale, in proportion and in harmony with its environment. As anyone who has ever attempted to walk to the Barbican Centre knows, urban walkways are alienating, confusing and a poor substitute for design that puts people first. The Barbican is far from the worst example. There were any number of large developments, mainly of social housing, with walkways and gantries that not only became havens for criminals but often isolated rather than united blocks of flats.
Andrew Lewer (Northampton South) (Con)
This is not a whimsical issue for my right hon. Friend, but a long-standing issue of concern, as it is for me. My postgraduate thesis was on the Gothic revival in domestic architecture in the mid-18th century. That brings me to my question. How do we reconcile space for innovation, as the Gothic revival was in some respects, with respect for the vernacular in our very different counties and neighbourhoods?
Mr Hayes
As a direct result of that intervention, let me make my first demand of the Minister. I have more demands to make at the end, so I will get this one out of the way now—I see the Minister glancing at his civil servants nervously.
It is critical that every local authority has a design guide that is not only particular to its locale, but that has site-specific design appraisals for those most important regenerative opportunities. It is not enough for a local authority to rely on some county-wide or area-wide design guide or very broad general motherhood-and-apple-pie design principles. There have to be specific requirements for developers, which allow places to continue to change in a way that is in keeping with what has been done before. That is about materials, scale and sometimes eclecticism; there are particular places that look a particular way. We do not want every high street and every housing development, every town and every city to be indistinguishable one from another, but that will happen only if we are very demanding of what we expect of developers.
As you know, Ms Dorries, I have been Minister or shadow Minister for virtually everything, and I was once shadow Housing Minister. I met many big developers, big names that we could reel off if we wanted to, and they all said to me, “John, if you are clear about the requirements, we will build our business plans to meet them. We understand that you want to build lovelier places, and we know that that is what people want anyway. We are quite happy to build things that people will like and want to buy, or places they will want to rent. Be very clear about your requirements and we will work to them.” It is not about taking on developers; it is about working with them, but being demanding of them.
Mr Jim Cunningham
One of the things I learned in local government when I was leader in Coventry was that if someone is clear about what they want to do, they do not get any major problems—that happens when they are vague and unclear. I was reading an article in one of today’s papers, which showed a link between crime among young people and the design of buildings, particularly social housing, and certainly in areas in London, for example. Has the right hon. Gentleman read that report? It is worth looking at.
Mr Hayes
The hon. Gentleman knows of my extremely strong views on social justice and the redistribution of advantage in society. If we are going to redistribute advantage, as I think we should, it is not good enough to suggest that people who are less well-off, people who need to rent a home or young people who are looking to make their first home could make do with something inadequate, while those who are advantaged and privileged can buy the kind of lifestyle that was available to my working-class parents. The lifestyle I enjoy in my constituency in Lincolnshire is a bit like the lifestyle I enjoyed when I was a little boy on that council estate. We still use local shops, we have a garden to play in, we have a nice home and we have what might be called a traditional way of life because I am in a position to be able to provide that for my children—going to the village school and all the rest of it—but if I went back to places such as the place where I was brought up, by and large that life would not be available to most people who are rather like my mum and dad were that short time ago. I emphasise that it was a short time ago, Ms Dorries, but you knew that anyway. I want beauty for all, not for some or for the privileged or rich alone.
John Howell
My right hon. Friend is being incredibly generous with his time. One point that I would bring out strongly is something that he has mentioned in passing but has not concentrated on: the need to include the environment in housebuilding, to be able to enjoy the space that comes with that, and to be able to provide opportunity for the family.
Mr Hayes
It will be alarming to some, but a delight to others, to know that I am only on page 3 of my very long speech, and I want to make a bit of progress. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that part of the sense of place, to which I referred earlier, is about green space. I will come in a moment to some of the research done by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales’s organisations on what people want, because a lot of the interventions have mentioned the role of consultation, engagement and involvement in shaping policy around what people actually want. There has been a lot of work done on this by a variety of organisations, to which I want to refer.
Let us be clear about what we aim to achieve. We aim to build homes of which people can be proud. Le Corbusier, who is responsible for many bad things, said:
“A home is a machine for living”.
A home is not a machine for living. Homes are a reflection of our humanity. William Morris said:
“Have nothing in your home that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
That was because Morris understood that beauty and wellbeing are inextricably linked, and that a politics that is serious about welfare and wellbeing must be serious about beauty. It is not possible to believe in the common good as passionately as all those here in the Chamber do but not care about aesthetics—the two are inseparable.
That beauty is somehow detached from matters of fairness and social justice is the second misconception that must be challenged. For the ancient Greeks, aesthetic and moral judgements were inseparable. In the 19th century, many artists considered beauty to be the vital link between freedom and truth. I sense that today there is once again a growing understanding of how aesthetics are a vital part of our judgment of value and worth. That is partly intuitive; people instinctively understand the connection between the value of beauty and a wider conception of worth.
This can be seen in protests at the ugly buildings that developers still attempt to foist on communities against their will. It can be seen in the despair at identikit supermarkets that lack any sense of craft or character, built with no consideration of the past and no regard for the future. Indeed, at the heart of modern architecture, like all modern art, is the Nietzschean idea that the past is irrelevant and we can create our own value system. Much modern architecture, like modern music, fails precisely because it rejects those principles of harmony that time has taught us to delight in, and that excite our senses not because they are discordant, but because they are harmonious.
Where modern design does succeed, that is largely by accident or because, where form has at least followed function, a building has a high degree of utility. That is important, because we often hear architects, planners and engineers speak about ergonomics, but they frequently confuse ergonomics with aesthetics. It is not sufficient for a building to be ergonomically sound, irrespective of its aesthetic.
Just occasionally, a combination occurs that unites those two things—the extension to King’s Cross is a very good example. Looking at the extension to King’s Cross and the engineering of the roof, it is clear that what is a functional requirement has been turned into a work of art, as aesthetics and ergonomics have come together. That is such an exception that it is frequently mentioned, because people are searching for an example of something joyful. Every time I go to King’s Cross station, which I do frequently on my journey to and from Lincolnshire, I look in wonder at that development. I know that we should be doing that time and again in towns and cities across the county—if not in scale, certainly in essence.
These lessons are not new, and I offer nothing that is not the wisdom of the people. The buildings that are most often treasured and valued by the public at large—our constituents—are usually older buildings that are shaped by vernacular style, where architects have taken care to be in harmony with the surroundings and where craftsmen have laboured over detail. A study by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment found that, when asked to name the most beautiful buildings in Sheffield, most respondents cited the two cathedrals.
Even the very same architects, planners and technocrats who foist ugliness on the rest of us often choose to live in beautiful, old houses in communities that still have a sense of place and a link to their surroundings. In fact, it is quite alarming that most modernists choose to live in Georgian or Victorian houses. That is the problem: escaping to gated lives, they leave well alone those who are forced to live in the kind of houses that the hon. Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) mentioned, and that is just not acceptable. Beautiful housing has become increasingly unaffordable to the kind of people he mentioned, precisely because it has become so scarce. We have seemingly become incapable of building anything of comparable quality or of planning new developments with a similar sense of place and community, which are values that matter directly to our quality of life, our sense of wellbeing and our health and happiness.
It cannot be fair that beauty is increasingly the preserve of the few, which brings me to the third misconception that cannot be left unchallenged: that beauty belongs to the past. It is often considered, sometimes unthinkingly, that it is no longer possible to build beautiful buildings. We have somehow, rather depressingly, come to believe that the supply of beauty is both finite and exhausted, perhaps because people assume that it must be dated, kitsch or whimsical to build according to the principles of classical architecture, or to extend such a vision across a development so that it is harmonious, with a sense of community and place.
Such snide comments are sometimes made about the Prince of Wales’s vision for Poundbury, although the popularity of that place reminds me of what one wit said about the original Broadway production of “The Sound of Music”: “no one liked it, apart from the public”. The truth is that, when surveyed, the public repeatedly identify those kinds of place as places where they would like to live and that they aspire to own one day.
Beauty does not have to come at too high a price and it does not have to be sacrificed for the sake of utility. Those assumptions are false. When the city fathers of Birmingham, Nottingham and Manchester built great town halls in classical or gothic style, they did so because they understood that these styles had endured. A fine example is Nottingham, a city I know very well, having lived there for 20 years, studied there and been a county councillor in Nottinghamshire. The Council House in the centre of Nottingham, which is a great neo-classical building, was built in 1929. Right up until then, we understood, but the problem has grown in scale and depth since the war. Those planners, engineers and architects built something that they wanted to last, and they succeeded. The modernist library in Birmingham’s Chamberlain Square was recently demolished, just 40 years after it was built, but no one would seriously consider doing the same to the classical town hall or the other great public buildings of the Victorian era.
Despite their appearance, those buildings are, in other respects, modern: they were built using modern construction techniques. In historical terms, compared with the cathedrals I mentioned, they were built yesterday. Many were built in the late 19th or early 20th century. There are no good reasons that we cannot continue to build beautiful buildings, as the Prince of Wales has demonstrated to such wonderful effect.
While I am dealing with the Prince of Wales, I want to return to the issue of what the public want. The Prince’s organisations consulted widely on the principal things that people want and do not want. I will highlight four. They do not want their town or village to lose a strong sense of identity; they do not want green space to be unduly threatened by urban sprawl; they do not want too many tall or large buildings, out of scale with what is there already, to be built; and they do not want change to be too rapid or overwhelming. In other words, people want building development on a human scale that is incremental and in tune with the existing built environment. Is that really too much to ask of our generation? I think not, and I hope the Minister agrees.
The irony is that many modern and postmodern buildings are more expensive than buildings built and designed according to classical principles. Even in cases where improving design and build quality comes at a price, in the longer term that will save money, and not just on maintenance. A British Land study estimates that better design could save the UK economy an estimated £15.3 billion by 2050, making us all happier and healthier.
Good design has the power to strengthen communities and improve physical and mental health through abundant green space and walkable streets. It has the power to improve safety and security through the abolition of semi-private spaces, walkways and underpasses, which trap people and encourage criminality. All those considerations should be fundamental to planning policy.
It would be a genuine tragedy if concerns about the supply of housing led us to revisit the failed post-war experiment in high-rise living. That is not the answer. Tower blocks are actually built at lower densities than terraced housing. We must consign such misconceptions to the past, and in their place develop a planning system that has true regard for people and communities. For almost 60 years, our planning system has encouraged or allowed out-of-scale buildings. We need fundamental change.
I will say one other thing about His Royal Highness, who put this issue in such clear terms and speaks, I think, for the people when he said that he did not want the place
“which I love greatly disappear under a welter of ugliness”.
How many communities and individuals have felt that? How many have felt that their voice is not heard by architects, planners, engineers and—I have to say it—politicians of all persuasions?
We need fundamental change. In the future, buildings should be in harmony with the landscape, vernacular in style and built from local materials, and they should offer local distinctiveness, which is the foundation of people’s sense of place. Pride in communities is unlikely to flourish if people have no say in how housing is built or how their neighbourhood develops.
As the hon. Member for Coventry South and my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) said, that obliges us to engage and involve local people in the character, shape and scale of developments close to them. Although the revised national planning policy framework now encourages local authorities to produce design codes and styles, we must go much further.
Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Order. Just to make the right hon. Gentleman aware, there are three Front-Benchers to speak, and other Members have requested to speak.
Mr Hayes
That is most kind of you, Ms Dorries. I always regard your advice seriously, and I will move reasonably swiftly to my exciting peroration so others can contribute.
Policy Exchange found that most people do not want to live in glass-covered high-rises or sprawling concrete estates. They want homes that are built in traditional styles, such as Georgian and Victorian-style terraced housing, and tree-lined streets. Similarly, research by Create Streets found that, in overall planning, people value green spaces; walkability, both in terms of consecutiveness and street-level interest; and a minimisation of the internal semi-private space that is a function of tower blocks, walkways and so on.
The success of the “Save our parks” campaign run by The Mail on Sunday is indicative of how much we value green space, yet parks and open spaces across the country are being lost, eaten up by greedy developers and unprotected by careless councils. We should not just protect green spaces, but build new parks and squares. I was pleased by the Budget yesterday, but we need to do more. Why does the Minister not stand up and say that it is his plan, ambition and intention to create 100 new parks and green spaces in towns and cities across the country?
In practice, much greenfield development is degenerative. All development should be regenerative where possible. It should be not a bolt-on to communities, but an opportunity to enhance and develop them in a way about which we can all feel proud. Policy Exchange estimated that, in London alone, there are 6,122 hectares of brownfield land, the mixed use of which could accommodate between 250,000 and 300,000 new homes. Bad design must no longer be tolerated. I want beauty for all.
I am coming to my exciting peroration, Ms Dorries, so excitement can build from now on—just in case anyone wanted notice of the need to be excited. We plant trees for those born later—for our children and grandchildren—and we should build for future generations, too. The built environment we leave behind is our children’s inheritance. We must not leave them a poisoned legacy of lost beauty and present ugliness. Such a legacy has already led to the burgeoning interest in local history. Bookshops are filled with illustrated history books, invariably with the word “lost” in their title. Towns and cities, pictured as they once were and no longer are, fascinate our constituents, because once we knew how to build and develop. They show a lost world of proud local shopkeepers, well-kept shopping arcades, community and Victorian civic pride. How much more can we afford to lose before we end this destruction? When will we start adding to our stock of beauty once more? Beauty once lost must now be regained. The Government can play their part. We must demand and do more. We must deliver beauty in our time.
Several hon. Members rose—
Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
Order. The Front Benchers are going to have 10 minutes each. Two other Members wish to speak, so to be fair and equitable they have just over 10 minutes each.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) on securing it and, as ever, for speaking so eloquently and poetically. I would never be able to emulate his use of the English language and his flow, but others might be able to—I suspect that the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) will do so.
The focus of this debate is the national planning policy framework, which provides a framework for producing local plans for housing and other developments. Those plans, in turn, are the background against which applications for planning permission are decided. I appreciate that the NPPF applies only in England, but it is important to have well-designed and visually attractive developments across the whole of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
I am sure most, if not all, hon. Members will have heard me talk about my beautiful constituency of Strangford, which I have the honour and privilege of representing, and working and living in. I genuinely believe it is the best place to be in all of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Other hon. Members will say, “I expect the hon. Member for Strangford to say that,” but I honestly believe it. I urge those who have not been there to make that journey. When they see the beauty that we have, they will undoubtedly have the same opinion as me. We have large towns, small towns and lots of small villages, but for the most part we are a rural constituency with rolling green hills, a glistening lough, beautiful walks, canoe trails, and much more, all under the protective gaze of Scrabo Tower as it looks down from the edge of Newtownards down to Strangford Lough and across the constituency of Strangford.
Those of us who represent rural constituencies know how important it is to balance the need for development with the need to maintain natural beauty, ensuring that buildings are in keeping with the local area. In 1943, having seen a burnt and crumbling House of Commons, Winston Churchill remarked:
“We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”—[Official Report, 28 October 1943; Vol. 393, c. 403.]
That is spot on. As a boy, one of my childhood heroes was Winston Churchill, as was Blair Mayne and a former Member of this House, Dr Ian Paisley. To receive planning permission to build in the countryside in Northern Ireland, one of the requirements is to
“promote high standards in the design, siting and landscaping of development”.
It is no longer enough for buildings to be structurally sound and to simply do the job. It has to be more than that. They must also be aesthetically pleasing to the eye, whether they are in the countryside or an urban area.
While we battle to maintain our green spaces, we also recognise the demands for more housing and the infra- structure to support it and keep villages and towns connected. In Northern Ireland, the regional development strategy—RDS 2035—sets out eight aims, two of which are:
“Promote development which improves the health and well-being of Communities”—
and—
“Protect and enhance the environment for its own sake”.
According to neuroscientists, buildings and cities can affect our mood and well-being—I believe they do—and specialised cells in the hippocampal region of our brains are attuned to the geometry and arrangement of the spaces we inhabit. For example, evidence shows that people’s happiness levels can be more easily achieved by living in an aesthetically beautiful city or a beautiful location in the countryside. I declare an interest as chair of the all-party group on healthy homes and buildings. Last week we launched a white paper in which we outline the need for modern homes to be energy-efficient, to have the correct air quality, and to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye inside and out. Last week the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill on those issues and how we can make housing more accessible to people right across the United Kingdom.
John Howell
The hon. Gentleman talks about the need to provide infrastructure along with housing, but environmental infrastructure is the big thing that is mostly missing in the development of new housing estates.
Jim Shannon
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. He is right. That is why we make sure that the environmental impact is a big part of development approval in Northern Ireland. He is clearly right and that should be at the centre of any development on the mainland as well.
Studies have shown that growing up in a city doubles the chances of someone developing schizophrenia and increases the risk for other mental disorders such as depression and chronic anxiety. Despite a higher concentration of people, much of that stems from a lack of social cohesion or meaningful neighbourly interaction. It could be one of the reasons that access to green spaces, where people can gather and escape, is so important for people living in cities. The correct environment around someone helps emotional and mental well-being.
Although we face potentially different issues in rural areas, the need to ensure that developments are in keeping with the area and, if possible, enhance it rather than detract from it is vital. The greatest problem in rural areas is the increasing need and demand for developments, and, as a result, improved infrastructure in terms of roads and transport. Of course, rural development always poses difficulty, especially in areas that have either seen an influx of new buildings or in more remote areas that are almost untouched by architecture or by any development at all. In both cases—I can speak with some authority on this because it is something that many constituents have come to speak to me about—the fear is that something is being lost, and that natural beauty and natural habitats are being replaced by concrete and stone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that rarely sits easily with residents.
We are also, arguably, more aware than we ever have been before of the impact that we are having on the world: our carbon footprint and the increase in pollution and waste. That is an issue for us every day in this House and outside. Those are fairly new considerations that architects now must deliver as well as ensuring that buildings are safe and structurally sound, along with providing an element of beauty for the local area. The Government have set some money aside within the health budget to address mental health issues. I read the other day that among students and young pupils in school there has been a 50% increase in mental and emotional issues. In Northern Ireland we have 10,000 children who have such issues. It is good that the Government have set that money aside. We need to have departmental co-operation and interaction to ensure that what we deliver in terms of houses also helps to reduce the mental and emotional issues.
In rural areas we must ensure that the requirement to bring something to the local area and to enhance it—at the same time as complementing the local environment—is always met. In urban areas more needs to be done to ensure that, where possible, residents have access to green open spaces and that architecture can respond to the demand for something different and interesting, particularly as simple and monotonous architecture has already been shown to have a more negative impact on citizens. When something as simple as our surroundings can have such an impact on our daily lives and therefore on our mental health, it is important that measures to improve the aesthetics of new and existing buildings should be considered.
Again, I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings on securing this debate and I look forward to other contributions.
Mr Edward Vaizey (Wantage) (Con)
I am grateful for the chance to appear under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) for securing this important debate. He started by asking whether we could remember a time when beauty had ever been debated in this mother of Parliaments. I confess I cannot recall a particular date, but what is lodged in my mind is 6 June 2005. The Tory party was still on its knees after yet another election defeat, but that great man, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Sir Oliver Letwin), made a speech about beauty.
That has always stuck in my mind, because it was the first and probably the last time that a politician talked about beauty. My right hon. Friend was the environment spokesman, and he made many of the points that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings has made so eloquently in today’s debate, with almost mirror-image quotes about how people despise litter and love their landscapes, and how people are up in arms if someone threatens to build over much-loved parts of our country. So why do politicians not talk about beauty when most people live their lives yearning for beauty in some shape or other?
Of course, the language of bureaucrats and bureaucracy takes over, but when we talk about planning we are really talking about beauty. Planning is a system that is designed in some shape or form to try to regulate beauty. It is ironic that many of the buildings and much of the architecture that my right hon. Friend praised were built when planning laws were much more relaxed. When we walk through the medieval streets of the City of London we walk through an entirely unplanned city, which would have been planned after the great fire of London had not the merchants revolted against Christopher Wren’s masterplan, but we cherish such beauty.
Modern planning is a system to try to regulate beauty. As a new Back Bencher and then later as Minister for Culture, I lobbied hard for the terminology of beauty to be put into our national planning framework. When my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps) was Housing Minister, he came up to me in the Lobby after the 2010 election and thanked me for being a pain over our years in opposition when I was lobbying him to put design principles in the national planning policy framework, and he thanked me for helping him to understand its importance.
Nevertheless, we have not covered ourselves in glory since. I, for one, hold my hand up as having been at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport when we downgraded and merged the role of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment—I think it was subsumed into the Design Council. I should be interested to hear from the Minister what engagement he has with what is left of it.
I do not say that CABE was a perfect model, but to have just one organisation out there holding planners and, more importantly, developers to account for design principles was important. In fact, someone from CABE, when it was still alive, kindly took me around a development in my constituency and pointed out where the developers had put in money and effort, and where that had petered out, resulting in the creation of buildings that were not, of course, unliveable, but were certainly not designed in a way to create harmonious surroundings. It was not really a question of money; it was a question of laziness.
What my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said about how easily things could change is true. I remember bringing the architect Terry Farrell to my constituency. I am not going to defend his buildings, but as an urban planner he is quite impressive. He sat down with residents of Wallingford, a medieval town in my constituency, pointed to the thousand-year history of settlement around it—towns and villages that developed around what had been marshland—and talked about how it might be developed sympathetically and harmoniously. The residents were supportive. I do not say that if his master plan had come to fruition and the houses had been build they would not still have manned the barricades, but just to be engaged and have someone acknowledge the history of their beautiful town was enough.
I should like to hear from the Minister not only about the incorporation of design in planning principles, but about a slightly more mundane although still important issue—the quality of new buildings. Linden Homes, probably the worst developer in my constituency—the bar is pretty high—is building houses in Cholsey that are literally falling down. I have had to go and visit constituents. Miller Homes in Drayton and Kier in Shrivenham have also had some problems with their buildings. The quality of building is shockingly bad. The great irony is that the building trade has not yet been disrupted by technology. Despite the terrible connotations, we should be building prefabricated homes. The Germans have done so for years. We could build quality homes in factories and erect them at lower cost, and with higher design quality, than the terrible homes being built by Linden Homes at the moment.
My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings mentioned the work that Policy Exchange is doing, which I applaud. A remarkable meeting is happening at lunchtime on Thursday, when a Syrian architect called Marwa al-Sabouni will be interviewed by Sir Roger Scruton. In the middle of the bombardment of Homs, that lady emailed him to ask him a question about his book on aesthetics. His talk is about the role of architecture in the Syrian civil war, which sounds completely out there, until one hears her quotation about the “lack of beauty” in Homs and
“the promise of a good life that architecture can inspire”.
She said:
“The old city of Homs used to be known as ‘the mother of the poor’. You didn’t need money to live there. It was a place of trees, and jasmine and fruit.”
That phrase could almost have been written by my right hon. Friend. She continued:
“But then the new city, with its corruption and its modern blocks, developed over it, bringing with it a lack of hope, despair.”
She is someone who, in the midst of an incredible conflict, with her family at risk and her friends being killed, was able to take time out to appreciate the importance of beauty.
Everything I shall say after that will seem mundane, but I certainly want design and beauty to be incorporated into planning principles. Policy Exchange has called for places of special residential character. The idea was put to me by the Duke of Richmond, about Chichester, for example. Could a heritage listing be given to some of our great cities and towns, to preserve them?
Will the Minister update us on whether what I read in the newspaper last week is true—that the wonderful, protected views of St Paul’s in London are now under threat from developers? That really would be a case of knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing. Those wonderful views keep London as the green, liveable city it remains, despite its being one of the world’s most globally successful cities. Everywhere we look in public policy, design and beauty are vital. How pleasing it was, even given the delays with Crossrail, that design and beauty were thought about in the design of stations. How pleasing it is that design is being made central to the character of High Speed 2; I hope it will get built. To echo, again, what my right hon. Friend said so eloquently, within the design of HS2 people in Birmingham want to build a station that is a homage to the great stations of the 19th century—a place of arrival, great welcome and beauty.
I want finally to give a small nod to my old beat of the arts, and mention the White Paper that I managed to publish before I got fired. It put place making at the heart of cultural policy—the opportunity to work with the arts to help to create and support places of great beauty.
Douglas Chapman (Dunfermline and West Fife) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and I thank the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) for bringing this important debate to the Chamber. I reacted to some of the points he made with great empathy and understanding, and I appreciate his approach.
When I first looked at the Order Paper, and thought about the legislation and the planning frameworks that underpin these matters, it seemed on the face of it that this would be a very English debate, because the frameworks in Scotland are different. However, the speeches have been very full in their coverage, and we have had an exciting view of what the future might bring if we can get the frameworks right.
My constituency contains one of the largest housing developments in western Europe—the Dunfermline eastern expansion—and perhaps that fact allows me to contribute to the debate on design and beauty, which are applicable in all constituencies and communities, irrespective of the planning guidelines that are used. The eastern expansion has brought what seems like never-ending growth to our mid-sized Scottish town, which has grown by easily a third in the past 10 to 15 years. The homes can be regarded as fairly similar in their design, reminding me of the song about houses that are
“all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same”.
However, while there are some good examples of design and layout within that massive development, quite a lot of opportunities have probably been missed. If all the houses were triple glazed, with higher standards of insulation, and had solar panels or different kinds of renewable power built in as standard, that would give an environmental boost to the way we look at homes. The fact that people now need to retrofit some of that new technology is a backward step. Perhaps we should pay more attention to the guidelines on how to make homes more environmentally friendly in future. Some of the things I have mentioned are not visually appealing, but when we put less pollution into the environment that is surely a benefit for all citizens. It improves the environment we live in, especially when such things as air quality are so far up the environmental agenda.
Scotland starts with quite an advantage, in terms of general layout. Urban Scotland is more green than grey, and green space covers more than half of urban land in Scotland; I think 54% of urban land there is deemed green space. That translates into the equivalent of a tennis court-sized piece of publicly-accessible green space for every person, which is quite a high bar to have set and to maintain. This is not just a matter of the new homes such as those in the eastern expansion. We can surely get big wins, if we have imagination, by bringing empty houses and derelict land back into positive use, especially if that breathes life into town centres.
A great example in my constituency is the rebuild of an old linen mill that lay empty and unloved for the best part of 10 years. It is now being restored and rebuilt to create 200 new flats, but without losing all the outward appearance of the old mill building. That new life will bring vitality to our town centre, not to mention new homes for people to rent or buy.
The Scottish Government fund the Scottish Empty Homes Partnership, in conjunction with Shelter Scotland, to help councils to work with owners of empty homes to bring them back into use. Some 700 homes have been brought back into the market this year alone, and Scottish local authorities can remove council tax discounts on empty homes. They can even increase council tax on those homes, so that there is an incentive for homeowners to refurbish, re-let or sell their properties, and perhaps allow an uncared-for home, or an eyesore in a town or village, to come back into use. That initiative is supported by the £4 million Scottish empty homes loan fund, which supports 17 housing projects and is targeting 500 homes across the country.
The old linen mill I mentioned is a short walk from the new Dunfermline galleries and library—a development that was crowned “Scotland’s best building” in 2017. It has already won numerous design awards and is likely to be shortlisted for many more. The architects have managed to integrate the older Carnegie library, which was built last century, with a new glass and stone structure that has an open aspect across to the 10th-century Dunfermline Abbey and views across the Firth of Forth. Taking in that view, we can see Dunfermline High School, which opened a few years ago. I am particularly proud of that development, because in a previous life I was one of those councillors who Members mentioned in thinking about how we can encourage councillors and people who make local decisions to be more open to the visual aspects of our buildings.
I was chair of the council’s local education committee when Dunfermline High School was built, and I remember the endless meetings, care and attention that went into the design and functionality of that new school. In the end, we got a school that is light, airy and fit for purpose. Many Members have highlighted the psychological effects of good planning and design, and how that can affect our mental state and general outlook. Educational attainment figures for Dunfermline High School have risen on the back of that new building, and such examples highlight why good investment in public design and smart, aesthetically pleasing architecture raise both spirits and performance, and give us all a feel-good factor.
This has been a bit of a constituency tour—I am sure other Members have examples of great buildings in their constituencies—and I have saved the best to last. The Queensferry Crossing opened last year, on time and under budget; I am sure the Minister would be interested in having budgets like that all the time. It is a superb structure of immense architectural beauty, and it is framed against the backdrop of the Forth road bridge, and the iconic UNESCO-recognised Forth rail bridge. Those bridges were built in different centuries—if Members are interested, they can look on my Twitter feed, @DougChapmanSNP, because I managed to take a picture of all three bridges during my flight on Monday morning. If people want to see those views, they should do so. That might raise their spirits for the rest of the afternoon.
This has been an extremely valuable debate, especially in Budget week. Usually, anyone in charge of spreadsheets knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, but this debate has shown that many Members do know the value of our built environment, albeit it sometimes comes at a price. If we can better train our councillors and planning authorities to value design and beauty, and if we give them the planning frameworks and legislative tools, such as the Scottish Government’s Creating Places policy, we can start to put those factors at the heart of the communities we are trying to build or rebuild. If we can do that, today’s debate will have been very worth while, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Ms Dorries, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) not only on having the most beautiful name for his constituency, but on securing this important debate on beauty. I will return to his comments in a moment, but first I wish to thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his remarks. I think he introduced a very important aspect of this debate, which is the link between beauty, a healthy environment and people’s health, including their mental health. He also reminded everyone how wonderful and beautiful Strangford is. After everyone has been to visit Durham, I encourage them to go and visit Strangford—I hope he is happy with that.
The right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings made an amazing speech. I will not be able to match his eloquence in any way, but I hope I can offer him a service by endorsing his comments, which were long overdue. I hope that this debate starts a different discussion in this place about what planning can and should deliver.
The right hon. Gentleman raised an incredibly important topic that I learned about early on as a young academic in Belfast. One of the first projects on which I was included in the research team evaluated the impact of Divis flats on the health of the local community. Some Members might not know this, but the Divis flats were completed in 1966, as were a lot of deck-access blocks in this country. There were 12 eight-storey deck-access blocks, with one 20-storey block at the edge. I carried out my research in the 1980s, but people had maintained for many years that those blocks of flats adversely impacted on their health and wellbeing.
During the study we discovered huge amounts of asbestos; that ultimately led to the blocks being demolished, which is what the local community wanted. People were propelled into campaigning, however, by the fact that they simply felt that they were not living in a good environment. They had to walk a long way along deck-access corridors that frequently had no lights, and they could not easily access transport. All the space was common space—there was very little external space. I do not know whether what replaced the Divis flats would pass the test set by the right hon. Gentleman, but it is interesting to note that those flats were replaced by streets of houses with lots of garden space and public areas of green space. The streets are near the city centre, and there is access to employment. People got better access to bus routes, and the community went from having a great many problems to being self-sustaining. I learned early on that the scale and quality of a development is very important to our sense of wellbeing.
This is not a new topic; it is a lesson we have learned before and we appear to have to learn it again. Raymond Unwin, whom I think we all accept as the father of town planning, said in 1909 that we needed to make a real case for the importance of attaching beauty and art to town planning policy. Somewhere along the way, we lost that attachment, and that needs to be addressed. ResPublica found that English people believe beauty to be a right rather than a luxury, and 81% of those polled believed that everyone should be able regularly to experience beauty, whether in the natural environment or through other methods, including those that planning can deliver for local areas.
Through the debate, the right hon. Gentleman has encouraged us all to focus on what the fundamentals of planning should be and how planners working with local communities—I will say more about that in a moment—can deliver a vision for what an area needs. Tools are also needed so that that vision can be realised in a way that local people are happy with, which means that planning has to move from using the very technocratic methods that it employs at the moment to doing something more visionary and inclusive.
As we are in the middle of a housing crisis and know that we need to deliver many more homes every year, much of our discussion in this place concentrates on the need to improve housing delivery. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman can usher in a new discussion about place making, because although it is important that we have the homes that we need, those homes sit in communities. All too often we do not pay attention to the other things that communities need to thrive: proper infrastructure, access to public services and access to employment.
We do not talk enough about good-quality design, or about how to not only save green spaces, but make them. The Minister could consider incentivising taking brownfield land in cities back to being green space, because there is often no land that has not been built on to be made into such a space. I also hope that he will consider how to give the national planning policy framework more teeth. It is okay to exhort people to have better design and have discussions in this place about it, but unless we get some regulation in the system and create the level playing field for developers that the right hon. Gentleman talked about, we are never going to raise the quality of new building. In particular, local people need to be involved at an early stage, so they can talk about the type of development that they want and make the historical and modern references that they would be willing and able to make if they were supported through the planning system.
The Minister also needs to look at permitted developments. Yesterday, I was horrified to hear the Chancellor say that there might be more. Permitted development is leading to some of the poorest housing we have had in this country for a long time—barely a third of it meets basic standards. We need proper planning in place to deliver the quality homes that we need, but permitted development does not provide that, and having more of it on our high streets could be a problem. Of course, we want change of use and a flexible planning system—it has to reflect changing needs—but permitted development ushers in poor quality, and I hope that the Minister will reject it and look instead at developing a new planning system that is much more community focused. That system could have regional or national planning tiers and focus on what our neighbourhoods need and what people say they need to thrive as communities. I know that the Minister is quite new to his job, but I look forward to hearing his response.
The Minister for Housing (Kit Malthouse)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Ms Dorries. You and I were both brought up in a city punctuated by architectural superlatives, but also scarred by some of the worst examples of architectural vandalism over the last three or four decades, so this debate is of interest to us both. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) on his fantastic speech. It will sit in his canon, alongside his groundbreaking and remarkable speech, “The journey to beauty”, which I have read several times now. He gave it as Transport Minister and it caused quite a stir in the industry at the time. He is without doubt an aesthete and a patriot, and I salute his indefatigability in the face of the ugliness that he rightly calls out. I am tempted to say “I agree” and sit down. He knows however that the issue of beauty in the built environment is close to my heart, so I shall continue.
One of the advantages of having a poet on your speechwriting team in the Department is that they quite often recall to us some of the poetry of our youth. In preparing for this speech, we considered Larkin’s “An Arundel Tomb”—a wonderful poem—which reminds us, with his image of the earl and countess captured in stone, that the things we build today could last for centuries, and that we have a duty to future generations to ornament their lives as ours have been ornamented by the generations that preceded us.
When the Prime Minister asked me to take this job, she was clear about my task: she wanted more, better, and faster homes. Those are the three indivisible words by which I live. We are talking in particular today about the “better” bit; building more beautifully, because in the words of the architect Frank Lloyd-Wright:
“If you foolishly ignore beauty, you will soon find yourself without it.”
Back in 2010, just 134,000 net additional homes were added to the country’s housing stock, but today, the Government are in delivery mode. The number of additional homes is up 55% to 217,000 per annum, and we are well on our way to reaching our target of 300,000 per year. We have always been clear that building more does not mean that we cannot build better. As my right hon. Friend said, we have to quash the myth that quality and quantity cannot go together. In fact, the more we build, the more important it is that we get it right. While I accept his challenge that beauty is not a relative term, when it comes to our built environment it is often in the eye of the beholder, so no matter what we do, some people will be unhappy.
We all know what beauty should feel like. Beautiful places not only make us happy but keep us well, and move us from fear and anxiety to hope and happiness. They welcome us, inspire us and elevate the mundanity of human existence. Great housing developments do not have to be billion-pound projects—the overall winner of last year’s Housing Design Award was a mixed-tenure regeneration scheme in Camden—and critically, beautiful places to live and work should not be the preserve of the wealthy, as my right hon. Friend also pointed out. No matter where one stands on design, our first obligation is to ensure that communities get what they need in a form that they appreciate.
The Government are leading on that by putting beauty at the heart of our housing and communities policy. In both the housing White Paper and the social housing Green Paper, we are focused on creating great places and on design quality. Homes England, our new and more assertive national housing agency—I launched its strategic plan this morning with an exhortation to beauty in all that it does—is promoting design quality through its programmes. In July, our revised national planning policy framework put another stake in the ground. It states that
“permission should be refused for poor design”
especially when it
“fails to take opportunities to improve the character and quality of an area.”
In decades to come, we want to look back on this golden age of housebuilding not through the windscreen of a bulldozer, but with a view to treasure, preserve and invest in what lies before us.
We must learn the lessons of the 1960s and 1970s. My right hon. Friend referred to the Birmingham central library, which has now been demolished. The same is true of Robin Hood Gardens, as well as Pimlico school—a brutalist concrete school in a ward where I served as a councillor—which I played a part in having demolished. They are temporary buildings.
Mr John Hayes
While the Minister still has 10 minutes left, let me ask him if he will agree to three things: first, to draw up a blacklist of blight, which would allow us to demolish many more buildings of that kind; secondly, to put in place obligatory local design guides so that local authorities have to build in a style that is suitable and appropriate; and, thirdly, to back the Mail on Sunday campaign to protect urban green spaces. The hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) spoke about level playing fields, but any playing field will do. Playing fields are places where people dance, play, meet friends and enjoy the open space. We need to protect them. Will my hon. Friend do those three things?
Kit Malthouse
My right hon. Friend raises some interesting issues. As he knows, I am in the process of producing the guidance to the NPPF, and I shall certainly take his advice as I do so. He might be interested to know that when I was at City Hall, I suggested a competition for Londoners to vote each year for a building that should be demolished, and that we should provide grant support to assist in the demolition of that building, if required. However, let us see where we get to with the guidance.
My right hon. Friend mentioned local materials and the vernacular, and we want to draw from the history of any area the use of materials that mature and age gracefully. Critically, we want to build the conservation areas of the future. That is a challenge I have put to the housing development community in a number of forums over the past three or four months that I have been in this job. That does not mean that all new homes and public buildings need to be a replica of the local style, but they do need to fit in, in the broadest sense of the term.
We are therefore supporting high-quality, high-density housing such as mansion blocks, mews houses and terraced streets, typical of the English urban townscape and rural context with which we are all familiar. In particular, I am keen to see the re-emergence of that great British gift to the world of architecture, the garden square. It is possible for modern, efficient and technology-driven design to echo our history and to reflect the local area without becoming pastiche. That is something we have sought to achieve with our garden communities programme.
More than a century ago, Sir Ebenezer Howard first outlined his idea of a garden city. He had a vision of places where people could work, raise families, travel easily and enjoy green spaces. We are renewing that idea for the 21st century, and we have set out clear expectations for high-quality place making across our country. That is a chance to aspire beyond identikit housing, which my right hon. Friend identified, and town centres that look like everywhere and nowhere. We are championing ambitious councils, which see garden communities as a central part of their plans for housing and growth. Our programme supports 23 places to deliver more than 200,000 new homes by the middle of the century. I hope that we might be able to rise to his challenge to produce 100 new parks, if each of those places has four.
We are not only building homes; we recognise that we are building neighbourhoods. Developments of 500 units or more are bigger than most villages, so we have to think in terms of neighbourhoods that function, as my right hon. Friend pointed out. To achieve that, however, we know that local planning authorities need design capacity, so we have directed almost £5 million to 26 local authorities through our planning delivery fund, to support them in developing innovative ways to increase design skills throughout the country.
We are also running workshops for councillors, to help them to understand and to support their role in ensuring beauty in the built environment. The workshops will offer them the opportunity to discuss the challenges that they face and, importantly, to share their own experience of promoting design quality. We are bringing in people from across the sector—from local authorities to developers, housing associations and architects—to share their ideas about beauty and great design.
Mr John Hayes
Will the Minister—we are lucky to have him, by the way, and the shadow Minister—agree to meet me and the Prince of Wales’s organisations to discuss how to learn from the work he has done and is now doing?
Kit Malthouse
I am more than happy to meet. In the past, I have worked closely with the Prince’s Foundation for Building Community—I knew Hank Dittmar quite well before he sadly passed away—and I would be delighted to become reacquainted with the prince’s work, not least because earlier this year we held a design quality conference, the first of its kind, which was attended by 380 people from across the sector, and we want to do more of that kind of work, because the responsibility to build more beautifully rests with all of us.
Where the Government are leading, I encourage the private sector to follow. When I bring that message of “more, better, faster” to the sector, I always stress how design matters at every level, from planning to community acceptability: build beautifully and get permission, build beautifully and sell more houses, and build beautifully and communities will actually welcome developers, rather than drive them out of town at the tip of a pitchfork.
Mr Vaizey
First, I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) said: we have had far too many Housing Ministers, and I call upon the Prime Minister to keep this wonderful man in office until the 2022 election and many years beyond. Secondly, I caution against this debate tipping over into an attack on modern architecture. Robin Hood Gardens may not be lamented, but Park Hill in Sheffield—a similar design—has been restored and is much loved. As the Minister who listed Preston bus station to much anger, I am delighted that it is now treasured by the local community.
Kit Malthouse
I acknowledge what my right hon. Friend says, but as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings said, that is often an accident of ergonomics, form and beauty coming together, just as it did for the roof at the British Museum—an extraordinary structure in which, exactly right, ergonomics and form come together.
Some of the best examples of beautiful buildings are delivered by small and medium-sized enterprises, from self-build to the refurbishment of historic buildings. Sadly, the 2007-08 economic crash killed a number of such growing developers, and we are yet to see a new talent pool emerge. I believe, however, that SMEs are part of the key to the challenge. That is why we are directing our home building fund towards SMEs—to give them the confidence to grow and build, and to raise the bar on design quality. By having more players in the market, we shall get them to compete on innovation and quality.
Ultimately, it comes down to delivering houses that people want to live in, buildings where people want to work and places that people want to call home. More than that, we must build things that elevate and entertain. That is what the Government are hoping to and will deliver in the future. I look forward to working with many hon. Members on that most important of missions. I close by—
Kit Malthouse
Sorry, yes. I asked my team to update me on the London views. Apparently, there is a campaign by London First and other developers to relax the protections, but so far they remain in the draft London plan. We shall see where that plan lands.
I shall finish my speech by returning to that Larkin poem. Members may remember—I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings does—that the most affecting part of that poem is in the second stanza, when Larkin reveals that the couple he has been looking at are actually holding hands. They have been holding hands for the centuries for which they have been lying there. At the end of the poem he ends with that famous line:
“What will survive of us is love.”
In 200 or 300 years’ time, what will future generations see as a symbol of our love for them, projected forward in time? All that will survive of us is those things that we build today. We are joined in our ambition to ornament their lives and to create the beauty that will enhance their existence for centuries to come, as ours has been enhanced by the generations who came before us.
Ms Nadine Dorries (in the Chair)
I am not sure, Mr Hayes, if there is any point to me asking if you would like to have the last two and a half minutes.
Mr John Hayes
Simply to repeat, Ms Dorries, that we are lucky to have a Minister—and, by the way, a shadow Minister—of such calibre. He is right: we are talking about what we do for generations to come—those born later, as I described them.
Speaking of Larkin, urban planners have done to too many of our fellow Britons what Larkin said all our parents do to us. Now it is time for Government to raise their sights to a more distant horizon. Beauty is not a bolt-on, an extra or something that we may opt for; it is intrinsic to developing a sense of place, which is essential to a sense of value and worth, as the Minister clearly understands. That is not only about future generations, but about the common good now.
As the Government move forward on their plans for housing, they need to have a debate about quality and not to be limited to a debate about quantity. It is absolutely right for those two things not to be paradoxical. It is entirely possible to build homes that people want to live in.
I hope that the Minister will make the ambition of 100 new parks come to life; that he will prohibit development on the green spaces where, as I said, people play, make friends, dance and dine; and that he will be insistent that all that he has said today informs not only his thinking but Government policy into the future. It is right for buildings to elevate, as he said, but more than that the buildings and the politics should enthral. That is not merely an aspiration, but the duty of all of us, which is why I am delighted to have introduced this debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered beauty and the built environment.
Five Year Forward View for Mental Health
(6 years ago)
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Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the five-year forward view for mental health.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. The key purpose of the debate is to represent the recent report of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health, of which I am vice-chair. We published “Progress of the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health: On the road to parity”, which is a report on the progress of the five year forward view at the halfway stage.
I pay tribute to the cross-party group of MPs and peers who took part in the inquiry, particularly the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who is the chair of the APPG; she is with us in this debate and I think she will make some remarks. I also pay tribute to Rethink Mental Illness and to the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which provided us with excellent secretariat support and supported us throughout the inquiry. I thank the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, who attended the parliamentary launch of the report and engaged in a very helpful question and answer session.
The report is a summary of more than 70 pieces of written evidence, two oral evidence sessions, a focus group of service users and carers, and a visit to a mental health trust. It is a serious and informative piece of work that could help to make a difference in informing the NHS’s long-term plan. There are three main sets of recommendations in the report, including some important ones on joining up work with other services, particularly social care and housing, but this is quite a short debate so I will focus only on two questions.
I am interested to hear from the Minister about the Government’s plans to support people with severe mental illness. The report shows that adults severely affected by mental illnesses such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder are left behind. We saw no consistent and coherent approach on how to support people diagnosed with personality disorders. The inquiry heard that there are no targets for how long adults should have to wait to access eating disorder services. Those illnesses have a severe impact on people’s day-to-day lives and can be lifelong conditions. It is not acceptable that people who are the most ill often wait the longest to get care.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. Although I appreciate, as he will, how big a task this is, I welcome the Government’s commitment to mental health funding in the Budget. But I am concerned that we are getting nowhere in reaching parity of esteem. The number of children and young people experiencing mental health problems has risen sharply, and they often go to A&E for help. Does he share my view that funding is needed to ensure that children and young people suffering with poor mental health have safe places in the community to turn to for help and support, without having to rely on A&Es, which are already under duress?
Jeff Smith
I very much agree with the hon. Gentleman. Although I will never say that increased spending on mental health is not good, the announcement in yesterday’s Budget of extra funding for mental health teams in A&Es points to a problem because we should not have to increase spending on A&Es. We should try to cut the number of people who have to go to A&Es at an earlier stage, and we must invest at an earlier stage.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
I am very grateful for the APPG’s work. One of the biggest concerns is about mental health support in further education colleges, which seems to have gone completely off the radar. Both colleges in York have told me that there is increasing crisis in further education, particularly on self-harm by young people—now that there are more exam-based assessments, that is escalating at a pace. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must focus on prevention in FE colleges, to ensure we have the right health professionals based in those colleges?
Jeff Smith
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Child, adolescent and early adult mental health is a big and growing problem.
The five year forward view recognised creating treatment pathways for people with bipolar disorder, adult eating disorders and personality disorders, but halfway through the plan, the inquiry found that those are still to be published. It is vital that NHS England implement in full all pathways recommended in the five year forward view.
Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Although there has been a commendable focus on increasing talking therapy through the IAPT—improving access to psychological therapies—programme, that tends to be cognitive behavioural therapy. The evidence base for helping people with personality disorder, particularly emotionally unstable personality disorder, is dialectical behaviour therapy. There is a real paucity of other talking therapies such as DBT available throughout the country, but particularly further north than where we are sitting, in London.
Jeff Smith
The hon. Gentleman has great experience and knowledge of those issues and makes an important point. He has anticipated some of the comments I will make and I strongly agree with him.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
We, as MPs, are among the first to come across the sort of patients the hon. Gentleman is talking about. Does he agree that training ought to be provided for MPs, so that we know how to deal with those people when they appear at our surgeries?
Jeff Smith
That is an excellent point; some training packages are available for MPs’ staff. I encourage all colleagues to take advantage of that.
The vast majority of people severely affected by mental illness will receive support within a community mental health team, which is the type of core service that provides help to around 700,000 people in England, often with quite complex needs. Although some specialist services have benefited from additional funding and targets, core services for adults severely affected by mental illness have stood still. Core community services did not receive any funding under the five year forward view, and we found that only £50 million was allocated to other core services nationally.
Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)
In Hartlepool, there is no drop-in centre for people in crisis. Crisis teams are stretched to the limit, and often people wait for two hours or more to access them. Given the current funding review, does my hon. Friend agree that we must urgently resolve such situations?
Jeff Smith
Again, that is an excellent point and I strongly agree. The report makes it clear that core services are underfunded and under pressure. There has been great success in getting people better access to psychological therapy, but while IAPT is an excellent service it is not designed for people with severe mental illness. Core services are too overstretched to provide timely talking therapies to people with more complex needs, so those who are most ill often have to wait the longest to get help. Simon Stevens, the head of the NHS, said at the Global Mental Health summit that he believed that we must restrike the balance between new talking therapy services for patients with less severe conditions and the core services for those with long-term and severe mental health needs.
We heard many examples of people with severe mental illness struggling to get therapy. One service user came to us; they had a history of psychosis and were told by their GP that if they wanted to access psychological therapy quickly, they should lie to the IAPT team about having psychosis to avoid being rejected for treatment, because it was too difficult to get the treatment they needed for their condition.
In the worst case scenario, people can be hit with the double whammy of being told they are too ill for IAPT but not ill enough for a core mental health team. People are then left struggling. Another service user, Dani, who has a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, spoke at our parliamentary launch and contributed to the report. She said that she felt it was strange to be called a service user because her experience was mostly of being told that she was not suitable for services, rather than actually using them.
The inquiry saw the consequences of what happens when people do not get timely support in the community. First, there is a rise in inappropriate out-of-area placements. At the end of June this year, there were 645 inappropriate out-of-area bed placements. Secondly, there is a rise in mental health crises. The report notes that attendances at A&E for a mental health problem have risen 94% since 2010. In our inquiry, we heard from service users who expressed their frustration at turning up at A&E and waiting hours to be seen, before being sent home after a brief chat with a professional. Extra services in A&E, as we were promised yesterday, are positive but a much better solution would be intervening so people do not have to go to A&E. A model already exists where mental health calls to 111 or 999 are redirected to a specialised 24/7 support service staffed by experienced psychological wellbeing coaches, social workers and mental health nurses, who can provide assessments and real-time support. That is successful and it could be rolled out as a national standard approach, which is something the report recommends.
Mental health crises should not be considered an inevitability for people severely affected by mental illness. It is entirely possible to stop people having to go to A&E in a crisis if community services intervene early enough to support them. Support across the country is patchy, unfortunately, as core services struggle to meet the increased demand on budgets. We should not be creating a system that steps in only when people reach breaking point. That is why the report recommends that NHS England should increase resources for core mental health services, such as community mental health teams. Will the Minister set out how the Department of Health and Social Care will help people with severe mental illnesses who are being left without support?
Secondly, I would like to focus on the issue of workforce. Will the Minister set out how we will ensure that we have the staff to meet the needs of everyone with a mental illness? Throughout the inquiry, we heard regularly that the issue of workforce is the biggest barrier to achieving the five year forward view. When workforce and funding for them do not meet demand, the thresholds for accessing treatment rise. That is a problem not just in core services, but in child and adolescent mental health services and across the board.
Dr Poulter
The hon. Gentleman is again making an important point. It is all very well talking about the aspiration of putting more money into mental health and expanding services, but improvement cannot be delivered without the workforce on the ground to provide care. There are serious recruitment and retention challenges across the mental health workforce. If we are talking about the crisis with young people, there is a real problem attracting people into the CAMHS workforce, particularly to become CAMHS consultants and CAMHS psychiatrists. That is an issue that the report picks up in great detail, but I hope he will join me in urging the Government to address this as a matter of urgency.
Jeff Smith
The hon. Gentleman makes another excellent point. Health Education England’s plan commits to 19,000 more people working in mental health by 2021, but between March 2017 and March 2018 the number of mental health staff in the NHS increased by just 915 people. That does not look like progress is on target. One in 10 consultant psychiatrist posts is empty and between April 2010 and 2018 there was a 12% fall in the number of mental health nurses. What are the Government’s plans to tackle the problem of the mental health workforce?
The report makes some recommendations and suggests that Health Education England and the Government look at all measures to increase the mental health workforce. There is a huge interest in mental health among young adults. Until we undertook the report, I did not realise that psychology was the third most popular undergraduate course for students starting university in 2016. We should make it easier for those capable, ambitious and keen graduates to work in NHS mental health services.
The hon. Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) made the point earlier that recruiting more psychologists for specific therapies, such as dialectical behaviour therapy or cognitive analytic therapy, would mean that people had a wider choice about the type of therapy they received, instead of, as often happens, just being prescribed cognitive behavioural therapy—if they are able to get a prescription at all—because it is the only therapy available.
Danielle Rowley (Midlothian) (Lab)
As well as having more specialists in the NHS, does my hon. Friend agree that to tackle mental health we need good training in schools, workplaces and all the different parts of society? The point was made earlier that we, as Members of Parliament, need to have training, as well as being able to encourage a more positive attitude to mental health.
Jeff Smith
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. I am probably not going to take any more interventions because I want to give the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on mental health time to make remarks and to hear from the Minister. I will rattle through the rest of my comments.
The report suggests that the peer workforce, where people with their own personal experience of mental illness support those who are currently in mental health services, should be expanded. Service users told us that it was invaluable not only in terms of positive role models, but to prevent an “us and them” barrier between patient and professional. It is effective and leads to a reduction in readmissions.
Finally, funding—the elephant in the room, as always. The five year forward view came with a headline commitment of over £1 billion invested each year in mental health by 2021. This has undoubtedly improved lives. However, the APPG heard that it is difficult to be certain that funds are reaching the frontline and that historical underfunding means that mental health is still the poor relation in the NHS. I note that a report from the Institute for Public Policy Research suggests that spending on mental health will have to double from £12 billion to £23.9 billion in the next decade to make parity of esteem a reality.
The mental health investment standard means that every clinical commissioning group has to increase mental health spend in line with its overall increase in health spending. However, last year, 24 CCGs reduced the amount they spent on mental health. Eight CCGs were classed as meeting the mental health investment standard despite the fact that they cut the amount they spent on mental health. We would welcome clarification on what the Government are doing to ensure that each CCG meets that target.
The five year forward view was never intended to solve every problem in our mental health system, but where it has been focused it has made a difference. For example, there has been success in perinatal mental health and improving access to IAPT. This report focuses on where the gaps are. We need to prioritise investment in core services and to ensure that we have a robust NHS workforce. I hope that the Minister, with NHS England, will respond positively to the report and hopefully this will reform NHS long-term planning.
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
I sincerely thank the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) for giving me a chance to speak in the debate, as that was entirely at his discretion. It has been a real pleasure working with him on the report. I also reiterate his thanks to Rethink Mental Illness and the Royal College of Psychiatrists, which have done a huge amount of the work that has been condensed into the report. A great deal of hard work went into it, and they did most of the legwork.
I have been on quite a journey with this report. We originally conceived it back in 2016 and it came to fruition this year, at a moment that feels timely because we are mid-way into the five year forward view. NHS England is working on its long-term plan for the NHS and I hope it will be drawing on the recommendations in the report. The Chancellor has just announced a welcome £2 billion of funding for mental health out of the £20 billion for the NHS.
During the inquiry we heard about some areas of mental health where real progress has been made. We heard some truly inspiring success stories of how the five year forward view and the changes in it are changing people’s lives. For instance, we heard about new perinatal services—four new mother and baby units—which mean that when a mother is severely ill, she will be able to receive in-patient treatment and have her baby there with her, rather than their being separated, as has too often been the case in the past.
We heard about the success of talking therapy services and how many people are getting timely access to them. We also heard about the success of early intervention in psychosis. In the past, a diagnosis of psychosis could be seen as a life sentence, but early intervention really does make a difference and we heard success stories of people recovering and going on to lead mentally healthy lives.
Although there are some real success stories, there is much more to do. The report makes 24 recommendations, but given the time I will mention just three of them. There will be a little bit of repetition of what the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington said, although I will try to avoid it as far as I can, but I think it is worth emphasising these three areas.
First, the report includes the recommendation that the Government develop evidence-based treatment pathways more widely. We heard from the eating disorders team at North West London NHS Foundation Trust that having firm waiting time targets and a clear pathway for treatment had immeasurably improved care, but although the five year forward view included a timeline for creating treatment pathways across all areas of mental health, there are many areas where they have not been implemented.
Secondly, the question of workforce came up time and again as the biggest barrier to achieving the ambitions of the five year forward view for mental health. There is a desperate need to train, recruit and retain more staff at every level. We simply cannot make meaningful improvements to services without the staff to deliver them; there must be new routes into the NHS workforce, making use of psychology graduates—as has been mentioned—and psychotherapists, and bringing in more people with lived experience of mental illness, who do valuable work. It is also important that all frontline staff get some mental health training.
We heard that mental health training now forms a greater part of the training for new nurses and doctors, for instance, but there is a huge established workforce who could benefit from at least some mental health training. We heard from one carer who had done a mental health first aid course and said she had more of knowledge of mental health than her sister, who was a nurse.
Thirdly, core services are truly the backbone of mental health care. We heard that they are consistently struggling to cope with demand, leaving more people unable to get help until they reach crisis point. The focus on some of the new, exciting services has perhaps meant that the focus has turned away from those vital core services.
To sum up, great progress has been made. We are on the road to parity between mental and physical health. I feel optimistic because of the Government’s attention to this agenda and the extra funding coming in for mental health, but there is indeed some way to go.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Nigel Adams)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington (Jeff Smith) on securing the debate and all hon. Members present on their contributions and interventions.
Improving care and reducing the stigma around mental health is a key priority for this Government. We welcome the report from the all-party parliamentary group, and I congratulate both the vice-chair and the chair on their work. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) probably underplays the amount of effort that she and her vice-chairs put into it. The report is a timely piece of work and a well-considered contribution to the dialogue on mental health services in this country. In many ways, it mirrors the thinking we have already seen from Mind, the Royal College of Psychiatrists and others.
The statistics on mental health demonstrate the size of the challenge we face. One in four adults experiences at least one diagnosable mental health problem in any given year, yet NHS support for mental ill health has historically been seen as a “Cinderella service”, of secondary importance to other NHS services. The stigma attached to mental ill health has, at times, led mental health service users to feel marginalised.
That is why, in 2016, the Prime Minister made a commitment to improving mental health services. As has been mentioned today, we set out to achieve greater parity of esteem between physical and mental health services. In February 2016, NHS England published “The Five Year Forward View for Mental Health”. This is a timely debate in that regard; I suspect we could have done with an hour and a half at least, and I am sure that when the Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), returns to her post there will be an opportunity to expand the debate.
The five year forward view was the result of wide-ranging stakeholder engagement, led by an independent mental health taskforce and chaired by Paul Farmer, chief executive of Mind. It laid the foundations for what we believe to be one of the largest transformation programmes for mental health services anywhere in Europe. The transformation may not be complete, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said, progress has been made, and continues to be made.
I will just touch on funding, which formed a key part of the remarks made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington. To support the commitments made in the five year forward view, we have pledged £1 billion for adult mental health services between 2016 and 2021. That came on top of the £1.4 billion pledged the previous year in recognition of the need radically to improve children and young people’s mental health services.
We have delivered against those funding commitments: last year saw more than ever before spent by the NHS on mental health, with almost £12 billion spent by clinical commissioning groups and on specialised services, such as those for eating disorders. Only yesterday, right hon. and hon. Members will have heard the Chancellor’s announcement of a further £2 billion to fund mental health by 2023-24, expanding crisis services and supporting more people with severe mental illness into employment.
Today, 74% of people referred for treatment following a first episode of psychosis receive treatment within two weeks under the early intervention in psychosis programme, compared with 64% only two and a half years ago. Just under 80% of routine eating disorder referrals are seen within four weeks, compared with 65.1 % only two years ago. In 2017-18, the national trajectory of 2,000 more women accessing specialist perinatal care was exceeded and we continue to focus on developing local, integrated pathways in this area.
Things are improving outside NHS settings too. We have heard about the work that should be taking place in colleges—importantly—and workplaces. Our investment in improved facilities for crisis mental health care and changes to legislation have helped to reduce, for example, the number of people detained in police cells following a mental health crisis by more than 95% compared with 2011-12. I am pleased that the report recognised some of those achievements over what has been called a “transformational” period in the history of mental health services in this country.
Referring to what my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent said about core services, we recognise that there is still much unmet need in mental health. That is particularly true for those suffering severe mental illness. Across the country, we are seeing innovative examples of community mental health services working well to provide timely support close to home, to help prevent in-patient admissions.
We also need to look beyond the NHS. Public attitudes towards mental health are improving. That is in part due to the Time to Change campaign, for which this Government provided £1 million of funding. We want to be recognised as a global leader when it comes to mental health, which is why, only three weeks ago, we hosted the global inter-ministerial conference.
I know time is running out, so let me turn quickly to some of the other remarks made by the hon. Member for Manchester, Withington on workforce. We have committed to 21,000 new posts, which will ideally be filled by 19,000 NHS staff. That has been written into local plans and some local areas are making progress, but it is too early to be able to count the number of people in post. The hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) mentioned further education, and as part of the Green Paper on children and young people we will incentivise every school and college to identify and train a senior designated lead for mental health issues.
To conclude, given the time available, we recognise that there is still much work to be done. I am proud of the work that this Government are doing to improve mental health, ensuring that many more people can access vital, high-quality mental health support. I hope we get an opportunity to debate the subject in future, but I also hope I have provided reassurance today that we are absolutely committed to delivering against the commitments set out in the five year forward view for mental health.
Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10 (6)).
Local Government Funding: Merseyside
(6 years ago)
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Maria Eagle (Garston and Halewood) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered local government funding in Merseyside.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I am happy to welcome several of my Merseyside colleagues to the debate.
The Prime Minister says austerity is over. The Chancellor says austerity is coming to an end. Aside from the clear difference between those two statements, neither is the experience of local government leaders and councillors on Merseyside, nor is it set to be their experience over the next few years. My constituency covers two local authority areas, Liverpool City Council and Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council. I see that my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth) intends to speak in the debate, so I will focus my remarks on the situation facing Liverpool City Council and he will deal with that facing Knowsley Metropolitan Borough Council. I confine my remarks in that regard to simply saying that the challenge facing Knowsley is equally difficult to Liverpool’s, although it is a smaller authority.
Liverpool City Council has already had to cut £340 million from its budget—some 58% of its total resource—since 2010. This year, it must find a further £41 million of cuts to make up the balance of the £90 million reduction it has been seeking over the city’s three-year budgeting period, which comes to an end next March. By 2020, it will have cut £420 million in total, which was 64% of its budget before austerity was unnecessarily and zealously imposed to such a high degree by the Lib Dem-Tory coalition Government in 2010. Those figures show that there is a lot more cutting to come over the next two years, regardless of what the Chancellor said to us yesterday. Austerity is set to continue for Liverpool City Council, no matter the measures in yesterday’s Budget.
According to the National Audit Office, local authorities in England have seen a 49% reduction in Government funding since 2010, so the cuts imposed on Liverpool have been far higher than average, despite its people having higher levels of deprivation and poverty than the average. Indeed, Liverpool City Council is ranked as the fourth most deprived local authority in the latest indices of multiple deprivation statistics. In fact, 10 of the city’s 30 wards contain a local area within the 1% most deprived nationally, with one—Speke-Garston—in my constituency. Liverpool is ranked as the third most deprived for health and disability and the fifth most for income and employment.
In any fair system, central Government would mandate below-average cuts on Liverpool; that would happen in any system that took any note of the needs of the people of different areas. However, the way the coalition and Tory Governments since 2010 have imposed austerity most emphatically does not take account of the relative needs of the people of different areas who have to deliver the cuts demanded of them. Liverpool has been doubly disadvantaged by facing a larger cut in addition to having more and greater needs to meet.
Take social care as an example. In 2010, Liverpool City Council spent £222 million supporting adults who need help in the community, either because of age, infirmity or disability. That has been reduced to £152 million, despite our ageing population and our population having higher levels of ill health than in many other areas—as set out in the indices of multiple deprivation—meaning more people need the help provided by adult social care services.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate and for the leadership she gives to Merseyside MPs on these issues. To put this in context, central Government cuts to St Helens Council’s budget are the equivalent of two years of its social care budgets. Similar to Liverpool, we have an ageing population and an expected increase in people suffering from conditions such as dementia. Does she agree that that is completely unsustainable, and that austerity certainly has not ended, for my constituents or hers?
Maria Eagle
I agree with my hon. Friend. It is impossible to see how anybody looking at these facts could assert that austerity is either over or is even coming to an end. We obviously do not know what the Government think between those two poles, but it is one or the other, depending on where they are. From where we are, it does not seem that either assertion comes near to explaining the truth.
In Liverpool, £70 million less is being spent on adult social care alone due to the cuts caused by austerity—this political choice that Governments since 2010 have made. Thresholds for eligibility for that help have therefore clearly had to increase, so fewer people get it despite more people needing it. The lack of that support, which should be there and would have been in the past, creates extra burdens on individuals and their families. That is the direct consequence of these cuts in Government funding.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
This is a timely debate. Coventry has experienced exactly the same sort of local government cuts as Liverpool, and through the loss of grants—that is what caused all this—well over 50% of its budget is really not there anymore. One big problem in Coventry—I am sure my hon. Friend will touch on it—is the funding of children taken into care. She just touched on social care. Lots of families now have to find money for social care that they can ill afford, driving them into the hands of money lenders.
Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend will know the figures for Coventry very well. He set some out, and they sound similar to some of the figures we have seen on Merseyside. Any application for Coventry to join Merseyside will of course be considered by the appropriate authorities, if my hon. Friend wants to take that back to Coventry.
Nationally, £7 billion has been cut from social care budgets, so the £650 million announced by the Chancellor yesterday—to much fanfare—will make little impact on the size of the problem created by the Governments he has been a member of since 2010. I saw today that that figure will cover not only adult social care but children’s, and it also apparently includes money for NHS winter pressures next year, so perhaps that figure is not quite all it was cracked up to be in the Budget statement. However, even if it were, it would not be enough to deal with many of the problems created by the cuts to Liverpool’s social care that have had to be made in the last eight years and are still ongoing.
What about reserves? Tory Ministers frequently answer questions about the scale of the cuts faced by suggesting that authorities should spend their reserves; we often hear that cry. Liverpool has spent £146 million of its reserves to support social care spending, even at the reduced levels it now provides. Its reserves are down to £17 million, so I hope that the Minister was not planning to tell me that Liverpool City Council should spend its reserves. It is clear that that is not a long-term solution. In fact, it is not a solution that will work for much longer at all. Indeed, the NAO says that one in 10 authorities nationally will have nothing left in three years’ time if they continue to use their reserves to pay for social care, as Liverpool has done. Even if those remaining reserves were spent only on social care and nothing else, local authority reserves would be completely used up by 2022.
What about new money? The Mayor of the city of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has adopted—quite entrepreneurially, I think—an invest to earn strategy, for which he has been criticised but which has yielded so far an extra £13 million a year in new revenue. His original idea was to use that money to support growth in the local economy. However, because of the extent of the cuts in Government funding and the damage they have done—the dire impact that they have had on some of the poorest and most vulnerable members of society in Liverpool—he has had to use the money to support services that would otherwise have been cut even further. For example, all our Sure Start centres have been kept open, even though some of the services they provide have gone. However, the tide of extra need being caused by ongoing cuts in Government support and social security benefits is likely to overwhelm the extra funding that the Mayor has brought in via invest to earn, and to do so soon. In that regard, the roll-out of universal credit will mean 55,000 people in the city being transferred on to it.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend recognise the experience in Wirral with the roll-out of universal credit? That has led to a need for 30 extra tonnes of food and created a 32% increase in the use of food banks because of the hardship that it has caused.
Maria Eagle
My hon. Friend, perhaps unsurprisingly, has anticipated my next point—we tend to be on the same wavelength. The Trussell Trust says that in areas where universal credit has been rolled out, it sees a disproportionate increase—my hon. Friend reports a big increase in Wirral—in food bank referrals, as opposed to a lower increase in other areas. The Chancellor is putting some money back in for universal credit, to ameliorate the cuts made by George Osborne in Department for Work and Pensions budgets, but that will not prevent millions of poor and vulnerable people from losing money. They will just lose a little less—and that is without the administrative chaos and design features of this benefit that cause poverty and destitution in Liverpool. Only the Liverpool citizens support scheme, the mayoral hardship fund and the discretionary housing payments, on which the Mayor spends more than central Government provide in moneys, stand between many families and destitution.
The Mayor of Liverpool, Joe Anderson, has repeatedly invited Ministers to Liverpool to inspect the books and tell him just what else he is supposed to try in order to deal with the funding crisis that austerity has created, but not one has taken up the challenge. Indeed, he even sent train tickets to Eric Pickles, when he was Secretary of State, to facilitate a visit, but he did not use them. Perhaps this Minister can take up the offer to inspect the books and see what else he can suggest that Liverpool City Council do; we would be most happy to welcome him. If not, perhaps he could indicate that the Mayor of Liverpool’s suggestion of a royal commission on the funding formula will be seriously considered. After all, with things going as they are, soon there will be no consideration of levels of deprivation or need in any of the ways that funding is allocated to local authorities, nor will any account be taken of the ability of the people of a local area to pay for all that is needed themselves; there will be no elements of redistribution. That is a recipe for entrenching disadvantage and ending social solidarity.
According to the Local Government Association, 168 councils will soon receive no revenue support grant at all and will rely only on business rates and council tax for their income. That disadvantages Liverpool again, because the council tax mix and base is so low. For example, Liverpool has more people than Bristol, but raises £38 million less in council tax, because almost 60% of Liverpool properties are in band A, compared with an average of 24% across the country, and 90% are in bands A to C, compared with 66% nationally. In addition, almost 36% of council tax payers are eligible for a discount because of their circumstances, whereas the national average is 16%. However, Government funding takes no account of these issues. That makes a big difference. If Liverpool was at the national average for these things, that would have meant an additional £97.7 million in council tax available to be collected every year. As it is, Liverpool can raise only £167 million in council tax. Similarly, less is raised in business rates in Liverpool than in many other places, because of the density and mix of local businesses.
Forcing the people of the city to rely, for meeting higher levels of local need, on weaker business rate and council tax yields is not a fair way to fund local services. I therefore finish by asking the Minister to have the courage that his predecessors lacked and visit Liverpool to inspect our books and make some suggestions as to what else, if anything, can be done. I also ask him to address the question of establishing a royal commission on local Government funding to ensure that the Government of which he is a member do not entrench existing deprivation and remove elements of redistribution that have in the past ensured social solidarity and improved life chances, and equality between different areas of the country. We need that now more than ever.
Several hon. Members rose—
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. The debate can last until 5.30 pm. I am obliged to call the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman no later than 5.13, and the guideline limit is five minutes for the Opposition, 10 minutes for the Minister and then time for the mover of the motion to sum up the debate at the end. That means that the Back-Bench contributions can run till 5.13. Five Members are seeking to catch my eye. Three of them have written to Mr Speaker, but I am a generous soul, so I want to get everybody in. If contributions are longer than five minutes, those at the end will get less. The first Member who has applied to Mr Speaker is Dame Louise Ellman.
Dame Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing this important debate and on the excellent way in which she opened it.
Local government is vital. It is responsible for essential services such as education, social care and road safety. It is a lifeline for people in need. It drives regeneration and civic pride. In Liverpool, the City Council, with Mayor Joe Anderson, has protected people from the brunt of ongoing and severe Government cuts. It has displayed innovation and civic leadership. By 2020, more than 64% of central Government funding will have been removed from Liverpool. That is a real-terms loss of £444 million. For the fourth poorest local authority in the country, that is a great injustice.
The Chancellor’s statement that austerity is ending rings hollow in Liverpool. Government cuts continue as the council struggles to care for people who need social care and children who just want a chance in life. Nurseries remain underfunded and schools still struggle. The impact of the Government’s cumulative cuts in benefits, often affecting working people, takes its toll. Universal credit threatens to make people poorer. We do not know what the Chancellor’s reassurances in the Budget will mean to people on the ground—not very much, I suspect. Rhetoric needs to be matched with positive action.
Despite increasingly vociferous warnings, fire and police services are denied the essential cash that they need to protect the community. Cuts in fire services are causing increasing public concern, and in Liverpool and Merseyside as a whole gun crime is now increasing. Over the city hangs the threat of Brexit—threats to the economy, to EU-funded initiatives and to the European collaborative research that is so important to our universities and to the city of Liverpool.
I call on the Government to change course and match their words with positive change. They must revisit their plans to put an even tighter squeeze on local services by changing local government funding after 2020 to eliminate central Government support for Liverpool. That is grossly unjust in a city where there is a low council tax base and a 1% rise in council tax raises only £1.4 million; a 1% increase in a place such as Surrey raises £6 million.
Liverpool has a responsible and innovative council protecting Liverpool people from a Government intent on cutting back. I call on Ministers to match their rhetoric with deeds, stop the cuts and give Liverpool a fair deal.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
Thank you for calling me to speak, Mr Hollobone. I would like to add to the congratulations to my sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), on securing this debate at such an important time. As she has pointed out, local authorities in general have seen a cut of nearly 50% to their budgets, but local authorities in Merseyside have suffered even greater cuts.
My local authority, Wirral, has suffered a 53% cut in real terms since 2010, which is above average. That means that it has lost well over half its 2010 budget, which is £635 less in resource every household in Wirral. Wirral’s local authority is expected to continue to cut £130 million more between now and 2021, despite the Chancellor and his jocular toilet jokes in the Budget yesterday.
How do these cuts affect my constituents? Behind all the cuts and the many service reductions we have been forced to experience in the past few years are people who are often very vulnerable, not being looked after or being left to fend for themselves when circumstances make it impossible for them to survive independently. The social safety net has been deliberately destroyed by this Government in pursuit of their ideological obsessions with a smaller state. Not only do they pursue those obsessions and hit the poorest hardest, but when we have debates such as this they smirk and laugh, and do not believe the tales that we bring to the House about the real results their cuts have had. The Minister looks to me to be doing the same again today.
We have seen an increase in food bank use, homelessness and destitution, as well as anxiety and insecurity, which has led to increases in mental health breakdowns. A lot of these cuts are actually false economies. In Wirral, the adult social care budget has been cut by over a quarter since 2010, but because of our low council tax base the capacity to raise tax locally is severely constrained. A council tax increase of nearly 6% this year raised only £8 million, half of which is ring-fenced for social care, but because Wirral has an above average number of older people, that increase does not even cover the extra demand being generated by our ageing local population. It is not acceptable for the national Government to wash their hands of the different levels of demand for social care in different areas and leave council tax payers to pick up the bill when council tax bases vary so dramatically—my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said of Liverpool’s case—between different areas, because of different property prices.
In my constituency, over 11,000 people are providing unpaid care to their loved ones, many for 50 hours a week with little and diminishing help. We have seen real-terms cuts in spending on youth services. When Labour was in government, spending on youth services doubled, but since 2010 it has gone down by 7% nationally. Spending on young people’s services, such as counselling and youth centres, has fallen by over half. Some 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed and many preventive, proactive services have been wiped out. In Wirral, that has led to a huge increase in the number of children taken into care, which is up from 650 two years ago to 810 this year.
These cuts are a false economy, because as less is spent on preventive work, more has to be spent on much more profound and costly interventions later. How is it moral to wait until a young life is ruined, rather than spend less to prevent it from happening in the first place?
In Wallasey, 20 out of 26 schools face budget cuts. With nearly £3 million cut between 2015 and 2020, per-pupil funding has fallen by 8%. Since 2010, 50% of the Merseyside fire authority’s grant been taken away. Instead of having 42 fire engines, we now have 22, with only 14 available for immediate response. The number of firefighters has reduced by nearly 40% from 927 to a mere 580. After years of decline, fire deaths have increased by 10%. The Merseyside police budget cuts have led to the loss of over 1,000 officers and crime is rising. As the recent Home Affairs Committee report demonstrated, the police are becoming less and less able to cope. As crime rises, we see the number of arrests and charges falling.
Once more, the emergency services are so stretched that they can barely cope with emergencies, and they certainly cannot do preventive work, so lives are put at risk as public sector workers face relentless pressure, being expected to do more for less. This is not my definition of fairness and it is not my definition of the end of austerity. It is an ongoing, rolling scandal, which is placed at the door of this Government.
Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing this debate and leading it so powerfully. Along with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman), she set out fully the impact of austerity on Liverpool City Council.
Last week in this Chamber, we had a debate led by my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) in which we shared the horrific stories from our constituents about the increased use of food banks, and the impacts of austerity and the changes to social security benefits. I strongly echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said about the efforts of Liverpool City Council, under the leadership of Mayor Joe Anderson, despite the scale of cuts in the support from central Government, still to deliver for the people, and in particular to deliver for some of the most vulnerable communities in our city. I second the idea of a royal commission to really address the issue of the fairness of local government funding. I also pay tribute to those who work in our public services who, despite austerity, do their utmost to deliver the very best services at local level.
I want to focus first on education, and secondly on crime and policing. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood rightly said, Liverpool City Council has done its utmost to protect its children’s centres, because we know how powerful the evidence is that investing in the early years of children’s lives makes the biggest difference. If we are serious about seeking a more equal and just society, investment in those early years is crucial. I ask the Minister to speak to his colleagues in the Department for Education about the importance of those early years.
Last week, I raised the issue of the important role that nursery schools play in our communities—I make no apology for raising it again. I have two brilliant nursery schools in my consistency, Ellergreen and East Prescot Road, both of which are rated outstanding by Ofsted. They are very concerned about their long-term funding, because of some of the considerations that the Department for Education is undertaking. We are all concerned that the adoption of a national funding formula poses a threat to our schools’ funding. Schools in my constituency and around the country will not be comforted by getting some money for the “little extras” as the Chancellor set out in his speech yesterday—that is frankly insulting. We need a serious, long-term settlement for schools funding.
I will finish by saying something about crime and policing, because that is an issue of massive concern to my constituents. I ask the Minister to share the issues that have been raised during the debate with his colleagues in the Home Office. Again, this speaks to the question of injustice in funding, which all three of my colleagues have spoken about. Funding cuts have hit all parts of the country, but they have hit some parts much harder than others, and it tends to be the areas with the greatest social and economic need, such as Merseyside, that have been hit the hardest. Merseyside police relies on central Government to provide 75% of its funding. In contrast, Surrey can raise most of its funding for its police locally. Therefore, an equivalent cut to both forces does not hit the two areas the same—it hits Merseyside much harder than it hits Surrey.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) has just pointed out, since 2010 in Merseyside we have lost 1,700 staff and police officers—1,700 gone—and had a cut in the number of police community support officers of around 35%. Last year, the chief constable of Merseyside, Andy Cooke, warned that Merseyside police was reaching breaking point, as budgets are stretched to the limit.
Crime is going up, but officer numbers are at their lowest in years. Office for National Statistics figures show a 14% rise in crime in Merseyside in the year to September 2018. Of particular concern in my constituency are the 18% rise in robbery and the 16% rise in violent crime. I say to the Minister, who speaks for communities and who can lobby his Home Office colleagues, that that has to change. Surely dealing with crime and protecting the public are the most basic responsibilities of any Government.
I ask the Minister please to listen to our chief constable and our police and crime commissioner, Jane Kennedy. We need a fair deal for policing in Merseyside, alongside a fair deal for local authorities, about which my hon. Friends have spoken so eloquently.
Mr George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on the typically thorough way in which she introduced this important subject. I will confine my remarks to the effects of the cuts in grant to Knowsley specifically, but before I do, I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and other hon. Friends have said about the impact of cuts on policing and on fire and rescue services.
As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood indicated, Knowsley Council is the council in the country hardest hit by funding cuts, which amount to £100 million less to spend on vital local services. To bring that down to a human scale, that equates to a cut of £485 in grant support for every person in the borough, compared with a national figure of £188. To bring that down to an even more human scale, Windsor and Maidenhead Council has had a £49 cut in grant per head and Wokingham Borough Council has had a £43 cut in grant per head. I began to wonder whether something in the grant formula was weighted towards local authorities that begin with the letter w, but if that had been the case, it would have applied to the Wirral too. As my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) eloquently described, however, it does not.
Knowsley Council has told me that its biggest challenges are funding children’s social care, which my hon. Friends have mentioned; the need for a permanent funding solution for adult care; and the impact of moving the cost of funding services provision on to council tax payers. Funding social care is not just a problem for Knowsley. In the north-west as a whole, the number of looked-after children has increased by 12% since 2003. In Knowsley, the additional pressures on the budget for children’s social care are expected to exceed £3 million as a result of a combination of increased costs for all placements, even higher increased costs for specialised placements and the scarcity of suitable residential placements.
The Government’s response, however, has been wholly inadequate and falls well short of providing the funding and certainty needed to keep up with growing demands. The Minister will say that there was an announcement in the Budget yesterday. We have not seen how that will be distributed, and we do not know what it will mean for any given local authority, but if the total sum mentioned is distributed evenly, it will hardly make a dent in the difficulties that areas such as Knowsley are experiencing.
Some additional funding for adult social care has been announced in the past few years, but it does not reflect the resources needed to offer adequate and sustainable services and, moreover, it was a one-off. In March 2017, £9 million of additional resources was announced from the better care fund to help to fund increasing demand and rising costs. So far, however, the Government have not confirmed whether that support will continue beyond 2019-20. Can the Minister commit to continuing that funding? If he cannot, the council’s budget will inevitably mean that services suffer still further. Moving the cost of service provision on to local council tax payers is, frankly, nothing short of disgraceful. The move away from a grant distribution formula that provided a weighted recognition of the needs of an area is entirely regressive in how poorer, more deprived areas such as Knowsley end up as the biggest losers. How can that be fair?
The Government argue that need should be replaced by a funding system that rewards councils based on the level of economic growth and prosperity. Knowsley has some important and successful local companies such as QVC in my constituency and Jaguar Land Rover in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood, but their success and that of other companies locally, though important and welcome, can have only a limited impact on the revenue generated for Knowsley Council and falls short of the area’s needs.
We have already seen the effect on services. Anything that is not a statutory requirement has inevitably had to bear the brunt of the cuts. As we have seen elsewhere, we are at the point at which local councils cannot meet even those statutory requirements. As need is increasingly sidelined, that trend will sadly continue. The grim conclusion has to be that unless the Government acknowledge the need for a fair funding system that properly reflects local need and deprivation, areas such as Knowsley face a bleak future in which the consequences of the Government’s austerity programme are visited on the communities least able to bear them.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) for securing the debate and for the manner in which she opened it. I am honoured to be among my hon. Friends representing constituencies on Merseyside, especially in the face of a Tory Government who have chosen to impose unfair and disproportionate cuts on our constituents. I use the word “chosen” carefully because, as we know, austerity is a choice, which makes the damage done to our constituents’ lives so much worse. It is not just what is in the pot but how the Government have chosen to cut it up that has hit the most deprived the hardest, because the Government have removed the weighting for deprivation from many of their funding formulas. As we saw in the Budget yesterday, those cuts are not going away anytime soon, despite the Prime Minister’s promise that “austerity is over” earlier this month.
Tory cuts have hit Merseyside so hard that there has been a £440 million reduction in Liverpool City Council’s Government support since 2010-11, which is a cut of 64% to the council’s overall budget. We are at the point at which our most basic services are in crisis, and many hon. Friends have articulated examples of where that is the case.
The revenue budget of Merseyside fire and rescue service has been reduced from £73 million to £59.9 million. These cuts might be just figures on a spreadsheet to some, but they have real-life consequences. Our fire and rescue authority has been forced to reduce the number of firefighters it employs from 923 to 620, and to reduce the number of fire engines from 42 to just 24. In turn, the response time for life-risk incidents is on average 35 seconds slower than in 2010-11. What if there were a major incident in Merseyside?
Similarly, Merseyside police has faced startling cuts from central Government, as my hon. Friends have said. Many hon. Friends have articulated the connection between local authority funding and our police, and how we have been disproportionately hit. Our police workforce has been cut by nearly a quarter, so we have 1,600 fewer police staff than in 2010-11. I ask the Minister to reflect on that and I hope he is listening carefully.
Ultimately, the combination of all the cuts to our local authority, our fire service and our police force has led to a reduction in service for many different community services throughout the course of life—from our children’s centres to our youth services, to our leisure and recreation service, to what happens on our roads, to our community services and to services for the elderly and social care.
We have an incredibly stretched council, fire service and police workforce who do so much in such challenging circumstances, and what we are seeing is an impact on real life for too many of our constituents. We are seeing an increase in people in crisis. We are here today because we think it is socially and morally illiterate to see so many people in crisis. It is also financially illiterate. We are sitting here in front of a Minister from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, but this situation has wider, far-reaching consequences for all Departments. We have heard about the impact on our national health service and that we are going to see £20 billion extra spent on our NHS, but again this disproportionate focus on crisis is so much more expensive. It does not make any economic sense.
Other colleagues have clearly articulated the impact of cuts, including the increase in crime. I will just reflect on the fact that we are now seeing the most brutal run of gun violence in Liverpool in recent years. In just a 10-day period at the beginning of this month, there were two fatal shootings, one of which was in my constituency, and four non-fatal shootings. This increase in serious crime has far-reaching and serious consequences for our constituents.
However, it is not until we compare the cuts that we have sustained on Merseyside with those elsewhere that we truly see the disproportionate level of austerity with which our constituents have been burdened. Whereas each household in Merseyside has experienced a cut of £712.57, the average reduction per household across England is just £320.99. That is still an unwarranted reduction, but of course it is nowhere near the cuts that the people of Merseyside have to cope with in one of the most deprived areas of the country. It is nothing short of a tragedy that the Government’s own figures have shown that if Liverpool City Council had been subject to that same average reduction, it would have been £71.6 million better off in 2019-20 than it is expected to be. What is worse and most galling is that some authorities have seen an increase in their spending power—colleagues have mentioned Surrey.
Neglect by a Tory Government is nothing new to the people of Merseyside, whose independence and resilience make our region proudly what it is, and our city, under the leadership of Joe Anderson, is doing so much in spite of this Government. Can the Minister tell us when our constituents will be given an equal chance and some relief from this disproportionate burden?
Jim McMahon (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.
I would say that it is also a pleasure to respond to the debate, but it is not a pleasure at all; it is heartbreaking, when we consider the human stories that sit behind the numbers that we have heard today. However, I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Liverpool, Riverside (Dame Louise Ellman), for Wallasey (Ms Eagle), and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger), for how they have stood up to represent their communities in the face of absolutely devastating cuts to vital public services.
I should declare an interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and I will use some of the LGA’s information in my speech. The truth is that austerity is not over, but it was never going to be over, because as things stand the Government do not believe in strong local public services. We have heard talk today about how the Government do not like a big state. The truth is that the Government actually do not mind a big state, provided that it is a big national state, because the workforce data today says that the national Government workforce is the biggest since comparable records began, compared with local government, which is now at its smallest since comparable records began. The disproportionate cut has not only been to local government; within England the most deprived communities have been the hardest hit. The most deprived communities have seen cuts of about £220 per person, compared with about £40 per person in the least deprived, so austerity has been targeted on local government and then within local government it has been targeted on the areas that could least afford to take the hit, in the way that we have seen.
The Government have completely ignored pleas from the cross-party LGA to do two things: first, stop the in-year cut of £1.3 billion; and, secondly, fund forward the £5.8 billion that would have addressed homelessness, adult social care and children’s services. Let us be honest—when it comes to the £410 million that is being put forward, the majority of people who work in social care are paid the minimum wage. When the national minimum wage goes up in April, those people will rightly be uplifted, but there is a cost to that for the providers. Much of the money announced in the Budget will go not to additional care for over-65s who need it, but to pay people who are being paid the lowest possible rate for providing an essential community service. I do not believe that is fair, the LGA does not believe that is fair and councils across the country do not believe that is fair, but again we see the Government turning a blind eye to it.
We all know where the real impact has been felt; we know the numbers on adult social care and the fact that 1.2 million people who would have had care in 2010 do not get that care today. We know that there are more young people who have been taken into care because they are at risk if they are kept at home, and the cost of that to local authorities. We also know, because the Government have walked away from their responsibilities, that the only way that councils can fund that care is to reduce eligibility and take the money from vital neighbourhood services.
The services that council tax payers see and value that come from the council tax that they pay have been the very services that have been taken away to fund the pressures on people’s services in every community in the country. The public say, “I’m paying more council tax, but the bins are being emptied less often, the local library has closed and the park doesn’t get maintained in the way that it used to.” All those really important services have been affected.
I hoped that when we had a change in Secretary of State that the new Secretary of State would finally have the ear of the Treasury, so that they could finally get a fair hearing and make the case for these vital community services, but it strikes me that one or two things have happened. Either the Ministry did not bother making the case in the first place, or—it could be both these things—the Treasury just does not care about the human impact of austerity and how we have seen it distributed across the country.
What I want to know, what people in the Chamber want to know and what people in England want to know is, what will the Minister do to address such chronic underfunding? It will be on his watch that an older person will die because they do not get the social care they need, or a child will be made to feel vulnerable because they are not getting the protection they need. Where will the money come from?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government (Rishi Sunak)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.
I start by congratulating the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle) on securing this debate and it is good to see a strong turnout from Merseyside colleagues as well.
It did not sound like the hon. Lady was aware that in fact my very first visit as Minister for Local Government was indeed to Liverpool, both to see the City Council and to work with the troubled families programme, and I was delighted to accept an invitation from the hon. Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) shortly after being appointed to this particular role.
Being relatively new to this role, I am the first to say that local authorities have done a commendable job over the past few years, maintaining a strong level of services in the face of rising demand. In responding to the specific points that the hon. Member for Garston and Halewood made, I will first outline my broad vision for the role of local government, which consists of three particular areas: first, to drive economic growth; secondly, to help the most vulnerable in our society; and, lastly, to build strong communities. I will take each of these areas in turn, specifically in relation to the points that have been made by hon. Members about Merseyside.
I will start with the economics. In this financial year, councils on Merseyside— including Sefton, Knowsley, Liverpool, Wirral, Halton and St Helens—had an aggregated core spending power of around £1.3 billion. Core spending power is the standard measure of a local authority’s key financial resources. It includes money from the central Government grant, which is typically known as the revenue support grant, but also the money raised locally from council tax, the money raised through the business rates system, and further specific grants from central Government for things such as adult social care, the better care programme and, indeed, the new homes bonus.
Across Merseyside, core spending power is up every single year in this four-year spending period and up 2% this year as well.
Maria Eagle
I received a parliamentary answer from a colleague of the Minister about police spending, which said that over the last year £5.1 million of extra money had been given to enable the police to tackle the very serious crime that my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) referred to. In fact, that money came from the Government simply allowing a precept increase; it all came from hard-pressed council tax payers in Liverpool and not one penny piece came from the Government. How can the Minister justify the ridiculous figures that he is using, which hide the Government’s contribution by referring to everything else that can be raised in any other way? That is a way of abdicating responsibility.
Rishi Sunak
I totally reject the suggestion of hiding. It would be ridiculous to look at any local authority’s financial resources without considering the various ways in which such an authority funds itself. I am delighted that the hon. Lady is focused on keeping council tax low. Indeed, the Government have ensured that council tax today is lower in real terms, across the country, than it was in 2010. We have heard various suggestions from Labour Members about doubling council tax, which is something I assume the hon. Lady, being on the side of hard-working taxpayers like us, would reject.
The idea that the funding formulas do not take account of deprivation or the differing ability of areas to raise council tax is totally erroneous. For example, when the adult social care precept was introduced, it was understood that different areas would raise different amounts from it, which is why in the incremental billions of pounds that the Government have injected into the social care system directly through the better care fund there is an equalising measure to take that into account. That is exactly why, today, the most deprived authorities have a core spending power per household—taking into account all those things, council tax included—that is 23% higher than that of richer authorities. Indeed, that is why areas with larger council tax bases provide more of their area’s resources from council tax; Merseyside provides less than half of the amount those areas do, because the council tax base in Liverpool is that much lower. It is totally wrong to suggest that that is not taken into account.
I think it was alleged that I, or the Government, had removed deprivation from funding formulas. I can categorically say that I have not removed it from any funding formula. We are in a root and branch review of how local government is funded. We are in the midst of various consultations and I would be delighted to have hon. Members’ suggestions.
Mr Howarth
If that is the case, will the Minister explain why Knowsley, which is one of the most socially deprived parts of the UK, has had a £100 million cut in its grant? His figures just do not add up.
Rishi Sunak
I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that Knowsley’s core spending power per household is about 20-something per cent. higher than the average for a similar metropolitan authority, which takes into account exactly his point. He talked about the fair funding review and, as I said, that is exactly where all the issues will be considered, ensuring that deprivation or, indeed, multiple other factors, are taken into account in the new funding formula.
Rishi Sunak
No. I will try to make some progress.
When it comes to that point, I am convinced and confident that those factors are taken into account. Indeed, as we restructure the fair funding formula, they will continue to be taken into account fairly and accurately.
Beyond Government grants, driving economic growth locally is the only sustainable way to ensure that we can raise the money we need to fund our services, and business rates retention is one such opportunity. I am delighted, and I am sure hon. Members here will join me in recognising, that Merseyside is in the fortunate position of being a 100% business rates retention area, which means that the local councils keep all the growth they generate from those rates. That is not something that is enjoyed by every local authority—[Interruption.]
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Order. We do not really want sledging in the Chamber. The hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) is sitting opposite the Minister and he must be heard with courtesy. Her side of the House was heard with courtesy during all its contributions. I know that the hon. Lady’s attempt to intervene was not accepted by the Minister, but she could have another go. However, she is more likely to be successful if she does not keep shouting across the Chamber.
Rishi Sunak
Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I think the hon. Lady was being snide about the fact that Merseyside is a business rates retention pilot. I am sure that the £54 million that Merseyside will keep this year in additional funding as a result of the pilot is nothing to be snide about, and will make an enormous difference on the ground, helping the people I know she cares about. Many other local authorities across the country would be happy to be one of the pilot areas, so if she thinks that Merseyside would rather not be one and would give up the opportunity to others, I would be happy to talk to her afterwards.
Rishi Sunak
I will try to make some progress.
Business rates retention is not the only incentive for local growth, as it sits alongside the other support the Government give to local authorities’ wider ambitions through local growth deals. For example, £2 million has been invested to create the first dedicated digital skills academy in the UK, at the City of Liverpool College, and more than £13 million has been invested in a highway infrastructure scheme comprising a series of essential and integrated improvements along the A565 corridor. In sum, the Government strongly support Merseyside’s economic growth, whether through direct investment or business rates retention, and thus enable it to fund services over the years to come.
Rishi Sunak
I will make some progress.
The second vision I outlined, which is undeniably one of the most crucial roles for local government, is to continue to help the most vulnerable in our society. It is local authorities, as we have heard, that support the elderly, the disabled and our children in need, and we owe an enormous debt of gratitude to councils for their incredible work. I am delighted that the Government back local authorities to carry out those vital duties. Last year, the Budget provided an additional £2 billion for social care. Earlier this year, another £240 million was announced for social care winter funding, and in the Budget yesterday the Chancellor announced that a further £650 million will be provided for care services next year.
In contrast to what we have heard, the flexibility to use the funding for things such as children’s services is something that local authorities have specifically asked for. They will have the flexibility in each local area to use the funding for different care services, rather than its use being dictated by central Government. I would have thought that all Members appreciated their local areas having such flexibility to make the best use of the money, in the way they see fit.
I am pleased to say that that increased investment and better working between the NHS and local government is paying dividends on the ground. We have seen social care free up 949 beds a day since the peak two years ago—a 39% reduction in social care delayed transfers of care. In Merseyside, progress has been seen particularly in St Helens, and I commend the local authority on reducing such transfers by 72% since the February 2017 peak.
I have mentioned the troubled families programme, which is making amazing strides to support our society’s most vulnerable families. When I visited the Clubmoor children’s centre in Liverpool, it was a privilege to talk to several of the families participating and to see the life-changing work at first hand. I am proud to say that the Government have invested £1 billion in the programme over this spending cycle, with 130,000 families nationally achieving significant and sustained progress against the goals they have been set. In almost 17,000 of the families, one or more of the adults has moved into work, and the families I spoke to told me that that was central to their ambitions.
Across Merseyside, 10,000 families are being helped with more than £20 million of funding, and I pay tribute to Liverpool City Council in particular for doing a very good job, working with early help assessments. We heard from the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) about the importance of early intervention. Referrals to children’s services in Liverpool were down 3% in the most recent year—
Mr Howarth
On a point of order Mr Hollobone. I want to place it on record that, had he been here, my hon. Friend the Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) would have made a significant contribution, but he is, in fact, not here.
Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)
Thank you for that point of clarification. It will be on the record.
Rishi Sunak
I apologise to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who mentioned the importance of early intervention. I thank the right hon. Gentleman for the point of order. That great work in the last year builds on three successive years of reductions in referrals to children’s services.
We talked about the importance of local authorities in building strong communities and the Government back that, whether through the funds for Liverpool City Council from the controlling migration fund, ensuring that communities are connected through the roads fund that was announced yesterday, or bringing high streets together and creating pocket parks—something that Liverpool has benefited from. Whether through building economic growth, supporting communities or helping the vulnerable, the Government are determined to recognise the role that local government plays and to back it with what it needs.
Maria Eagle
I am disappointed that the Minister chose to take away half of my time to respond. I am afraid he did not deal with the points that were made in the debate, and that is a shame. It is ridiculous for him to suggest in the way he did that the Government take account of deprivation. I would like to see how he came up with the figures in his speech. Liverpool’s local authority has lost 64% of its money, and Knowsley 58%. Our police have had the worst cut in the country, losing 31% of their money, with the fire authority losing 50% of theirs. Liverpool Community College has lost £5 million over the past four years. If that is strongly supporting Merseyside, I hope that the Minister and his Government will stop supporting us, because it is terrible.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered local government funding in Merseyside.
Written Statements
Banking Act 2009 Reporting
(6 years ago)
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The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)
The Treasury has laid before the House of Commons a report required under section 231 of the Banking Act 2009 covering the period from 1 October 2017 to 31 March 2018. Copies of the document are available in the Vote Office and the Printed Paper Office.
[HCWS1049]
Istanbul Convention Ratification: 2018 Report on Progress
(6 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Victoria Atkins)
I have today laid before Parliament and published the second annual report on progress toward ratification of the Council of Europe convention on combating violence against women and domestic violence (the Istanbul convention). The UK signed the Istanbul convention in 2012 to reaffirm the UK’s strong commitment to tackling violence against women and girls (VAWG) and this Government remain fully committed to ratifying the convention.
The report is structured in line with the Istanbul convention’s key objectives and sets out the steps taken by the Government and the devolved Administrations toward ratification of convention, and measures taken forward since the 2017 report on progress.
We are continuing to step up our efforts to combat VAWG. We will refresh the cross-Government VAWG strategy later this Session to ensure that we are doing all that we can to tackle those crimes that disproportionately affect women. The refresh will reaffirm the Government’s commitment to addressing VAWG in all its forms, capture new programmes of work, including the forthcoming draft Domestic Abuse Bill, and provide an update on the delivery of existing actions.
In most respects the UK already complies with or goes further than the convention requires. As the 2017 report on progress set out, since signing the convention in 2012 we have strengthened the law, introduced new protective tools, and issued a range of guidance and support for frontline professionals. But we know there is more to do. That is why in March this year, we launched our “transforming the response to domestic abuse” consultation on what more we can do to protect and support victims, recognise the lifelong impact domestic abuse can have on children and make sure agencies effectively respond to domestic abuse. As part of this, we have consulted widely with partners on the legislative and non-legislative steps we can take to ensure victims are afforded the greatest possible protection.
We will be publishing a Government response and the landmark draft Domestic Abuse Bill in due course. The draft Bill will include the provisions on extraterritorial jurisdiction over the specific offences necessarily for compliance with the convention in England and Wales.
The publication of this report fulfils the requirement of section 2 of the Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence (Ratification of Convention) Act 2017. I will be updating Parliament on progress in due course.
Copies of the report will be available in the Vote Office and it will be published on the Government’s website at gov.uk.
[HCWS1048]
Grand Committee
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Henig) (Lab)
If there is a Division in the Chamber, the Grand Committee will adjourn for 10 minutes.
Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018
(6 years ago)
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Lord Agnew of Oulton
That the Grand Committee do consider the Further Education Bodies (Insolvency) Regulations 2018.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, these regulations were laid before the House on 5 September. In the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 we introduced a special administration regime for the further education sector. This included provisions for insolvency in the rare instances that it might be needed. It has been some time since we have discussed further education insolvency in this place and it is worth taking the time to set out some context for the benefit of those less familiar with this regime and the primary legislation.
Colleges are statutory corporations but operate independently of government. They have the ability to raise debt funding in the same way as a commercial body, through bank or other lending, although they are not for profit. A financially resilient further education sector requires strong leadership and an efficient structure to operate in. Since 2015, we have been working with the sector to strengthen that leadership.
Additionally, through a programme of area reviews, we have supported the restructuring of the sector so that colleges can meet the needs of learners and employers in their area as efficiently as possible. The Government have supported the sector to share best practice and to help weaker colleges to improve and raise standards. Coupled with the FE strategic leadership programme offered by the Education and Training Foundation, the aim is to drive up professional standards in the sector to help colleges to improve quality and become better equipped to deliver sustainable provision serving local needs. The Government also provided access to a restructuring facility, set up in 2016, to support the implementation of recommendations that came out of the area reviews. As that work is coming to an end, the restructuring facility closed to new bids at the end of last month.
Although we are seeing merged colleges and more robust arrangements developing as a result of the area reviews, we cannot guarantee that no college will fail in the future. We recognised that we needed a suitable mechanism in place to deal with colleges in an orderly manner if they should fail in the future. Therefore, in 2016 the Government announced that they would develop an insolvency regime for the sector. This includes a special administration regime with the objective of avoiding or minimising disruption to the studies of existing students of the FE body as a whole, while ensuring that the education administration is no longer than it needs to be—thus it benefits both students and creditors of an insolvent college.
The main provisions for the regime are in the Technical and Further Education Act 2017. The legislation provided clarity on whether and how insolvency law applies to FE bodies. The new regime ensures that there is an orderly process in place for managing a college insolvency. It also introduces, in the unlikely event that a college should become insolvent, a special administration regime known as education administration, which prioritises the protection of learner provision. Once commenced, the regime will give the Secretary of State the power to apply to court for an education administration order, appointing an education administrator. This could happen as a result of a creditor taking insolvency action of its own, in which case the Secretary of State can use his powers to put in place a different form of insolvency proceeding to protect provision for learners. Alternatively, he may be persuaded that the FE body is insolvent and that an application to court for an education administration order is the best course of action.
The 2017 Act applied certain provisions of insolvency law to the FE sector subject to modifications set out in the Act and specified in the regulations that we are considering today. These regulations modify insolvency legislation as it applies to FE bodies, both in the Insolvency Act 1986 and in wider legislation that concerns insolvency, to make it work effectively for further education bodies.
I also draw the Committee’s attention to the fact that there will need to be another piece of secondary legislation enacted before the special administration regime can be commenced. This will be a statutory instrument setting out the rules that apply to the education administrator’s conduct of an education administration. That instrument will follow the negative procedure. The insolvency regime provides the framework for insolvency practitioners to work within when dealing with the further education sector and specifies how education administration can be used to protect provision for existing learners at a college in financial distress. It is not the purpose of this legislation to seek to close colleges. It is a necessary tool to deal with the worst-case scenario, as the hard edge of a broader intervention system providing a structured and measured approach to preventing and responding to failure.
Colleges enjoy a high degree of financial independence, and it is right that they should be responsible for the decisions they take. This wider intervention system will start with the monitoring of colleges that are experiencing difficulty. If things get worse, then there will be a wide range of intervention tools. The insolvency regime is the mechanism of last resort, and we would expect it to be used only rarely. I wish to be clear that, where a college becomes insolvent, it will not necessarily lead to provision being closed. The aim would be to deliver the best scenario for the local area in the manner that is least disruptive for the learners at the college.
I turn to the purpose of this legislation. The draft regulations before the Committee today are quite technical. Their main purpose is to modify provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986 and to have legislation made under those provisions apply effectively to college statutory corporations. This not only ensures that a regime works technically, it also deals with practical issues to allow for the fact that FE bodies are autonomous and will have different provisions within their instrument and articles of governance. Therefore the regulations make provisions to manage insolvency proceedings in a standard way. These regulations also set out provisions for filing documents with Companies House, so that insolvency procedures are transparent for further education corporations, as they are for companies.
The role that the governors play in the UK education system is a crucial and well-established one. They bring a wealth of outside experience and knowledge to the sector. They are, rightly, already subject to important duties and liabilities as trustees of a charity and should already be well used to the responsibility that these duties bring. Governors should respect good practice, following proper process and ensuring that they take and carefully consider appropriate professional advice before taking key decisions.
The regulations have been drafted purposely to exempt student governors from certain offences and duties normally contained within insolvency legislation. The Government took the view that there would be some situations where student governors could not possibly have a meaningful say in decisions that gave rise to particular offences. It follows that it would not be right to expose them to liability for those offences. It is common for student governors under the age of 18 to be excluded from voting on decisions by the board that have financial outcomes. We have taken the view that if they cannot have a say in financial decisions, they should not be liable for offences linked to those decisions. Equally, student governors should not have to prepare a statement of the affairs of the college corporation, which includes a summary of the corporation’s assets and liabilities and details of its creditors—details that they might not be expected to be privy to. However, let me be clear that there is an onus on all governors—student members, staff members and other governors alike—to co-operate with the insolvency practitioner appointed by the court. This includes not making false statements when they are required to supply evidence of events.
I turn to the more technical detail of the regulations that we are considering today. Part 3 of the regulations modifies provisions of the Insolvency Act 1986 and the Insolvency (England and Wales) Rules 2016 as they apply to FE bodies that are statutory corporations. Part 4 of the regulations applies provisions of other legislation relating to insolvency to FE bodies, subject to modifications. For example, the Land Registration Rules 2003 need to be modified to enable the Land Registry to make an entry in the register that an administrator or liquidator has been appointed over a statutory corporation. Part 5 modifies provisions of the Companies Act 2006, applied to statutory corporations by Regulation 3, to ensure that they work effectively for FE bodies that are statutory corporations. This is to facilitate the correct filing of key insolvency documentation.
We carried out consultation on the position adopted in the regulations with insolvency practitioners, lenders, colleges and organisations that represent the sector. This included the Association of Colleges and the Sixth Form Colleges Association. The department has also worked hand in hand with Companies House and the Insolvency Service to ensure that these regulations work effectively for their intended purpose. The regulations apply to FE bodies and companies conducting designated further education institutions in England and Wales, and Welsh Ministers are fully supportive of the approach taken in the development of this legislation. I commend these regulations to the Committee.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations, which will bring a new college insolvency regime into effect by the end of the year. We believe that they are necessary and will not be opposing them, although we have some caveats that I shall bring to the Minister’s attention.
The Government are right to regulate in this area to bring more legal certainty, but we believe they should use the new powers only in exceptional circumstances because of the risk that they could damage confidence in an important sector. As I argued in Committee on what was then the Technical and Further Education Bill—before the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, was in your Lordships’ House—there is a danger that highlighting the need for a statutory insolvency regime that has not hitherto existed may alarm governors, banks, employers, international partners and others whose support is necessary to ensure that colleges provide the education and skills that the country needs. That is even more important now that the country is about to leave the EU and faces an uncertain economic future into the 2020s.
These regulations are technical and take a sensible approach to fitting out the structure of the legislation. The continuing underfunding of further education and the growing financial weakness of some colleges heightens concerns that the Government could unintentionally force a college into insolvency, with the serious consequences that that would bring. The new statutory college insolvency scheme can be traced back to early 2016, when the Government were overseeing the rationalisation of the sector through the national area review programme. No clear rules currently exist as to what happens should a college run out of money and the Government did not effectively indemnify it. When colleges were taken out of local government in 1992, a new type of statutory corporation was created to run them but no rules were ever established to apply in circumstances where colleges simply ran out of money. Instead, to protect a college’s students, courses and assets, central government—through a succession of funding agencies—has ended up being the funder of last resort. This has meant that the banks have always been paid in full or been able to replace an old loan with a new one.
The Government’s post-16 area review was designed to put all colleges on a sustainable financial footing and has resulted in more than 50 mergers since 2015, the majority of which have been self-funded by colleges. The process of restructuring colleges has proved to be more complicated than was anticipated when the area reviews started. Colleges have found that it takes more time than expected to satisfy their banks, resolve pension issues and navigate rules devised by Ofsted, the Home Office and the Education and Skills Funding Agency. We understand that the Treasury insisted on a college insolvency regime as a price for providing its restructuring loans, and this is what was legislated for in the Technical and Further Education Act. These regulations will put this into effect and are intended to provide clarity about what happens when a college gets into severe financial problems. The law creates a special administration regime for colleges akin to that put in place in recent years for energy companies, train operating companies and housing associations—strange comparators, noble Lords may feel. But it is to be welcomed that the special administrator will have duties to protect learners, as well as creditors, in a situation where a college has run out of money.
The new college insolvency regime has been described as a last resort rather than a normal route to secure change. Once the new arrangements come into force, there will be several lines of control in place: the governing bodies will of course have a duty to ensure the solvency and viability of colleges; the ESFA will have financial oversight; the Further Education Commissioner will intervene where the college has a notice to improve; and there is the independent business review, a new pre-statutory process that will apply for colleges in severe financial distress. Only if and when all the above fail to resolve matters will the new college insolvency regime apply.
Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)
My Lords, I too thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. It is always somewhat frustrating that discussion of regulations offers no chance to amend, but of course it gives us an opportunity to challenge and seek clarification from the Government on rationale, detail or implementation.
We on these Benches found the Technical and Further Education Act a deeply depressing piece of legislation. Our further education sector makes an enormous contribution to education and the economy but continues to be overtasked, underfunded and underappreciated. The Bill was largely about potential insolvency in further education—hardly a resounding message of support. Of course, it introduced the baffling T-levels, which were not sought by the sector and continue to be baffling months after their inception. They risk undermining the highly regarded vocational qualifications that have served this country well for generations, but we will keep the perplexities of T-levels for another debate.
I declare an interest as a vice-president of City & Guilds, an organisation I worked with for some 20 years. For more than 140 years, it has been an immense source of employment skills for the nation. City & Guilds has always worked with FE colleges, which play a crucial part in delivering world-class qualifications that are highly regarded in the UK and overseas by employers across the whole range of work-related skills.
We note that a number of FE colleges have fallen into financial difficulties. Can the Minister tell us how many of them have actually become insolvent? I note that the Explanatory Memorandum indicates that,
“in reality we expect that FE colleges entering insolvency would be a very rare event”.
One wonders why, in that case, so much of the Act was devoted to such insolvency. We gather too that:
“The Department will publish two sets of guidance before the instrument comes into force”.
Will the Minister say when we can expect these sets of guidance? Apparently there is to be no monitoring to assess whether there are,
“any unexpected burdens or tensions within the FE sector”.
Any legislation that imposes additional burdens and tensions on an overburdened sector should surely be dismissed instantly. Would it not be prudent to have some sort of review?
Will the Minister also say what part in those financial difficulties has been played by the unwelcome and damaging burden of providing GCSE resits in maths and English? If ever a policy was designed to reinforce failure in learners, these resits are that policy. Young people who may have brilliant workplace skills are forced into taking exams again and again which have little, if any, relevance to the work they wish to do, and they fail time and again. This is hardly encouragement for the future. Colleges have been tasked with this depressing and resource-intensive duty. When will the Government realise the negative and counterproductive impact of their obsession with academic qualifications, regardless of the talents of young people or the relevance of those qualifications to the things that young people actually want to do? Can the Minister say if and when the Government have plans to review the GCSE resit policy?
I share the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, over the drop in funding for FE, which is surely unacceptable with all the pressures put on it.
Can the Minister say what provision has been made for private providers? What progress has been made in developing comparable safeguards for apprentices and other learners who are with private providers, especially in view of the collapse of 3aaa? What about the looming collapse of learndirect? Do these regulations have any implications for protecting learners if there are subcontracting arrangements, for instance? We know that colleges and private providers are entangled in highly complex subcontractors. The Minister may have an answer on this, but if he does not, perhaps he could write to me.
We do not seek to challenge these regulations, but we express again our deep concerns over government policies towards vocational, or even technical, education. We hope that wise heads will appreciate that it is in the national interest, and in the interest of learners, to give every possible support and status to those who seek to acquire the work skills the country so desperately needs. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.
Lord Jones (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his cogent introduction and my noble friend for his eloquent steer in a debate such as this. My remarks will be very brief. The regulations refer to Section 124A of the Insolvency Act, which is headed “Petition for winding up on grounds of public interest”. Will the Minister expand on how he perceives the public interest in the context of this sphere of education? The matter is complicated, and obviously the provision is necessary, but can he give a recent instance of where a specific further education establishment has been perceived to be insolvent? Has that happened? Does he know of a sixth-form college that has been wound up? Has that happened?
Paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Memorandum on the policy background is helpful. Does the Minister know whether exceptional financial support has been given to one of these institutions? Like others in this debate, I think the further education sector is crucial to the future of Britain’s economy. In particular, FE colleges might help us save what remains of our manufacturing base.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I preface my remarks by saying that we value further education. It will go through a renaissance and the need for vocational courses, skills development and apprenticeships will help it to blossom. This instrument is technical but it is absolutely right that we should agree it.
However, I have a number of concerns. We have had the area reviews, of course, but why do we allow a further education or sixth-form college to become insolvent? One would think that further down the line we would take strong and robust action to ensure that that does not happen. If a college closes down the effect on the local community and economy can be devastating. If we allowed a further education college in, say, Northumberland to close down because we had not kept our finger on the pulse, imagine the effect that that would have in a predominantly rural area.
It is important that we understand the mechanisms for ensuring that this does not happen. I see in the document that 37 further education colleges published notices to improve financial health. What do the Government do to make sure that that support is given?
I agree with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about cuts, but it is not always about cuts; it is about management as well. An institution might not have all the resources it needs but it might be so well managed that it thrives nevertheless. It is about the management of the college as well as its finances.
I have three further questions. First, the Minister said that insolvency will not always mean closure. Will he expand on that and say what other actions can be taken? Secondly, do these regulations apply to university technical colleges? Thirdly, if we want to create the level playing that the Minister talked about, should we not ensure that all sixth-form colleges are treated equally and that those that have to pay VAT will no longer have to do so? Will he perhaps explain why sixth-form colleges that are not in a multi-academy trust have to pay VAT?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for the interesting points they have raised. There have also been a number of questions which I will certainly try to address.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that we are adamant that this provision is for exceptional circumstances. I made that clear in my opening comments. In answer to noble Lords who raised questions about our commitment to this sector, it might be worth summarising the extent of that commitment. In the current academic year, 2018-2019, we expect to spend some £7 billion, which includes apprenticeships. That gives a sense of the proportion of our public spending that we are putting into this age group.
I can reassure all noble Lords that this instrument is designed as an exceptional mechanism. The main reason for it is that under traditional insolvency arrangements, the lenders take control of the process. The provisions in these regulations make sure that learners are given more priority. That is the overarching principle of why this is being done.
On the specific question that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked about how the various bodies involved in the sector would interact with one another, we are still developing intervention systems so that we can respond effectively to the early signals of poor financial health to focus on preventing colleges from getting into positions of insolvency. This allows the FE commissioner and his team to go into colleges at an early stage, work with principals and governors and share best practice on better financial management to help college boards develop sustainable plans for financial resilience. College boards may need to make tough decisions to make to become more resilient. We will rely on their engaging with us early on, as soon as they know there is a problem. That goes somewhat to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made about the quality of management and governance. That is very much what we are pushing for, to ensure that when the canary in the coalmine sings, it is listened to and early action is taken.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
There is no objection to the fact that young people are helped by being able to read, write and add up. The point is that GCSEs are very academically focused and the content of those syllabuses is completely inappropriate for many people who have technical skills and could happily do a functional test paper but not the academic papers of GCSE; it is the GCSE exam that is the bugbear, not the fact that people need to be able to read, write and add up.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
I will certainly take the noble Baroness’s views back to the department and reiterate them; I understand exactly what she is staying. She also raised a question about providing guidance to governors. We are committed to providing clear guidance, particularly on their duties and liabilities under insolvency law. The general College Governance guide, last published in 2014, will be updated. Both sets of guidance have been drafted and are being developed with the stakeholders—the Insolvency Service, the Association of Colleges and the Sixth Form Colleges Association—ready for publication in, we hope, the next few weeks.
The noble Lord, Lord Jones, asked whether I have any specific examples of colleges that have become insolvent. The short answer is no, as they have so far resolved their issues. In 2016 we created the restructuring facility, a fund from which some £330 million has been drawn across the sector. That has been used specifically to help them carry out the restructurings and some of the mergers to which other noble Lords referred, so there has been a period of consolidation over the last two years.
The noble Lord also asked about sixth-form colleges. There is a provision—this also addresses the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Garden—for sixth-form colleges to convert to academy status. If they do that, they get the benefit of VAT recovery. The question was: why cannot everybody do that? The reason is that it is a complicated process. It is an option that we have offered to sixth-form colleges but not all of them have taken it up.
Lord Storey (LD)
There are all sorts of reasons. If a sixth-form college chooses not to become an academy or part of a multi-academy trust, it is penalised by having to pay VAT; but if it chooses to go down that route, it gets the reward of not having to pay VAT. Is that what the Minister is saying?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
That is, in essence, correct. However, one of the advantages of the FE sector is that colleges are allowed to borrow money commercially. If that is a route they want to take or have taken, that can be a barrier to conversion to academy status.
The noble Baroness, Lady Garden, asked about the role of private providers in subcontracting. These regulations are specifically designed simply for the further education sector, not for independent subcontractors. If a further education college were to become insolvent, a subcontractor could become one of the creditors.
I hope I have answered all the questions that have been raised.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
These regulations do not apply to university technical colleges. A UTC is framed under the academies legislation and has a funding agreement in the same way as an academy has, but UTCs are a separate legal entity.
As I have outlined, these regulations make necessary modifications to insolvency law so that it effectively applies to FE bodies and can bring the further education insolvency regime into effect. Cases of insolvency are rare and will continue to be so, but we cannot afford to be complacent. It is essential that this legislation is put in place for the FE sector to provide legal certainty and, most importantly, to ensure that learners are protected in the event of financial failure.
Motion agreed.
Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2018
(6 years ago)
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Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
That the Grand Committee do consider the Newcastle Upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland Combined Authority (Establishment and Functions) Order 2018.
Relevant document: 40th Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government and Wales Office (Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth) (Con)
My Lords, this order was laid before the House on 4 September. At Budget 2017, nearly a year ago, we announced that we were minded to agree a North of Tyne devolution deal with the three areas which will be the constituent councils of this combined authority: Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland. The deal will devolve major powers and budgets, including £20 million a year of devolved funding over the next 30 years, control of the 19-plus adult skills funding, and powers for the combined authority to acquire and dispose of land. The mayor will have powers to take forward compulsory purchases and establish mayoral development corporations as a foundation for the North of Tyne’s housing and regeneration ambitions. In return, the area has agreed appropriate governance for these new powers and budgets centred on a combined authority with a directly elected mayor. Such mayors can provide a focused single point of accountability for the powers and budgets being devolved, and can be a powerful voice raising the profile of their area with business, with government, and internationally, helping to promote inward investment and growth.
The order before the Committee, if approved by Parliament and made, will implement this deal—a deal which is yet another step along the way of our devolution agenda. It recognises that North of Tyne is a coherent economic area, which generates almost £17 billion in economic output, has a number of significant growth sectors and is home to more than 815,000 people. The deal will support the delivery of the North East local enterprise partnership’s strategic economic plan, which sets a forward direction for industrial growth across the north-east.
The background to this deal is that when in September 2016, the four authorities south of the Tyne—Durham, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland—chose not to participate in the agreed North East Combined Authority devolution deal, the Government were clear that they would continue to work with those authorities committed to devolution. As a result of this, the three North of Tyne authorities that supported the original deal have worked with government to agree this new mayoral devolution deal on this smaller North of Tyne geography. Although ideally we would have wished to see a deal that covered the area of all seven councils, we are clear that this North of Tyne geography is an economic area that can rightly support a devolution deal that will bring considerable benefits to both that area and the wider north-east. As my honourable friend the Minister made clear in the other place, we in the Government pay tribute to and thank the leaders of the three North of Tyne councils—Nick Forbes, Norma Redfearn and Peter Jackson—for their vision, work and commitment, which have led to this deal and the benefits it will bring to both their communities and the north-east more generally.
If approved by Parliament and made, the draft order will implement the deal. It is made pursuant to the provisions of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Act 2009 as amended by the Cities and Local Government Devolution Act 2016. It will put in place the necessary governance arrangements. It will establish a combined authority for the areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland. It makes provision for a directly elected mayor for that area, to be elected by all the local government electors for that area. The first mayor will be elected on 2 May 2019 for a term of five years, with the next election taking place in May 2024, then every four years subsequently. The initial five-year term is to bring these mayoral elections in line with mayoral elections in other city regions where there are elections of metro mayors, such as Greater Manchester and the West Midlands.
The order also makes provision for an interim appointed mayor in the period before the mayoral election takes place. This interim mayor will be appointed by the members of the combined authority, and while he or she will be chair of the combined authority they will not have any powers devolved to them. The order is equally the instrument through which certain powers, as envisaged in the deal, are devolved to the area to be exercised by the combined authority and, in some cases, by the mayor, once he or she is elected. These include local authority powers of compulsory purchase and the power to create and establish mayoral development corporations.
To allow for the establishment of the new mayoral combined authority, this order removes the local government areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside and Northumberland from the area of the current Durham, Gateshead, Newcastle upon Tyne, North Tyneside, Northumberland, South Tyneside and Sunderland Combined Authority and changes the name of that combined authority to the Durham, Gateshead, South Tyneside and Sunderland Combined Authority.
Most importantly, to ensure the continuity of the delivery of integrated transport arrangements across the two combined authorities across the north-east, the order also makes provision for the establishment of a joint transport committee. The new combined authority will appoint three members to this committee, one of whom must be the mayor unless the mayor decides that he or she does not want to be a member. The existing combined authority will appoint four of its members to this new joint transport committee. The new joint committee will exercise all the transport functions of the two combined authorities. It will produce a joint transport plan covering the area of both combined authorities. As with all combined authorities, an overview and scrutiny committee, as well as an audit committee, will be established for this joint committee.
In laying the draft order, we have followed the statutory processes specified in the 2009 Act as amended by the 2016 Act, which I mentioned. Establishing a combined authority is centred on there being a triple lock: a combined authority can be created only if the councils concerned consent, the Government agree and Parliament approves the necessary secondary legislation. The three councils that will be the constituent councils of the new combined authority—Newcastle, North Tyneside and Northumberland—have consented to the provisions in this order that will create the combined authority. The original combined authority and the three councils leaving it have consented to the change of that combined authority’s area. All seven councils and the original combined authority have consented to the establishment of the joint transport committee and the associated constitutional changes that this order brings.
We have considered the particular circumstances of this proposal in relation to establishing a new North of Tyne combined authority and the changing of the boundaries of the existing combined authority, as the law requires. We have concluded that all the statutory conditions are met. We also consider that it would be appropriate to establish this combined authority while having regard, as the 2009 Act requires, to the need to reflect the identities and interests of local communities, and to secure effective and convenient local government.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I refer to my interest as an elected councillor in Newcastle, and one who will be seeking re-election next May. Next Sunday will be the 14th anniversary of the referendum on the proposal at that time to create an elected regional authority for the north-east. Forty-eight per cent of the electorate cast their votes and, I am sorry to say, resoundingly rejected the idea by 77% to 23%. Disappointing as it was to those of us who saw in the concept a real opportunity to create a body capable of promoting the interests of the region as a whole, the result was not a great surprise. Local rivalries have never been confined to the football pitch.
In the mid-1960s, at a time when local radio was being promoted by the BBC, the then leader of Gateshead Council declared that nobody in Gateshead could possibly be interested in anything broadcast from Newcastle. In the mid-1990s I wrote a paper advocating the establishment of a north of England councils’ association, incorporating the counties of Northumberland, Durham, Cumbria and Tyne and Wear—the latter of which has since vanished—and their constituent city and district councils. Knowing that if such a proposition was seen to have emanated from Newcastle its prospects of success would have been negligible, I passed it to the then leader of Northumberland County Council, who circulated it without attributing its source. The association was accordingly established with Hugh Little of Cumbria as its first chairman. When Cumbria departed, it became the North East Assembly and when Tees Valley in turn departed, it became the Association of North East Councils.
It is unfortunate that the four councils south of the Tyne have so far declined to join the new combined authority—I should add that part of Northumberland is south of the river but will be within the boundaries of the new authority. I can understand some of their concerns. The new structure will be led by an elected mayor, a requirement imposed by the Government on all new combined authorities. Newcastle itself voted 62% to 38% against having an elected mayor when it was compelled to hold a referendum—for just the city itself—in 2012. This time, people are being denied a voice completely on that issue.
Moreover, the much-vaunted investment by the Government of £600 million over 30 years, which is all of £20 million a year shared between three councils, is frankly pitiful. Newcastle alone is facing cumulative cuts which, by next year, will amount to £280 million annually, and there is no suggestion from the Government that there will be any benefits flowing our way under any changes in the local government finance system. The same would apply to the neighbouring authorities.
There are, however, some promised changes which are welcome. These include local control of the budget for adult education, with enhanced powers to promote development, and a joint committee to manage public transport. Can the Minister say whether the latter will include a role in relation to rail transport, including the east coast line? Can he give any assurances about the future of the region’s airports? If, as has from time to time been suggested, the Scottish Government abolishes air passenger duty, will the region’s airports, and in particular Newcastle Airport, be able to follow suit?
On the housing front, I understand that the current chairman of Homes England is to chair a housing land board. Can the Minister explain how this will work in relation to the role of the councils in the provision of social housing? Will it be possible for the councils to provide more social housing for rent? Who will determine the size and nature of local housing provision and the provision of the necessary services for residents?
There are ambitious claims for job creation and new housing, with apparently 9,500 people to be helped into employment and 10,000 houses to be built. Can the Minister indicate over what period these goals are expected to be achieved? How many of the 10,000 homes will be provided respectively by local authorities, social housing providers and for sale?
Transport is an important issue for the whole region. It is to be hoped that both the new combined authority and the four councils which will remain from the existing authority will continue to work together through the joint transport committee.
The Metro, which serves Newcastle, North and South Tyneside, Gateshead and Sunderland, is a critical service covering all the authorities in the currently established set-up. There is clearly a potential to expand the service, not least to the west end of Newcastle, one of whose wards I represent. Will the department invest in this important area? It is a modest task in the light of the vast amounts being spent on Crossrail and HS2.
Will the Minister’s department put pressure on the Department for Transport to tackle the dreadful performance of the laughably misnamed TransPennine Express in the service between the north-east and the north-west, a more important project in the eyes of many of us than HS2?
The region is one of 10 bidding for funding from the £1.7 billion transforming cities fund. Six mayoral authorities have already shared £840 million. Given the problems facing the north-east, which are threatening to worsen after Brexit, it is vital that we secure investment of this kind. I understand we are looking for funding in the range of £50 million to £100 million. I hope the Minister will support our bid from the region.
There are some issues which cross the boundaries between the new combined authority and the four south of Tyne authorities. Two further education colleges, on either end, in effect, of the Tyne tunnel, are now combined. One will be in each of the two combined authorities hereafter and I am not clear what the implications of that will be. I do not know whether the noble Lord is in a position today to respond to that. He may need to consult the Department for Education. However, there will be services which cross the river, as it were, which will not apparently be affected directly by the new authority structure and there will have to be arrangements to deal with that.
It is similar in the National Health Service. We have, for example, a Newcastle and Gateshead clinical commissioning group which also crosses the boundary of what will be the two combined authorities. Is it envisaged that any change will be made in the NHS area, given the changing boundaries within local government and the important connection between local authorities’ social care provision and the NHS?
The justice system is another area which merits consideration, especially the probation service, which hopefully is to be restored as a single service in the light of the systemic failings of the split between probation and Chris Grayling’s community rehabilitation companies. Will the combined authority have oversight of both the custodial and probation services in its area and, indeed, of the court system, where court closures are having a serious impact on the working of the courts? It may well be that at least oversight of these areas could well be placed within the province of the new combined authority.
Many of us are hoping that, whatever doubts we may have about aspects of the changes in bodies in the order, they will help the region to address the serious problems it faces, constantly exemplified for me by the presence in the council ward that I have represented for the past 51 years of the busiest food bank in the country. I look forward to the evolution of a North East Combined Authority with the determination and resources to help transform the life chances of our citizens. I endorse the conclusion of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report:
“It will be important that all involved keep under review the success of cooperation between the new mayoral Combined Authority and the other councils, against the objective identified by DCLG in 2014 of promoting more effectively economic growth and prosperity for the area concerned; and that the Government should be ready to adapt arrangements in the light of experience”.
We are in a period of change. There is real potential for improvements to be made, but it will not be enough simply to rely on that reorganisation, not least in relation to the necessary funding to address the very serious economic and social problems that the area faces. This is a step forward. There is still a long way to go to transform the life chances of people living in the north-east, and in particular in the area covered by these changes.
Lord Shipley (LD)
My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, in a debate. He reminded us of the history of devolution and of some of the current problems in public investment and governance across the wider north-east. I agree with him that this proposal is a step forward. He used the word “unfortunate” to describe the fact that the four councils south of the Tyne have refused to take part. I think I might have used a stronger word, but for the moment “unfortunate” will do. Indeed the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee said:
“Progress towards establishing a mayoral Combined Authority in this part of the North East has not been straightforward”.
Let us all agree with that. I have been very critical of this and of the failure of local councils across the wider combined authority area to speak with one voice. As the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee reminded us, key business stakeholders appear to view the latest proposal as a second-best option. It is the only option on the table. It is a second-best option, but the final sentence in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s comment is,
“the Government should be ready to adapt arrangements in the light of experience”.
I very much hope that the Minister will be willing to confirm that that is exactly what the Government plan to do.
I support this proposal because I believe that the north of the Tyne should not be left behind because of the approach taken south of the Tyne. Indeed, there are powerful combined authorities elsewhere across the north of England that have mayors. They give focus to strategic planning and to the delivery of growth, jobs, higher education and skills standards. For that reason this proposal should be supported. It is a very great pity that the area to the south of the River Tyne decided not to take part.
The Minister referred to the transport arrangements. It is true that the current structure will remain in place. There will be a statutory joint authority to bring all the councils and passenger transport executives together on key issues. The seven local authorities are said to be confident that these arrangements will work. Well, they need to work. There will have to be an agreed clarity of purpose for the whole subregion, because this could come unstuck when a critical decision has to be made.
The Lord Bishop of Newcastle
My Lords, I welcome this proposal for a North of Tyne combined authority. I was present when the minded-to agreement was signed and there was a real sense of purposeful energy around the room. I agree with my noble friends Lord Beecham and Lord Shipley who talked about the level of investment that this combined authority will pull in; it is good, but very modest. I hope that nobody, including the Minister, will feel that this is anything like a sufficient answer to the critical lack of investment in the north-east. This development is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a proper level of investment in the north-east economy.
I hope, however, that I can offer some encouragement in the face of undoubted disappointment that we are looking at three authorities joining together in this combined authority, not seven. Most people would absolutely have preferred it to be seven. The governance review decided that there is an economic coherence between the three authorities that have been brought together; I agree with that. I share a bit of hope that, beyond economic coherence, there is also social and cultural coherence.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the Church of England and Parliament looked at the structure of Church of England dioceses to see whether they were fit for purpose for the development of new areas of industrial and manufacturing population. In 1878, an Act of Parliament created two new dioceses in the north of England—Liverpool and Newcastle dioceses. The area of the proposed combined authority was at that time part of Durham diocese. The diocese of Newcastle, which came into being in 1882, is almost exactly coterminous with the proposed combined authority. When my diocese came into being, St Nicholas Parish Church in Newcastle became Newcastle Cathedral; Queen Victoria then granted a royal charter and Newcastle became a city, so there is a real coherence.
In the life of the diocese, which has existed since 1882, we have found that, when it works, it works because there is a real sense of identity in these three areas. It works only when we recognise a degree of mutual dependence and support, one for the other. When we look to our own interests in either Newcastle, North Tyneside or Northumberland, we are not served—but in the sense of belonging together there is enormous strength, far greater than any of the three areas have separately.
I am well aware of the degree of political risk in this proposal. I commend the real commitment from all sides of the political spectrum to accept that risk but to set it aside and come together around what everybody believes will be to the benefit of the communities in the new proposed combined authority. I want to honour those who have shown such political leadership. I hope the Minister will assure us that the Government too will honour this genuine commitment to flourishing, which, in the region, is a sign of hope for us.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, I admire the optimism of the right reverend Prelate, which she has brought to her work; she is a welcome arrival in the Newcastle diocese.
When asked which of the two would have a more profound impact on the region, this measure or Brexit, most people I talk to in the north-east are pretty clear that it is Brexit. An awful lot of people recognise that, unless we bring the Brexit process to a halt or somehow get a miracle deal that allows the just-in-time provision of spare parts to the Nissan factory and further investment in the north-east by firms from abroad, there will be a profound and adverse economic effect that will put what we are discussing today very much in the shade. Viewed from rural Northumberland—the vast area of north and western Northumberland that forms part of this combined area—it all seems a bit distant. I doubt whether many people there are even aware that it is happening.
One thing that many people will remember, as we were reminded of by the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is that there was a referendum on whether there should be a regional structure for the north-east. It was a referendum under which the proposed body had too little power, and that was a powerful criticism made by its opponents. But those opponents, of course, included many prominent people in today’s governing party, the Conservative Party, who said that they did not want another tier of government in the north-east or any addition to the structure, and did not want any more politicians. But this order provides specifically not only for a mayor but for the mayor’s political adviser —the only two jobs you can be certain will be created as a result of it. So here those people are bringing before us what I think is a deeply defective scheme. It will be a miracle if real good can be achieved by it.
The scheme’s fundamental failure is that it slices through the middle of what it is supposed predominantly to be dealing with: transport and other urban issues in the conurbation of Tyne and Wear. We talk about having a system of government that is accountable, but how are people expected to understand a system that, to simplify government, brings together three authorities which will still exist and carry out their functions but will be part of a combined authority? Just as you have grasped that, you are then told that that combined authority will also be a member of a joint committee made up of two combined authorities, and that only this joint committee can deal with the transport issues because of the folly of creating an authority that exists on only one side of the river and goes right through the middle of the integrated transport system, the Metro.
Here, perhaps I can pay passing tribute to my noble friend Lord Rodgers of Quarry Bank, who has either just celebrated or will soon celebrate his 90th birthday. It was he who signed off on the Metro, in his Labour governmental days, many years ago. What a valuable feature it is of the north-east and how valuable it would be to see it extended into south-east Northumberland and Washington to bring more unity to the conurbation. Other aspects of transport that we want to see integrated in the conurbation—both its heavy-road system and its bus system—require a lot more work. The joint committee will be busy if it is going to address that. But it remains absurd to split the conurbation in this way.
The point I most want to make is this: in rural Northumberland, we are still suffering the consequences of the loss of accountability at district council level. Local government already seems extremely remote—it is 50 miles away from people living in Berwick or Bellingham and beyond. It is very distant indeed.
Lord Wrigglesworth (LD)
My Lords, I declare my interest as chairman and shareholder of the Durham Group and a former chairman and shareholder in UK Land Estates, which, among other things, owns Team Valley, still the single biggest industrial estate in the UK, with some 800 acres of businesses of all sorts.
I speak in this debate not just from that point of view but from having been the regional chairman of the CBI and of the Northern Business Forum. I was a member of the board of the Northern Development Company, which succeeded in bringing Nissan, Fujitsu, Komatsu and a variety of other businesses to the region in years gone by. I was delighted and honoured to be the founding chairman of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative as a result of an invitation from the Labour leaders of Gateshead and Newcastle city councils. As a result of an invitation from Gateshead Council, I was chairman of the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, which was in financial difficulty and which we managed to pull back from the brink.
I have also been chairman of the Port of Tyne. It dominates a large part of the business life of the region. All the cars from Sunderland are exported to the rest of Europe and other parts of the world from the Port of Tyne. It is the fourth-biggest import- export car terminal in Europe. It is the biggest trust port in the country. It is bigger than Dover. It makes an enormous contribution to the whole of the subregion.
Colleagues will understand that in all those different roles I have had a fair amount of interest in and experience of dealing with local authorities and other bodies in the Tyneside area. Although I support what the Government are doing and I have every sympathy with the Minister in trying to bring these things about, it is a tragedy for the area that we have not been able to bring all the authorities together as was envisaged. It would have been better to have had a separate Wearside LEP and a separate Wearside combined authority, with Sunderland and Durham working together. There has been an historic problem of Sunderland being overshadowed by Newcastle and the Tyneside area, which seems the natural conurbation for the region, rather than including Wearside in it. If we had been able to get a combined authority for the whole of the seven authority areas, it would have been very much to the advantage of the region. This is very much a second-best solution.
It is also in sharp contrast with the success that there has been on Teesside, which includes my home area and which I represented in the other place for many years. There, the Conservative mayor and the Labour local authorities are working extremely well together, bringing resources to the area, developing the area and working together for the benefit of the whole region in a way that I have never seen in my lifetime in the north-east. The contrast between what is happening in the south of the region and what is happening in the north of the region illustrates the damage that is being done by the parochialism and the antagonism across local authority boundaries by the leadership of the local authorities in the southern part of Tyneside.
Although I am happy to support this first step—as it has been described—we should not in any way underestimate the damage that this mix-up and this weird split of the north part of the north-east into these two areas—north and south of the Tyne—will have. As I said, I was chairman of the NewcastleGateshead Initiative, the destination marketing agency for both sides of the river, which made an enormous impact. We put in a bid for European Capital of Culture. It has had a massive impact in the area on both sides of the river. How is the NewcastleGateshead Initiative going to work with a combined authority on one side of the river and the other authority on the other side of the river? It is going to be extremely difficult at times. It will certainly make life much more complicated, as it has been in the past.
The Port of Tyne, on the north bank of the River Tyne, straddles both sides of the river. On the north side is the international passenger terminal, with 30 cruise ships every year, paying visits and bringing an enormous amount of money and economic activity to the area. There are car and other activities going on on the north bank. On the south bank, we have the major dock facilities, with all the cars and the exports going out of there. There are wood chips and coal coming in, a whole pile of scrap being exported, and tea and a whole range of goods being imported on the south bank of the river, where the port will have to deal with South Tyneside. Instead of dealing with one authority for the whole area, the port will have to deal with a combined authority on the north bank and two authorities on the south bank. It will make the best of it, but this illustrates the difficulties when there is such a split of responsibilities and staff.
I mentioned the Team Valley. For 25 or 30 years, I have been developing factories and offices, probably creating more jobs throughout the region than I have ever done in Westminster. You have to work with the economic development departments of different local authorities. If I build a big shed in South Tyneside and I want to let it to somebody, I will have to go to the LEP, to the combined authority and to Gateshead Council. I will have I do not know how many economic development departments to deal with in trying to fill that factory with people working there for a company. If I am going to embark on a project like that, I will have to work with all those bodies to make a success of it. That makes life very complicated.
I do not know what will happen with representations from the area on economic regeneration. I think of MIPIM, the great property event in Cannes in the south of France every year, and more local ones here in London. Are all the authorities going to be sending representatives down? They probably will. But if there were one combined authority for the area, we would have one group of people and one strategy and everybody would know who they were dealing with. Frankly, it would also be much cheaper for the rate payer and taxpayer if that were to be the case.
Although I support what is happening as a first step, it is a tragedy for the area that we do not have a single united authority. I would prefer one for Tyneside and one for Wearside. We already have the successful one on Teesside.
The transport issue illustrates the problems—it will be the same on housing and other areas—where all the bodies have to work together and staff will have to be employed to carry out the work in different bodies. It will be less efficient and less effective and it will not have the impact of one authority for the whole area.
I support the regulations with a heavy heart. I shall be interested to hear from the Minister if any discussions are going on with the authorities south of the river to try to bring them to their senses and join in, so that everyone knows where they stand, with one authority for the whole area.
Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth
My Lords, I thank noble Lords for their contributions and I shall seek to deal with the points that have been raised.
No one on the Government side seeks to suggest that this is an ideal arrangement. We would have much preferred the councils south of the Tyne to participate in the deal. I agree, therefore, with the points that have been made by all speakers—with differing amounts of stress—that this is not the first choice. That said, it takes us forward. Again, most participants would agree with that, with the possible exception of the noble Lord, Lord Beith. I do not think that he was fair in suggesting that I was not keeping a straight face about this—it was probably said tongue in cheek; he is normally very fair—because I have no doubt that this is a good step forward for the region. I emphasise that, given the circumstances, this is the best way forward.
I shall try to deal with some of the points that were made. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that this is not the most desirable arrangement and that anyone who did not know would think that Gateshead and Newcastle were as remote from each other as Sydney and Melbourne, rather than being connected by the Tyne Bridge. It is a mystery to me, but that is where we are.
I do not want to suggest that £600 million over 30 years—although we should not underestimate the amount that will be put into the deal—will solve all the problems of the north-east. That is clearly not the case. Nor is it the sum total of the investment that goes into the north-east. Significant amounts, for example, go into the LEPs and the borders growth deal, of which the noble Lord, Lord Beith, will be aware. The Northern Spire Bridge attracted £82 million of government money and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park is another example. I shall come on to the money earmarked for the Metro system.
We cannot both say “Let us set up this devolution deal” and “What is the Government’s policy on x, y, and z?” It is for the combined authorities and the mayor to decide. It will not have escaped everyone’s attention that, although some metro mayors are Conservative, they are not all Conservative. This one—although I have no doubt it will be a close run thing—may not be a Conservative. I remind the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, that we are giving significant power to the mayor and the combined authority to decide on policy in the areas that we devolve.
The noble Lord mentioned the airport and air passenger duty. That issue will not be devolved. The Government are looking at that to balance all the needs of the different parts of the UK. He is right to refer to the problems of Scotland in competition with Newcastle; similar problems are felt in relation to Bristol and Wales. The Davies review has formed some of the policy in this area.
There is a significant housing element here, but that will not affect, for example, the existing provision for social housing, nor the £2 billion that the Prime Minister recently announced from 2022. There is no doubt that that will be bidded in for.
Adult education is not devolved by this. I agree with the noble Lord about the need for authorities to work closely together, as they do at the moment in many cases. The NHS is also not devolved by this arrangement—of the metro mayors, I think only the Mayor of Greater Manchester has that devolved power. Similarly, justice will not be devolved and so probation will not be directly affected, but I agree with him about the need to work across borders and to adapt arrangements in the light of circumstances. That is a fair point and we will approach it very much on that basis. The noble Lord asked about investment in the Metro system. In Budget 2017, £337 million was announced.
Central Counterparties (Amendment, etc., and Transitional Provision) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
(6 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Bates
That the Grand Committee do consider the Central Counterparties (Amendment, etc., and Transitional Provision) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 and the EEA Passport Rights (Amendment, etc., and Transitional Provisions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018.
Relevant document: 1st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee (Sub-Committee B)
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, HM Treasury is currently undertaking the necessary preparations to ensure that, in the event that no deal is agreed when we leave the EU in March 2019, a functioning legislative and regulatory regime will continue to be in place for financial services. The aim of the work is to maintain continuity at the point of exit as far as possible. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 will transfer existing EU legislation on to the UK statute book at the point of exit. It also gives Ministers powers to amend this legislation to ensure that it will operate properly in a UK context. The Treasury is laying the necessary statutory instruments to complete this work for financial services legislation. This is the third debate in this Committee as part of this programme of work and there will be many more over the coming months.
Last December, the Treasury announced that legislation would be brought forward to establish a temporary permissions regime enabling EEA firms operating in the UK to continue their activities in the UK for a time-limited period after withdrawal. At the same time, it was also announced that a temporary regime would be brought forward in relation to non-UK central counterparties. The two SIs being debated today deliver on these commitments. They are both extremely important to the financial services sector, as they make a key contribution to our aims of maintaining service continuity at the point of exit.
The EEA passport rights regulations deal with references to the EEA financial services passport in UK law and establish a temporary permissions regime to provide for continuity once the UK leaves the EU and passporting no longer operates in the UK. Many will be familiar with the passporting system, which allows firms in an EEA state to offer services in another EEA state on the basis of the authorisation granted by their home state regulator. In a no-deal scenario, the UK would be a third country outside the EU financial services framework and therefore outside the passporting system, meaning that any references to EEA passport rights in UK legislation would become deficient at the point of exit.
The Government therefore need to repeal provisions in the Financial Services and Markets Act 2000 that implement the EEA financial services passport. This would mean that any EEA firms currently operating in the UK via a passport would no longer be able to do so from exit day, just as UK firms would no longer be able to passport into other EEA states. EEA firms would then need to obtain authorisation from the UK’s regulatory authorities if they wished to continue doing business in the UK. In such a scenario, the volume of applications received by the UK regulators would increase significantly as many hundreds, perhaps thousands, of EEA firms submit applications for UK authorisation. This will include applications from large and complex businesses with a substantial UK presence.
The need for a large number of firms to submit these lengthy applications for authorisation before exit day, and have the UK regulators process them in time, therefore poses a substantial cliff-edge risk for firms and regulators. Ultimately, this would affect UK individuals and businesses who rely on services from passporting EEA firms and cause disruption to them. To mitigate those risks, in line with the Government’s commitment on 20 December last year, the Treasury has therefore put forward this legislation to establish a “temporary permissions regime”. This regime would enable EEA firms operating in the UK via a passport to continue their activities in the UK for up to three years after exit day, allowing them to obtain UK authorisation or transfer business to a UK entity as necessary.
To alleviate the potential scenario where some EEA firms cannot be authorised within the three-year period, this SI also gives the Treasury the power to extend the regime. This could be done only where it is “necessary” to do so, and it could be extended by only 12 months at a time. Any extension would need to be based on a robust assessment from the FCA and the PRA regarding the effects of extending and not extending the period. The instrument that would extend the regime would be subject to the negative procedure, which was drawn to the special attention of the House of Lords by Sub-Committee B of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its report published on 18 October. The Treasury judges this choice of procedure appropriate given that the power to extend the regime is conferred by this instrument, which itself is subject to the affirmative procedure. I assure Members that we take parliamentary scrutiny seriously. Although this affirmative instrument introduces a power to make regulations via the negative procedure, the Treasury believes that if a like provision were to be made by an Act of Parliament, it would also be via the negative procedure because the power is so tightly drawn.
The temporary permissions regime would ensure, first, that firms can continue servicing UK businesses and consumers for a temporary period after exit day and, secondly, that firms will have appropriate time to prepare for and submit applications for UK authorisation and complete any necessary restructuring. Finally, the PRA and the FCA can manage the expected applications for UK authorisation from EEA passporting firms that were previously operating in the UK via a passport in a smooth and orderly manner.
This SI is a pragmatic response to a complex issue. It is necessary to minimise disruption to users and providers in the UK financial services sector in a no-deal scenario. I note that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee report acknowledged the importance of these regulations in achieving this objective.
It is with similar considerations for minimising disruption and enabling the UK’s regulators to manage a no-deal scenario in an orderly fashion that I turn to the second of these SIs, which covers central counterparties. Central counterparties are central to the UK and global financial system. They reduce risk and ultimately improve the efficiency and resilience of the system as a whole. They stand between counterparties in financial contracts, becoming the buyer to every seller and the seller to every buyer. They guarantee the terms of trade even if one party defaults on the agreement, reducing counterparty risk. UK firms currently receive services from non-UK central counterparties under the framework set out in the European Market Infrastructure Regulation, known as EMIR.
Under EMIR, non-UK central counterparties are permitted to provide services to UK firms if they are either located in the EU and authorised by their home regulatory authority or located in a third country deemed equivalent by the Commission and recognised by the European Securities and Markets Authority. In a no-deal scenario, when the UK leaves the EU and is no longer within the single market for financial services, those non-UK central counterparties would be unable to provide services to UK firms until they were recognised under the UK’s domestic regime. Such a sudden dislocation in the provision of services would introduce substantial risks to UK firms, many of which rely on non-UK central counterparties to provide clearing services and for mitigating transaction risks. By extension, this could impact on customers of those UK firms. Day one disruption to these services would pose risks to UK firms, as well as stability risks to the broader financial system.
Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate (Con)
My Lords, I would like to intervene briefly to ask my noble friend a couple of questions. Although we all hope for a deal scenario, not a no-deal scenario, nevertheless the practical approach to these matters should perhaps be thought through a little more. My first point is a procedural one relating to the statutory instrument—I refer particularly to the EEA passport rights matter. I spent some years—not many, thank goodness—as a member of the Select Committee on Statutory Instruments in the House of Commons, which was chaired by the late Bob Cryer. He was scrupulous about determining the nature of approaches towards statutory instruments.
I am concerned that we have, effectively, a hybrid—an affirmative resolution, but nevertheless with the prospect of a negative procedure in the event of any extension of time, for registration of the various bodies that may need registration in due course. I find that rather concerning. I would like my noble friend to confirm that we are not getting dangerously close to a ban on negative approaches. Clearly that could happen when the affirmative approach is required but where there is a fee involved for a function which a UK public authority would exercise.
I believe the registration itself must by implication—although it is not revealed in this document—carry with it some financial implications; some fees will have to be paid, although they are not referred to here. If that is the case, would it not be more appropriate for affirmative resolution to be carried through to those extensions as well as to the rest of the item? That is my first point.
My second point is that while the FCA seems capable of handling quite large numbers of registrations for companies under EEA processes, the Prudential Regulation Authority does not. That is a deep concern. So far, the PRA seems able to manage only 10 or 12 applications per year. It has already indicated that it expects that there will be between 100 and 200 applications in the event of a no-deal scenario under these proposals. How does my noble friend believe this can be dealt with, without some form of massive increase in resources or powers, particularly in the hands of the PRA? I would be grateful if he would allow that.
I come to my third and final point. He has talked about the extension of the extension, which requires six months’ notice from either the PRA or the FCA as to the needs arising. To my mind, that is an almost indefinite process; we would see these extensions going on ad infinitum, or certainly for a considerable time. Surely that must be a disadvantage to the entities applying for registration and, indeed, to the position of this country in relation to the financial services in which it is at present so pre-eminent. Can he assist with that? I am grateful to him for his introduction.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction and I concur with him that these are necessary instruments. I declare my interests as in the register and, in particular, as a director of the London Stock Exchange.
Starting with the EEA passport rights regulations, I fully understand the need for temporary or deemed permissions and some flexibility, but in the longer term there are risk and competitiveness issues to consider, so I shall explore further the time periods and how the policy surrounding them might operate. There are two time periods: two years from exit before a formal application for authorisation has to be made, and three years from exit, extendable, within which the relevant regulator makes a determination. Supervisors can require a formal application to be made before the two-year period is up, and presumably that could be exercised for a variety of reasons, such as phasing in for size or complexity of entity or for other risk-based reasons. As the Minister has already mentioned, the two-year period is also potentially useful to EEA firms trying to decide what to do, getting used to UK supervision and having time to organise themselves before having to seek authorisation. It can also be that the two years is simply a waiting room until the regulators have the capacity to carry out the authorisation determinations. How is it envisaged that the two-year period will operate? What is the policy? Is it a phasing mechanism? Will the regulators be controlling that phasing? Is it wholly in the hands of the firms that want their passports replaced? Is it expected that everyone will have two years and then there will be a sudden rush of applications; or, as I asked before, will there be some kind of risk-based assessment about which applications must be brought forward in time?
I now turn to supervision, because the entities in the temporary regime will come under supervision. Can the Minister assure us about the regulator’s capacity to supervise and that significant supervision will take place? If it is envisaged that there may be an unmanageable, or at least long, queue for authorisations because of capacity issues, what is the capacity situation with supervision?
Does two years really mean a fixed two years that cannot be extended? I cannot find anything to say that it could be, and there is nothing in the Explanatory Memorandum. But just in case I might have missed something, will the Minister clarify whether the construct of the regulation stating that “Section 55U” of FiSMA “has effect as if” is a good way of keeping the two years unamendable by any power to make changes that might be embedded in FiSMA or anywhere else? I am still learning the tricks of some of the parliamentary drafting that goes on here, and that is quite a good one to remember.
As to the three-year limit allowed for determination of applications, it can be extended, as has already been said. How necessary that is might in part be determined by the policy over the preceding two years. Is extension available only if the regulators do not have the capacity to conclude within three years? I think that is what the Minister said. Has three years been set assuming a rush of applications at the two-year stage, or will an extension be inevitable if that two-year rush happens?
As the noble Lord, Lord Kirkhope, said, it would clearly not be appropriate for the extension to be used on a rolling basis to allow businesses that might not measure up to full UK authorisation standards to continue to operate in a temporary regime because there had been no determination of their application. That is one of the reasons why I share the view expressed by the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee that there is a good case for an extension requiring the affirmative procedure. I do not agree with the reply from the Treasury Minister John Glen in the correspondence. It is not satisfactory to say that some affirmative permission somehow flows from this SI so that the negative procedure is enough at the time of the extension. That might have been the case if the policy on these time periods had been more clearly elaborated, but it was not. In fact, it seems to be in the hands of the regulators, and if that is the case, then I cannot see how avoiding affirmative procedure is the right way to go. If the Government had set the policy and embedded it in here, that would be different, but this does not include the policy on how it is going to be used.
The Earl of Lindsay (Con)
My Lords, I want to ask my noble friend a couple of questions on the CCP side to clear up any confusion, in my own mind at least. The first refers to the requirement in the Explanatory Memorandum for,
“non-UK CCPs (including CCPs established in the European Union)”,
to apply to the Bank and receive recognition from the Bank in order to continue their activities after Brexit day. The paragraph thereafter refers to the opportunity for temporary recognition, and there it refers only to third country CCPs. I assume that third country CCPs include CCPs established within the European Union, but the slightly different terminology used in those two paragraphs left a doubt in my mind as to whether there was some distinction. If indeed the temporary recognition is not available to CCP establishment within the European Union, what is the reason for that? From the way the memorandum is written, it could conceivably be that the term “third country CCPs” does not apply to European Union-established CCPs.
My second question, which reflects a question raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, is about the length of the temporary recognition timeline. If I understand it correctly, it is set initially at three years and can be extended by 12-month intervals. Is it envisaged that a non-UK CCP can, at the end of three years, still be operating under a temporary recognition regime and can continue thereafter to enjoy 12-month extensions to its—as it were—permitted activities in the United Kingdom?
Lord Tunnicliffe (Lab)
My Lords, I will speak to these two instruments in the order they appear on the Order Paper. I found these two instruments difficult to understand and therefore have consumed considerable intellectual effort in actually understanding them, which has left very little effort in reserve to produce an elegant speech. I would like to thank two officials: Greg Stump, for his tutorial on the CCPs, and Richard Lowe-Lauri, for his tutorials on the passporting. I have to say that the disadvantage of having an excellent tutorial is that all the questions I could have asked have largely been answered, so I will not be making a very long speech.
One of the biggest problems in understanding the instruments is that they, particularly the one on passporting, refer frequently to the Financial Services and Markets Act, which we all know as FiSMA. I do not have available a fully amended version of it to refer to so I want to ask the Minister something; I definitely do not want a reply because he will have to take this back to the ranch. Some years ago, a precedent was established when a 50-page Bill came from the Commons and left the Lords 150 pages long—it involved introducing bail-ins, et cetera—and the Treasury was good enough to provide an electronic copy of FiSMA, fully amended. That made understanding what the revisions of the instruments were doing much easier. I request formally that the Treasury does that again. Clearly the Government have a fully amended copy of FiSMA available on their machines because otherwise the creation of the instruments would be virtually impossible.
The regulations on passporting seem very simple. Basically, they say that an EEA CCP can continue trading in the UK, initially under a temporary recognition before moving into permanent recognition. It is as simple as that. As I understand it, this cannot be done unilaterally because moving CCPs into a full recognition environment will be dependent on memoranda of understanding with the host nations of those CCPs. I would value confirmation of that if it is true. Even in an extreme no-deal scenario, there will still need to be international understandings between nations in that situation.
There is no reciprocity in the instruments, as I read them. We have a situation where we are saying to EU CCPs, “Please carry on as before”, and to UK-based CCPs, “We have secured nothing to allow you to continue your business in Europe”. In the case of CCPs, not continuing on a reciprocal basis will be very difficult for both Europe and ourselves. I believe that there is some discussion in Brussels about there being reciprocity, even in a no-deal situation. I would value any news the Minister may have on the development of such a reciprocal understanding.
In the event of a loss of recognition by a foreign-based CCP, it is not clear what the enforcement mechanism would be. For instance, would the loss of recognition mean that trade contracts would become ultra vires or lead to a very messy situation? The statutory instrument contemplates the loss of recognition but does not set out how that would be managed. I would value anything that the Minister might be able to tell me about what would happen.
Equally, my understanding of the passporting instrument is, once again, that it is extraordinarily simple. It means that EEA firms can carry on trading in the United Kingdom on virtually the exact same terms as they do now. In other words, a no-deal situation has no negative consequences for non-UK firms because the mechanism for a more or less automatic granting of temporary authorisation, and then the transition to permanent authorisation, is set out in this instrument. The converse is not there; as far as I can see, it does nothing for UK firms. The Minister may put me right on this but, as far as I know, there are no effective World Trade Organization rules for services that would allow UK firms to trade in Europe.
Lord Bates
I thank noble Lords for participating in this debate. It has lasted for 46 minutes, of which my introductory remarks were 13 minutes. In the 33 minutes, noble Lords have, by my calculation, managed to generate 24 questions which I will attempt to work my way through. I simply flag that up for colleagues on the Front Bench who are waiting for immediate business.
These are crucial issues. Noble Lords are quite right to raise them and seek further clarification. I commence by saying that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, in this respect: this is not the outcome we are seeking or that we want or desire. It is not the outcome that we expect. We expect to secure a deal that will allow us to continue to have a good trading relationship in financial services with the European Union. We believe that that is in the interest of not only the UK but the EU as well. We are working very hard to secure that.
Lord Tunnicliffe
I want to explore that question a little bit further. Surely the test would be whether this is, in its elements, reciprocal to the privileges that EU firms will have as a result of this instrument.
Lord Bates
I do not want a 25th question; I will keep it at 24 and work my way through to that one. I have some remarks to address that particular point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, asked whether there could be a scenario in which a firm cannot be authorised within three years, which would extend the time limit. The answer is yes. The position is that although the PRA and the FCA have credible working estimates of the number of EEA firms that will apply to them for authorisation, there is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty about this process. That, coupled with the varying degrees of complexity in some of these firms’ applications, means that a power to extend the length of time is necessary. This will be crucial to mitigate the potential scenario in which some EEA firms cannot be authorised within three years from exit day, which could force the regulators to reject authorisation for the firms’ applications. Clearly, we do not seek that outcome.
The noble Baroness also asked whether there is enough flexibility to make equivalence decisions for CCPs. The powers in the EU withdrawal Act limit the fixing of deficiencies to retain EU law when the UK leaves the EU. It does not allow for policy changes beyond this element. The aim is to provide certainty to non-UK CCPs and their UK users during the period immediately following withdrawal from the EU. The criteria for recognition of non-UK CCPs will remain unchanged and will be onshore. This would allow recognised non-EU CCPs to resubmit the application used for EU recognition.
The noble Baroness then asked about the process for the joint assessment by the regulators. As set out in the statutory instrument, the PRA and the FCA would need to submit to the Treasury a joint assessment outlining the effect of extending or not extending the time period on the regime, on firms in general, on the UK financial system and on the ability of the regulators to discharge their functions in a way that advances their statutory objectives. That assessment would need to be submitted to Her Majesty’s Treasury no later than six months before the end of the regime. The Treasury would then make regulations to extend the duration of the regime only if it considers them necessary on the basis of the assessment.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked what protections would be available following exit day to UK customers who currently have access to the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. No one should lose FSCS protection as a result of this SI. If a UK customer is currently protected by the FSCS, they will be protected as long as the firm enters the temporary permissions regime.
The noble Lord also asked about the consequences for UK customers if a firm is denied authorisation. Any firms in the temporary permissions regime that are denied full UK authorisation by the UK regulators will lose their temporary permissions. Further legislation will be laid before Parliament at a later date to enable such firms to wind down their UK-regulated activities in an orderly manner. This legislation will ensure that the existing contractual obligations of these firms with UK customers can continue to be met. UK customers would no longer be able to enter into new contracts with these firms unless the firms had successfully reapplied for authorisation from UK regulators.
The noble Lord then asked what a firm being denied authorisation says about the passport regime and whether it suggests that it is not equitable, let alone equivalent. The EEA passport regime system is underpinned by the co-operation of EEA member states’ competent authorities. Each member state’s competent authorities supervise the activities of firms under its jurisdiction, even if those activities take place elsewhere in the EU. Once we leave the EU, we cannot rely on this co-operation continuing. We are therefore making these preparations.
Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted
Regulation 12 states:
“A central counterparty established in a third country”,
that,
“intends to provide clearing services … on and after exit day”,
has to make an application and that the application “must” be submitted before exit day. I do not think that is quite what the Minister said. I realise that time is short now, and there are quite a few things that the Minister has had to gloss over. I hope he will review what I have said, and I would welcome a written response.
Lord Bates
We may have misunderstood the point that the noble Baroness was making. I am very happy to undertake to write to her on that specific point and copy it to members of the Committee.
The noble Baroness asked why a CCP might not have been recognised within the initial period. While the Bank of England has credible working estimates of the number of CCPs that will apply to it for recognition, there is an unavoidable degree of uncertainty about this.
My noble friend Lord Lindsay asked whether third-country CCPs includes EU CCPs. EU CCPs will be treated as third-country CCPs post-exit. EU CCPs and third-country CCPs will be eligible for the temporary recognition regime if they were permitted to operate prior to 29 March 2019.
My noble friend Lord Kirkhope asked whether the regime could be extended continually each year. It is in everyone’s interest for firms to transition from the current system of EEA passporting rights to full UK authorisation as quickly and efficiently as possible. There would be no circumstances in which it would be desirable for the regulators or the Treasury to extend the length of the regime on a continuous basis. He also asked whether the negative procedure is an appropriate instrument. I respect the work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, whose report we have before us today. I addressed this in my opening remarks. We believe that the choice of procedure is appropriate, given the overall powers being scrutinised now through this affirmative instrument. The negative procedure would just be an extension of that. The power to extend the time period is not a provision which relates to fees and so would not, if made alone, attract the affirmative procedure under Section 8 of the Act, to which my noble friend referred. He also spoke about the process for registration with the PRA and its ability to deal with the volume of applications. I reiterate what I said to the noble Baroness, Lady Bowles: I am confident that the PRA and the FCA are making adequate preparations to deal with the scale of the challenge which they face, but it is a significant challenge.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, asked whether the regulators may ask firms to apply for authorisation sooner than the two-year deadline set out in the statutory instruments if they so choose. The EEA Passport Rights (Amendment, etc., and Transitional Provision) (EU Exit) Regulations will give regulators the ability to direct firms to make an application for authorisation during a specified period within two years from exit day if they have not already applied for authorisation. This will help regulators manage the flow of applications in a smooth and orderly manner. I draw the Committee’s attention to the FCA’s recent consultation paper published on 8 October, in which it set out its intention to allocate each firm a three-month landing slot within which that firm will need to submit its application for UK authorisation. It plans to issue a direction shortly after exit day setting out which firms have been allocated to which landing slot.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, asked how the two-year application period will operate. I dealt with that earlier but I did not cover one specific point: the two-year deadline for applications to be received cannot be extended.
The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, asked whether this is a one-sided arrangement and whether there will be any reciprocation. The Government are only able to take legislative action in relation to EEA firms’ passport rights to the UK; they cannot through unilateral action influence the status of UK firms. That is why we are seeking to agree a deep and special partnership with the EU, as well as an implementation period, so that important preparations can take place in an orderly manner.
The noble Lord asked what the impact on the financial services sector would be if there is a no-deal exit. Reaching a deal is in the mutual interests of both sides. We are focusing on the negotiation of the right future partnership based on a proposal published in the White Paper on 12 July. That White Paper outlined the Government’s position on financial services and Brexit. We propose a framework for financial services that will provide stability for the EU-UK ecosystem, preserving mutually beneficial cross-border business models and economic integration for the benefit of businesses and consumers in the UK and the EU.
The noble Lord asked what it says about the regime if a firm is denied authorisation. Once we leave the EU we cannot rely on this co-operation continuing and therefore we are making these preparations. It is important that these regulations go ahead so that consumers in this country have confidence in the financial services put forward here.
I have addressed the Financial Services Compensation scheme and I will now deal with one or two points relating to central counterparties. The noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, made a point on the memorandum of understanding with the host state. Yes, there are a number of necessary steps for a non-UK CCP to be recognised in the UK. These include that the Treasury must determine that the relevant third country’s regulatory and supervisory framework is equivalent to EMIR; the bank must agree supervisory co-operation agreements or memorandums of understanding with relevant competent authorities of the CCP applicant; and the non-UK CCP’s application for recognition to be assessed by the bank must include information on its financial resources, internal procedures and various other relevant information.
The noble Lord asked what would happen if the central counterparty is not recognised. If a non-UK CCP were to continue to provide clearing services to UK firms without recognition, it would be in breach of a general prohibition under the Financial Services and Markets Act, which prohibits anyone carrying out a regulated activity unless they are authorised or exempt. The CCP would be guilty of an offence and subject to a fine or imprisonment. However, further legislation will be laid at a later date to enable such firms to wind down their activities in an orderly manner by being treated as being recognised for a short period.
I hope that has addressed many of the questions.
Lord Tunnicliffe
In the unlikely event that the Minister has missed anything, will he review his answer and, if he has missed the odd point, send a letter covering it?
Lord Bates
I am happy to give an undertaking to do that. We are in uncharted territory here—we have not been through this process before. The Economic Secretary to the Treasury, John Glen, is being incredibly diligent in engaging with the regulators on a regular basis and being guided through this process. That is why the announcement was made in December. We will continue to keep this under review. The noble Baroness, Lady Bowles, made a suggestion about how we might keep the House informed of developments and made particular reference to perhaps involving the Select Committees. If I may, I will take that back to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury because, in some of these areas, once we know the lay of the land—we hope it will not come to that but if it does—then we will clearly need to review these provisions. I am happy to take that suggestion back and include it in my answer to the noble Lord, Lord Tunnicliffe, which I will copy to my noble friends Lord Lindsay and Lord Kirkhope.
Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) Order 2018
(6 years ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Henley
That the Grand Committee do consider the Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) Order 2018.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, this order was laid before the House on 19 July of this year and I beg to move that it be approved. The Government place great importance on supporting low-income families and ensuring that their energy bills are as low as possible. To that end, we continue to provide direct financial support to vulnerable households through the warm home discount scheme, while the energy price cap will protect around 11 million energy customers who have been stuck on poor value deals. Our election manifesto restated our commitment to tackling fuel poverty by increasing the energy efficiency of homes and the energy company obligation, or ECO, is the key policy in meeting those commitments.
Under ECO, energy suppliers in Great Britain are regulated to reduce domestic energy bills by installing energy efficiency measures. Since its start in 2013, more than 2.4 million measures have been installed in around 1.9 million homes. In 2015, the Government stated their intention to reform ECO to provide more help to those who need it most. The ECO order that we are debating completes that reform and will result in the whole scheme being focused on low-income and vulnerable households until March 2022. We will continue to fund the scheme at £640 million per annum until 2022, and in the Clean Growth Strategy we committed to funding domestic energy efficiency at least at that level until 2028. The Government consulted on proposals for the new scheme in spring and received 239 responses. Most responses were broadly supportive.
Currently, energy suppliers become obliged to act under ECO when they have 250,000 customer accounts. These thresholds were set in 2013, when the “Big Six” energy companies dominated the market. There are now more than 70 domestic suppliers in the market and we consider it appropriate that more are covered. Therefore from April 2019, suppliers with 200,000 customer accounts will be covered, falling to 150,000 from April 2020. We have expanded the eligibility criteria of the scheme so that households on certain disability benefits, their Ministry of Defence equivalents and low-income working households in receipt of child benefit are newly eligible for support. This increases the number of households eligible for support from 4.7 million under the affordable warmth part of the previous scheme to 6.6 million households under the new scheme. We believe this strikes the right balance between supporting those households most in need and keeping delivery costs low. We have also increased the proportion that can be delivered under the local authority flexible eligibility scheme from 10% to 25%. This allows local authorities to refer households for help, including people with health conditions exacerbated by cold homes.
To support the industrial strategy and the clean growth challenge, suppliers will be able to deliver up to 10% of their obligation using measures not previously supported under ECO. While encouraging a broader mix of measures, we will continue to maintain safety and installation standards. The scheme allows the equivalent of 35,000 broken heating systems to be replaced each year so that low-income households can receive support, should their heating system be beyond repair. While other forms of energy efficiency may have greater long-term benefits, a broken boiler can be the immediate crisis point for a struggling family.
Lord Teverson (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his very detailed explanation of what this secondary legislation does, although I have a few questions. This is an example of where we pretend we are not taxing consumers. As this is not public expenditure, we have to put it through energy companies, which are in the private sector. They decide and spend a lot of time working out who should get these things when it could all be done a lot more simply if we did not go through this public expenditure pretence. When I go through ECO, it always seems to me that it would be so much better if it was administered by local authorities. They know households with problems and have all sorts of obligations towards private renters, who are a real problem in terms of energy efficiency and getting landlords to implement these sorts of schemes. It would be so much easier if we were honest with ourselves. This is a form of taxation, it is public expenditure, and we should just sort it out, rather than go through all the bureaucratic inefficiency that we have.
Having said that, I welcome the scheme very much in terms of moving this agenda forward. The present scheme, as I understand it, ran out at the end of September. We now have this instrument in front of us. I do not know how long it will take to get the thing started. I understand that there are some roll-over functions, and I welcome that, but so often with this sort of funding—even more so with European funding—there is always a risk that the companies and installers involved in this have a cash-flow crisis because we stop and start these programmes. I may be worrying unnecessarily, but I would be interested to understand how that gap is coped with and when the scheme is expected to really take off.
I noted with some amusement paragraph 7.20 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which said:
“There is a high level of interest in the scheme from energy suppliers who deliver the scheme, fuel poverty groups and installers, and some interest in the scheme from the public”.
That is extremely honest of the instrument, but I am sure we would all agree that it would be good if the public, who are affected by this, were motivated to push to get the scheme going. From that evidence, there may be a real need for some sort of public information scheme. I would be interested to hear from the Minister how that will be solved.
I find some of this order a little bit difficult to follow. Clearly there is an emphasis on social housing, which I welcome. Given the budget of the ECO—it is not insubstantial but it is limited—I also welcome that it is going on areas of fuel poverty rather than just carbon savings. No one is more committed to climate change issues than me but it is right to concentrate expenditure on fuel poverty.
What do we do about the rest of the housing stock that is not covered by this? The Minister mentioned that there is still a real gap in the Clean Growth Strategy in dealing with household efficiency in the rest of the market. I notice that the strategy states that it will:
“Support around £3.6 billion of investment to upgrade around a million homes”.
The programme covers 900,000 homes with an average spend of £640 million per calendar year. That works out at only about £2 billion for the time that is left until the end of March 2022. I would be interested to see what happened to the other £1.6 billion between the strategy and this paper.
On the private sector side, how do we check that landlords are meeting their legal obligations? How do we check that the measures work? I am sure that there is already a process for this but the instrument mentions the “monitored measure” option. I do not want to go into great detail but that option gives bonuses to suppliers or accounts in additional savings or help.
From the evidence, we all know that fuel poverty families getting better insulation does not tend to reduce their energy spend. Quite understandably, it just makes sure that the family is warmer than it was before, so I do not understand how we measure the effect of this given that people will probably use more energy to keep warmer instead of being cold. Are the Government confident about how these schemes are audited?
I welcome the fact that the scheme will continue beyond this until 2028, as in the Clean Growth Strategy, and I welcome the concentration on fuel poverty. Again, following the unfortunate relative failure of the Green Deal during the coalition Government, we absolutely need a national scheme to find a way to upgrade the rest of the UK’s housing stock.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I bow to the superior knowledge of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. I have a couple of questions. I want to press my noble friend, if I may.
At the outset, I declare my interest in the register as a vice-president of National Energy Action. I have long taken a close interest in the Warm Front programme. Like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, I welcome the continuation of the scheme. Obviously, it is a matter of record and ongoing regret that around 4 million households are still in fuel poverty. Any scheme that can be seen to reduce that is very welcome. How does the scheme compliment what is already happening? What more could potentially happen through building regulations? A more joined-up approach to warm homes would be very welcome indeed.
Being half Danish, I am particularly interested that we currently export residual household waste from the city of York and north Yorkshire to Holland at a cost to the local taxpayer. However, at the end of the day, the benefit is to Dutch residents, because the waste is burned and energy from waste is recovered in the form of district heating. My aunt in Denmark gets the benefit of that—although not from our residual waste in north Yorkshire—through cheaper electricity, hot water and heating. I am very interested to know the potential number of new district housing connections that could be made through the continued scheme before us this afternoon. Does my noble friend have a projection of that? What plans do the Government have to retrofit? There is a firm in Denmark that has changed its name to Ørsted, but I prefer the old name of DONG—the Danish Oil and Natural Gas company—which is easy to remember. It claims it could retrofit properties here in London. Is that something that the department has considered?
My last question is about the figure in the order before us today for potential savings. Is the overall home-heating cost reduction target of £8.2 billion realistic? How do the Government plan to achieve that?
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his introduction to the order before the Committee today. As he explained, it introduces a completely new energy efficiency programme—ECO3—focused essentially on those in fuel poverty but with elements of ECO2 and 2t. Indeed, the first ECO order, made in January 2013, was itself a successor to previous government energy efficiency schemes such as Warm Front, CERT and CESP. These previous schemes were more centrally funded, whereas ECO is an obligation on energy companies to fund and finance energy efficiency measures using their own resources and without additional government support. In that regard, austerity is still continuing.
The order extends to 2028, which, as I mentioned last week, is only four years short of 2032, the end period for the fifth carbon budget. We note that the Government are at risk of failing to meet that. The new ECO3 measure, as suggested, replaces the wider remit of former ECO schemes, which were based on a carbon-saving metric and encompassed a number of programmes relating to energy efficiency for carbon-saving purposes, where only a minority of the overall funding was directed specifically towards people in fuel poverty. The main programme therefore restricts measures to those households in band E, F and G properties. For these reasons, I cannot fully endorse the order before the Committee today. I also detected a slightly less than encouraging response from the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and perhaps some criticism.
The order is a continuation, reducing and restricting policies that fail to address the wider issue of energy efficiency on a more comprehensive basis. Nevertheless, it does contain some good measures in response to previous Labour criticisms. The Government should be commended for reducing the obligation threshold for suppliers from 250,000 to 150,000 accounts over time, and for looking at the problems encountered by customers when switching from a company above the threshold to a smaller company operating below the accounts threshold.
Also to be welcomed is the Government’s response to extending the 25% of the suppliers’ obligation to be met by local authority flexible eligibility. It is, in effect, a nominations scheme in which local authorities can participate, whereby area-based activity can be undertaken to improve similar properties in a location. Another important aspect of this measure is the focus on innovation and the benefits it can bring—for example, Q-Bot, which undertakes the laying of insulation in inaccessible places.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I welcome the generally positive tone of the noble Lord and my noble friend Lady McIntosh, both of whom recognised that this order is a genuine reform of the ECO system. As I made clear in my opening remarks, it is designed to target it far better at those who are less well off and those who find it harder to adapt their houses to make them more energy efficient. It has achieved a great deal in the past and will continue to achieve a great deal.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, takes a less positive approach to this and accused us of a lack of ambition, given that I talked about increasing very dramatically the number of people that we intend to try to reach, and recommended generally spending more taxpayers’ money in a rather haphazard manner. I point out to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, that technology will encourage those who can afford it to make changes that will lead to a reduction in the use of energy. One only has to look at, for example, the reduction in the cost of things such as LED lights over the past few years, which has made it far easier for people to change to those lights and therefore decrease their use of energy. Similarly, it is right that those who can afford it should pay for appropriate insulation as is necessary, as they will see the benefit in a reduction in their fuel bills and the country and society as a whole will see a benefit in the reduction in carbon use. These measures are designed to encourage those who find it less easy to afford to make those changes.
Lord Teverson
As the Minister knows, in the UK, particularly in commercial buildings and increasingly in private buildings, we have a problem that landlords and tenants have very different goals in this area, so unfortunately it does not always work out that way. However, I do not want to interrupt him further.
Lord Henley
I totally agree that landlords and tenants have different views on this. Landlords can benefit from these measures. If the noble Lord would like, I will write to him in greater detail on that point. We would also like to see landlords with old houses make the investment that is right in those houses where they can do so.
I shall deal with some of the more detailed questions that were put to me, particularly by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lady McIntosh. I hope that in the process I will also deal with some of the queries of the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester.
My noble friend talked about energy from waste and the possible advantages that the Danes are getting from us exporting some waste. My noble friend will remember that when I served in Defra I had an interest in waste. She will also know that there are sometimes difficulties in getting planning consent for energy from waste plants. I will write to her in greater detail on that, as it goes slightly beyond my brief at the moment. I also note that she mentioned the firm DONG in Denmark—I think it has now changed its name to something else that I cannot pronounce: Ørsted. I have recently seen some of its windmills off Barrow, which is now the largest wind farm in Europe, providing, I think, a very large increase in renewables from that source.
I agree with what my noble friend said about more homes being retrofitted. The new innovation routes could allow multiple measures to be installed in homes. That approach would need to be sponsored by us to demonstrate that it could be cost-effective. That information would need to be provided to Ofgem, the scheme administrator, to ensure that it met the relevant standards. If I can give her some further detail on that and on potential figures for those new district heating connections, I will write to her in due course.
The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, was concerned about the end of the old scheme and the start of the new. I assure him that early delivery means that the measures which meet the new scheme’s rules, and which are delivered before Parliament agrees these regulations, will count towards the supplier’s obligations. We will have a seamless transformation of these matters. I also assure the noble Lord that there will be the appropriate audit he seeks. Ofgem requires measures to be installed to specific standards and 5% of the measures are checked by Ofgem under the scheme’s technical monitoring checks. I hope that 5% will be sufficient for the noble Lord to consider that it provides the appropriate audit and checks.
The noble Lord asked about the housing stock that is not covered by the ECO scheme. We are reviewing the fuel poverty strategy and will make an assessment of how best to meet the fuel poverty targets. As I made clear, the clean growth strategy has set aspirations to decarbonise all sectors of the UK economy. The buildings mission aims to at least halve the energy use of new buildings by 2030, as well as halving the cost of renovating existing buildings to a standard similar to new buildings. I repeat that new buildings are covered by current building regulations, and therefore any new buildings will be appropriately insulated. However, we want to get old buildings up to the same standard as new buildings while increasing quality and safety.
The noble Lord had other queries. He quoted from paragraph 7.20 that there was some interest from the public and said that he wished to see more. We would all like to see more interest from the public—that is true of a great many schemes throughout government, way beyond this one. I assure the noble Lord that a number of members of the public responded to the consultation. They obviously had an interest in energy issues, energy efficiency and fuel poverty. The majority of the responses were supportive of consultation, as I set out in my opening remarks. I hope that as a result of this debate—should people be taking much interest in it—and other measures, others throughout the country will take an interest in this, and that those firms involved in the scheme will do their bit to contact the public and let them know what is available, particularly for those with low-cost housing.
As I said, I welcome the generally positive tone taken by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend. I hope that in due course the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, will come round to that view and accept that this will go a long way towards meeting the problems of fuel poverty, will help to decarbonise and will help to meet the targets that we hope to—and will—meet by 2030 and beyond. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Electricity and Gas (Powers to Make Subordinate Legislation (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
(6 years ago)
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Lord Henley
That the Committee do consider the Electricity and Gas (Powers to Make Subordinate Legislation) (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Henley) (Con)
My Lords, the regulations were laid before the House on 5 September. As we approach EU exit, my department is working to ensure that our energy legislation continues to function effectively after exit day. In recent years the EU has introduced through the third energy package a suite of legislation governing the energy systems of member states. Much of this is technical legislation, known as European network codes and guidelines which apply to energy operators and regulators.
To maximise continuity, the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 will incorporate the majority of this legislation into domestic law when we leave the EU. This instrument is the first of a package of energy-focused regulations amending this retained EU law to ensure that the UK’s energy legislation and markets work effectively after exit. This instrument does so in two ways: first, by ensuring that directly applicable EU law concerning electricity and gas will be effectively incorporated into domestic law; secondly, by enabling the UK Government and the Northern Ireland Executive to amend elements of this retained EU law in a simple and proportionate way, ensuring that our energy legislation can keep up with the rapid pace of technological advances and market developments. To do so, this instrument will transfer legislative functions conferred by four EU regulations from the European Commission to the UK Government and Northern Ireland Executive under the powers of Section 8 of the withdrawal Act.
The first power being transferred by this instrument is a limited ability to create European network codes. The withdrawal Act will incorporate all direct EU legislation so far as is operative immediately before exit day. This means that provisions in force on exit day but applying from a later date will not be incorporated. This is the case for several European network codes. Without government action, this could create gaps in the energy regulatory framework, leading to uncertainty and detriment to industry, which has adapted rules and practices to comply with the network codes. It is therefore important that the UK can incorporate these missing provisions promptly through legislation. This is accomplished by Part 2 of the instrument, which will revoke the European Commission’s power to make new codes and instead substitute limited powers for the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy to make regulations bringing into domestic law provisions corresponding to the codes or parts of codes not captured by the withdrawal Act. These statutory instruments will themselves be subject to the affirmative procedure to ensure effective parliamentary scrutiny.
Secondly, this instrument will enable amendments to network codes by transferring powers currently held by the European Commission to the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy. These powers would be exercised using subsequent affirmative statutory instruments.
Thirdly, as well as powers relating to network codes, this instrument will transfer to the Secretary of State and the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy powers to amend definitions and reporting requirements under the EU regulation on wholesale energy market integrity and transparency, known as REMIT. REMIT prohibits insider trading and market manipulation in wholesale energy markets and provides energy regulators with valuable tools to fight these crimes. The power to amend definitions is limited and may be used only to ensure coherence with other relevant financial services and energy legislation, or to take into account developments in wholesale energy markets.
The fourth power under this instrument concerns the security of gas supply regulation, which creates common standards and indicators to measure threats to gas security and defines how much gas is needed to maintain security of supply. The regulation contains templates for risk assessments, preventive action plans and emergency plans to be carried out by the Government. Further, the regulation contains powers for the European Commission to amend these templates using delegated acts. This instrument transfers these to the Secretary of State. Powers to amend the security of gas supply regulation and REMIT would be exercised through subsequent negative statutory instruments. This is appropriate as these powers permit only narrow amendments to very limited provisions of these regulations.
This instrument extends to Northern Ireland. As energy is a devolved matter, this instrument transfers powers variously to the Secretary of State and to the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, respecting the devolution settlement. In addition, my department has consulted with the Northern Ireland Department for the Economy throughout. While this instrument permits the Secretary of State to exercise its powers in respect of Northern Ireland, this would occur only in respect of a reserved area such as international relations, or when the Department for the Economy determines that it is unable to act in the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers. Each time this occurs, it would be accompanied by a ministerial Statement explaining why it was necessary.
In conclusion, the regulations are a sensible and necessary use of the powers of the withdrawal Act that will maximise continuity in our energy regulations as we leave the EU. I commend the regulations to the House.
Lord Teverson (LD)
It is left to me to start this rather technical discussion. On this occasion, I will stick to a rather strategic level, if the Minister does not mind. First, it has been the Government’s intention in our EU negotiations to remain in the single energy market, which I hugely welcome. I would be interested to understand from the Minister whether there has been any progress on that; whether that might appear in the political declaration of our future relationship in the withdrawal agreement; whether the Government are still keen to do that; and, if we are successful despite our red lines and the Government’s general intention to come out of the single market, whether the instruments would be necessary if we remain in the EU internal energy market.
Moving on from that, we have interconnectors. On codes and other technical matters, once we leave, if we are not part of the internal energy market, we will no longer have access to discussions on or information around codes used by that market. I would be interested to understand what effect that will have on interconnectors between us and the European Union at that time. Certainly the Select Committee that I chair was very concerned about the inefficiencies in trading—not so much around interruption of supply but around increases in energy prices due to inefficiencies because of the relationship not being as smooth as it was before—that might come about from that.
I want to ask a fundamental question. As the Minister mentioned, the secondary legislation concerns Northern Ireland as well. As he knows, the island of Ireland has a completely integrated energy market—a so-called single energy market. What preparations have the Government made, particularly in the case of no deal, so that this energy market for electricity and gas can continue to function, with powers coming back to the UK and such disintegration—that is, no longer being completely under the purview of the internal energy market? Will that single energy market in Ireland still work despite the fact that the network codes will change? This system seems fundamental to Northern Ireland’s energy needs, let alone those of the Republic.
Lord Grantchester (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the regulations—the first of many to come concerning the UK’s exit from the EU. The Committee will consider many technical energy matters. It will not be entirely simple to identify the crucial elements and their implications. However, I will echo the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, on the more challenging aspects of the regulations on wider-ranging topics, such as the internal energy market and the position of the island of Ireland.
On the face of it, the instrument seems simple enough. It moves powers held by the European Commission to a domestic authority, giving the Secretary of State power to alter them—in this case, referring to European network codes and guidelines—and adopt the amendments overall as “retained direct EU legislation”. Later amendments that will not come into force by 29 March 2019 will not be regarded as retained direct EU legislation. They will be resolved, perhaps even revoked, by exit day under separate secondary legislation, along with elements of retained EU law where the Secretary of State considers that the EU instruments retained in law will not be capable of operating in isolation from the rest of the EU instrument. Powers are also taken in the SI to amend the provisions of REMIT, an EU regulation concerning wholesale market integration and transparency, to apply internally to the UK and not to have to report to EU authorities.
Some amendments will be made by affirmative procedure and some negative. As your Lordships’ Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee concluded, all is so clear, so far. Perhaps the Minister can confirm first whether all these amending instruments will be amending only: that is, not enabling new powers through secondary legislation. That does not seem to have been commented on.
More importantly, this question brings up the whole issue of the internal energy market. Unlike Euratom and other bodies established by treaty, the IEM is merely a collection of agreements among member states on how the European energy market is to be conducted. It has been stated many times that it would be advantageous for membership of the IEM to be retained, or a close association with it. How far could any statement go when it is not really a distinct entity? This order would be regarded as a contingent action, to be effected and commenced if no suitable alternative arrangement for energy trading through interconnectors can be put into place—rather like the contingent nature of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, now an Act, as the Minister will remember. Can the Minister clarify whether this is the Government’s intention or whether, as the memorandum seems to suggest, the order will apply regardless of any deal and be part of a signal to break with the IEM under all scenarios? Will he also clarify the Government’s general intention toward the internal energy market?
Very pertinent in this respect is the position regarding Northern Ireland. Ireland, north and south of the border, already operates under an all-Ireland grid. Given the possibility that Northern Ireland will not operate its own grid requirements at Brexit, is it intended to break up the Ireland grid? While paragraphs 7.12 and 7.13 of the Explanatory Memorandum deal with the position as now, when there is not a functioning Executive, is it intended that Northern Ireland will function on different codes from the rest of Ireland at Brexit? Can the Minister explain what is intended and how it will work on a United Kingdom basis with Northern Ireland and the Irish grid?
While an effective system must be in place upon Brexit, does this order—while enabling continuity for UK authorities—close the door on options for a better working of the energy system after Brexit through close association with the internal energy market? Can the Minister provide the Committee with any further clarity? If any of his remarks can assure the Committee on this point, I can confirm the order today.
Lord Henley
My Lords, I am grateful to both noble Lords for their comments. As the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, rightly said, this is possibly the first of many statutory instruments that will come before the House, possibly as negative orders. He will remember that, if I have this right, I wrote to him and to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson—or if I did not, I copied a letter that my right honourable friend Claire Perry sent to colleagues in another place—about these orders back in August of this year. I will double check whether I did. All I know is that she wrote on 14 August; I thought that I had copied that letter but if not, I will make sure that I have.
The reason why I mentioned it is that I have given a commitment to write to noble Lords as other orders come forward. As I made clear in my introductory remarks, these orders merely give certain powers to the Secretary of State to make powers that previously existed with the EU. Obviously, those powers are to make further orders that will come forward. It is, one might say, quite a complicated landscape and—both noble Lords will have heard the discussions on earlier orders—we might have found it easier and speedier if I had written to them in advance. I thought that I had.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Newlove) (Con)
My Lords, the Committee needs to adjourn for five minutes to make an adjustment to the furniture before the final debate.
Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018
(6 years ago)
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Baroness Buscombe
That the Grand Committee do consider the Child Support (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2018.
Relevant document: 41st Report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Baroness Buscombe) (Con)
My Lords, I begin by thanking noble Lords for bearing with me as I take these regulations through from a seated position. I want to say a particular thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, for giving me early notice of her response to the regulations, for which I am extremely grateful. The regulations were laid before both Houses on 12 September 2018. They enable the Government to make amendments to child maintenance legislation to deliver the new child maintenance compliance and arrears strategy. Let me give the Committee some context and background to the regulations.
The Government introduced a reformed child maintenance scheme in 2012. The reformed scheme provides stronger incentives for parents to work together following separation and, where possible, to make a family-based arrangement for maintenance, avoiding state intervention altogether. The Child Maintenance Service is there for families unable to make a private arrangement. It delivers a simpler scheme, avoiding the problems which beset the previous statutory child maintenance schemes. These draft regulations will strengthen the statutory scheme and introduce measures to prevent parents artificially minimising their child maintenance liability. They will also introduce new collection measures, close loopholes and broaden the sanctions that we can bring against the small number of parents who persistently fail to meet their obligations to their children.
Now that the majority of cases with ongoing maintenance have been closed on the CSA schemes, the Government want to draw a line under the regrettable legacy of the CSA and end the years of uncertainty that families who have historic CSA cases have experienced. For many years, these cases have been held in limbo. The debts outstanding are often small, and in some cases, when asked, parents have moved on with their lives and are not interested in pursuing the debt. These regulations will give parents in certain circumstances a final chance to tell the Government that they still want to consider taking action to collect their debt where it is likely to be possible at reasonable cost to the taxpayer. This will enable these cases to be closed finally in the next few years.
A small number of parents are currently able to lower their child maintenance liabilities artificially, or avoid them altogether, by drawing an undeclared income from assets. Whether this is via loans against the value of bullion or through the acquisition of virtual currency, the cultivation of a cash-poor but asset-rich lifestyle is a rare but growing method of evading child maintenance responsibilities. These regulations introduce new powers to address this problem. Where a client believes their ex-partner possesses the relevant assets, the Child Maintenance Service will investigate, escalating to its financial investigations unit if appropriate. If possession of a relevant asset is confirmed, and the value exceeds £31,250, a notional income will be calculated at 8% of the asset’s total value. This will be added to the total income used to calculate the maintenance due. It is recognised that assets can be acquired for legitimate reasons, which is why this power will be used in only a very small number of cases. The draft regulations protect assets in certain circumstances, including where the asset is used for business purposes or is the primary home of the parent or a child.
It has become evident that some parents are able to place all their funds in joint or unlimited partnership accounts, rendering them inaccessible to our current powers. These regulations extend the Government’s powers to enable the Child Maintenance Service to use regular and lump sum deduction orders in relation to joint and unlimited partnership bank accounts and to use lump sum deduction orders in relation to sole trader accounts. The introduction of this new power will mean that an additional £350,000 of maintenance per year may be collected for children.
To protect the rights of other joint account holders, a number of safeguards have been put in place to prevent deductions being taken from the other joint account holder’s funds. Joint or unlimited partnership accounts will be targeted only where there are insufficient funds in the parent’s solely held accounts. Before action is taken, the last six months’ account statements will be checked to establish the ownership of the funds. In a small number of cases where, despite investigation, it is not possible to establish how much of the funds within the account belong to the parent—for example, because no evidence is furnished as to ownership—a pro-rata approach will be adopted. This will assume that the parent’s share of the funds is equal to that of the other account holders. All account holders will be notified before a deduction order is made in respect of a joint account and given the opportunity to make representations in relation to the funds targeted. The standard representation periods will be 14 days for regular deduction orders and 28 days for lump sum deduction orders. All account holders will also have appeal rights. Further safeguards are in place to ensure businesses have sufficient cash flow to continue to trade. A deduction will not be taken if it would reduce the account balance below a reasonable amount; we suggest, for example, £2,000. There is also a requirement for the Government to review these provisions every five years.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister, who, in adversity, has done a splendid job in explaining these regulations. I cannot help but believe that somewhere on the premises there must be a parliamentary sedan chair, which I happily will take one end of until she is better, and I hope that that happens soon.
I am a member of the scrutiny committee, and its report is part of the discussion this evening. It was interesting scoping the report, and we got some really compelling evidence from both sides of the argument, from non-resident parents as well as parents with care. My track record on all this stuff is longer than I care to admit. I was around in 1991 when the original legislation was brought forward and produced the 1993 scheme. The economic environment within which these schemes were started is now different. In the past, I have always taken a Gingerbread approach to this. In 1991 and 2003, the thing that really exercised me was that there were people acting in bad faith as non-resident parents with considerable amounts of money, and, because of the bad blood between the parents, they were taking it out on the children. That is what set my measuring stick for working out how this happens. It is very difficult for the state to go behind the front door of any family and interfere in these circumstances, and we learned that the hard way. It is true to say that under both Governments—and I could not help either from the place I sat in in the House of Commons or in the House of Lords—the two legacy schemes have been really difficult for families. Misery is not too important a word because they exacerbated the relationship between the separated parents.
None of this is easy, and my heart goes out to the professionals who have been running these schemes. They have been dogged by IT difficulties, and the collection process has struggled. The honest truth is that the elements in these regulations, which largely I support, should have been carried out years ago. I was part of the 2008 Act that gave passport legislation authority to the department, and now in 2018 we are actually implementing some of that. In parentheses, there is an interesting question about why that is not happening in Northern Ireland. It may be that there are special provisions for Northern Ireland at the current political moment, for all I know, but I would be pleased to know why it is an exception, because I cannot think of any other reason than the fact that it is getting special treatment.
When the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee looked at this statutory instrument, it looked at the fact that there is still only a 57% payment compliance rate. My colleagues on the committee, who have not been studying this legislation as long as I have, found it very hard to understand why a scheme of this duration was still getting only 57% payment compliance, and that is still an issue for me as well.
Concerns were expressed about the way in which assets are still being protected from actions in bad faith because of the difficulties of valuation. I understand that with physical assets such as works of art it is difficult to know how much they are worth, who owns them and so on, but we heard evidence in the committee’s investigation of this SI which demonstrated that yachts are being bought which, even under these regulations, cannot be attached to the liability due by the non-resident parent. That is too complacent. There must be some way of obtaining an independent valuation of an asset’s worth. I support the notional wealth which the regulations attach to assets but they do not go far enough, certainly in relation to some of the physical assets that the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee heard about in evidence when considering these regulations. I will be interested in what the Minister has to say about that.
The evidence we received from non-resident parents led me to think again about the relatively different economic environment for child poverty that we are facing. Non-resident parents have that problem as well as parents with care. They do not get any credit within universal credit for making maintenance payments, which must be difficult for some non-resident parents. They made that point with some force in the course of the evidence they gave. The department made a fist of answering some of these points, but we were still left with real concerns.
People are nervous that we are closing down these schemes—no one will miss them when they go—but, when we move into the new child maintenance scheme, are we taking proper advantage of the opportunity to look at this in a slightly wider context than merely these regulations? They are welcome as far as they go. The weekly value of assets being considered is good, deduction orders, lump sums and additional write-off powers are understandable, and I have mentioned passports, but the communities which will be deprived of pursuing some of these liabilities in future deserve better legislative consideration of the impact that will be felt by them when all of these dramatic things happen.
It would help if there could be an update on how these schemes are proceeding towards closure—what the time frames are and whether there has been any slippage from the last time we discussed this in Parliament. I am still concerned about some of the issues that were raised by the National Audit Office report of March 2017. I am delighted that the Select Committee in the House of Commons is still interested in actively pursuing some of these issues. However, the NAO report did not make happy reading either.
There are a couple of issues I wish to ask questions about. The NAO made special reference to the fact that the department does not tell non-resident parents who have arrears that there is an opportunity available to them to renegotiate the debt on cause shown where hardship can be demonstrated. However, the department does not do that, I suppose for the obvious reason that it gives people an excuse to pay less, but in the situation that we facing in terms of child poverty and for the next couple of years, I think that some non-resident parents should be told about that. The claim they make for a reduction in their maintenance liabilities can be contested by the department and controlled in that way. The NAO was right to raise that. Keeping it secret is no longer defensible and I hope the department will think about that.
Baroness Sherlock (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for her explanation of the regulations. I also wish that she is back to full ambulatory health soon. I was glad to have the opportunity to give her advance notice of the questions I will raise because some of them are quite technical. It would be great if she could answer them but if not, she should feel free to write to me.
Before I start, I want to pick on where the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, stopped. Most of the people in the House of Lords who have a passionate interest in this are in this room, apart from one or two who could not be here. We have been discussing these issues for a long time. The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, saying that he has moved on to a different perspective makes me want to rehearse briefly the fact that having an administrative system of child maintenance is incredibly important. Before it existed, the only way for single parents to get the money they needed to raise their kids was to go to court. It was expensive to get an order, to get it updated and to get it enforced, so the creation of an administrative system of child support really matters. It matters for those kids, the families and the country. It is a statement that you may separate from your partner but you do not cease to be responsible for your children, and the state will enforce that if necessary if the parents cannot afford to do so. I want to lay that on the record.
We should also note that, although the legacy schemes have had a range of problems, billions of pounds have changed hands and gone towards raising children. We should mark that. We should not say simply assume that the problems mean that we do not want to get this right going forward. The obligation to support your children is there, so I share the view that it would be good to have an opportunity to discuss more broadly the issues around child support policy. However, since Parliament has determined the amounts that should be paid by non-resident parents to parents with care, getting that enforced really matters and the regulations address that. In the light of that, I should flag up a historic and now rather distant remunerated interest as I was a non-executive director of CMEC for a time.
In essence, these regulations do two things. They allow the Government to write off significant debts arising from historic schemes and they introduce some new compliance measures to help with collecting future child maintenance. I want to look at each of those in turn to see whether it feels like a balanced package.
First, on the debt proposals, the Explanatory Memorandum says that there are uncollected arrears of £3.7 billion, with £2.5 billion owed to parents and £1.2 billion owed to the Government. DWP thinks that it would be too expensive to try to collect all this, so it proposes to separate the debt into two parts: that which it will make one last attempt to collect and that which it will simply write off. Where there has not been a payment in the last three months and, as the Minister explained, a CSA case started on or before 1 November 2008 and the debt is more than £1,000, or the case started after that date and the debt is more than £500, it will ask clients if they want it to try to collect the debt. If no representations are received, or collection of the debt is not possible, it may be written off. Can the Minister tell us how those representations will be sought? Will each parent to whom money is owed be written to individually?
Secondly, where there has been no payment in the last three months and the case started on or before 1 November 2008 and the debt is less than £1,000, or the case started after 1 November 2008 and the debt is less than £500, or the debt is less than £65, then the debt can be written off without asking the parents at all. Can the Minister tell us, if there had been a payment of some sort in the last three months, irrespective of how much was involved or when it started, would attempts carry on being made to collect the debt, even if it did not meet these criteria? If so, is there not a risk of what is known in the trade as moral hazard? In other words, does it not risk sending out a message to parents who have not paid to support their kids that if they simply do not pay for long enough, the Government will give up and they will benefit from having the debt written off?
To justify writing off historic debt while avoiding the moral hazard charge, it is incumbent on the Government to show that current child maintenance liabilities are being effectively enforced—a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood. So is that the case? As the noble Lord mentioned, the current rate of compliance is 57% and it has been static for the last two years. Ministers are partly arguing that these regulations would add to the range of collection and enforcement powers the department has to drive up that statistic. Let us see whether we think they would.
There are basically three measures. First, the deductions from joint and unlimited partnership accounts, which is a welcome measure designed to prevent non-resident parents from evading their financial obligations by moving all their money into joint or unlimited partnership accounts. However, I would like to raise a point made in paragraph 11 of the 39th report from the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee. It reports a concern—raised in a submission to the committee, on which the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood sits—that the proposal to notify the other account holders of the intention to make regular or lump sum deductions and give them a set period to make representations could give the non-resident parent time to move the cash somewhere else.
The committee noted that the regulations provide that the interim order must include an instruction to the deposit-taker not to do anything that would reduce the amount standing to the credit of the account below the amount specified in the order. However, the Explanatory Memorandum also goes on to say that, in the absence of evidence to the contrary—the Minister reinforced this today—it will be assumed that the NRP has a share of the funds equal to that of any other account holder. So, if the deposit-taker is required only to keep in the account an amount equivalent to that specified in the order, is there not a risk that, in some cases, only a portion of that retained balance can be attributed to the non-resident parent, and therefore, when it comes to the attempt to reclaim it, there will not be enough left to meet the debt? What are the Government doing about that? I did say this was technical.
Secondly, I want to look at the effect of this measure. The self-certified impact assessment says that DWP expects that the use of this measure will result in 350 requested deduction orders from joint personal accounts in England and Wales per year and 170 from unlimited partnership business accounts. Based on the pattern of their use for sole accounts, DWP assumed 34% will be lump sum deduction orders and 66% regular deduction orders, and it expects a 60% success rate. When you crunch these numbers down—which I did because I am very sad—it means that, adding together personal joint accounts and unlimited partnership business joint accounts, you get a total of basically not very much. My sums suggested this meant that the department expected to issue only 100 successful lump-sum DOs and 200 successful regular DOs, which would have brought in about £350,000 a year in extra child maintenance.
However, about half an hour before I came into the Committee, I saw a letter—just published—from Justin Tomlinson to Frank Field, chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee, in which he said that DWP analysis after the consultation estimated that these new powers would actually enable an extra 400 to 500 actions per year, yielding around £840,000 in additional maintenance. The letter said that the department thought the figure might be even higher still. Can the Minister tell the Grand Committee the current estimate of the number of cases in which these powers are likely to be used, and how much extra maintenance the department expects to collect?
Another question is on the confiscation of passports. The instrument also commences a power, set out in Sections 39B to 39G of the Child Support Act 1991, enabling the Secretary of State to apply to the court for an order to disqualify a non-resident parent who is wilfully refusing to pay from holding or obtaining a UK passport. This is again welcome but I wonder how well it would be used. The 39th report of the scrutiny committee quoted the department as saying:
“This measure will be used as a last resort, where all other enforcement actions have been found to be inappropriate or ineffective”.
When I went back to the methodology document that accompanied the consultation, it said that DWP expected approximately 20 cases per year where a court sanction would be applied. But then it became clear that that would be not 20 passports a year but 20 cases where court sanctions could be applied. Those sanctions might be passport removal but might be losing a driving licence or going to prison. That could mean this new power on passports might be in single-figure usage.
Again, the letter to Frank Field from Justin Tomlinson suggested that this power could be used in around 20 cases a year. Can the Minister explain whether that is 20 cases of passport confiscation a year or whether we are still talking about 20 cases of court sanctions a year, of which some may or may not be on passports? Either way, it is a very small number. Clearly, I realise that it is intended to be a deterrent as well but that was said of driving licences, yet we are still stuck at 57% enforcement. We have to ask: how effective is this likely to be?
The third and final category is on including major assets in the calculation of child maintenance liabilities. There has been lots of pressure on DWP for a long time to reinstate the lifestyle variation available under the previous regime, by which parents could request a variation to the calculation based on a disparity between the lifestyle of a non-resident parent and the income which they reported. Charities such as Gingerbread, along with the Work and Pensions Select Committee, have pressed DWP on this but to no avail. One of the presenting problems has been parents complaining that the NRP claims to have a low income, yet possesses considerable assets and a lifestyle that should be impossible on the income that he or she is declaring.
However, DWP decided not to do that. This is one of its proposals to deal with it instead by including major assets in the calculation of child maintenance liabilities. That is welcome but the scrutiny committee remains concerned about how it is to be done—a point alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, who mentioned yachts. I do not often get to talk about yachts in my brief but it is the case that a specific submission was made to the committee of a parent who said that her former spouse had bought a yacht, yet nobody could make him pay over the amount of cash he was meant to do as support for the children.
It would seem from that case that there is a real situation out there. Yet in its 41st report, the committee managed to establish from DWP that the definition of asset does not include high-value items such as a yacht or a Rolls-Royce, because it is too hard to value them. In fact, the report said:
“This would seem to confirm our concern that the Non-Resident Parent can find ways of avoiding payment by buying goods with their cash assets and reinforces our view that the new formula for calculating income may make little actual difference”.
Given that that is the whole point of this power, can the Minister explain how the Government plan to deal with this issue and, again, how often DWP anticipates using these provisions?
In conclusion, we are in a position where compliance rates are stuck at 57%. I am doubtful that the package of powers we are discussing are likely to make all that much difference given that the biggest of them will, in the original calculations, affect only 450 children and bring in £350,000 a year. Alongside that, the Government are planning to write off debts of £3.7 billion, so basically we are talking about 0.01% of the amount that has been written off. Even if it is the higher £840,000 figure, my back-of-an-envelope calculations say that we are still talking about 0.02%. There is quite an imbalance.
I remain concerned about those who are slipping through the net—the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, raised this. In 2012, DWP estimated that 56% of CSA clients who chose not to apply to the statutory service would make a family-based arrangement. A survey by NatCen conducted between June 2015 and September 2016 found that three months after the CSA cases had been closed, only 18% had a family-based arrangement in place. A similar number had gone to the CMS but 56% had nothing in place.
Baroness Buscombe
I thank noble Lords for their contributions to this debate and for the constructive approach that they have taken towards today’s proceedings. I will now respond to some of the key issues raised. I will attempt to do this in order but I doubt whether I will succeed. I will do my best and if I fail to answer any questions, please be assured that we will write to the Committee following the debate.
I wish to put into context the justification for what we are doing. This has not been a quick or easy decision; it has involved exhausting other approaches to deal with the debt. We have also had numerous long debates and discussions within the department in trying to decide the best thing to do. We are talking about huge sums of money here. I say immediately that when considering resources and budgets, the truth is that we have to be proportionate—what is reasonable in the circumstances; what is more pressing; and what is more important. In our department we are already spending 25% of the entire government budget across Whitehall, so we have to think about resources and the degree to which we want to protect and support children going forward versus the difficulty of writing off such a considerable debt. We have to balance that against the fact that if we do not write it off and keep it on our books it would cost us approximately £30 million a year, which would not be money well spent. It has been a difficult balancing act.
Moving all the debt to the CMS IT systems would incur a one-off cost of at least £250 million, without the resources to action it. We have taken various actions to collect this debt, including using debt collection agencies to chase what is owed. More than 63,000 cases were passed to debt collection agencies for them to arrange collection, but after three years we took back 55,000 cases because the DCAs had not been able to make any debt collection arrangements.
This is our approach following exhaustive discussions, debates and thinking through what is fair to the taxpayer. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said, the most important thing is to put the children at the forefront of our minds while seeking ways to send out the critical message that no one should cease to be responsible for their children. Enforcement matters.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, that I absolutely respect his considerable and lengthy involvement on this really important subject. Of course, there have all along been compelling arguments on both sides. It is interesting what he said about the economic environment being different. Maybe there is also a sense that people are becoming more artful in how they seek to avoid their responsibilities, which is depressing. I am not sure what that says but the truth is that we must have the well-being of children at the forefront of our minds. In a sense, yes, these regulations are overdue, so it is important that we look forward. It is also important to say here that they form the first of two packages. We plan to lay a further set of regulations in 2019 to secure the remaining powers to deliver the 2018 compliance and arrears strategy. These will allow us to take a consistent approach to deduction from benefits.
I should explain that the regulations are being laid in two packages because the Social Security Advisory Committee needs to consider the regulations that make changes to deductions from benefits. But we would not wish to delay the rest of the regulations so that we may lay them all together. Those regulations are not yet drafted, so there is still time—I stress this—to take into account any thoughts on these provisions from noble Lords and honourable friends in another place. We welcome any input on that.
Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope
That is an opportunity perhaps, under an SSAC consideration of the second package of regulations, for affected parents with care and non-resident parents to make submissions to the SSAC scheme later this year. If I understood what the Minister was saying, the Social Security Advisory Committee will undertake a normal consultation and will be looking for people to make submissions for consideration as the committee makes its recommendations. Am I right in thinking that?
Baroness Buscombe
I ask the noble Lord to bear with me, because I do not want to get this wrong. The answer is: only if the committee decides to report the regulations.
I will focus on some of the questions put to me, which are welcome. I start with the question from the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, on case closure timescales and the fact that there has been slippage. We are still on course to have ended all existing liabilities on CSA cases by the end of this year, 2018. The noble Lord referenced the NAO report. In that context, it is really important to say that we are continuing to consider the recommendations in the report. The department, in a broader context, has really taken on board that we need to be much better at listening. We thought that we were doing enough perhaps, but there is always more that we can do—within time and resource constraints, of course—but it is very important that we listen.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked how the representations will be sought. Will each parent to whom money is owed be written to individually? Depending on which category a case falls into, a client will receive a different letter or series of letters explaining what is happening and why, and, where appropriate, giving them the opportunity to ask us to try to collect their debt. These letters will be sensitively worded and will acknowledge that this may not be the outcome a client is hoping for. I was asked whether, if there has been a payment in the last three months, we will continue to collect. The answer is yes. If the case is in payment, we will continue to collect any arrears still outstanding for as long as the case remains in payment.
I was also asked whether our power to confiscate passports will be used only in a few cases. We will use this power in a targeted, proportionate way. I noted what the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, said about our having tried driving licences and asking whether that worked. The keyword here is “deterrent”. The vast majority of parents, we must stress, willingly pay towards their liabilities; we will seek to apply sanctions only in cases where parents wilfully refuse to pay. This happens only in limited circumstances. As with other enforcement powers, such as removing driving licences, the threat of exercising it can be very persuasive. The threat of denying people a passport is certainly something that stood out, when I first read the draft regulations, as something quite exceptional. I hope noble Lords will agree that it should send out a strong message to those who, frankly, are consistently refusing to take responsibility for their children.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, and the noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, enquired about compliance rates for cases of collect and pay, asking what we are doing to improve the figure of 57%. The latest data, published in September, for collect and pay compliance shows it is going up; it is now 62%. Of the £1.85 billion due to be paid since the Child Maintenance Service began, £1.6 billion has been arranged through direct pay or collected through collect and pay while £290 million is currently unpaid—around 12% of the total. This percentage share continues to decline from 12.4% last year and 13.1% two years ago.
The CMS is not the only option available for separated parents to arrange child maintenance; it is there for people who cannot work together to make their own arrangements. The collect and pay service is in place for those parents unable to work together, who are less likely to be compliant. This means that the caseload is smaller but naturally more challenging than the CSA caseload.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked how many cases will be affected by the notional income power each year. We have not made projections on this point, but we anticipate the number to be small as, historically, only a small number of parents attempt to avoid their liabilities in this way. On the question of how many passports we expect to be disqualified every year, the figure referred to indicates that we project 20 applications for all types of sanctions will be made in the year. These include commitment to prison and disqualification from driving. Sanctions must only ever be a last resort; this is not just about how many we pursue but about targeting the right people. The threat often results in payments restarting.
The noble Lord, Lord Kirkwood, asked why the passport power is not being introduced for people in Northern Ireland. I can assure the noble Lord that this is not a particular sop to those resident in Northern Ireland who do not respect their responsibilities for their children. This is not being introduced in Northern Ireland simply because Northern Ireland citizens are entitled to an Irish passport; they have options for dual nationality, which would reduce the effectiveness of the power—they would simply find an easy way around it.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, asked whether giving periods of representation to account holders would mean that NRPs can move money to other accounts. This change is intended to close down a known loophole. If we intend to deduct a lump sum from a joint or business account, the funds will be frozen during the representation period. If parents move their funds to another type of account—for example, a sole account—we will target that account. If the funds are moved to an account we are unable deduct from, we will use our other strong enforcement measures to collect the debt.
House of Lords
Prisons: Children of Prisoners
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to support the children of prisoners.
Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)
My Lords, having a parent in custody can have a very significant impact on a child. We must understand the diverse needs of these vulnerable children and provide the necessary support. For example, recent government reforms mean that prison governors now have the budget and the flexibility to commission family services that work for their prisons and in their communities.
The Lord Bishop of Gloucester
In 95% of cases where a mother receives a custodial sentence, a child has to move home. Unlike a child in care who moves home, the child of someone in custody has no guarantee of a place at the local school, and the person looking after that child receives no financial support. Will the Minister commit to identifying children of those in custody as a specific group, and ensuring that they and their carers receive the necessary support?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I thank the right reverend Prelate for raising this. I managed to speak to her, literally a few minutes before I rose to answer the Question, and I was surprised, as I am sure noble Lords will also be, that that is the case. My information is that families who look after such children, whether they are carers from the same family or non-family carers, are eligible for the same benefits as they would get if they were the parents of the child—child benefit, child tax credits and so on. Indeed, they may also get other funding under Section 17 of the Children Act. I would like to investigate this further and write to the right reverend Prelate. I will, of course, put a copy in the Library, because this is a very important issue.
Baroness Bloomfield of Hinton Waldrist (Con)
My Lords, almost exactly a year ago we debated the excellent Farmer review on this very subject. Can the Minister report on the progress, if any, on developing links between prisons and communities, which benefit the children of all prisoners, and on technology such as tele-visiting arrangements, for maintaining prisoner-child contact?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I share the noble Baroness’s appreciation for the work of my noble friend Lord Farmer, and we are making good progress in going through his 19 recommendations and ensuring that they are implemented. One of those recommendations was the introduction of new family service contracts for prison governors, which, as I mentioned, has already happened. We are trying to create outward-looking prisons so that our empowered governors go into the community and look at what is available there, whether that be third sector groups or other service provision, and use what is available locally to ensure that prisoners have contact with their families, and also the employment skills and training they need to make a successful future.
Baroness Corston (Lab)
My Lords, I hope the Minister will visit some women’s prisons. A short time ago the Justice Secretary, David Gauke, announced that there would be a presumption against sentences of less than 12 months. The overwhelming majority of women in our prisons are there for far less than 12 months; indeed, two years ago 271 of them served sentences of two weeks. This break between mother and child is catastrophic, and frequently there is no family reunion. What progress is being made to ensure that we do not have these short sentences?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Baroness is completely right, in that short sentences for men or women are a significant factor in family breakdown. The Lord Chancellor has made it very clear that he wants to see the number of short-term sentences decline. That of course depends on the independent judiciary and the sentences that they hand out, but there is lots that the Government can do. We are ensuring that the National Probation Service pre-sentencing report includes information on dependants. If that information is in the pre-sentencing report, the judge sees it and can then use it as a mitigating factor in the sentence that gets handed down. Furthermore, we are rolling out an excellent piece of work by Dr Shona Minson, Safeguarding Children when Sentencing Mothers. That is important work and we need to get that message out there, but at the end of the day it will be up to our independent judiciary to hand down sentences.
Baroness Burt of Solihull (LD)
My Lords, it is estimated that over 200,000 children are affected by parental imprisonment across the UK. We do not know the actual number because neither the courts nor local services routinely ask them. These children are left in the shadows, their needs often forgotten, with devastating impacts. Despite their situation, they are locked out of the support that they need to get a better chance in life. Will the Minister heed Barnardo’s call for the Government to appoint a lead Minister to oblige the courts to ask about the children of people being sent to prison and ensure that adequate childcare and support arrangements are in place?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
My Lords, this is a very complicated area. The noble Baroness is not quite right: we do encourage courts to ask defendants, whether they are male or female, whether they have dependent children. What happens is that some mothers, in particular, fear that their child might then be taken into care, and they may well have made their own informal arrangements for that child and therefore think, “Actually, I’m not disclosing that I have children”. It is therefore very difficult for us to pick up that information.
The noble Baroness mentioned Barnardo’s. I pay tribute to the work that it has done on the National Information Centre on Children of Offenders, a comprehensive website that was launched in May this year so that all government agencies, both nationally and locally, can find out best practice and work out the diverse needs of these very vulnerable children.
Lord Laming (CB)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that one of the reasons why we have these very short sentences of two weeks and the like is that the courts appear to have lost confidence in the non-custodial arrangements that have been made, particularly given the decline in the standing of the probation service? What steps are being taken to recover the position of probation supervision?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
The noble Lord is right that there has been a move away from community sentences, which perhaps has been because the quality has not been there. However, we are turning that around. We are looking at improving the provision of mental health, alcohol and drugs treatment locally, so that court-ordered treatment can run alongside community sentences. On the point about probation, we have re-established the National Sentencer Probation Forum, in which people who hand out sentences and the probation service can discuss what issues need to be sorted out to ensure that the provisions are there for these community-based sentences. I think all noble Lords will agree with me that the more that we can use them, the better for all involved.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, are the Government supporting parenthood programmes for prisoners? I believe that some are very effective. Can the Minister say whether there is support for them, and whether will they expand?
Baroness Vere of Norbiton
I would be very happy to talk further on that matter. For example, in women’s prisons the family services contract has gone out to a single contractor called Pact, and there are lots of opportunities for families to learn together, along with homework clubs. The noble Baroness mentioned parenting. There are parenting skills classes, which often involve constructive whole-day family days through which the families of mothers in prison can get together and learn together. These appear to be working very well.
Railways: East Coast Main Line
(6 years ago)
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Lord Beith
To ask Her Majesty’s Government when new trains will be in service on the East Coast Main line between Newcastle and Edinburgh.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Transport (Baroness Sugg) (Con)
My Lords, passengers across the east coast main line, including in Newcastle and Edinburgh, will benefit from the introduction of new trains by London North Eastern Railway, delivered through the Government-led intercity express programme. These new trains will transform passenger journeys, providing more seats, more frequent services and faster journeys. LNER is working closely with Hitachi Rail Europe, Network Rail and other industry partners to bring these trains into service as soon as possible, with a full rollout scheduled to be complete by 2020.
Lord Beith (LD)
My Lords, the noble Baroness did not say very much about when these particular sections of the line will have the service. Because these new trains apparently interfere with the outdated signalling and points system on the east coast main line—and also, bizarrely, because the regulator thinks people might use the interconnecting things to climb on top of the trains—the introduction north of York has been delayed. In what year will each of these sections of the line get new trains, and for how long will the service depend on worn-out HST trains which are 40 years old?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I am happy to give some more information on the timings. The first trains were due to enter service in December this year, but LNER has recently announced that these will not be introduced until early next year. There remain challenges relating to electromagnetic capability, ORR approvals and train design. Of course, this is disappointing for all involved, but when introduced the trains will provide more seats and faster journeys. As I said, the full rollout of the east coast fleet is still scheduled for completion in 2020.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend will be aware of my interest in this. I congratulate the Government on their involvement in this programme. Can my noble friend put a date on when the trains will actually run the full route to London? How will this coincide with the improvements to King’s Cross station that have been announced?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I am afraid that I am not able to give a definite date. We are trying to introduce the trains as soon as possible, but there remain issues that we need to work through. LNER has said that it hopes to start introducing the trains early next year. On my noble friend’s point about King’s Cross, we are carrying out essential works on King’s Cross to replace the expired track and signalling to ensure that we can see the full benefits of the east coast main line enhancements.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
It was from the government Dispatch Box that we were told on 23 May this year that:
“The good news also is that we fully expect the new intercity express trains to be introduced on the east coast main line from the end of this year, as planned”.—[Official Report, 23/5/18; col. 1032.]
Is this episode yet another example of the reality that, in our fragmented railway system, no one is in overall charge? No one is ultimately accountable for the performance or lack of it of our national railway network and, as a result, no one accepted responsibility for ensuring that the new trains would start running on the planned date. If the Government disagree that that is the case, then which individual or body was accountable for ensuring that the new trains would start running on the planned date on the east coast main line?
Baroness Sugg
Well, that was not me. The noble Lord is quite right to say that in May I gave reassurance that those trains would come into service. At the time, that was very much what we were planning. However, as I said, there have been emerging issues on that which we need to work through. It is not unusual with delivery of a whole new infrastructure—and this is a £2.7 billion investment, which we should welcome—that there are some compatibility issues. We are working through them. On the noble Lord’s point about the rail system, it has been well over a decade since we have seen a large change in the rail network and, while we have seen record private investment and the doubling of passenger journeys, of course it has had its challenges. The time is absolutely right for a comprehensive review, and that is what the rail review will do.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for the help that she has given in recent weeks to try to ensure that we have a happy resolution to the better, promised service—I repeat, promised service—between Lincoln and London. Is she confident that she will be able to join me on one of those trains during the course of 2019 with those colleagues from all parts of the House who have already accepted my invitation?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, we have discussed this specific service many times, and I know that it will disappoint my noble friend, as it does me, that we are unable to guarantee that those services will be introduced in May 2019—and I am not able to give an exact date either. I know that that will also disappoint the people of Lincoln because those extra services will enable more people to visit that great city. However, I can absolutely reassure my noble friend that both LNER and the Government are committed to more trains to Lincoln and we will deliver them as soon as possible.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
My Lords, next year, when the new sleeping cars are reintroduced to the railways, will they be run on the east coast line to Scotland as well as the west coast line?
Baroness Sugg
There are some issues with trains to Scotland at the moment, so I am afraid that I am unable to give that guarantee. We are working very closely with the Scottish Government to deliver that.
Lord Watts (Lab)
My Lords, how can the Secretary of State keep his job? What has happened to ministerial accountability for this shambles?
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, we are overseeing, as I have said many times, record investment in our railways: £48 billion over 2019 to 2024. Obviously, with all these improvements, that has given us challenges, but we should not lose sight of the benefits that are being seen through this investment. The Azuma trains alone will have 15% greater capacity, and once the full fleet is in service they will deliver a 28% increase in morning peak services. There will be improvements in accessibility, and they will be more reliable, with more storage room. That is what we should aim for.
Baroness Brinton (LD)
My Lords, the Azuma train appears to have fewer disabled spaces than the current high-speed trains. Can the Minister confirm that first, that will be rectified, and secondly, that passengers will not be able to store suitcases in the wheelchair spaces? Becky Whitworth could not get on a train because the entire space was filled with cases.
Baroness Sugg
My Lords, I understand that the new trains will have improvements in accessibility, with more wheelchair spaces, which will not include flip chairs. There will also be universally accessible toilets. However, I will write to the noble Baroness on her specific question.
Health: Spectrum Conditions
(6 years ago)
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Lord Addington
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the importance of identification of spectrum conditions, such as dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia, on (1) educational, and (2) other life outcomes.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and remind the House of my declared interest as president of the British Dyslexia Association.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)
My Lords, our data collections do not separate outcomes of dyslexia, ADHD and dyspraxia, so we are unable to make such an assessment. In terms of destinations, after completing key stage 4, for those with SEN, overall in 2016-17, 90% of pupils with a statement or education, health and care plan were in sustained education, employment or training compared to 88% of pupils with SEN without statements, and 95% of those without SEN.
Lord Addington
I thank the Minister for that reply. I have made him and his office aware of the document brought forward in February this year by Warwickshire Educational Psychology Service, called Teaching Children & Young People with Literacy Difficulties Practice Guidance, which is very similar to a document that appears on the Staffordshire site. This states that dyslexia effectively is not something to worry about. It effectively undermines the whole basis of the support which the noble Lord has been talking about. Will he give an assurance that the Government will make sure that accurate diagnosis, which can be life-changing, is maintained for this group because it helps through education and throughout life?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the document to which the noble Lord refers recognises that early identification and intervention is important to meet the needs of children and young people with literacy delays. On the necessity of a dyslexia diagnosis, I do not have expertise in such matters. However, the noble Lord and the British Dyslexia Association do, and I would encourage Warwickshire local authority to consider carefully its advice on this point, and on the document generally. I share the noble Lord’s frustration that it has not responded to the British Dyslexia Association’s letter written over two and a half months ago.
Lord Winston (Lab)
My Lords, I am astonished that the Government do not know the figures for the relative incidence of the spectrum disorders in schools. I declare an interest as a member of staff of Imperial College. Is the Minister aware of our programme where we have managed, hugely successfully, to encourage dyslexic students, in particular, to gain very high educational qualifications? But of course, if the condition cannot be identified, it is very difficult to do that.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I acknowledge the great work the noble Lord, Lord Winston, is doing. I am clear that early diagnosis makes a huge difference; it helps the self-esteem of the child in question, and also enables earlier interventions to take place, helping to establish that child on a strong educational pathway.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, does my noble friend accept that dyslexia is an impairment that can result in substantial and adverse long-term effects on an individual and their ability to carry out normal, day-to-day activities, and therefore this report is in complete contrast to the legislation that this House has passed?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, it is certainly not helpful that Warwickshire County Council is not engaging with the British Dyslexia Association. Under the Equality Act 2010, a person has a disability,
“if he or she has a physical or mental impairment and the impairment has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities”.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, this is not a party-political issue, and I acknowledge that the Minister made time last week, along with the noble Lords, Lord Addington and Lord Storey, to discuss Warwickshire County Council’s guidance with me. That is why the Minister’s words today are disappointing, because I had understood that he accepted that this was an urgent and serious issue. Warwick County Council’s guidance to parents ignores the science and refuses to recognise that dyslexia is a medical condition. One wonders if, perhaps, it has also advised their residents that the earth is actually flat and that there is no such thing as global warming. With Cambridgeshire County Council and Staffordshire County Council considering aligning themselves with Warwickshire County Council’s position, I think it is important that the Government set out what action they will take to ensure that this misguided guidance is withdrawn as a matter of urgency.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I share the concern of the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and I have offered to write to Warwickshire County Council to understand why it has not responded to the British Dyslexia Association’s very detailed and well-written letter, sent two and a half months ago. As I said, we recognise the issue of dyslexia. Many children and young people who have SEN may have a disability under the Equality Act, and as I said, we strongly believe in early diagnosis and early intervention.
Lord Sterling of Plaistow (Con)
My Lords, my grandson—a splendid little boy—is on the spectrum. Only yesterday, we had a meeting with the Minister on the subject of early identification of this problem. There is no doubt about it: the earlier it can be identified the better for everybody, as it gives children a chance to participate in life in a normal way. What was lacking, as many of us here know, is child psychologists. Without many more child psychologists we do not have the ability to identify problems early, and I hope that the Minister, who I know has huge empathy for this subject, might hasten to add to that voice.
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, I am not sure whether the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, was referring to dyslexia or autism, but he will be aware that we have increased awareness among all schools, and encouraged teachers to increase their awareness. With the Autism Education Trust, for example, we have rolled out a lot of autism awareness training. We now have 190,000 people trained in autism awareness, which is up from 150,000 in June of last year.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister will recall that during Children and Families Act, the local offer required local authorities to give information about special needs provision, and that information has to be accurate. Does the Minister not agree that it is not helpful to parents when false information is given out by councils, particularly on this issue of dyslexia? Will the Government clarify whether they fully support the recognition of dyslexia as a disability as defined by the Equality Act 2010?
Lord Agnew of Oulton
My Lords, the Equality Act 2010 provides protection for any person with a condition that meets the Act’s definition of disability—that is, a physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on a person’s ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The Act does not, except in a few specific instances, mention by name the conditions that automatically fall within the definition of disability. This is because, in most cases, it is the impact on the person’s life that is the qualifying criterion, rather than the condition itself.
Gambling: Fixed-odds Betting Machines
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will introduce legislation to reduce the maximum bet for fixed-odds betting machines to £2; and if so, when.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, as announced in May 2018, the Government will introduce legislation to reduce the maximum stake for B2 gaming machines, also known as fixed-odds betting terminals, from £100 to £2. The Chancellor of the Exchequer confirmed in yesterday’s Budget that the new stake limits will come into effect when the remote gaming duty is increased to 21% in October 2019.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I find it difficult to thank the Minister for that reply. The need was felt and identified, a consultation period was held, results were published, and an impact assessment was brought forward. When the Government announced their readiness to reduce the stakes from £100 to £2 there was universal light shed on a very dark area of British national life, including among members of his own Government.
This is a victory for the bookies. What are their lobbying powers with the Treasury that they have been able to eke this process out to suit their needs and to make huge profits from the results of their endeavours? How can they do that when they disingenuously argue that it takes time to change the machines, even though the evidence shows that they can be changed very quickly? There are too many questions but the overriding one is: why? The Minister is an honourable man. Would he not prefer to be on this side with me, asking the Government that question?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, I am happy to give an answer. We have never said exactly when this would come into force.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
It is true. I am delighted that, along with the excellent list of other good news that came out of the Budget yesterday, we are now able to provide clarity on the reduction to £2, which will help to stop extreme losses for those who can least afford them. The answer to the noble Lord’s question about why is to allow enough time for businesses to readjust. We are talking about a good number of jobs here. The Association of British Bookmakers has ascertained that there are about 21,000 jobs and 4,500 businesses. We think that that is a slight exaggeration, but we are talking about big numbers.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I refer the Minister to a reply he gave, on the last occasion the House discussed this, about the targeting of gambling at children and young people. In particular, the development of virtual reality games such as Fortnite, which is specifically targeted at young people, makes the idea of gambling normal. Will he also say a word about the contribution that the gambling companies to which he referred are supposed to make through the levy, to help people who become addicted? As many of them do not pay the voluntary levy, when do the Government intend to make it compulsory?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
As I have said in the Chamber before, we do not intend to make it compulsory. The voluntary system is working well at the moment, but we always keep it under review. The resources that we receive through the levy go towards helping problem gambling. The noble Lord made an extremely important point about the need to protect children. Problem gambling has remained consistently below 1% of the adult population for many years. Much work focused on children is going on, particularly with GambleAware. About two months ago, I noticed in the papers that a well-known TV personality took a machine from her son and smashed it against a table leg. In other words, parents need to take control and make sure that children do not spend too much time on these machines.
The Lord Bishop of St Albans
Many of us who have been speaking and campaigning on this issue were appalled yesterday to hear about the further time that it will take to implement this. These machines are predominantly found in the poorest areas. The research is quite clear: they cause huge poverty. On top of that, it is estimated that every day between one and two people commit suicide for gambling-related reasons. That is not only a huge social cost; it is a massive financial cost, far more than the £400 million relevant tax revenue that Her Majesty’s Government receive each year. Surely it is time to do this for the sake of everyone in our country.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I note what the right reverend Prelate says, but coming to this decision was a result of much cross-departmental work and liaison with the industry. Now is the time for clarity, which we have given, and we need to go ahead. We expect the companies to implement this by the date that we have given.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, the Minister talks about jobs and businesses, but what about the thousands of young people who become addicted to gambling? What about the 500 suicides? Does the Minister not think it is time to look at the whole issue of television advertising, which the noble Lord, Lord Alton, mentioned? Young men are seen regularly in betting adverts during the cricket, and football players have betting companies’ logos on their shirts. Is it not time that we regulated the industry and looked again at a review of gambling?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I answered the question from the noble Lord, Lord Alton, about whether the levy was mandatory or voluntary. The Government take suicide prevention extremely seriously and much work is being done, particularly with the National Health Service. Support is available. GamCare provides the national gambling helpline and a national network of counselling services. It is very important that we run this in parallel with the lead-up to the date that we bring in this change to the fixed-odds terminals.
Lord Naseby (Con)
My Lords, my noble friend says that it is going to take another year and, as we understand from the Chancellor, there may be a Budget in the spring. Did my noble friend listen to the strong feeling of, I suspect, almost everybody in this Chamber today? Perhaps it would be possible in such a Budget to implement what should happen.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I will certainly take the noble Lord’s comments back, but the date is fixed.
Greater Manchester Combined Authority (Adult Education Functions) Order 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Agnew of Oulton
That the draft Orders laid before the House on 23 July be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 24 October.
Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Bill
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 View all Mental Health Units (Use of Force) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 15 June 2018 - (15 Jun 2018)
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, in moving that the Bill do now pass, I should like to sincerely thank several people, including the Minister and his counterpart in the other place, Jackie Doyle-Price MP, who have been so supportive and helpful on the Bill. I also thank the voluntary sector, which has been incredibly vigorous and thorough in making sure that the Bill is as close to perfect as it can be. Will the Minister confirm that there will be other, informal, meetings on the Bill, which will look at the guidance to the Bill, particularly on statistics, impact and measurements? I wish to say that the Bill should now pass.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Health and Social Care (Lord O’Shaughnessy) (Con)
I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for her question and, more importantly, for her steering the Bill to this point. I offer my thanks to her, her colleague Steve Reed in the other place and everybody who has been involved in this important piece of legislation. As she will know, my honourable friend Jackie Doyle-Price, the Minister for Mental Health, committed to the Government publishing statutory guidance within 12 months of the Bill being passed. I am happy to confirm to the noble Baroness that, in developing this guidance, the department will establish and consult an expert reference group, which will include experts on restrictive intervention as well as people with lived experience and, furthermore, that public consultation will take place before the publication of the final guidance. So I can absolutely reassure the noble Baroness and all noble Lords that we will consult widely with a broad set of stakeholders, as well as reflecting discussions in this House and the other place, to make sure that all those contributions are included in the guidance.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 View all Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 137-I(a) Amendments for Committee, supplementary to the marshalled list (PDF) - (30 Oct 2018)
Lord Duncan of Springbank
That the Bill be now read a second time.
Relevant Documents: 15th Report from the Constitution Committee, 36th and 37th Reports from the Delegated Powers Committee
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
My Lords, as I have said on many occasions, the Government remain emphatic in their support and advocacy of the Belfast agreement. The beating heart of the Belfast agreement is a devolved power-sharing Executive Government, and for that reason the restoration of a devolved power-sharing Executive is our top priority. Much to our regret, and despite our best efforts, there remains no devolved government in Northern Ireland. I believe we all share a common view that this is not good, particularly at this serious and important time. Let there be no doubt: the people of Northern Ireland need and deserve a devolved Government—a sustainable, stable, fully functioning and inclusive devolved Government.
I would much rather not be here—I suspect that many of your Lordships might share that sentiment—and that the Bill was not necessary. However, for reasons we have discussed before, sadly it is. As a Government we remain committed to taking those decisions necessary to provide good governance and political stability for Northern Ireland. This package of measures is a key staging post toward restoring a devolved power-sharing Executive and Assembly.
I do not doubt that the debate that follows will be wide-ranging. However, I shall state at the outset what the Bill seeks to achieve. The purpose is threefold. First, it will create a time-bound period for the intensive talks necessary to create an Executive. Secondly, it will ensure the functioning of the Northern Ireland departments during that period. Let me be clear that the Bill does not give the Northern Ireland departments new powers. Instead, it provides clarity on the exercise of existing powers in the absence of Ministers, and will be underpinned by guidance that will help Northern Ireland departments judge whether those powers should be used in the absence of Ministers. Finally, it will seek to ensure that key public appointments are made.
I thank the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and the Constitution Committee of this House, and I put on record both my appreciation and that of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland for their hard work in scrutinising and publishing the reports on the Bill so very quickly. We accept the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee’s recommendation that the power enabling the Secretary of State to add offices to the table in Clause 5(2) should be subject to the affirmative procedure. The Constitution Committee raised concerns about that procedure and the fast-tracking of the legislation. We agree that this should not become the norm and that it should not be considered to set a precedent.
On the specifics of the Bill, first, it extends the period provided for in the Northern Ireland Act 1998 for Northern Ireland Ministers to be appointed before the local elections in 2019. As your Lordships will be aware, because Ministers were not appointed by 29 June 2017, the 1998 Act requires a further election before an Executive can be formed. As set out in my right honourable friend the Secretary of State’s Statement of 6 September, an election at this time would neither be helpful nor improve the prospect of restoring the Executive. From our engagement with Northern Ireland parties, we believe that this view is widely shared. Nor is the prospect of direct rule an attractive one. The provisions of Clause 1 seek to create a period in which an Executive can be formed and talks can take place, by removing that current legal impediment to an Executive being formed for a defined period.
The Bill also provides, in Clause 2, that this defined period may be extended once, for up to five months, removing the need for further primary legislation in the event that, for example, a short extension is judged necessary to finalise an agreement and form an Executive. I assure noble Lords that we will not be waiting until March to bring the Northern Ireland parties together. Following the passage of this legislation, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State intends to meet party leaders to discuss the basis, process and timing for further talks. My right honourable friend will also welcome all efforts to improve and enhance the political dialogue between the parties in Northern Ireland—including Church leaders and Members of this House—to discuss how best to encourage meaningful political engagement towards the restoration of an Executive.
With regard to decision-making, during this period, in light of recent court judgments, Northern Ireland departments require certainty and clarity. Their decision-making powers in the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers have come under close scrutiny. The Bill makes clear that a senior officer of a Northern Ireland department may exercise departmental functions in the absence of Ministers during the period for forming an Executive, if the officer is satisfied that it is in the public interest to do so. The Bill also requires the Secretary of State to publish guidance on the exercise of departmental functions during this period, including the principles to which senior officers in Northern Ireland departments must have regard when deciding whether to exercise a decision-making function. A draft copy of this guidance has been published and placed in the Library of the House.
The Bill stipulates that the Secretary of State must have regard to representations from Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly before publishing the guidance. Similarly, my right honourable friend would have regard to such representations should the need for revised guidance arise. We would also welcome representations from UK parliamentarians as well as MLAs on its content before a final version is published, something the Secretary of State intends to do shortly after the Bill receives Royal Assent.
The principle established by this Government’s interventions over the past year is that we will legislate where doing so is necessary to protect the delivery of public services and uphold public confidence in Northern Ireland. But let me be clear, while the NICS needs certainty in respect of decision-making powers, these measures do not set or change policy direction on devolved issues in Northern Ireland. That is for a restored Executive and Assembly.
The principles underpinning decision-making are set out in guidance rather than on the face of the Bill, as Northern Ireland departments need a degree of flexibility and discretion to enable them to reach appropriate and necessary decisions and ensure the continued delivery of public services in Northern Ireland. We have engaged closely with the NICS during the development of the draft guidance. The factual information provided by it has informed the approach we have taken.
This Government also recognise that, in the absence of an Executive, there will be some decisions that we, the UK Government, should take, such as setting out departmental budget allocations for approval by Parliament to ensure that public services continue to function.
Noble Lords will be aware of some new elements to the Bill since it has arrived in our House. There was a series of amendments to Clause 4. To be very clear, the clause requires the Secretary of State to issue guidance to Northern Ireland departments on how to exercise their functions in relation to Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 and Article 13(1)(e) of the Matrimonial Causes (Northern Ireland) Order 1978 and wider human rights. The Secretary of State would also be required to report guidance under this clause on a quarterly basis to the other place, and set out her plans to address the impact of the absence of Ministers on human rights obligations in Northern Ireland within three months of the day on which the Bill receives Royal Assent.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
I am most grateful to the Minister for giving way. He will recognise that Clause 4, which was inserted in the Bill in the other place, is quite modest in its objectives. During the Brexit negotiations we have been told we cannot have a line down the middle of the Irish Sea affecting trade differently in one part of the United Kingdom from the other. Yet we have a line down the middle of the Irish Sea, affecting the human rights of one part of the United Kingdom, compared with the rights of the rest of the United Kingdom. The Supreme Court in particular, in relation to abortion, said recently,
“the present legislative position in Northern Ireland is untenable and intrinsically disproportionate … the present law clearly needs radical reconsideration”.
What are the Government going to do about that?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I hope that the noble Lord will allow me to expand on that later. However, in response to him directly on this issue, the Supreme Court judgment to which he refers was based on an absence of standing, which therefore created another technical issue—it was technical only, but it is important to stress that. We already have lines around our United Kingdom, because they are lines of devolution as well. The devolved settlements are important and have a role to play in this. I do not doubt that we will expand on that as certain amendments are discussed later today. However, I of course recognise the point that the noble Lord has raised and will report on it directly in due course, but perhaps he will allow me to continue.
The important aspect here is that, as the honourable Member who drafted the amendment has acknowledged, the new clause does not alter the law in Northern Ireland. This was not a clause that the Government sought but its inclusion was clearly the will of elected Members of the other place. I appreciate the sensitivities around the issues that the clause addresses. Abortion law and same-sex marriage have previously been subject to debate in this House and indeed in the Northern Ireland Assembly. As your Lordships know, these issues are devolved and should, rightly, be determined by an incoming Assembly. However, as I stated, the new clause does not change the law in respect of the wider legal framework in respect of either.
Finally, the Bill contains provisions to address the urgent need for key appointments to be made in Northern Ireland and to certain UK government-sponsored bodies where those appointments would normally require the involvement of Northern Ireland Ministers. Clauses 5 to 7 ensure that key posts can be filled while minimising the extent of UK government intervention in what are, rightly, devolved matters. Clause 5 would allow the relevant UK Minister to make certain specified appointments, exercising the appointments functions already conferred on Northern Ireland Ministers. As my right honourable friend the Secretary of State set out in her Written Statement on 18 July, these posts are the most pressing and urgent appointments, as they are essential to the maintenance of good governance and public confidence in Northern Ireland. They include the Northern Ireland Policing Board, the Probation Board for Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Judicial Appointments Commission and the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland. The Bill takes this focused approach rather than conferring a blanket power on the Secretary of State.
It is also important that we provide for other vital offices which might unexpectedly become vacant. For this reason, the Bill includes provision to add to the list of offices by means of a statutory instrument allowing the relevant UK Minister to exercise Northern Ireland Ministers’ appointment functions in relation to additional specified offices. This power would be used only if the appointments were urgent and necessary, and my right honourable friend the Secretary of State would of course consult the main Northern Ireland political parties before bringing forward regulations.
A large proportion of appointment functions in Northern Ireland are conferred on Northern Ireland departments. The provisions that I outlined earlier dealing with departments’ decision-making powers would provide the necessary clarity to allow the Northern Ireland departments to be able to exercise those appointment functions conferred on them during the formation of the Executive. It does not transfer to them any appointment functions currently conferred on Northern Ireland Ministers.
The lack of an Executive has also affected appointments to UK-wide bodies, as a small number of these require Northern Ireland Ministers to be consulted or to agree an appointment made by a UK Minister. The most pressing example is the appointment by the Home Secretary of a new chair of the Disclosure and Barring Service. Similarly, joint appointments are made by UK and Northern Ireland Ministers. The Bill addresses such appointments by allowing them to be made in the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers but it retains the Northern Ireland input by requiring the UK Minister to consult the relevant Northern Ireland department. The powers given to UK Ministers under Clauses 5 to 7 would expire when Northern Ireland Ministers were appointed and an Executive formed.
The people of Northern Ireland deserve strong, locally elected, accountable individuals sitting in an Assembly, and they deserve a functioning, sustainable devolved Government. Achieving that is our priority, and we continue to be focused on achieving it. On that basis, I commend the Bill to the House.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for introducing the Bill before the House today, and I think we understand the reason for it. As he explained, the Bill has three clear and limited purposes: to extend the period to form an Executive; to clarify the functions of the Northern Ireland Civil Service at this time; and to ensure that important public appointments can be made.
We on these Benches do not disagree with the individual elements of the Bill, but the Minister will not be surprised to hear that we are deeply frustrated and disappointed, as I think he acknowledged he himself was, that it has been necessary to bring these measures forward at all. This is now the seventh or eighth piece of legislation that the Government have had to bring forward to Parliament to ensure that Northern Ireland continues to function on a day-to-day basis in the absence of the political parties being able to reach an agreement that would restore the devolved Executive.
The Minister can be in no doubt that this party has a long-established commitment to devolution, and in particular to the institutions in Northern Ireland established under the Good Friday agreement. I have a personal, abiding memory of the referendum, as the result was declared on the morning of my wedding, giving a particularly positive lift to an already happy day. Like, I hope, everybody else around this Chamber, I would hate to see that agreement put at risk, as it currently is because of the stalemate.
The best solution for Northern Ireland remains devolved government and a well-functioning Assembly. However, we are deeply concerned that the real challenge of restarting the talks and restoring an Executive is not being faced up to. As far back as 2017, the then Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, James Brokenshire, stated that the current situation—which is continuing—was “not sustainable” in the long term. We are now almost one year on from that statement, and fast approaching two years since the collapse of the Executive. This really is a shameful indictment of this Government, as well as the parties.
The noble Lord the Minister has more than once talked of “a new impetus” being needed in the talks process—we agree, but when will we see this, and what are the Government doing to spur it on? Although he mentioned that the Secretary of State will follow this legislation through, it would be good to hear in his response precisely what the Secretary of State is going to do to try and break the impasse. It has been eight months since there was any real attempt by the Government to restart talks between any of the parties in Northern Ireland. My understanding is that the recent attempts to encourage discussions were led by Naomi Long, the leader of the Alliance Party, in a separate meeting convened by church leaders at the end of September. The Government really do need to be visible and present.
For Northern Ireland to function properly, we need much more than this. While we welcome the clarity given by the Bill and by guidance to the Northern Ireland Civil Service, enabling officials to take key decisions is not enough. It lacks democracy and proper accountability, as I think the Minister has acknowledged. It is in no way comparable to normal politics, where politicians drive change through committees, departments, the Assembly and the Executive. In the end, devolution is the only credible and democratic way forward, and we must surely exhaust every possible initiative to ensure accountable, local government is back in place.
For quite some time, we on these Benches and others have called for an independent mediator to be appointed to manage a fresh talks process. I would contest that now, more than ever, is the time that an independent facilitator must be appointed. The nature of the breakdown of the talks in February, the subsequent dispute over the status of negotiations, and the damage caused to political relationships make the appointment of an independent facilitator absolutely crucial, and emphatically in the Government’s own interests. In addition to building internal confidence in any talks process, there is also a pressing need to give the public confidence that everything possible is being done to restore the institutions. This means that any talks process needs to be inclusive, with all five parties around the table, and transparent.
As far back as the Stormont House agreement in 2014, there has been recognition that the petition of concern system in the Assembly has not been working as it was originally intended. Since then, we have seen times when it has been used to block progressive social reforms. Indeed, many of the issues that are currently in deadlock between the parties could be resolved democratically on the floor of the Assembly if the ability of some to use, and abuse, the petition of concern was removed. Rather than going back into talks and simply repeating the dynamics of past failures, can the Minister say whether the Government are giving any consideration to reforming the petition of concern? There is a possibility that future-proofing the Assembly to deal with social policies and equality issues, and preventing any single party being able to frustrate the will of the electorate in the future, could change the pitch and nature of the talks process. Does the Minister agree that such a change could be very helpful in achieving an outcome, and restoring an Executive with the capacity to address issues of current concern across the Province?
I have tabled and am supporting amendments to address some important policy issues for Northern Ireland that are currently not being resolved as there is no Executive and Assembly in place. I will address these in detail in Committee, but I place on record my strong personal support for Clause 4, which I am sure is shared on these Benches, which was inserted by a free vote in the Commons. Recent polls have shown support of up to 76% for equal marriage. There is also a huge amount of public support in Northern Ireland to reform the law on abortion: a recent poll showed that some 80% of people now believe that a women should have the choice of abortion if her health is at risk; 80% also feel that the same choice should be there in cases of rape or incest; and 73% of those surveyed in Northern Ireland agree that a woman should have the choice of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality. A figure that the Minister should consider most carefully is that 65% of those surveyed in Northern Ireland think that Westminster should reform the law in the absence of a devolved Government. Across the UK, surveys suggest that as much as 75% of UK citizens believe that the law should be changed and that the UK Government should take responsibility for doing it. I suspect that very high figure reflects discomfiture in knowing that British citizens do not have equal rights across the United Kingdom, something which my noble friend Lord Steel drew attention to in his intervention.
I have a further specific question for the Minister on the detail of the Bill. I would be grateful if he could address this in his remarks at the end of the debate. Clause 3 contains six initial subsections that allow senior officials to take decisions that may have previously been the preserve of Northern Ireland Ministers. However, subsection (7) then states:
“Subsections (1) to (6) have effect despite anything in the Northern Ireland Act 1998, the Departments (Northern Ireland) Order 1999 … or any other enactment or rule of law that would prevent a senior officer of a Northern Ireland department from exercising departmental functions in the absence of Northern Ireland Ministers”.
While the latter part of this sentence appears to qualify this power only to circumstances whereby senior officials are exercising power in the absence of Ministers, it is drafted in a fairly ambiguous way. That is an ambiguity that we could do without, given the length of time since we had a functioning Executive.
Therefore, could the Minister reassure the House that this cannot and will not be used as a justification for not abiding by some key equality and human rights safeguards in the Northern Ireland Act when any such decisions are taken? Specifically, Section 24 of the Act prevents departments “doing any act” that is incompatible with rights under the European Convention on Human Rights or discriminates against a person or class of person on the ground of religious belief or political opinion. Section 75 places procedural requirements to equality screen and to equality impact assess policy decisions. Section 76 prohibits discrimination on sectarian grounds by public authorities. Will the Minister give a categorical assurance that these important protections will not be undermined by the Bill? After all, the UK Government are the legal signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights and, I would argue, have a responsibility to protect and to promote these human rights.
It is abundantly clear that issues of vital importance that are in the public interest are not being addressed in Northern Ireland. This is of concern not just to people in Northern Ireland, but to a majority of the people of the United Kingdom. Rather than what we would hope for—the vibrant, progressive and shared society that we want to see—Northern Ireland is being allowed at best to drift and at worst to stagnate. It is imperative that the Government take urgent action to inject momentum into the talks and to end the ongoing political impasse. The people of Northern Ireland deserve nothing less, but it is the responsibility of the Government, as well as the parties of Northern Ireland, to break the deadlock, bring about change and get normality back.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, those who spoke before me, albeit just two, have committed themselves to devolution in Northern Ireland. That is something that I and my party are strongly in favour of. Indeed, records will show that we are the only party that has not dallied with other ideas for Northern Ireland over the past 30 or 40 years. We are strong believers in devolution. We believe that devolution is the way forward. We believe that it serves Northern Ireland well and that the people of Northern Ireland should be making those decisions.
However, I have some concern when I hear some Members past and present speak who want to cherry pick things that London should be deciding and then maybe Northern Ireland politicians can decide other things if and when devolution returns. We will strongly oppose any attempt to cherry pick and decide what should or should not happen in Northern Ireland. However, if—and I know that the Minister has not said this—it is the opinion that direct rule should return, then let it return in full, not piecemeal, because that gives everybody the worst of both worlds.
We stand here today ready to go back into a Northern Ireland Assembly tomorrow, with no ifs, ands or buts, and no preconditions. It has to be said here, loud and clear, that it was Sinn Féin members who brought down the Northern Ireland Assembly—and I suspect that, if it were to be restored again, they would do the same all over again at their own timing. That is the way they work.
There are aspects of this Bill about which we have great concerns. I have great concerns about Clause 4. I do not want to get into technical, legal arguments that I know others will want to address: I will save my contribution on that for Committee. I simply want to point out that some others do not want to point out that abortion is a devolved matter. Legislation in Northern Ireland is the most up-to-date in any part of the United Kingdom, having been decided in 2016 on a cross-party vote. There was no petition of concern, but it was decided on a simple, straightforward majority that the law should remain as it is.
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, will the noble Lord explain to the House what the Parliament of the United Kingdom is supposed to do where a matter is devolved and there are no devolved institutions?
Lord Morrow
I simply point out again to the noble Lord that it is a devolved matter—but he consciously ignores that. I would respect him more if he would have more respect for what the people and the elected representatives of Northern Ireland have said quite recently. Furthermore, it is not going to help us to get power-sharing back. That surely should be the aim and the goal of this House: the restoration of devolution, as the Minister has already stated.
Polling of 1,013 adults in Northern Ireland conducted between 8 and 15 October showed that 64% of people do not think that Westminster should interfere in this issue but should leave it to the Northern Ireland Assembly. I agree with those 64%. The figures rise to 66% of women and 70% of 18 to 34 year-olds. The same polling also shows that 47% of people in Northern Ireland believe that intervention by Westminster would undermine devolution; only 30% disagree.
Furthermore, I understand that Amnesty has also done some polling on this same question, reaching different conclusions. However, I note, first, that it was conducted by an organisation that is not a member of the British Polling Council. Secondly, it did not release the polling tables for this question; and, thirdly—inexplicably—it left out the “don’t knows” and the “prefer not to says”. This inevitably distorts the outcome. Had the polling I cited been done, the proportion of Northern Ireland citizens saying that Westminster should not intervene would be more than 70%.
Of course, I accept that all polling has its limitations. The country vote on which we can depend was the election of the Northern Ireland Assembly, of which I was then a Member, by the women and men of Northern Ireland. This Assembly determined, by a simple majority vote and without reference to a petition of concern—I emphasise that—not to change abortion law in any way on 10 February 2016. Of course, if at some future point the Supreme Court issued a declaration of incompatibility with respect to any aspect of our law, the Northern Ireland Assembly would respond appropriately.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, I said when the Bill was first mooted that it was a smokescreen for failure, and that is exactly what it is. It is before us only because the Government have been forced by various actions pending in the courts. One action would have forced the Secretary of State to call an election. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, referred some months ago to the fact that the Government had been acting ultra vires for quite a long time. The provocation for it, of course, was when a decision by a senior official in the Department for Infrastructure was struck down over a waste incinerator, of all things. The Government realised then that the civil servants who had been taking decisions could no longer do so and were not prepared to do so. I fully understand their position.
In many cases we are using the Civil Service in Northern Ireland as a football—as an excuse, in some respects, for not taking other decisions. As long as it is prepared to take decisions and keep things running, everybody can stand back and say, “Things are ticking over okay, there is no urgency”.
I also want to deal with the appearance that some form of political talks process and action is happening. There is not. Every fortnight, the Secretary of State rings up the party leaders, she speaks to them for a few minutes, asks a number of questions—probably off a list—and that is about the height of it. There is no formal process and there has not been one for months. There is nothing happening in that area at all.
The Minister has brought several pieces of legislation before us over the past year and we have had this conversation many times. He has said that we cannot continue with this, we cannot let this go on any longer, there is only so far we can push it. I have to say to the Minister that he has developed the ability to say nothing with great conviction and compassion. I do not believe that if he was put in the spotlight he could actually defend what is being done here. On the formation of an Executive, the dogs in the street know that there is not going to be an Executive this side of Brexit. Everybody knows that. Secondly, of course, in the last formal process between the parties, which ended in February, while there was no agreement between the parties at that stage, there was clearly a set of understandings that were to be put to the respective parties for their approval. That blew up in their faces at that time. So getting that process going again with the existing personnel in place is going to be extremely difficult.
The other thing that has happened is that support for devolution and for the Assembly is withering. The behaviour of the last Administration was absolutely outrageous by any standards. Anybody who has paid the slightest attention to the inquiry conducted by Sir Patrick Coghlin into the RHI would be shocked and appalled at the attitude and the culture that were operating in that Executive, where spads, paid enormous sums of money—between £85,000 and £92,000 a year—were able to effectively run departments. That applies to both the DUP and Sinn Féin. Sinn Féin’s Minister had to go cap in hand to somebody who was not allowed to be a spad, who did not even have that capacity but was in Sinn Féin headquarters, to get permission to see whether they could bring the heating scheme to an end and put a cap on the prices. A DUP adviser, when he thought the money was coming from annually managed expenditure, which is outwith the block grant, said that we could fill our boots. This is the attitude. This House and this Parliament seem to be oblivious to it; the Government know what is going on; they have not covered it up but have ignored it. They have turned a blind eye for months—for years. People are disgusted and fed up. Every time this happens, it is harder and harder to get things going.
I have drawn attention to issues concerning health. There is the issue of institutional abuse, which I know is coming forward in Committee. On health itself, I believe we have to take some decisions on humanitarian, not on political, grounds. With our waiting lists, people’s lives are being directly affected and injured as a result of the inability to have a Minister in place.
I say to this House and to Parliament in general that this situation cannot continue much longer, but as long as the Government are prepared to turn a blind eye to it, it will. There are no initiatives at all. Regarding the issues in Clause 4, while the public have latched on to this and we have all received lots of emails, nothing in this Bill is actually changing the law. People misunderstand that: they think the law is being changed, but it is not. To some extent, it is smoke and mirrors. Those who will be happy with the idea that the law is changing will be disappointed, and those who are not happy that the law is going to be changed are obviously frightened by this.
The Minister should at least clarify the legal position. We all know that the efforts to clarify the situation for civil servants are only going to last between now and the next judicial review. We will be back here in a few months in the same pickle as we are in today.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, my intention is to speak about Clause 4 only and the legal situation which is the background to it. I am taking no position on the substantive issues which underlie the clause, but it is quite clear that the intention of those who promoted the Motion put to approve Clause 4 as an amendment in the House of Commons, on a free vote, was to bring the law on abortion in Northern Ireland into line with modern law on the other side of the Irish Sea. The position is that abortion has been made a devolved subject. Therefore, the only statutory authority with authority to alter the statutes and statutory instruments is the Legislative Assembly of Northern Ireland and Ministers of that Assembly. There is no power whatsoever in the United Kingdom Parliament to interfere with that while it is devolved.
The noble Lords, Lord Steel of Aikwood and Lord Bruce of Bennachie, mentioned that there is a border in the Irish Sea on this point. That is certainly true. There are borders between here and Scotland on a number of things, including, for example, free prescriptions in the health service. It is part of devolution that the law on one side of the devolved border may be different from the law on the other side. I am a little surprised that exponents of devolution found that surprising, but that is the fact. That is part of the background of the law on this matter. The devolved issue is one, as I say, for the Northern Ireland Assembly and Ministers acting as Ministers of that Assembly.
Where that is the law, the question of the Human Rights Act is important. Your Lordships will recollect that the Human Rights Act does not modify existing law. There is a power in the courts to declare a provision of British law—this would apply in Northern Ireland as well—incompatible with the convention provision in the Human Rights Act. That decision of the courts does not affect the law unless and until it is acted on by Parliament. Perhaps the best example of that was the relationship between the Westminster Parliament and prisoners’ voting rights. That was declared incompatible with the convention rights by a Scottish court many years ago and the English court followed it, saying it was not necessary to do it twice because there was nothing wrong with the way that the Scots had done it—which is a compliment that I always like to hear. Anyway, that is what happened, and it remained the law of the United Kingdom for a long time. There have been some slight modifications recently but the idea that the Human Rights Act changes existing statutes is wrong. It is part of the provision of the Human Rights Act that it does not do so.
Therefore, the only authority to alter the existing law and bring it into conformity with the Human Rights Act is the legislature in question, if it is a statute that is in issue. Therefore, there is no question that the Secretary of State could by guidance alter the law in this matter, which is to a considerable extent defined by statutes which are in existence and in force in Northern Ireland. The Secretary of State is mandated to do this—she must do this—but if she were to make an order, it would be immediately set aside because it is quite clear from the statistics that have been given that not everybody in Northern Ireland is of exactly the same mind in connection with abortion. If it were so, it might pass without any challenge but in Northern Ireland that is extremely unlikely. Therefore, if the Secretary of State were to make an order trying to escape the existing statutes of Northern Ireland relevant to this subject, she would be immediately struck down as doing something which she is not entitled to do. The fact that she would have been asked to do that by Parliament is an extraordinary situation.
I know that those who moved this amendment in the House of Commons did so with that in mind—that this might be a way forward—but in this House we must take the view that that is not possible. I tabled an amendment for Committee—the last one, which will presumably come fairly late this evening—about that. I am proposing to move the amendment so that discussion will be possible but I do not intend to press it to a Division because abortion has always been—rightly, because it is a matter of conscience—on a free vote. This amendment was passed on a free vote in the House of Commons and therefore I do not intend to press it here. There may be others who want to do that and the fact I have tabled the amendment makes that possible. I just make it clear that I am not going to do that because it would be completely ineffective in producing the result that the movers of it wanted.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, the Bill is a sad necessity and many of us hoped that the Executive and institutions would have been restored in Belfast long before today. I will make just a few brief comments.
One of the arguments that has been put is that we should stop paying Members of the Legislative Assembly. I know that their pay is going to be cut a bit but I caution against doing more than that small cut, simply because if we take away all income from Members of the Legislative Assembly, they will have to find other jobs, and then when the Executive is restored we will have no politicians ready to take over and we would denude Northern Ireland of some people who would have a part to play in public life there. So I would caution against being too harsh with the pay of Members of the Legislative Assembly.
I have tried to understand what constraints the Bill seeks to permit or not to permit in terms of decision-making by civil servants—and I am bound to say that I found it pretty difficult. I have read the bits of paper, but maybe the Minister will throw some light on this in winding up. Of course, the civil servants in Northern Ireland have, by tradition, done a pretty good job. They are used to it. Ministers come and go, and the civil servants stay—but in the absence of Ministers they tend to be excessively cautious. One cannot blame them for that, but the difficulty with excessive caution is that very little will happen unless we take away the constraints that the civil servants impose on themselves.
Let me give a few examples. On the Parliament channel I happened to stumble on some Northern Ireland television and saw a bizarre example, which I think I have now had confirmed. It is not proper for Members of the Legislative Assembly to put on the noticeboard above their constituency office more than their name and their party; they may not put their email address or their phone number. Indeed, if that television programme was right, David Ford, a former Justice Minister, will lose his Assembly money and be penalised by £10,000 because he put his email address and phone number on the sign above his office door. I cannot think of anything dafter or more absurd. I hope that the Minister will find a way of getting rid of that stupid anomaly and giving David Ford the money to which he is surely entitled under the present provisions. We spend our time—or at least, they certainly do in the Commons—trying to make ourselves available to the public, yet there, by some bizarre reason, things go the other way.
I have been trying to understand the details of the Budget. I have not yet managed to do it all, but I understand that there are some provisions for extra expenditure in Northern Ireland, including expenditure on shared and integrated education projects. Is that extra money now available to be spent on integrated schools, and will civil servants get the go-ahead to do that, rather than having to wait until the Executive are restored? Integrated education is surely crucial to politics in Northern Ireland, and to harmony among communities. All we are saying is that parents in Northern Ireland would like to have the choice of integrated education, and I would like to feel that, on the basis of yesterday’s Budget Statement, there is a bit of money in the budget available for this purpose.
I also note what the Bill says about appointments. I think that there are some other appointments that are not listed, and the danger is that if the Secretary of State permits appointments to be made only fairly late in the day, there could be a lame duck in a senior post, not knowing whether he or she had a future. That is a very unsatisfactory position to be in. I urge that the Secretary of State should give as much notice as possible in the case of renewing appointments, or of removing appointees and appointing new people, so that there is at least some continuity. That would be fair to Northern Ireland and to the people concerned.
I am worried about what the decision-making will mean regarding planning constraints. There have been one or two such cases in Northern Ireland, and in the past few months civil servants have been very cautious about giving the go-ahead for major projects requiring planning permission, because they are concerned about whether they have those powers or not. Planning constraints are important, but I hope there can be at least some relaxation, so that worthwhile projects that would create jobs and be beneficial to Northern Ireland are not held up. When people want planning permission for such projects they cannot always wait. They may not have the money to sit tight, and the chance will go away. The Minister will know of some examples.
I note what the noble and learned Lord who preceded me said about abortion, but I want to leave that until we deal with the amendment.
Penultimately, may I ask the Minister a question that he will expect to come from me—one about child refugees? I know that some parts of Northern Ireland have taken Syrian families, but I would like the Minister to answer this question: can it be made possible for Northern Ireland to provide foster accommodation for child refugees through the scheme under Section 67 of the Immigration Act? I have been told by people in Northern Ireland that they would like to co-operate, and there are local foster parents who would be willing. I understand that it is a matter for the health boards. I have talked to lots of people and they are all keen that there should be some progress. Can the Minister throw some light on whether that would be possible, or could be made possible?
Lastly, the Minister talked at a number of points in his speech about the consent of the Northern Ireland parties to one or two specific issues. I wonder how widely it could be made a principle underlying the Bill that the Northern Ireland parties should be asked in an informal consultation process about some of the issues we are talking about today. That would help to move things along. It would not give a mandate or make the process legal in terms of devolution, but at least consulting the Northern Ireland parties on some of the changes that need to be made might not be a bad idea.
Lord Eames (CB)
My Lords, the columns of our newspapers in Northern Ireland are frequently filled with people giving their wise or otherwise comments on public affairs. In the last few weeks the discussion of the Bill that is before the House today prompted one writer to say, “Here we go again”—and I have a feeling that that is the emotion that many noble Lords will be feeling at this moment. Because I believe that that is a danger in its own way, we need to put everything that we are saying this afternoon—and, as I have been reminded, this evening—in the context of what the reality is.
Yes, here we go again: we face another look at the disastrous consequences of a failure to establish a local Administration at Stormont. We all know the story, the excuses and the reasons, and we are left in no doubt that, even though at one stage in recent history, we are told, the main parties were within grasping distance of an agreement, no agreement was possible. For my part, I believe that we would be failing the people of Northern Ireland, who are after all the substance of what we are doing, if we did not realise that, no matter what the details are of our discussion and debate, it has an effect right across the board on a society that in many ways is unique.
It is unique because it is a devolved Administration and because many of the things that have happened question the value of devolution and the way in which the United Kingdom goes about it. In the margin of many of the arguments that we have heard over and over in this House, there are questions of a fundamental nature that we find it comfortable to avoid, such as: does devolution mean the New Jerusalem to those concerned because power is given to local politicians? When those local politicians find that the margins in which they are asked to work are not possible, we then ask the bigger question: does that mean we have somehow got the theory of devolution wrong?
Once more the disastrous consequence of the failure to reach agreement on the formation of that devolved Administration for which we had such hope at the time of the Good Friday agreement is that our people are being denied a voice on serious issues. The reality is that this failure means that medical services, education, social services, roads, transport and indeed victims face impossible odds because Stormont cannot take serious decisions.
It would be very easy to place much of what we are talking about this afternoon in a context that takes us away from the reality of the experience of Northern Ireland. It is a society which has suffered much and which is still trying to come to terms with the wounds of the Troubles. They are not just physical or obvious wounds. They are the failure to build relationships, to mature in political relationships and to understand that within our grasp, if we have the rare will to do it, we can achieve much that has so far eluded us. The absence of this local devolved Administration in these days as Brexit comes galloping—dare I say?—across the Irish border, fast approaching with all its unanswered questions, means that Northern Ireland is bereft of the presentation of its local voice.
We have been reminded by the Minister that this is the Government’s attempt to meet a unique situation. We are told that it is one means of encouraging local government in Stormont. It places on our Civil Service responsibilities to take actions that could easily lead it into a legal minefield. That, for me, is a real concern. It causes long-term questions on the theory of devolution. We are bound to ask: after this Bill, what happens next? What happens if the consequences of this Bill falter yet again? Will the Government face another situation where special needs must be met by special provisions? Are we, in fact—I ask the Minister directly—in danger of setting a precedent that could be interpreted in other devolution relationships in the United Kingdom? Today we face decisions affecting the people of Northern Ireland which their representatives, rather than Westminster, ought to take.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, no one in this House who has just heard what the noble and right reverend Lord said would feel anything other than the most profound sympathy, both for what he said and the picture he painted. I am English but married to an Ulsterman and go regularly to Northern Ireland. I heard that with mounting depression, but it does not surprise me. I also feel a great deal of sympathy for the Government, who are doing their best not to take over. They are doing their best to allow for a situation in which they can persuade those who do not seem to want to be persuaded that they must form an Executive and recall the Assembly.
I want to say a few words about Clause 4, which is not, of course, government-inspired, for obvious reasons. In the other place, there were interesting and useful arguments on devolution and human rights. It is not necessary to explore those today, except to say that the Supreme Court has criticised the situation in Northern Ireland in no uncertain terms. I particularly remark on the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Kerr, who was the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, and was perhaps more outspoken about the injustice to the women of Northern Ireland.
On the Bill itself, even if there had been a declaration of incompatibility, as a previous speaker seemed to think, the Supreme Court could not make it because it came from the commission, not an individual, so there was no declaration. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, pointed out very clearly in his exposition of the law, a declaration of incompatibility would not help at all in this situation. If he is right, as I assume he is, abortion is currently more serious an issue than same-sex marriage because at least there can be civil partnerships. The current situation on abortion is, however, as the Supreme Court said, profoundly unfair. I would not want to open the floodgates of easy abortion to Northern Ireland, but certainly there are situations of rape, incest and foetal abnormality that absolutely cry out to be dealt with.
Having heard the figures from various noble Lords, it is interesting that, like many others, I have had a lot of emails from women supporting the clause and women opposing it—more supporting the clause. I feel, “Poor dears, what do they think this clause really means?” The clause means absolutely nothing on abortion. It will help no one, and it raises expectations with a clear misconception, misunderstanding and misinterpretation of what the clause will say when it inevitably becomes law.
As the Secretary of State in the other place said, the clause puts an impossible burden on her because she will be expected to do something. Those who disapprove of it will see that she may do something they do not like. Those who want it—despite some of the figures we have heard, many women do want it—will find that she cannot do it. Her civil servants cannot do it. As the noble and learned Lord said, if they tried to do anything, they would rightly be slapped down by judicial review because sufficient people would oppose it for it to be taken to the Northern Ireland courts.
There has been a very well-meaning attempt by Members of the House of Commons to circumvent devolution by putting in a clause that I cannot believe they thought would mean anything or would do any good. I do not understand what they thought would happen but it will send a message—or a number of messages. I was told yesterday by somebody from Northern Ireland that this could even send a message that might have some adverse effect on the Good Friday agreement. That may be a step too far but it is certainly something that one cannot ignore. It is the expectation that has been raised that is so sad. What will the Belfast Telegraph, the News Letter or other newspapers in Belfast say after this goes through and becomes law?
If anything is to be done, the Government will have to take over the management of Northern Ireland and, in doing so, the point made by the noble and learned Lord will fall away because London—Westminster—would be making the laws. If Westminster makes the laws, it could change the Offences Against the Person Act, but until the Government do that—and they have absolutely no intention that I can see to do that, for obvious reasons—there is a stalemate, and nothing useful can be done. It is very unfortunate that seeing the Bill through on one day, for perfectly good reasons, means that there is no time for reflection on the best way forward. Clause 4 will pass and it is very unfortunate that it will become law.
Lord Dunlop (Con)
My Lords, I rise to support this Bill—the fifth piece of fast-track Northern Ireland legislation this Session. I confess that I do so with a slightly heavy heart, because legislating this way is far from ideal, as the Constitution Committee— of which I am a member—points out in its report. However, I sympathise with the Government’s predicament. Last year, as a Minister in the Northern Ireland Office, I brought before your Lordships’ House a fast-track Bill to extend the limit for creating an Executive to 108 days. Going the extra mile to try to restore devolved government in Northern Ireland is clearly right. By all accounts, as has already been pointed out, the DUP and Sinn Fein came within a whisker of an agreement in February. Further extending the time available is an understandable impulse, but will the sense of urgency to strike a deal diminish with each deadline passed and then extended? What happens if stalemate persists at the end of extra time, when there is no political equivalent of a penalty shootout to break the deadlock? These nagging questions remain.
All that said, in the circumstances I believe that the Bill is the least-worst option judged against two pretty unattractive alternatives. Those are either that there will be another Assembly election that changes little, with a campaign that might unhelpfully raise the political temperature; or that the spectre of direct rule returns. No one wants that; history has shown that it is not easy to escape from—it took nearly five years the last time.
That is why the current state of affairs is so frustrating. Between the end of direct rule and the dissolution of the Assembly in January 2017, Northern Ireland enjoyed the longest unbroken period of devolved government since the dissolution of the old Stormont Parliament in 1972. That was nearly 10 years in which there were real and positive steps forward in Northern Ireland, and it is a more peaceful and prosperous place today as a result. Yet, just at the moment that Northern Ireland should be driving forward and building on the progress of the last two decades, it has languished for 22 months without Executive Ministers. If negotiations go to the wire allowed for by this Bill, the vacuum could in theory persist for another 10 months. That is nearly three years without an Executive developing policy and being held to account by a fully functioning Assembly.
This is a troubling democratic deficit that our UK Parliament could never hope to make up. However, if further legislation is required, or fresh guidance from the Secretary of State, I hope the Government will be mindful of the need to provide as much time as practical for this Parliament to scrutinise and debate what is proposed.
It is, of course, the Buick judgment in July that has forced the Government to act now. The court judged that decisions normally for a Minister to approve lie beyond the competence of a senior civil servant in the absence of a Minister. However, the court offered no definitive view on where the dividing line should be drawn. Matters that are significant, controversial or engage more than one department would normally be a collective Executive decision, and therefore are clearly beyond a senior civil servant’s competence, in even these exceptional times.
The Bill still leaves a very large grey area. In the absence of this Bill and in the face of a heightened risk of further legal challenges, one can well imagine how there might be a chilling effect on Civil Service decision-making. The Bill seeks to fill that void. However, the lines between policy and administration are never clear cut. The scheme set out in Clause 3 and draft guidance attempts to strike a balance that is difficult, if not impossible to achieve—balancing sufficiently wide scope of administrative discretion with the controls on how that discretion is exercised, without normal accountability mechanisms. The Constitution Committee’s report highlights a number of constitutional issues, including the breadth of conferred powers, lack of clear lines of accountability and the retrospective effect of Clause 3. However, the committee accepts that exceptional times require an exceptional response, while expressing concern that the Bill’s exceptional and constitutionally challenging provisions are not taken as precedents for future legislation.
Whatever our concerns about the Bill, we must not lose sight of the bigger picture. In the absence of fully functioning devolved institutions, decisions crucial to the future prosperity and security of the people of Northern Ireland are simply not being taken. Devolved corporation tax designed to give a boost to Northern Ireland’s economy is stalled; £2 billion of critical economic infrastructure, such as the north/south electricity interconnector and the new Belfast transport hub are in a holding pattern. Recommendations from the Hart report into historical institutional abuse are unimplemented. A strong elected voice representing Northern Ireland’s interests in the Joint Ministerial Committee discussions to prepare for Brexit is absent, not to mention the pressures facing schools and hospitals. Nothing in the Bill will directly change this state of affairs. One can only hope that the Bill provides a space to facilitate a political resolution.
My last official engagement as a Northern Ireland Office Minister was on 7 June last year, on a windswept ridge in Flanders, at the ceremony to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Messines. The battle has great symbolic significance for the island of Ireland. Soldiers from the 36th (Ulster) and 16th (Irish) Divisions fought together for the first time during the First World War. Unionists and nationalists set aside political differences to unite in a common cause. Their story and sacrifice made a powerful impression on all those there, nationalists and unionists alike. The example of those servicemen echoes down the years and stands as a rebuke to those who have not—after nearly two years—resolved their differences. As we approach our own national day of remembrance, I hope that Northern Ireland’s political leaders will reflect on the example set by those soldiers, rise to the same heights of leadership and do right by the people of Northern Ireland by restoring the devolved government they clearly want, urgently need and so richly deserve.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, regrettably we are again discussing another piece of legislation that should not have been necessary. Once more, we are holding a debate against the backdrop of a Northern Ireland with no locally accountable decision-making body in place. None of us wants to be in the current situation with no local decision-makers. As I have said many times before in this House, it is vital that we move forward positively. Northern Ireland has moved on considerably during the last decade and, despite the present situation, none of us wants to go back to where we were in the past. In the context of the continued absence of a fully functioning Assembly and Government, legislation such as this is necessary to facilitate the continued governance of public services. Bills require scrutiny, analysis and examination. This is the level of accountability that one should expect. Time does not allow for a great deal of that today and I would, naturally, prefer that such matters were scrutinised in the context of Stormont. Unfortunately, this is not the present reality.
I support the Bill, but I do so cautiously as it is limited in scope and far from an ideal solution. Before focusing on a couple of specific concerns, it is important to look at how we have reached this situation. It is worth repeating that we are discussing these matters in your Lordship’s House, and in the other place, only because of one party’s narrow agenda. Instead of a fair and balanced way forward, the party that collapsed the Stormont Assembly in January 2017, and refused to return, continues to halt progress in re-establishing a Government. One party continues to place the fulfilment of demands ahead of governing in the interests of everyone in Northern Ireland. Unfortunately, the result is that there is little prospect of a return to local decision-making at this time.
The legislation before us, although welcome, will continue to present challenges. Unaccountable senior civil servants have been tasked with taking decisions within departments for a considerable period of time. It is true to say that in some instances, decisions have been delayed and many are still not being made. I commend the Government for being proactive in issuing supporting guidance to the Civil Service so that it can get on with its job of doing the necessary work to advance day-to-day living in Northern Ireland.
The Buick ruling undoubtedly undermined the status of officials. Although the legislation and guidance are aimed at dealing with this directly and at providing some advice and clarity to reassure officials, I remain concerned that it gives limited scope for decision-making. There are still real concerns that decisions will be subject or open to judicial review or legal challenges. Does this legislation do enough to minimise the possibility of such a scenario?
It is to be welcomed that there is some assurance that decisions can be made, although it is likely that these will be non-controversial, covering planning and investment, which enjoy a broad consensus. I welcome the Government’s clarity in the other place that a decision such as that on the transport hub, which is crucial to Northern Ireland’s economy, can be advanced under the terms of the legislation. Policing Board members and other appointments can now be made, and this is extremely important.
There is now a specific requirement for senior department officials to report monthly directly to Her Majesty’s Government on decisions that have been taken under the Bill. This is an important point which deals with transparency, and I am pleased to see that it has been included.
There are some understandable fears of a continuation of the current situation, in which decisions in a range of areas, such as education, health, housing and major projects are not being taken. The Bill provides no certainty on key decisions. Permanent Secretaries in a number of departments have been cautious to date about advancing the number of decisions which have been in the pipeline for a considerable time. More than 200 decisions have lain in abeyance across departments since the suspension of the Assembly, and although we have made some progress within this Bill, there is no compulsion for officials to make key decisions that impact on the people of Northern Ireland.
These decisions need to be made if we are to see day-to-day public services restored to the level at which they should be. Budgetary decisions also need to be taken urgently, and policing and departmental spending challenges will continue to be an issue in some cases, as the allocations officials are working with are based on historic decisions taken by the previous Assembly.
On Clause 4, regardless of one’s personal views on abortion, it must objectively be accepted that this is a controversial issue in Northern Ireland. An amendment has been tagged on to this Bill, and this does not allow enough time for proper consideration or scrutiny of this matter. It is also the case that, in the United Kingdom, this is clearly defined as a devolved matter. The courts have recognised that this issue is, rightly, for the relevant democratic body, which, in this instance, is the Assembly. This is an attempt to change the law. As the Government have previously noted, guidance cannot do that. Any change in the current law in Northern Ireland will require legislative change. This provision is asking the Government to ask officials to do something that is impossible in law. This clause is therefore an inappropriate vehicle, regardless of the substantive issue involved.
Given that we are now approaching two years since the Assembly last met, we have reached a point where there needs to be some level of political decision-making, accountability and public scrutiny. Decisions will need to be made on a range of issues. I ask the Minister to provide assurance to departments that relevant ministerial approval will be provided.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, in March 1979, four days after Airey Neave was brutally murdered in the precincts of Parliament, I made my maiden speech in the House of Commons. I reflected on the need to find political solutions to the endless cycle of violence in Northern Ireland. During the years that followed, I served as a spokesman on Irish affairs. In 1985 I was appointed by the noble Lord, Lord Steel, to be a member of the commission that served under the chairmanship of the late Lord Donaldson of Kingsbridge, which produced the report What Future for Northern Ireland? Our commission concluded that progress could be made if, instead of encamped and embedded hostility to the other community, the respectful place of both traditions in a devolved power-sharing institution could be recognised. While endless legislation was rushed through as emergency legislation, none of it addressed the fundamental issue.
Eight years later, on 20 March 1993, the shocking waste of innocent life was underlined when a bomb was left in a litter bin in a shopping area of Warrington. Two children, three year-old Johnathan Ball and 12 year-old Tim Parry, were murdered. As I stood with John Major at their funeral, it was clear that the finest memorial to those boys would be renewed efforts to end a conflict which, over 30 years, claimed 3,600 lives, injured and maimed thousands more, and left countless lives scarred and disfigured in the way that my noble and right reverend friend Lord Eames described earlier.
The Downing Street declaration of December 1993 paved the way for the Good Friday agreement, signed on 10 April 1998. The painstaking and patient work of a succession of Secretaries of State, some of whom have been in your Lordships’ Chamber this afternoon, the statesmanship of men like John Hume and the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and ultimately the willingness of the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness to make devolution work, set aside the forced choice between British and Irish identities, with two tribes looking out at one another in enmity and hate—all gains alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, in his moving speech.
I hold both an Irish and a British passport, as do my children. In two world wars, my grandfather and father fought in the British Army, and an uncle died in the Royal Air Force. My mother was a native Irish speaker. Her family suffered extreme poverty in an area where Irish nationalism and republicanism had been nurtured by famine in one century and brutality in the next. So, more than most, I have always had to hold in tension a love of both traditions. From both sides of my family I was taught to abjure violence and to uphold the sanctity of every human life. I am troubled to see the gains of those years now at risk. Here we are again, rushing legislation through this House in 24 hours flat, with the House of Commons having done the same.
I was struck—it has not been referred to yet—by the report of the Select Committee on the Constitution of your Lordships’ House, published only yesterday. It stated:
“We question whether the speed at which the Government wishes to pass this Bill is necessary … more time (even with a fast-track timetable) could have been made available for parliamentary scrutiny of this Bill”—
which is surely our job. It continues:
“We emphasise that in any other circumstances provisions such as these which challenge established constitutional principles would not be acceptable”.
That brings me to Clause 4, which the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Belmont, just referred to, as did other noble Lords. It purports to provide guidance to members of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland in relation to the repeal of Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861: namely, the provisions banning abortion—the deliberate ending of the life of a child in the womb. This is a serious issue. This is the law of this land. “Procuring miscarriage” is an offence unless two doctors agree that one of the defences set out in the Abortion Act 1967 applies. So how can the Secretary of State issue guidance to another jurisdiction advising on the repeal of legislation that is current law in her own jurisdiction? As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said earlier, this is smoke and mirrors—and, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, it makes a nonsense. This is an absurdity, and on this point alone these ill-thought-through amendments ought to be dismissed.
In the mid-1990s, I accompanied a cross-community delegation of Members of Parliament—from the Social Democratic and Labour Party, the Official Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party—to see John Major. We were given his assurance that he and the Conservative Government would insist that abortion would remain a matter to be settled in Northern Ireland. It troubles me that Clause 4 seeks to unsettle that agreement. In a Bill of such a limited and temporary nature, how can anyone reasonably suggest that an issue as contentious and sensitive as abortion should even be included for consideration?
In the Commons, the amendments that were introduced came at such short notice that many MPs did not even know that the House would divide. Karen Bradley, the Secretary of State, was right when she said that if the amendments were passed, which they were, it would put the Northern Ireland Civil Service in “an impossible position”. She went on to say that,
“the Bill cannot force Northern Ireland Departments to change the law”,
as the new clause seeks to do—a point made by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, in his remarks earlier. The Secretary of State said:
“It would be totally contrary to the rule of law and the way the independence of the civil service across the whole United Kingdom operates”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/10/18; col. 385.]
In March of this year, 47 Members of this House, including former Cabinet Ministers, co-signed a letter to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland noting that legislation from Westminster would severely destabilise the devolution agreement. The Prime Minister says it would not be right for the United Kingdom Government to undermine the settlement agreement.
We have heard many references during the debate to things such as human rights. In December we will celebrate the 70th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which says that everyone has the right to life. There is no right to abortion in human rights law: let us be clear about that. Nowhere does the Universal Declaration of Human Rights refer to abortion being a human rights question.
There will be a chance to return to these issues in Committee, but let me conclude. Noble Lords do not have to agree with my substantive opposition to the taking of the life of a child in the womb, up to and even during birth in the case of a child with a disability—which results, in Great Britain, in one abortion every three minutes, or around 40 in the two hours that we have been debating this Bill so far, or some 9 million since 1967—or my noting that if that legislation had applied in Northern Ireland, 100,000 people would not be alive today who were born because the legislation does not apply there. Noble Lords do not have to agree with my view about this to be concerned about the provisions in this Bill. As parliamentarians, we have a duty to pass laws that make sense, a duty to uphold the principles of subsidiarity, a duty to resist the making of laws on the hoof, a duty to insist on proper scrutiny and debate, a duty to contest ideology and sloganeering, and a duty to respect the people of Northern Ireland.
Lord Trimble (Con)
My Lords, I have a lot of sympathy with the suggestion made by the noble Lord that we could have benefited from a procedure that allowed a more thorough examination of the legislation. However, we are where we are, and we are dealing with legislation which at the moment has to be acknowledged to be necessary. It is necessary because, for a long time now, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been vulnerable to a judicial review, and while that has not matured, she does need the provision that is in here to protect her against that.
Another factor that has been mentioned is with regard to doubt over the capacity of civil servants to take decisions in these matters, and here I just do not understand the problem. The Government of Ireland Act 1920 is quite clear: Section 8 puts executive powers in departments. Very clearly, the devolution is to departments. We could have a long argument about how this came about, because it flies against normal British practice, but this happened. There are hypotheses about it, but I am not going to go into the question of how it came about; I am simply saying that is the law, and that is the law that civil servants are exercising. Civil servants may find it embarrassing, but the law is as it is in the 1920 Act.
Clause 4 has been referred to, and I agree with a lot of the negative comments made with regard to it, but I have to say there is again another misunderstanding of what the law is. With regard to the law in Northern Ireland, the only substantive difference between the law in Northern Ireland and the law in England and Wales on abortion is the question of foetal abnormality. On all other matters the law is the same, in terms of the substance of the law. What is different is that the law in England is in statute law, but in Northern Ireland it is in common law: judicial decisions, including the Bourne decision in 1938. The problem then lies with the lack of a clear process and a way of proceeding. It is all very well to say, “Go and see your GP and he should arrange an abortion for you”. I do not think that that happens very often, but that is basically what should happen under our law. Rather than people having to go to England and spend thousands of pounds, they should be able to go to their GPs. Unfortunately, some doctors do not display the courage or constancy that is required. A further problem has been that various people put the health service under pressure to produce guidelines, which resulted in the Civil Service producing guidelines that were overly cautious and narrower than the law. Those guidelines should be dumped and we should have a clearer understanding of the law. Again, I do not want to spend too long on this point, although it has to be made. I am afraid that I disagree with some noble Lords—indeed, some noble Lords who are highly learned in the law—but I am confident that the situation is as I have stated it.
We should focus on the political problem in trying to resolve the difficulties. I agree with a lot of what my noble friend Lord Empey said. He gave a very clear description of the problems and of the way in which, unfortunately, the Government have not been able to progress matters in the way that we would like. However, that is understandable as we have so much on our plates at the moment. I can well understand someone saying to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, “Don’t bring me any new problems”. I am sure that that is the sort of thing that is being said there, but it is unfortunate that we do not have a viable political process to bring about a restoration of devolution.
There would be difficulties with that, because it is quite clear that Sinn Féin does not want to see Stormont restored. We need to find a process analogous to that which happened way back in 1997, when Tony Blair became Prime Minister and made his first speech outside London, in Belfast, in which he said to the republican movement, “A settlement train is coming. I want you to be on the train, but it will be going with or without you”. That put pressure on Sinn Féin to come into the process. We now need to find a way of exerting that kind of pressure on Sinn Féin to get things moving, because it will not move without pressure. One likes to think that, once Brexit is resolved, it might be prepared to look at things, but I am beginning to have doubts about whether it will really want to do that.
So the question is: how do we exert the necessary pressure? I have put forward proposals on these matters on previous occasions, but nothing has happened, probably because those proposals were too ambitious. This time, I am going to the opposite extreme and will table an amendment later today which is as cautious as I can make it. In fact, I cannot think of anything that could be more cautious than what I am about to propose, but it might start something moving, which is what we need to happen.
Finally, there have been a number of unkind comments, particularly in the debate in the other place, about Northern Ireland MLAs drawing salaries when there is no Assembly for them to participate in. That is not their fault—unless they are Sinn Féin Members, in which case I think they have to bear some responsibility. They are trying to do their best in their own way, and I shall give a little plug for my own MLA in Lisburn, Robbie Butler. One of the things he is doing to try to keep politics alive is that normally, on a weekly basis, he transmits videos that deal with various issues, and they are very effective. In September, he issued a video on suicide awareness and it has had 34,000 viewings, which is incredible in the current context. I declare an interest in this matter. It is not just that Robbie is my MLA; he has had the good sense to employ my son in his office. I mention that to show that MLAs are doing the best that can be expected of them in the present circumstances. However, it is our responsibility, and particularly the Government’s responsibility, to put them back into the circumstances they ought to be in—in a functioning Assembly.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow the noble Lord, Lord Trimble. Given the success he brought to the office when he was First Minister of Northern Ireland, can I suggest that his son is immediately given a hereditary peerage so he can participate in these debates? This might enable him in quick succession to become First Minister of Northern Ireland.
I feel, as with some other noble Lords, like an interloper in this debate, particularly sandwiched as I am in the batting order between the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, both of whom played an extremely important role in the operation of the devolved institutions. However, the reason why I and others are speaking—and we do so without any hesitation—is precisely because there are no devolved institutions in Northern Ireland at the moment. We take a view, which we have a duty to take, that after two years where there has been no Assembly and no Government in Northern Ireland, we in Westminster have a duty to take an interest, including, I would say to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, in fundamental rights in Northern Ireland.
The point which is essential to grasp here—and it is also my comment on the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Morrow—is that if Northern Ireland wishes to exercise the prerogatives of devolution, it must operate devolved institutions. It is unacceptable for those of us in Westminster, who are ultimately responsible for the welfare of people in Northern Ireland, to be told that we should respect a devolution settlement which the political parties in Northern Ireland will not respect themselves. That is an unsustainable position.
I believe that is against our fundamental duties as Members of this House and the other place, and there can only be a short period of time for which we can tolerate it any longer. This Bill says until the end of next March—that is nearly three years in which the people of Northern Ireland will not have had an Assembly or a Government. Could the people of England tolerate for one moment the idea that this House would not be sitting for three years? I made a bit of a fuss before the summer at the idea we were not sitting for 10 weeks. The idea we would not sit for three years—that the other place would not sit for three years too—and would devolve to civil servants the task of running the country is utterly unthinkable, and that is the context in which we are dealing with these issues in Northern Ireland.
I say to the noble Lords, Lord Morrow and Lord Alton, if they think that the devolved institutions of Northern Ireland are required to protect fundamental rights, then those institutions must sit and legislate. If they do not sit and legislate, then we have a duty to legislate in their place, because there is no one else who can do it. We cannot tolerate a situation where there is no Government or legislature for Northern Ireland. If the only legislature available is this one, then we have a fundamental duty in that respect.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, who is not in his place at the moment, said that we have to respect the devolution settlement and we do not have a right to legislate. I really do hesitate to take on a former Lord Chancellor, but my understanding of the constitution of this kingdom is that if this Parliament chooses, in its wisdom, to legislate, its law is supreme. Indeed, it has to be supreme because there is no other supreme body in this kingdom.
If we continue in this situation where the political parties in Northern Ireland—despite the strong advice being given by many of their wisest leaders in your Lordships’ House this afternoon—take the view that they are not prepared to operate those institutions, there must come a point, probably not far distant from now, where some form of direct rule will need to be instituted. The alternative to that is no legislature and no Government in Northern Ireland, which puts an intolerable pressure on civil servants, who cannot be expected to have to take these decisions without a proper, democratic set of institutions.
Baroness Butler-Sloss
I want to ask the noble Lord whether he thinks he was right in saying that this Parliament in Westminster could actually pass legislation. I think we would have to take over Northern Ireland and go beyond devolution when there is power for us to do that. But I think in the absence of that we could not, today for instance, pass a law.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I absolutely defer to the noble and learned Baroness. If she says that that is the case then she is obviously right, but there clearly are procedures by which we can exercise our sovereignty—the only question is what those procedures are.
I thought that the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, was quite brilliant. I have been to Northern Ireland several times in recent months to acquaint myself with the situation because of the debates taking place on Brexit, but also partly because the only way of understanding what the views of the parties and politicians across the spectrum in Northern Ireland are is to go there. It is not possible to get them here because, unfortunately, Sinn Féin does not take its seats, nor is it possible to be guided by the views of the Northern Ireland Assembly because it is not meeting. It is quite a commentary on our affairs that literally the only way of understanding what is going on in Northern Ireland, if you sit here in the Parliament in Westminster, is to go to Belfast and meet the parties.
When I went to Belfast, I had extremely constructive discussions with the parties in Stormont. It was the first time I had been to Stormont; its grandeur is quite extraordinary. These are institutions very much in the image of Westminster. What really struck me while I was holding meetings in one of the committee rooms, where I am told that the Executive used to meet, was that in the Senate Chamber was meeting the inquiry into the renewable heat scandal, which the noble Lord, Lord Empey, referred to. If a scandal on that scale had happened here in London, by now there would be cases in the courts and serious legal proceedings. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that the fact so little is known about those affairs here and we take so little interest in them is, I am afraid, something of a condemnation of us. However, if these affairs continue in Northern Ireland, I believe we will have no choice whatever but to become involved.
This is Second Reading and we will deal with Committee in due course. I will put down a marker for three issues that seem essential for us to address ourselves to in Committee, since there is no Assembly in Northern Ireland. The first is the issue of a mediator and getting serious talks started that could lead to a new Government in Northern Ireland. The Minister, in his excellent introductory speech, said that “intensive talks” are necessary. He also said—I noted this down as he said it—that,
“we will not be waiting until March”,
to get intensive talks going. I take those to be significant statements. Could he, in his summing up, return specifically to the issue of whether the Government will as a matter of urgency proceed, with agreement among the parties in Northern Ireland, with the appointment of a mediator? It seems an essential next step since nothing else appears to be producing momentum. I have amendments tabled in respect of that, but I do not intend to press them. I am looking for assurance from the Minister that the Government will move in this regard.
Secondly, on abortion and equal marriage, the situation as I see it is as follows. It is a judgment that will be held by a majority in this House and in the House of Commons that the current law in Northern Ireland is not consistent with fundamental human rights. Other noble Lords might take a different view and some of them have spoken in this debate, but it is my view that that would be the judgment of a majority. Indeed, that clearly was the judgment of the majority in the House of Commons. I expect that it will be the judgment of the majority in this House too. The only point I make in this regard is this: if the people of Northern Ireland want to take a different view through their elected representatives, those elected representatives must meet, because there will come a point, which I believe is not far distant, where, if they do not meet, we will be obliged to legislate.
Thirdly, there is the issue of Brexit. What has taken me to Belfast, Dublin and the border territories in recent months are discussions on this very vexed issue of the Irish border and how it is possible for us to Brexit while not having a hard border. It seems to me that we need some mechanism in the coming months, given that there is not an Assembly and an Executive in Northern Ireland, where we—this Parliament in Westminster—can receive the views of the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, not just from the one party that takes its seats in the House of Commons. In my amendments on the Order Paper, I suggest that the way of doing that would be to have a special sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly without there being an Executive, purely for the purpose of debating Brexit and reaching a resolution that could then be submitted to the Parliament here. My understanding from his speech is that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, might have a more ingenious suggestion to make later on in Committee as to how the opinions of the parties in Northern Ireland might be taken in respect to Brexit. I will absolutely defer to him if he has such a suggestion to make. I believe it is important in the coming debates on Brexit that we are able to take account in some formal way of the views of the political parties and their elected representatives in Northern Ireland. In the absence of any better solution to this problem, I suggest that there should be a special sitting of the Assembly.
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, other noble Lords have already commented on the fact that, yet again, we have fast-track legislation in respect of Northern Ireland. In no way, however, could this be described an emergency situation. Time after time I have advised the Government in this House from these Benches that the Secretary of State was operating ultra vires and that civil servants could not take the decisions that needed to be taken. The last time was in the debate on the Budget on 18 July. It is not just regrettable: it is becoming a really bad habit to keep bringing forward fast-track legislation when the problems have been known well in advance. It is almost as though the Government do not seriously want to discuss and debate these matters in detail, because there is no other excuse for what is being done.
Having said that, I am, of course, glad to see that the positions of the Secretary of State and the civil servants are being regularised in respect of departmental functions and appointments. However, that addresses only the legal problem and in the short term. It does not address the political problem, which is the reason for us being in this difficult situation. Noble Lords on the other side have described the responsibility that Sinn Féin bears for being in this situation, but it is not only a question of Sinn Féin.
Let us reflect on the fact that Martin McGuinness, who played a very valuable and constructive role with Dr Ian Paisley—Lord Bannside—resigned over the question of the First Minister’s handling of the RHI debacle. As time has gone on, whatever responsibility some members of Sinn Féin and Sinn Féin Ministers may have, it is absolutely clear that what was happening under the aegis of the First Minister, Arlene Foster, was utterly unacceptable and reprehensible. The report that is going to come out will be devastatingly bad, and so it should be. What is worse is that Arlene Foster had the experience of stepping in for Peter Robinson when he, as First Minister, stepped back from his role briefly but very appropriately on a matter of much less public expenditure import. She could have done the same, and we might well have not had the suspension of the Assembly.
On the question of whether we need a mediator, the parties were perfectly capable of getting together and coming to an agreement. The problem was that Mrs Foster was clearly not able to deliver that agreement when it went back to her own party. There is no evidence that getting an agreement through a mediator or otherwise is actually going to deliver, because it is not only one party that is a problem here: it is two parties. That is why, in addition to saying to the Government, “You have a legal problem with the Secretary of State and possibly civil servants operating ultra vires,” we need to say, “You have a political problem and you need to address that by an election”. All this Bill does from that point of view is postpone the date of that election, because it would not be acceptable to go to any form of direct rule at any stage without an election. All we are doing is postponing it.
I accept that November, December and January are not very good months for an election. I also accept that we might be preoccupied with other things by the time February and March come round, so I understand the provisions, but this is not the first time that the warning has come. This is not the first time I have asked for an election. Will the Minister, in his response, indicate why it has not been possible to have an election during any of the period of time when the election should have been held?
We may well come to the situation that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has mentioned: we go through this period, there is still no agreement; we have an election, there is still no agreement. What happens then? The point that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, needs to pay attention to is that we do not simply return to Westminster sovereignty. Why? Because we have an internationally binding treaty with the Republic of Ireland. That means that if there were to be any change or any development, it would have to be in discussions with the Irish Government. I think it unlikely that they are going to agree to a simple matter of direct rule. I think it much more likely that you would move to a form of direct rule in which there would be some clear acknowledgement of input from the Irish Government. That has been the trajectory for the last 25 or 30 years and I think it is the much more likely way out of this problem if the Northern Ireland political parties are not able to find a way of moving. That is the trajectory: this makes it a transition rather than a settlement. Much more could be said about that and I trust that we will be able to do so when we have the opportunity of a wider debate.
On Clause 4, the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has pointed out, I think correctly, that much could be done by way of guidance under the current legal system. I well recall, as a young psychiatrist, having to do assessments on women needing abortions for reasons of their mental health, but that was tightened once people said, “We need some kind of guidance”. It would be entirely possible, legal and appropriate for the Secretary of State to look at the guidance that is being issued on the current law. But there is another matter that could be dealt with entirely legally, and I ask the Minister to respond to this if possible, if not this evening then at another time. What is to stop the Secretary of State, on these two issues that have been referred to, putting proposals forward for referendums, so that we would not be dependent on particular political parties in hock to minorities, or on opinion polls? We could ask the people of Northern Ireland whether they want to make a change to the abortion law or the law on gay marriage. That would not be undermining devolution but saying that, if elected representatives do not put themselves in a position to fulfil devolution, we do not ignore the people of Northern Ireland, nor human rights law, but we ask them to give their view. Is there anything to stop the Secretary of State making a recommendation that there should be referendums—non-binding, but nevertheless advisory referendums?
These are two issues on which there is deep disagreement between Sinn Féin and the DUP regarding the resumption of devolution. Therefore, it is actually important that they be addressed, whether by ourselves, the people of Northern Ireland, or otherwise. We are all preoccupied with Brexit now but I tell the House that, one way or another, elected representatives in Northern Ireland must get the matter resolved within a short period after Brexit. I know that Sinn Féin is keen to see itself in government in the south more than in the north, but when the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, asked what can be done that would induce Sinn Féin back into devolution, I can see a situation very clearly. If the minority Government in the south were to fall, if there were to be an election and Sinn Féin found itself in coalition Government in the south, which is entirely possible, despite what is said by the leaders of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael, I can guarantee that you will have devolution at the drop of a hat, because Sinn Féin would very much like to be in government on both sides of the border at the same time.
This is still a moving picture. It may seem that watching politics in Northern Ireland is like watching paint dry, but eventually paint does dry, and we will come back to this issue again.
Viscount Brookeborough (CB)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. I have been scratching out bits and pieces that I was going to say and I was going to scratch out the bit about a referendum, but then I thought I would support it, since it had not come up. One of the problems we have in Northern Ireland is that we have a lot of politicians who say they are speaking for other people, but when you go around the country it is remarkable how few people they are really speaking for when they become hard line and morally demanding. That is all I shall say. Perhaps a referendum would at least settle it one way or another.
I welcome the Bill, although I think its scope is not nearly wide enough and it is very late in the day. The question has been asked: why it is an emergency; why urgent? The part of the Explanatory Memorandum entitled “Why is Fast-tracking necessary?” says “to provide clarity” and to “clarify the powers”. That does not mean that it is urgent. It means that the Government have sat on their backside and have done nothing since the Assembly crashed. Many of us in Northern Ireland would have said that that was incredibly predictable anyway. There seems to be very little forward thinking. If we look back for a moment at what happened in the Second World War under the coalition Government—I was not around—there was a single aim: to win the war, which they did. What happened afterwards? The whole thing burst apart. The Chuckle brothers, for once, had a single aim: to stop the violence. They stopped the violence and wanted power sharing. They got it, but what happens after a Government or a person achieve their aim? They make friends with their enemies to do so, but can they really work together in peace? There is a flaw there. I am not against devolved power or devolved organisation and co-operation, but it is difficult to believe that it will go on for ever. Therefore, many of us thought that it was fairly predictable.
There are people who think that the Assembly—I am not running it down—was the be-all and end-all of everything, and that all the decisions were made because they flowed out of it. They were not, it was not easy and it was commendable that people were trying to make it work. It is by no means a perfect system. It made government very difficult, and it made life in Northern Ireland very difficult. You could not get things done because there were contradictory signals the whole time. The Government have ignored these fundamental facts for far too long, and there has been little forward planning. When you plan forward, we were taught in the military—I know this is getting military—to carry out an appreciation, but to make fundamental assumptions and base those assumptions on fact. If you do not refer to them, you begin to run into trouble. The Government should refer to them more.
In addition, lately, the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach seem to have taken back seats—they have hardly engaged at all on this issue. Their predecessors were much more active and provided more leadership. We were grateful for it, and it provided a great deal more impetus to getting people together, without a shadow of a doubt—let alone a mediator, which is for other people. I am pretty even on that. In future, we should demand much more involvement and determination from the Government and Westminster. The only democratically accountable body that we, as citizens in Northern Ireland, currently have is here, because the Assembly is not sitting. I also realise that we do not want direct rule; however, inasmuch as we are making laws today to enable certain things to happen, why are we not passing legislation to enable Ministers to be appointed from here for a short, specified length of time? That would not be direct rule; that would be interim management of the situation. I think it is quite a good idea, but others have thought about it and binned it a hundred times. It would be time-limited in the same way that the Bill is. We would then avoid this whole issue of Civil Service responsibility and power, and judicial reviews. This is obviously a minefield and it is very difficult. The Civil Service is outstanding, but we are pressurising it into making decisions on which there will be comeback. It would also mean that policy introduction would be current, not retrospective, as it tends to be at the moment, taking a long time.
Perhaps all this lack of attention, lack of action and legislation with limited scope is intended not to upset the two main parties—the DUP and Sinn Féin—and therefore achieve a return to Stormont. Again, I say to the Secretary of State and the Government—who say, “This is our aim”—that of course it is their aim. They say, “This is our wish, we believe it will happen”, to which I say, “Face the fundamental facts”. Enough people have pointed them out today and I certainly do not need to go into all that detail.
Personally, I believe that Sinn Féin has no intention of going back until after Brexit and possibly after later discussions further down the Brexit road. It is waiting for the wheels to fall off this wagon and it wants to pick something up. If you were in Sinn Féin’s situation and wanted a united Ireland, what would you do? You would do exactly what it is doing. We should not be wasting dividend or any bonuses on Sinn Féin at the moment. You can use them only once and if you use them and do not get what you want, the next time round you have to leave it the heirlooms. We should not be going down that route. As has been said, the DUP has its own problems. It is not entirely one-sided but it appears that in that context Sinn Féin will say no.
The people of Northern Ireland, from all communities, feel totally frustrated and demoralised, with little hope of any progress. Somebody said—it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Empey—that people are not happy and everyone thinks that devolution and the Assembly are wonderful. I can tell your Lordships that people in Northern Ireland do not say that, because devolution has not worked for them, and that is that.
One has to remember that the vast majority of people—Catholic, Protestant, Muslim or whatever—are for peace, for a quiet time and for their own government. However, added to that is the number of people from not only Great Britain but Northern Ireland who served in the Armed Forces, and now our veterans are being hounded, when every one of them volunteered to serve—to lay down their lives if necessary—for our peace. Let us not squander all this by pussyfooting round those who brought about the Troubles. We need—from the Government especially—leadership, determination and legislation with the required scope until we get our Assembly and Executive back, but it has to work properly.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate but, like others, I wish it was unnecessary. As the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, said, most of us would prefer not to be here today.
Earlier this year we celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Belfast agreement. Several noble Lords present in the Chamber played key roles in that remarkable achievement on Good Friday 1998, and should be very proud of what they did. But I am sure that, like me, they can barely believe that, two decades on, Northern Ireland does not have a functioning Government. Yesterday in another place, the Chancellor of the Exchequer delivered his Budget Statement. Together with welcome funding for a Belfast city region deal, Mr Hammond announced an extra £320 million for the Northern Ireland Executive for 2020-21. However, as things stand tonight, it is difficult to envisage local Ministers being in place to spend it even then.
Several noble Lords mentioned the RHI inquiry, which has exposed levels of dysfunctionality inside the last Northern Ireland Executive that are shocking in the extreme. For month after month, we have heard tales of unelected DUP special advisers wielding considerably more power and authority at Stormont than most of their political masters. Last week evidence was produced which appeared to show that at least one Sinn Féin/IRA Minister was acting under instructions—not from special advisers but from senior members of the IRA, if not the IRA Army Council itself. It is little wonder that disillusionment with the political process in Northern Ireland is so high. The people of Northern Ireland deserve much better.
It was 25 years ago when the UDA murdered seven people in the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel; another person died from his injuries. Last week we commemorated the 25th anniversary of the IRA bomb on the Shankill Road that claimed nine victims. Three further terrorist attacks took place in the seven days between the Shankill and the Greysteel atrocities, with yet another six people losing their lives.
Make no mistake: we are never going back to that. We have come so far since 1998. Tourists are flocking to Northern Ireland in record numbers. In recent years the Province has gained a global reputation as a prime location for film production and high-profile sporting events. Next year Royal Portrush will host the Open golf championship for the first time since 1951. Tickets for all four days of competitive play have sold out—the first time this has happened in the 148-year history of the event—and the first ball has not yet been struck. I might add that I own a holiday home in Portrush, and I have been inundated with requests to let it over the Open period.
We have so much in our favour, but we continue to lack a functional, proactive and accountable Government. It makes me very angry that we have found ourselves in this situation. At times it also leaves me feeling a little embarrassed. Here we are in the mother of Parliaments, where I am immensely proud to serve as a Deputy Speaker. I am honoured to travel on a fairly regular basis to meet parliamentarians in other parts of the world to discuss democracy. But when my hosts ask me what form of elected Administration we have in Northern Ireland, I have to tell them that we have none.
My sense of discomfort is not eased by the substance of the Bill before us today. I too have tremendous respect for the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Its staff serve with great skill, knowledge and commitment—but their task has been made almost impossible by the current absence of political direction. The Permanent Secretaries I have spoken to have no desire to be placed in the position in which they find themselves. They want a functioning Northern Ireland Executive to be formed. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, said, we are where we are, and although this legislation is far from ideal, I understand why Her Majesty’s Government have deemed it necessary—for now. I sincerely hope that it will not stay on the statute book for long.
I end my remarks with a request which I ask the Minister to convey on my behalf. Everyone in your Lordships’ House will be fully aware of the excellent work done by Marie Curie to support those living with terminal illness and their families. Marie Curie has been campaigning to reform the special rules determining eligibility for personal independence payments for terminally ill people. There are special rules for terminal illness under PIP, which allow terminally ill people to access their payments quickly and without a face-to-face assessment. But only those with a diagnosis of six months or less to live are eligible to apply under these rules.
Experts from across the medical community have said that this is too restrictive. The difficulty in predicting life expectancy for many terminal illnesses means that legitimate claimants are being excluded from applying for PIP under the special rules. In June an independent review of PIP recommended that the six-month life expectancy criterion determining eligibility under the terminal illness rules be removed. However, in the absence of an Executive at Stormont, the changes required have not been actioned. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, Karen Bradley, has talked about allowing Northern Ireland departments to make decisions in the public interest. As Joan McEwan from Marie Curie Northern Ireland recently said:
“There can be no doubt that creating a fairer and more compassionate PIP system for terminally-ill people in Northern Ireland falls into this category”.
I agree, and I humbly invite the Minister to take Joan’s words on board.
Lord Lexden (Con)
My Lords, it is almost a year since the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, and I both had the honour to be appointed Deputy Speakers in your Lordships’ House. I have to say that he at once acquired a position of efficiency that I am still striving towards.
One of the many serious matters on which we have been reflecting today is the fact that for the best part of two years public services in Northern Ireland have been under the control of civil servants unaccountable to elected representatives, the first time that this has happened in any part of our country in the modern era. A visitor from another planet might perhaps wonder why those elected representatives serving as Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office cannot assume control temporarily, with additional appointments being made to cope with the greatly increased work. The answer that our political leaders would immediately give to such an impertinent visitor is of course that that would violate the devolution settlement. It is the settled conviction of the leaders of the main political parties that any amendment or modification of the devolved settlement in Northern Ireland, however slight or temporary, would bring disaster down upon us. Such dogmatic rigidity is unusual in the mainstream of British politics, where pragmatism normally reigns to the benefit of our country.
The reality is that the Government are content that public services in Northern Ireland should remain for the time being in the hands of unaccountable civil servants. How fortunate we are that their integrity and impartiality are admired so widely and justifiably. They certainly deserve the clarification and confirmation of their powers that the Bill will provide so that they can continue to discharge their responsibilities successfully.
No new policy can be created, we have been firmly told; the Secretary of State said last week that the Bill was,
“about allowing civil servants to make decisions that have been part of a policy that has previously been agreed”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/10/18; col. 300.]
That means, of course, policy agreed by the Northern Ireland Executive before it went out of business nearly two years ago. Time moves on and circumstances change, but policy remains in the state in which the Executive left it nearly two years ago. Yet policy needs to advance, desperately and urgently, in those long-established services on which people depend for their daily health and well-being: health, education, housing and welfare. My noble friend Lord Empey, one of my greatest friends in this House, has spoken with passion on several occasions, including this afternoon in what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, rightly described as a brilliant speech, about the appalling NHS waiting lists in the Province. My noble friend has suggested that the Northern Ireland Office should assume responsibility on a purely temporarily basis to tackle this crisis, a point endorsed by other noble Lords. “Oh no,” comes the reply, “that would breach the devolution settlement”, as if it were holy writ. Can it be right that our fellow countrymen and women in Ulster should suffer such distress—there are many other examples, some of which have been mentioned today—when a remedy could be supplied by the Government, who have the ultimate responsibility for the entire country?
In all this, one very important point tends to be overlooked: the Northern Ireland Assembly is the Province’s upper tier of local government as well as a devolved legislative body. One of the last acts of the Stormont Parliament of 1921 to 1972 was to make provision for the transfer of all the main local government services, on the very sensible grounds that Northern Ireland was not of sufficient size to warrant a range of county and county borough councils as well as Stormont itself. Today only very minor powers are exercised by Northern Ireland’s lower tier of local government, its district councils. Does Northern Ireland really need to be completely deprived of democratic oversight of all its main local government services because an Executive cannot be formed to exercise devolved legislative powers?
The creation of some form of interim committee structure in the Northern Ireland Assembly elected last year has been urged on several occasions by my noble friend Lord Cormack—who is not in his seat at the moment—drawing on his experiences as a distinguished former chairman of the Northern Ireland Select Committee in another place. The fertile mind of my noble friend Lord Trimble might perhaps also be moving in this direction. He has spoken, as he reminded us, of various possibilities in the past and we look forward to hearing more from him later. Some such arrangement would help rescue local government from the democratic limbo into which it was cast when the Executive collapsed.
Two issues of human rights, about which many people are now deeply concerned, loom large in this debate. I have frequently called for the extension of same-sex marriage to Northern Ireland—an issue which the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, has recently associated himself with by introducing a Bill in your Lordships’ House, and in which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is now taking a welcome interest. I hold to the straightforward unionist principle that the same basic rights should apply throughout our country. On same-sex marriage, opinion polls in Northern Ireland are overwhelmingly in favour of bringing Northern Ireland into line with the rest of the country. The Assembly voted for it before its collapse. Would it be appropriate to seek a further vote in the Assembly elected last year to provide the strongest possible basis on which to proceed in this Parliament in the absence of devolved government? Should abortion—on which feelings run so high in all parts of the country—be treated in the same manner or, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, suggested, should there be a referendum? These points need serious consideration.
I make one further point. How much better things would be if we had a common core of human rights throughout our unitary state—our “precious union”, as Mrs May referred to it. That would be a matter, perhaps, on which a Select Committee of your Lordships’ House could usefully deliberate. I reach one simple conclusion: the successful government of Northern Ireland in the conditions that exist today, and which we must expect to endure, requires rather more imaginative policy-making than is currently being practised.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, as someone who contributed actively to the creation of the Belfast agreement in 1998, it is galling to find myself standing here today endeavouring to find the slightest merit in this belated effort to compensate for the failure of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The harsh reality is that this Bill is but a camouflaged attempt to humour those who do little more than continue the attempts of the Provisional IRA, which was defeated in 1994 at huge cost—not least in the lives of hundreds of innocent men, women and children over the previous 25 years. I refer, of course, to Sinn Féin.
On top of that we see from the results of the recent presidential elections in the Republic the diminishing standing of Sinn Féin overall. It would be bad enough if we merely had Sinn Féin trying to “legalise” the Irish language—which has been financed and sponsored successfully for as long as I can remember—but the idea of creating the basis for pro rata usage in our courts, councils, Civil Service and the like is an extravagance our 1.8 million population simply cannot afford or facilitate.
The long-overdue compensation for abused children still awaits settlement. We should be getting our priorities right and I would like immediate reassurance in that respect. Remember that the victims are ageing and dying, so this is a matter of urgency—or should be. On the subject of compensation for injury, how does a person injured in what has become known as “Bloody Sunday” receive around £500,000 in damages while I do not know of a single IRA victim—soldier or civilian—who has received anything comparable? Is there a delusion in the Government that they can buy stability?
This Bill appears to provide for the replacement of the democratic process by an unaccountable Civil Service. Let me give an example of that unaccountability from personal experience, and I begin by reminding noble Lords that the Civil Service is composed of some who are just as bigoted as, albeit publicly accountable, politicians.
About five years ago, I applied to have my driving licence renewed and, being diabetic, I provided a letter from my GP as to my fitness. However a Mr Paul Duffy rejected my application, unless I sent all my medical records to him. I appealed the decision but sought agreement to bring my medical records to the appropriate doctor and then bring them home again. I was told, “We don’t employ a doctor in the department. Your medical records will be retained safely in my office”.
Having had 10 attempts made to assassinate me between 1970 and 1974, there was no way I was going to risk my safety by providing details of my routine visits to my diabetes and cancer clinics, so I again renewed my appeal. I cleared myself on that basis with my insurance company but had to wait 22 months to get my licence. It did not end there. Being notified at last, by Paul Duffy, that my new licence was available, I collected it from him on 6 May—note that date—2015. Mr Duffy, it turned out, watched me drive off with my new licence in my pocket, and immediately phoned the police to report having seen me driving without a licence. When the police called to see me that evening, we discovered that the licence I had received earlier that day had been post-dated to 7 May. Technically, I had been conned. I had no licence until the following day. To cut that long story short, the judge who heard my case threw it out in about two minutes.
The sequel, however, has a relevance to this Bill in so far as I decided to complain to the departmental head, Peter May, who curtly informed me by letter that he had the utmost confidence in Paul Duffy. Peter May has subsequently been transferred as head of the Northern Ireland Department of Justice. I apologise to noble Lords for having had to recount this experience, but this is the sort of administrator we are being asked to impose on Northern Ireland—and it does not end there. David Stirling was Permanent Secretary of the department at the time of the RHI debacle and we have seen his dire performance at the RHI inquiry. He now describes himself as head of the Civil Service in Northern Ireland. Who actually appointed him and to whom does he, and will he, report?
There is so much room for potential disaster in this proposed Bill, but perhaps my major point should be to ask on how many occasions the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has actually met and consulted the Northern Ireland Peers who sit in this Chamber. They are directly and indirectly the people who best understand Northern Ireland, both pre and post the Belfast agreement.
My final point must be what I will call the Stella Creasy aberration. I am one who cannot accept that “rights” should have priority over what is “right”. I am ashamed that Great Britain panders to a reluctant mother’s pride or social convenience, so that we so casually relegate a potential life to the incinerator. As the father of four and the grandfather of seven I have always believed that life is sacred. It is why I, with the late Enoch Powell, voted for the abolition of the death penalty when it was not something the grass roots sought. There is enough potential for disaster in this Bill without adding something that is so offensive to a majority across the traditions in Northern Ireland.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
I declare an interest. My husband is the chair of arc21, the organisation created by six district councils in Northern Ireland responsible for addressing the problem of waste disposal, and made the planning application that led ultimately to the Buick judgment, which has been referred to repeatedly both in this House and in the other place, and is one of the reasons for the legislation we are debating today.
I am sure that everybody in your Lordships’ House regrets the situation that prevails in Northern Ireland. It really is profoundly difficult—almost two years with no legislature, and things are challenging. Members of the other place and of this House have articulated the various issues which are stalled as a result of the situation, not least the major infrastructure projects, the commencement of which would provide employment, therefore contributing to the economy—an economy that is seriously depleted. I see no purpose in repeating that list. It is a difficulty compounded even more by the fact that there is no legislature and no Executive to consult on matters relating to Brexit, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. Brexit is probably regarded by the people of Northern Ireland as the greatest hazard they face at present, for a variety of reasons. I shall come back to that in a moment.
However, I want to address a matter raised by the noble Viscount, Lord Brookeborough, who is not in his place, but for whom I have the greatest respect. He said that there must be an end to the hounding of veterans. I have to say that there is no hounding of veterans. There are investigations in Northern Ireland into unsolved killings. When somebody is suspected of having been involved in a killing, it is right and proper, and due process in law, that those persons be investigated. That is what is happening. I personally have been involved in the investigation of matters where both military and former RUC personnel have been involved. I know that those who serve in the forces do a very difficult job, and I speak from the perspective of one whose brother served in Northern Ireland in the 1980s, and whose nephew, aged 18, went to Iraq in the British Armed Forces and lost his leg six months later right up to the groin, and suffered multiple other injuries. I speak as one whose other nephew has served in Her Majesty’s forces for coming up to 22 years in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places, so I am not in any way attempting to attack Her Majesty’s forces. In a country which has had the experiences of Northern Ireland, however, it is important that there is no abrogation of the rule of law. It is profoundly important that we adhere to the rule of law.
This measure is clearly seen as necessary to address the lacuna which has been referred to repeatedly. It is legitimate to question the rushing through of this Bill without thought of the normal discussion, analysis and scrutiny necessary, particularly in the delicate situation which is life in Northern Ireland today. The Select Committee on the Constitution rightly raised various issues, not least the breadth of the power which would be afforded to Ministers and civil servants, the lack of clear lines of accountability and the retrospective effect of the Clause 3 provisions, which were described as “irregular and concerning”. It went on to say that,
“a Bill with such characteristics being fast-tracked through its legislative stages in Parliament is undesirable”.
The Minister referred to the fact that it was being fast-tracked. He did not, however, explain why it is being fast-tracked at such a pace. Our peace reposes on the basis of the Good Friday agreement—in our divided way, some call it the Belfast agreement—and the consequential legislation. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, in which I am sure many noble Lords played a part, was an Act designed to make new provision for the Government of Northern Ireland, for the purpose of implementing the Good Friday/Belfast agreement. The consequential legislation enabled a complex, multi-faceted construct, which was designed as best possible to ensure the delivery of the principles of the Good Friday agreement. The noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, referred to the involvement of another state in the creation of that agreement. The construct we now have was very hard won, and trust grew gradually and sometimes painfully over the years—particularly 1998 to 2007. Interestingly, trust grew despite the suspension of the devolved institution from October 2002 until 8 May 2007. We were still able to work—myself included as police ombudsman—to enable the constitutional process to have its full impact in Northern Ireland. That was difficult, challenging and, on occasion, dangerous work. Policing and justice powers were devolved only on 12 April 2010. It is all very new and must be treated with great care.
There may be a perception in your Lordships’ House, and in the wider community, that Northern Ireland is solved. That it is far from solved is demonstrated by the fact that, once again, we are in a position in which there is no mechanism to run our devolved Government. It is also demonstrated by the fact that during 2016-17 —the last year for which we have security statistics—there were five security-related deaths, 61 shooting incidents, 29 bombing incidents, 66 casualties from paramilitary- style assaults and 28 paramilitary-style shootings, and 75 kilograms of explosives and 2,635 rounds of ammunition were seized. That was the largest quantity of explosives seized since 2006.
It is not all over, and I do not say that with anything other than distress. I personally have suffered in the Troubles; my family, many of my friends and many of the people I worked with have suffered. As police ombudsman, I sat and listened to story after story. I remember one family who came in where the 11 year-old daughter had been left with her two brothers, Rory and Gerard, who were 18 and 22. Their parents had gone out to mass. Róisín had been celebrating her 11th birthday when the gunmen came in and shot her two brothers dead in front of her. You would have to have a heart of stone not to care about things like this, so we need to remember that the situation can change very rapidly in Northern Ireland.
We need to be conscious that, when the talk about the border is so challenging and when no one really knows what is going to happen, this is a difficult time. I do not want to exaggerate, but it is a dangerous time. I have driven across the border twice in the past couple of weeks and will again next week. As you cross the border, you remember what it was like when there were checkpoints and things like that. I do not envisage military checkpoints, but look at the border between Canada and America, and borders between the European Union and some of its non-member states—you see queues and time spent. We do not need all that could happen to us—the social, economic and political cost —were it to come to some kind of hard border in Northern Ireland.
It is in the context of the uncertainties of Brexit and the failure to address the problems in Northern Ireland that the Government are taking powers to themselves. I grant that they are limited powers and in a statute that will have effect for only a limited period, but to many it will seem like shadow direct rule.
I make no comment on the extension of the time for the appointment of an Executive, other than to observe that the power to extend the period seems to have a maximum life of up to August 2019, by which time we will have been without proper governance for two years and eight months. I know why our two main elected parties, the DUP and Sinn Féin, say that they cannot go into government, but the people of Northern Ireland are being badly failed by the stand-off. It is surely incumbent on those parties, and consistent with democracy, that they lay aside these issues temporarily, go into government and use democratic means to resolve those problems as best they can—that is what democracies do.
We want government decisions made by elected politicians, not by spads on the one side—as we have heard in relation to the RHI agreement—or on the other at the headquarters of Sinn Féin, Connolly House, as I think the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, pointed out. The Executive collapsed because Martin McGuinness resigned from the Government in the wake of the RHI crisis—the green energy scheme. That is now going to cost taxpayers up to £490 million. The RHI scheme has been the subject of a public inquiry, very ably chaired by Sir Patrick Coghlin, who has heard testimony from those involved that was dreadful to listen to. It is astonishing to see who is following the RHI inquiry broadcasts in Northern Ireland. I know of women who watched it intently while doing their ironing. Never before has a public inquiry attracted quite so much interest among the general population.
Our most senior civil servants have said that spads “were in charge” following the reestablishment of the Assembly in 2007. We know that civil servants did not do ordinary things like keeping minutes of meetings, and were not informed about issues of which the spads were aware. We know that the Minister who presented the renewable heat incentive scheme regulations had not even read them when she brought them to the Assembly and asked MLAs to vote on them. So it goes on, but the story has been told and Sir Patrick will report, so there is no more excuse—it is dealt with. Now is the time for the DUP and Sinn Féin to go back into government, fight for the cause of Northern Ireland together and ensure proper governance.
I want to ask the Minister again: what is the urgency that required this Bill to pass through the other place in one day and through your Lordships’ House in such a rush? This is not an emergency situation. There is no sudden threat to the economy. There is no immediate terrorist threat. What is the reason for the haste?
The Act enables Northern Ireland civil servants to exercise departmental functions if it is in the public interest to do so, and will confer on the Secretary of State a duty to publish guidance on the exercise of functions, including the principles to be taken into account in deciding whether to exercise a function. The Secretary of State made it clear in the other place, as the Minister has, that this Bill was introduced because,
“we have to enable public services to continue to be delivered in Northern Ireland”.
The Secretary of State said that the Bill,
“will allow decisions to be taken by civil servants who have felt unable to do so since the Buick appeal was heard. We need to make sure that those civil servants can take those decisions, but this is not about their making major policy decisions or becoming lawmakers”.—[Official Report, Commons, 24/10/18; col. 381.]
So far, so good, and that was what the Minister was telling us, until he came to Clause 4, which goes way beyond the position that the Government have taken. In a situation in where those who voted to amend the Bill in this way hold no seats representing anyone in Northern Ireland, where neither Conservatives nor Labour have an MP, there can be no proper accountability for decisions like that. Abortion—I place it on the record yet again—is not a human right. There is a right to life; there is no right to kill the unborn child in the womb. There has been no declaration of incompatibility in courts in Northern Ireland. Somebody said that we do not have a common set of human rights, but we do; they are established under the European Convention on Human Rights, and we are signatories.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble Baroness. Although this is not a time-limited debate, might she consider concluding her remarks pretty quickly, given that the guide time is six minutes?
Baroness O'Loan
I am coming to an end.
Most recently, in June the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, gave me an assurance that the intention of the Government and the NIO,
“is to restore a power-sharing agreement and arrangement in Northern Ireland so that it will be up to the people of Northern Ireland and their elected officials to decide on abortion policy”.—[Official Report, 6/6/18; col. 1312.]
It cannot be compatible with the rule of law for a Secretary of State to be required by their Government and legislature to issue guidance which is not consistent with the law of the land. That is what would happen if the Bill were given effect. I have every sympathy with calls to give effect to the findings of the public inquiries into historical institutional abuse and hyponatremia-related deaths, and to give help to victims of the Troubles. However, I have not heard anyone advocating for Clause 4. I have not heard anyone advocating for direct rule, as suggested by other noble Lords; that is not the answer. We see Sinn Féin looking towards a referendum on a united Ireland, a profoundly important issue which does not commend itself to many of our population. We need action to bring the people together and that is what I ask of the Secretary of State.
Baroness Stroud (Con)
My Lords, I add my voice to those of noble Lords who expressed their sadness that we are, once again, in this place. Given the time, I will concentrate on Clause 4, which was introduced to this Bill by amendment in the other place. I question the clause for two main reasons. First, it represents a serious overreaching of the powers of Westminster. Secondly, as the House has heard, the insertion of this amendment is a misinterpretation of the role of the courts in relation to changing primary legislation.
Clause 4 represents a serious overreaching of the powers of Westminster and is not sensitive to the current reality of Northern Ireland politics. If we were in a position where there was no chance of devolved government being restored, it might be appropriate for Westminster to intervene on sensitive devolved matters. However, as this House has repeatedly expressed this afternoon, that is patently not the case. Most people in Northern Ireland believe that there is a good chance that devolved government will be restored once the main Brexit decisions have been made. The prospect of a fully functioning Stormont in 2019 is not beyond the bounds of possibility, and we should do nothing to put it there. Indeed, the Bill is premised on that hope. It is not advisable for Westminster to intervene on a devolved policy matter for the first time since the advent of Northern Ireland in 1921.
It is also understood that this is a matter where the people of Northern Ireland are known to feel strongly. As we have heard, recent polling shows a strong desire for abortion law to be set by the democratically elected representatives of Northern Ireland. For example, a recent ComRes poll found that 64% of people—and 66% of women—in Northern Ireland believe it would be wrong for Westminster to legislate on this issue at this time. Those proposing these amendments seem a little more concerned to make progress on this issue while the Assembly is down than to get power sharing back up and running again. I firmly believe that the steps that we in Westminster take at this time should be guided by one overriding consideration—whether our work will help or hinder the restoration of power sharing. Will this clause hasten the return of a functioning Executive and Assembly? Will it build the necessary trust, or hinder it? The answer is pretty self-evident, given the culture and nature of Northern Ireland. Trust grows slowly but can be quickly decimated.
Secondly, as noble Lords have noted, the sections of the law referred to in this clause govern the law on abortion, as interpreted by the courts. These provisions currently restrict legal abortions in Northern Ireland to situations where the life of the mother is at risk and continuing the pregnancy would adversely affect her physical or mental health in a manner that is “real and serious” and “permanent or long-term”. As the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, so eloquently stated, it is clear that Clause 4 rests on a misunderstanding about changing primary legislation. Although the Northern Ireland Assembly is temporarily suspended, abortion law remains devolved, as we have heard many times this afternoon. Only on 10 February 2016, the Assembly debated changing the law; the Assembly voted not to change the law in either of these situations. This is a recent debate.
This June, the Supreme Court ruled on a case in Northern Ireland on the same narrow scope of abortions that the Assembly had debated in 2016. It rejected the appeal and did not make any declarations of incompatibility with the current law in Northern Ireland and the European Convention on Human Rights. The notion that the Secretary of State should now produce guidance to impact the conduct of officials based on non- binding reflections of the courts rather than on the law is deeply problematic. It establishes a concerning precedent that should not be sustained. The relevant guidance should not differ from that issued by the Executive in March 2016, which reflects the law as it stands.
The impact of the law in Northern Ireland today is interesting in certain respects and may be of interest to policymakers here. The commitment to the value of the life of both the unborn and the mother has helped to define the culture of Northern Ireland and, in part, to make Northern Ireland what it is today. This is illustrated by the publication of a report at the beginning of last year which used robust statistical methods to show that around 100,000 people are alive in Northern Ireland today who would not have been had the Province elected to embrace the Abortion Act back in 1967. It should not be surprising that a Province which has lost so many holds life to be so precious. The figure of 100,000 was attacked and complaints made to the Advertising Standards Authority. However, after a five-month investigation, and drawing on the advice of health economists, the ASA ruled in August last year that the figure was entirely reasonable. It is extraordinary to consider that 100,000 people are alive today and that their right to life is entirely consistent with human rights.
Clause 4 is deeply problematic, and I ask the Government for assurances that any guidance that they provide will instruct officials to respect the rule of law and the law as it stands in this area.
Lord Curry of Kirkharle (CB)
Noble Lords will be delighted to hear that I have slashed my speech by about 50%, in view of the time and the fact that other noble Lords have made comments very similar to mine, much more forcefully than I could have done. I too will speak about Clause 4 and I very much support the comments of other Peers on the matter. As a Christian, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Alton, and the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud. I subscribe to the biblical view that human life is sacred from conception and that marriage is the union of one man and one woman for life. However, my views are not important; our views are not important. Many of us feel a great unease that this Bill is being used to force our views on the people of Northern Ireland. The last thing we should do at this time is intensify division in Northern Ireland and potentially mislead, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, mentioned earlier.
Yet here we are with a Bill which declares to the people of Northern Ireland that their laws are in breach of human rights, even though there is no proper legal basis for saying so. Whatever views they hold on the substance of these issues, many people in Northern Ireland will find it quite improper that Westminster is attempting to force a particular view on them by the back door, in haste.
This issue is about the authority of this House and our parliamentary institutions to overrule delegated, devolved powers. I find that deeply concerning. Incidentally, the Northern Ireland Assembly has, even though it is not functioning at present, expressed a view and has voted on these matter within the past two years, as was mentioned earlier. According to the procedures that govern the Assembly under the terms of the Belfast Agreement, attempts to legalise abortion and same-sex marriage were not passed. We must give proper respect to the people, politicians and institutions of Northern Ireland and leave these matters to them.
These are incredibly sensitive matters for us to be trampling over with last-minute amendments to a Bill which was designed to be purely administrative and all about steadying the boat while the political parties in Northern Ireland try to negotiate a return to power sharing. Why in the world do we risk rocking the boat with Clause 4?
I am deeply concerned about the precedent that this creates. It could have serious consequences if we ignore and overrule devolved powers without having given this adequate debate. What authority do we have, when the devolved power-sharing Assembly is not functioning, to overrule the devolution agreement? This is a really important question—a point that was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. Without clarity on these issues, we should respect the fact that marriage and abortion are devolved in Northern Ireland to the Northern Ireland Assembly, so we should leave it to the Assembly and stop interfering.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, before I comment on Clause 4, to which the noble Lord, Lord Curry, and others have been referring, I pay credit to those Members of this House who fought and worked so hard to achieve the Belfast agreement some 20 years ago. I fall into the category of the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, if I can classify myself in that group, in that we should not underestimate the achievements of bringing to the Province peace and prosperity which continue today despite the problems which we are discussing. I say that having had the experience of members of my own family returning to Belfast only a few weeks ago because they had both the confidence and the desire to live in Belfast in a way that they had not had for many years. I hope that economically, while we debate the issues of this specific Bill, we do not talk down Northern Ireland, because it has a great potential.
I now move to Clause 4. It will come as no surprise to a number of Members that I wish to refer to it—the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, referred to my Private Member’s Bill earlier. The noble Lord, Lord Curry, just asked, “Why do we rock the boat?”. The answer is, “Because this affects people’s lives on a daily basis, and we have to do something about it”. Contrary to what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, said, we cannot just sit here and say, “There will be an Assembly. There will be an Executive. We will just disregard the people until there is”. The discussion this afternoon has identified, over and over again, that we do not know when there will be an Assembly. We do not know when there will be an Executive. Conor McGinn in the other place and I have been pursuing an identical Private Member’s Bill. We will continue to do so. I remind the House, as the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, did, that in 2015 the majority of the Northern Ireland Assembly voted for same-sex marriage. I believe that, if there were an Assembly now, that would be the case again today. Unfortunately, we do not have an Assembly or Executive to test that.
Nobody who introduces law should do so only because they know somebody who is going to be affected by it. We should try, as legislators, to cast our nets wide. It does, however, make it easier when we are aware of specific cases and the impact that our legislation would have upon individuals. When I made my maiden speech in this House, I referred to my involvement with the Kings Cross Steelers, the world’s first gay and inclusive rugby club. It happens that a fair number of the members of that club are from Northern Ireland, including John Henry, who captained the club a number of years ago. He and his brother were featured in the Belfast Telegraph earlier this year. We cannot say to those members of a rugby club based in London, “It is fine. You can get married here, but you cannot return home to Northern Ireland to get married as you could if you stay in this city”.
Last weekend, I was present at a gay wedding here in London. Of the two men involved, one had been brought up in Northern Ireland. He worked in this House for a number of years. We are saying to that person, “It is fine to get married in London but, by the way, you cannot decide to live and get married in Northern Ireland”. Is that really what we are proud of in this country? It is certainly not something of which I am proud. There are others whom we all know, or ought to know, who are affected similarly by the absence of same-sex marriage legislation in Northern Ireland. When I introduced my Private Member’s Bill in March this year, two were sitting in the Gallery. There were other people present at the wedding where I was on Saturday.
I can understand, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, said, that it will have relatively little impact if we pass Clause 4, but it will have an impact in itself. It will send a message, a small but clear message, that we still care for people who face problems that our legislation is not dealing with, wherever they may be. I was very interested in the suggestions of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, of a number of different ways that we might find a solution to this problem.
I ask all parties not to stop with this Bill and this clause but to move rapidly to a change in the law that would be welcomed by so many people. It is not a question of people’s human rights; it is a British duty, and particularly our duty as legislators, to provide equality throughout my country.
Baroness Barker (LD)
My Lords, I am very pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, and I wish him all success with all his efforts to make sure that there is justice for our brothers and sisters throughout the United Kingdom.
I want to get back to the Minister’s opening speech. He said:
“Let me be clear that the Bill does not give the Northern Ireland departments new powers. Instead, it provides clarity on the exercise of existing powers”.
That is the point about Clause 4 that I wish to address. The purpose of Clause 4 is to allow the UK Parliament, in the absence of a Northern Ireland Executive, to scrutinise the impact of existing laws on abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland and, specifically, their incompatibility with the UK’s human rights obligations. The clause requires the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland to provide clear guidance to Northern Ireland’s civil servants with regard to the operations of these laws and to update the House of Commons each quarter on how she plans to address the laws’ impact on human rights obligations. It does not change the law in Northern Ireland.
I say to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, it may be that this has been misinterpreted, but I think that Stella Creasy MP, in introducing this in another place, could not have been clearer when she said that it did not change the law in Northern Ireland. If people who are opposed to it choose to misinterpret it and overstate it, that is a different matter, but nobody who has supported the inclusion of Clause 4 as it now stands has made that claim. People who object to the substance of it certainly have—that I would accept.
There have been recent court cases which have cast doubt on the compatibility of the current Northern Ireland law with convention rights. The Supreme Court case in the summer questioned whether the current law in Northern Ireland was in contravention of Article 8. There will be further cases later this year which will return to the Supreme Court. That is the reason that this is important. The noble Lord, Lord Morrow, and several other people have repeatedly returned to decisions that were made in 2016, but life goes on in Northern Ireland, and things which happen in people’s lives all the time are raising new cases which will go to law.
There is deep confusion about the current law in Northern Ireland, which is interpreted by professionals in very different ways, and that leads people to be charged under the law. In 2017, a man and a woman had to accept formal cautions under the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 because they were seeking solutions for the termination of a pregnancy because they could not do what the many hundreds of other women are forced to do, which is to leave Northern Ireland and come to the United Kingdom in order to obtain the rights which are perfectly afforded to other women in England and Wales. We know that a woman at the moment faces potential prosecution for purchasing abortion pills for her then 15 year-old daughter, who had been the subject of an abusive relationship and had been raped. She has been granted a judicial review to challenge the decision of the Public Prosecution Service to pursue a prosecution against her—which was the result of the sharing of her information by a medical professional. This is the sort of thing on which the people of Northern Ireland, and in particular professionals who engage in implementing the laws, need further guidance.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, said that the Human Rights Act does not change law, and he is absolutely right—it does not. I put it to him that if it did, in line with the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on abortion law in Northern Ireland, reform of Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act would have happened. But it will not, and it will not under this law, either. The amendment to the Bill made in the Commons allows the court to rule on the compatibility of our laws with convention rights, like the Supreme Court did in June 2018 when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mance, found that deferring to the Assembly, which had not sat for 18 months, to reach its own conclusion was not an appropriate course, as the need for such an amendment is evident. He said:
“the present legislative position in Northern Ireland is untenable and intrinsically disproportionate”,
in relation to abortions in cases of rape, incest or foetal abnormality.
I will say the following about the devolution matter, as devolution has been used a lot in this debate. I point out to noble Lords that the amendment which now stands as Clause 4 was passed by a majority of the House of Commons, in which there are representatives whose commitment to devolution goes way beyond that of anybody else in this House. They chose to pass this law and did so by a significant majority, because they never saw the devolution settlement as a reason to abrogate the human rights of people across the United Kingdom. This is an important and necessary piece of legislation at the moment, which will enable women in Northern Ireland simply to access their human rights.
Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)
My Lords, I very much welcome the Bill to the House this afternoon.
Before I come to the Bill, I shall take up a point that the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned. Some of us, as a party, would be supportive if he could convince all the parties in Northern Ireland to come with him with regard to discussing the Assembly meeting and a number of aspects, including Brexit. As a party, we would support that. I know that the noble Lord was recently in my own city of Londonderry, talking about the whole issue of Brexit, and I know he met a number of parties. Did he put that suggestion to Sinn Féin, as we would definitely support that in getting the Assembly up and running and meeting without an Executive? The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, suggested that both parties should set aside their differences and get the Assembly and the Executive up and running, and we would support that as well. At least it would be the start of getting devolution up and running in Northern Ireland once again. All the other parties would support that way forward but, once again, one party is creating a major problem.
As I said, I very much welcome the Bill. Although it is not perfect, it is what it is. Yes, there is consensus in this House but that the best solution would be to have a working Assembly at Stormont, with local Ministers in place who are accountable to the people of Northern Ireland taking such decisions. But that is not the situation, and I appreciate the situation that the Secretary of State has found herself in. The Bill has become necessary to ensure that public services continue to function in Northern Ireland and to allow civil servants to make decisions.
In the other House the Bill was described very much as a limited measure. I would describe it as a poor substitute for democratically elected politicians in Northern Ireland making decisions that affect the people they serve. The Bill is limited in what it can do and the powers it gives civil servants in Northern Ireland. Yes, it will enable the Civil Service to continue to run public services, but it will not make civil servants lawmakers, and they will not have the power to change policy decisions in Northern Ireland. Of course, the Bill also gives powers to the Secretary of State and Ministers to appoint people to public bodies in Northern Ireland. My only question for the Minister concerns people who are unsuccessful in being appointed to public bodies in Northern Ireland. Will there be a mechanism for them, so that they can appeal if they have a grievance over public appointments?
We know that the Bill is very much time-bound. There is a clear indication from the Government that they hope that by March 2019—or by August 2019, a further five months—the Executive and Assembly will be up and running. The Bill is very quiet about what will happen if that does not happen. Certainly, I should like to know about that from the Government, because the Secretary of State is running out of road as regards what more she can do as a Secretary of State to get the talks process on its way. I worry that the Bill is very silent on what might happen afterwards, if there is no agreement on getting an Executive and the Assembly up and running.
It is difficult to see how the Bill will resolve some of the major issues that Northern Ireland now faces. Education is in a serious situation. The principals of many schools will tell you that their budgets have been so stretched that they can no longer deliver the service they want to deliver. On health, too, a number of policies and policy decisions that need to be made are being sat on. Waiting lists are growing, and members of the public sometimes have to wait 12 hours to be seen at A&E departments. All of this is compounding, so real policy changes need to be made by Ministers to get these serious situations addressed. On infrastructure, economic development and inward investment in Northern Ireland, a number of issues are sitting there awaiting policy decisions on how we will move forward. The Bill is ambitious, although in many ways it is not, and the Government should have gone much further when the Bill came to the House.
There has been a sense of political vacuum in Northern Ireland since the collapse of the institutions. I hope—I know it is the hope of all Members of this and the other House—that we can get the Executive restored sooner rather than later. Our party is willing to listen to any suggestion that gets the Executive and the Assembly up and running. As a party, we have put forward a number of suggestions to the Secretary of State on how that might be done in a limited period, so that we can move to full devolution again in Northern Ireland.
Lord Kilclooney (CB)
My Lords, this has been a wide-ranging debate and I sympathise with the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, who has many problems to solve in Northern Ireland. When the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, commenced his speech he said, “Here we go again”, and I am afraid we could add, “We’ve heard it all before”. There were two exceptions. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, came out in favour of direct rule, which was a step forward by the noble Lord. And we heard an interesting idea from the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, who has an amendment, which I look forward to hearing later in the evening. We then heard the astonishing news from the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, that he had a driving licence, which will come as a great source of comfort to those who drive between Belfast and Dungannon on the M1.
Northern Ireland is a serious subject as well. Democracy is not just the rule of the majority; it is the rule of the majority with the consent of the minority. Because Northern Ireland politics are not based on economics or on social issues, and because the political division is between those of two different nationalities—those who claim to be Irish and the majority who claim to be British—there is a great division between the communities. That is why those of us who met in the discussions that led to the Belfast agreement agreed to a power-sharing devolved system of government in Northern Ireland. We thank the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, for the role he played in getting that agreement. It is why, today, I repeat that I support the Belfast agreement and the idea of power-sharing devolution.
We meet in bad times, with the collapse of the Northern Ireland Executive. Strangely, I agree with the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, about when the restoration of the Executive at Stormont might arise. It will not be just after Brexit; it will probably be after the Irish general election. I have said that for some time and, increasingly, people are beginning to accept it. Sinn Féin does not want responsibility for any unpopular decisions in Northern Ireland, and then to go into an election in the Republic of Ireland. The one question that arises from the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, concerns the doubt that has increased in the last week over the fall in the Sinn Féin vote in the Republic of Ireland during the recent presidential election. Its vote in the Republic fell dramatically from 10% to 5%. Apparently, a lot of the missing 5% voted for the sitting President Higgins and might return to Sinn Féin. If that is so, Sinn Féin, as the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, suggested, may well be in a coalition Government in the Republic of Ireland. In such circumstances, it would then also like to be in a coalition Government at Stormont in Northern Ireland.
This Bill is necessary because projects have been delayed or dropped in Northern Ireland and jobs have been lost. The details of the projects that have been dropped have already been listed in this debate and there is no need to repeat them. It means that we need, immediately, an interim measure until there is a restoration of the Executive at Stormont, or indeed direct rule—that may be the final, fallback position. We have the Bill as an interim measure and I welcome it.
There are three subjects that I want to refer to briefly. The first is abortion. This is a very sensitive subject in Northern Ireland and one that, strangely enough, unites Protestants and Catholics. What do I hear, on the one rare occasion when Protestants and Catholics are united? The English want to wreck it. It amazes me. This is a devolved issue and it should be decided by the Northern Ireland Assembly. In a recent ComRes poll, 66% of Northern Ireland women wanted the question of abortion decided at Stormont and not imposed by Westminster. We must pay attention to the wishes of the Catholic and Protestant people in Northern Ireland. It would be wrong to impose English moral standards on the people of Northern Ireland.
Secondly, we had the Budget yesterday. From Northern Ireland’s point of view it is a welcome Budget. We particularly welcome the decision for a city deal for Belfast and the financial contributions that will be made towards that programme. We also heard that there is a city deal for the Derry and Strabane council area—or the city of Londonderry. What is a disappointment to me, given where I live, is that the second-largest city council in Northern Ireland—the city of Armagh, Banbridge and Craigavon—has not even had the initiative to submit its claim for a city deal. I hope that will receive consideration in the very near future.
The third point, which was missing from the Budget and has not been mentioned in the debate on the Bill so far, is the need for an exemption to air passenger duty in Northern Ireland. I remember raising this some years ago, when we had a Sinn Féin Minister of Finance at Stormont. He was genuinely sympathetic to the idea. His name was Ó Muilleoir, if I can pronounce it correctly. He pointed out to me, in a reply, that it would probably cost the Northern Ireland Exchequer about £50 million from the block grant. If that is all that is involved, and since we have no road or land links between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, it is a special case. Sympathetic consideration should be given to the abolition of air passenger duty. This would certainly increase tourism in Northern Ireland and reduce the cost to families—our families in Northern Ireland are somewhat larger than those in England —of going abroad on holiday, or even going to England for holidays.
Last week, the noble Baroness, Lady Doocey, on the Liberal Democrat Benches, who always stresses her Republic of Ireland origins, said that the St Andrews agreement could not be changed, but it has been changed. The St Andrews agreement was an amendment to the Belfast agreement, and further amendments can be made. It is nothing new. One subject that needs to be addressed is one the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, mentioned at the outset: the petition of concern, which needs reconsideration. This concern should not apply matters of personal conscience, such as same-sex marriage or abortion. It should apply to economic and social policies—so that you do not have one community trying to impose its will on another, because that is the way life goes in Northern Ireland. It should not be abused or used by any party to stop legislation on same-sex marriage or abortion.
I look forward to the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and I hope that the next time we debate Northern Ireland it will not be, yet again, a case of, “We’ve heard it all before”.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
My Lords, it is always a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, particularly because of the important role that he played 20 years ago at the time of the Good Friday agreement.
The Opposition will not of course oppose the Bill. It is very important in clarifying the position of civil servants and allowing important and urgent decisions to be made, but it imposes on them quite a considerable personal burden. The shorter the time they have that burden, the better, because they are not elected. At the same time, the law will now clarify the position regarding planning application issues in Northern Ireland. It is important too that public appointments are made, because until now hugely significant appointments for the people of Northern Ireland have been frozen. That is obviously a part of the Bill that we very much support.
However, the thrust of the Bill is about the restoration of the Executive and the Assembly in Belfast. Although I say that we do not oppose the Government, we are not very happy about the situation with the current negotiations, or lack of them, which would lead to the restoration of the Assembly and Executive. It seems to me that there has been little urgency over the last months. It also seems that, by putting a final 10-month limit on the talks, we are in a sense accepting the principle of delay. That lack of urgency and the lack of an incentive to ensure that we have an Assembly and Executive up and running much more quickly than is envisaged by the terms of this Bill are disappointing.
Interestingly, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, made the point that, because local government is so limited in its powers in Northern Ireland, not only what a regional government do but what local government in England, Wales and Scotland do as well is without democratic accountability, and as a consequence huge strain is put on the Good Friday agreement and the agreements that followed it. It is not just about an Assembly and an Executive; it is about the north-south arrangements too, because they fall if the Assembly falls. The whole point of getting the two communities together over all those years was that you would balance on the one hand the importance of the north-south institutions, which are extremely important to the nationalists, and on the other hand the importance of devolution in Northern Ireland, as well as east-west relations—the British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference has not met properly until recently. All these strands of the agreement went together. You could not pick and choose the ones that you liked; you had to accept them all. That is the problem today in Northern Ireland in getting those institutions up and running.
Sinn Féin makes a great deal of the fact that it believes that the principles of the Good Friday agreement, particularly with regard to equality and human rights, are not being carried out in Northern Ireland. However, the agreement has also been breached by the Assembly not meeting. If Sinn Féin does not go into the Assembly and causes it not to function, that breaches the agreement too, and that is an important part of the negotiations that will follow this legislation.
The DUP should acknowledge that the RHI scheme caused much scandal in Northern Ireland. It should also acknowledge that the issues that Sinn Féin is complaining about, particularly with regard to the Irish language, can be resolved. If 20 years ago the whole apparatus and structure of the agreement that we all admire had depended on one single issue—the Irish language—it would not have happened. Far more significant issues than that had to be resolved at the time, but there are other ways in which you can restore the Assembly and still deal with the Irish language. Why can there not be an independent commission to make recommendations on the language? Why cannot people from Northern Ireland go to Wales and Scotland to see how the language legislation operates there? There are ways and means that can be examined but they have not been examined over the last months and years and they urgently need to be dealt with. The trouble is that you cannot legislate for trust—it is built up over years.
In Northern Ireland there is always a reason why you should not establish the Assembly at this time or that time. People say, “Oh, we can’t do it because of Brexit”, or “Ah, it’s not Brexit at all; it’s the general election in the Republic that will stop it”. And if it is not that, perhaps the local government elections in Northern Ireland will be a barrier. If we had listened to those sorts of arguments over 20 years, nothing would have been done in Northern Ireland, because there are always obstacles in front of us. There has to be a greater sense of urgency, and these obstacles, important though they are, have to be seen as part of the bigger picture.
I am glad that at the beginning of this rather long but interesting debate the Minister indicated that there are to be talks about talks, as they are not talking about talks at the moment. When they do talk about talks, perhaps they should think about a more imaginative way of holding them. They should be much more intense. They should be proper all-party talks, structured in the way that we have seen in the past—not the odd meeting in a party office here and there but proper talks around the table with everybody involved. There should also be an independent chair or mediator. That has been talked about for months now but there has been no movement on it. We would not have had what we did unless it had been for George Mitchell and his colleagues, and there are people who can be called upon to do that job.
Frankly, the two Prime Ministers and the two Governments have to do a lot more in getting people involved in the talks. The Minister will know that when talks were held in the past, the Prime Ministers from Dublin and London spent day in and day out, week in and week out, and month in and month out working to bring the parties together. In my view, there is no evidence that the two Prime Ministers, in dealing with what is, after all, an international treaty between our two countries, are dealing with it as they could. I know that they have the problems of Brexit, which will overshadow things, but that is intertwined with the restoration. There are two sets of negotiations that affect Northern Ireland—one on Brexit and the border and the other on the restoration of the institutions—and both are getting nowhere. There has to be a greater intensity in the weeks ahead.
There is another way. Time after time we have had what you might call “away weeks” in which the parties are brought together—at St Andrews, for example, which worked, and at Leeds Castle, which did not—but I have seen no evidence of new thinking on this. I hope that the Bill will herald new thinking, new imagination and new ideas about how to bring this matter to an end. Otherwise, we will drift inexorably towards direct rule.
We have said it many times: if you establish direct rule, it is a devil of a job to get out of it again. I was a direct rule Minister for five years in total. I did not like it, and I have said that to your Lordships before. I did not want to take decisions on behalf of the people of Northern Ireland. It is for the people elected in Northern Ireland to do that job. However, with issues such as Clause 4 and so on, the longer this goes on, the greater the chance that this Parliament and this Government will have to take decisions for the people of Northern Ireland, and that would be a disaster for the people of Northern Ireland. It is not an ordinary Assembly like the ones in Edinburgh or Cardiff; it is different. It is an integral part of the peace process as well as the political process. We cannot go back to where we were. The only way is forward, and that, I hope, will start after this Bill is enacted.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
My Lords, to use the term “wide-ranging” for today’s debate would be an understatement. I shall try to do justice, as best I can, to each of the points that have been raised. I hope that noble Lords will forgive me if I miss any points, as that will not be deliberate, and there will be an opportunity to pick them up later.
I begin with the obvious statement that it is now 22 months since there has been a functioning Executive. If we are successful and secure the passage of the Bill today, and it takes the full five plus five months, it will be 32 months since there has been a functioning Executive. That is an extraordinary period of time without functioning government, and I am drawn in particular to the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Dunlop, who reminds us that while much is going on in Northern Ireland, much is now stuck in limbo. Whether it be corporation tax, questions of the north-south interconnector, the implementation of the Harper report, even the functioning of the joint ministerial committees, all are stuck in limbo, all are a loss for the people of Northern Ireland and this is a negative, not a positive. We cannot lose sight of that reality.
Of the three parts of the Bill, the first is designed to address this very issue. The noble Lord, Lord Murphy, paints a very clear picture: “What on earth are you going to do differently now? Otherwise, you run the risk of simply repeating that which has gone before”. So we do need to be moving forward, and on the question of an independent mediator, we are exploring that. There needs to be change, and that is one example. In terms of how we configure the meetings, their frequency and intensity, whether it be home or away, or however we seek to do it, there needs to be a new momentum. This is now—I have said this before—the last point at which we can move this forward. It is not an easy thing to stand here; I listened with a wry smile when the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said I have an ability to say nothing with great conviction. That would be quite a talent, but I hope I can give a little bit more of something rather than nothing today.
The issue we are facing now is that we need—several noble Lords mentioned this—something which is not mechanical. I have spoken often about this agreement as being like an engine or a machine that involves engineers and mechanics. There is also a spirit inside it, and that spirit of co-operation needs to be there. I noted that one noble Lord said, “You cannot legislate for trust”. You cannot legislate for spirit either, but without it, you cannot get the engine working. That is the most telling thing of all.
The Government continue to invest in Northern Ireland. There are ambitious projects going forward. Yesterday’s Budget was a revelation regarding where we can see money going forward—both into the Belfast city deal and the Derry/Londonderry deal. To the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, I say, get Armagh to write to me now as they need to be part of the widest possible deal. The whole mosaic of Northern Ireland should be captured inside the city deal framework.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, that the £320 million released under the Budget for co-operation within education is available now and will be spent in the time available. It is absolutely right that it should be so, but there is no point in pretending that this is a substitute for local decisions made by locally elected individuals. There must be a functioning and sustainable Executive who can carry with them the trust and certainty the people of Northern Ireland deserve.
The noble Lord, Lord Eames, reminds us that we have a near unique society which has gone through the Troubles in the widest and darkest possible sense, and that there are wounds to be healed. Those wounds cannot simply be healed by putting money into the Province—that is not where they come from. It is about a trust and belief that the institutions of Northern Ireland can function and deliver the outcomes the people deserve. Without that, there is almost no purpose in having the Executive at all.
There are three parts to the Bill before us. The first, although difficult to realise, is straightforward in one sense: it is creating a window of opportunity for those negotiations. The second is a challenge, and there is no point pretending otherwise: how do we ensure that the civil servants are able to function in such a way that they have confidence in taking decisions? One of the questions asked by a number of noble Lords is: what is the urgency for this Bill to go through so quickly? One of the answers is that there is now a backlog of decisions in Northern Ireland, which have not been taken because civil servants do not have the confidence to take them. Those are not decisions that usurp the authority of Ministers. It is the quotidian, daily functioning decisions that must be taken to ensure good governance inside the Province. That is why we are issuing clear guidance—this is not an attempt to do direct rule lite. We have lodged the guidance in the Library, and noble Lords can read it and see where it is coming from.
We are ensuring that all those decisions taken by civil servants are fully transparent and are recorded and lodged each month, so we can see exactly what they are and understand what they are trying to do. Let us be frank about it: it will not allow civil servants to take bold, grand decisions which do not rest upon a solid foundation. We cannot ask those civil servants to display that level of courage. It is not appropriate to do so. That must rest with an elected Executive. A whole range of questions that we are all too familiar with will require that level of activity. I say to the people of Northern Ireland that the great shame right now is that this will not help those decisions to be taken. It will help the daily decisions to be taken with some confidence, but the bigger decisions await the arrival of a functioning Executive. That in itself is a serious challenge.
I have no desire to be critical of the Northern Ireland Civil Service; it is doing an extraordinary job in difficult circumstances. I note the circumstance that the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, has raised once again, but the wider question of where that Civil Service stands is to be broadly applauded.
On the third part of the Bill, we have been very careful not to try to give a blanket power to my right honourable friend the Secretary of State to create appointments without due recourse to the affirmative procedure, which allows full scrutiny. We have tried to put on the face of the Bill only those appointments which are urgent and pressing and need to be made now. However, there are now other means whereby, in extremis and emergency, we can move forward under that approach.
Those are the three component parts of the Bill, but there is another part, which arrived in the other place. That was not at the behest of the UK Government, who did not seek that amendment. However, it was put forward, there was a vote, and that amendment has now come to us. It has not come through some illegitimate means, but through a proper means. One can debate what it is intended to achieve—and sometimes the interpretation granted by the media is a little unhelpful—so let me be as clear as I can be. I listened to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. The clause in question does not confer new powers within the established procedure. It does not allow, in the guidance which will be issued, the civil servants to upset, ignore or run in contravention to the law.
I note the useful and important comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, about how guidance can be used in a sensible way to understand the law as it is today. As someone who comes from part of the kingdom which has a fully functioning devolved Government, I stress again that these decisions must be taken by the devolved Administration in the north of Ireland. There is no point in pretending we can usurp democracy in that fashion, simply because devolution is not to our liking. Devolution must function even when it is not as we would like to see it, but rather, how it must be.
Let me also be clear that it is not the desire of the Government to push this to a vote in any sense at all, but rather to recognise that which is here with us today. The guidance itself will not in any way seek to undermine the functionality or reality of the law. It is important we understand what it will do. It is not our desire to move into an issue of conscience—this must rest with the individual Peers gathered in this House today, should it come to a vote.
We come to a very simple point, raised by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay: irrespective of what emerges from the Supreme Court decision, which I do not doubt will emerge very soon, there will be a simple question of what that ruling means for the law. Ultimately, that new law will have to be made by the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, fully recognising all aspects of the community and that all individual voices need to be heard. It is not for us today to do that.
I turn briefly to the remarks made by my noble friend Lord Hayward. I am not unsympathetic to the point he makes about being able to send a message. Sometimes a message does indeed need to be sent, and sometimes it needs to be received too. I am not unsympathetic to that, but it is slightly different from what we must do here as a functioning legislature in that regard. I hope that will help us move that forward.
There are some other elements that we need to touch on very briefly. The question of the petition of concern has been raised. We are not averse to this being re-examined, resting broadly upon the principle of full engagement with all parties to ensure we can move it forward into a new but none the less fully supportive form. We would not be averse to that; how to achieve it is certainly something we can think about.
I listened with interest to the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, who again raised some very interesting points that I would like to discuss with him further so that we might have an opportunity to fully explore some of those aspects. If he will forgive me, I would like to have that meeting afterwards. I will happily produce a note of that meeting so that it can be shared with all. I am not trying to keep secrets from the rest of your Lordships here gathered.
I say to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, that I am very much aware of the questions that arise in Clause 3(7) regarding the functioning of the advice and guidance. It is not the ambition or intention to undermine or erode any aspect of the functioning of the human rights legislation as it applies to Northern Ireland. I am happy to give that categorical assurance right now, on the record.
I am also aware, as I look across the Benches, of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. I am conscious that we will not seek to eliminate the salaries of MLAs, who have a very real and serious function. They will be adjusted, as per earlier discussions that we have been party to, but it is not the ambition to remove them, nor to eliminate the salaries that rest on the assistants of those individuals. That will also be a very important part. If he will forgive me I will write to him directly on the question of fostering refugees because I do not have the answer at my fingertips.
I am aware of the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Alton of Liverpool, and I understand exactly where he is coming from. That is why I said earlier that this matter must be addressed by the people of Northern Ireland.
On the comments made by my noble friend Lord Trimble, I await with interest his amendment to understand what he intends. On the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I hope that I have given some measure of comfort on the question of mediation, and that we will be able to move forward. The question of a wider mechanism might well rest on something similar that is in the mind of my noble friend Lord Trimble. Let us see what emerges. We are not averse to looking at new methods to try to move these issues forward.
I could go on, but given the hour and that this is not the last time your Lordships will hear from me today, I will close. I say again that we hope that this can move forward in a sensible way and that we do not divide the House. If there are any issues that noble Lords wish to raise with me between Second Reading and Committee stage, I will be available for any discussions they might like to have. On that basis, I beg to move.
Arrangement of Business
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, it might be convenient for me to say a word about the Committee stage of the Northern Ireland Bill. The Public Bill Office will be taking amendments until an hour from now. Timings for Committee will be advertised on the annunciators after that point.
Extradition Treaty: UK and the State of Kuwait
Lord Collins of Highbury
That this House takes note of the Extradition Treaty between the United Kingdom and the State of Kuwait.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate that this evening will potentially be a very long one. I do not anticipate taking up too much time. I am rather disappointed about the procedure being used relating to these Motions on treaties. I looked at the computer on Friday and noticed that there was a speakers’ list, which promptly disappeared. Speakers’ lists aid the business of the House. They encourage people to participate. I can understand why there are some circumstances where lists are not used, but I hope that in the future the usual channels will consider it appropriate to have them.
I start by saying that Labour absolutely supports the use of extradition treaties, including with such states as the US which practise the death penalty, although we strongly believe that extradition should not take place where the subject could face the death penalty. Of course, the Extradition Act 2003 set out the basis for the UK’s extradition policy. Part 1 implemented the European arrest warrant and Part 2 allows treaties with other states to be established. Under Part 2, the Secretary of State must decide whether to certify each individual request for extradition. Of course, the 2003 Act also stated that extradition is expressly prohibited where the subject could face the death penalty.
The UK’s extradition treaty with Kuwait specifies that extradition between the two states is permitted under certain circumstances, the first being that the offence attracts a maximum penalty of at least 12 months and the requesting state must establish a prima facie evidential case in respect of any person whom they wish to extradite. The agreement specifically refers to several grounds on which extradition must be refused. These include if,
“the request for extradition has been made for the purpose of prosecuting or punishing a person on account of that person’s race, religion, nationality, sex or status, or political opinions, or that that person’s position may be prejudiced or his or her liberty restricted for any of those reasons”,
and if the extradition would breach human rights. Another element, of course, is if,
“the person whose extradition is sought could be, or has been sentenced to death”.
One of the first issues I want to raise is the fact that the penal code in Kuwait contains general provisions against debauchery. That means that it can punish lesbian and gay people, and fine and imprison them for up to six years simply for being gay. I have mentioned that the agreement specifically refers to the grounds on which extradition must be refused, but we can have a situation where someone was charged with an offence not related to their sexuality but a return to Kuwait might lead to abuse and further charges because their sexuality might become known or is likely to be known. There are horrific circumstances with some of the abuse that could take place in prison. Could the Minister give the House an assurance that, in such circumstances, an application will fail?
Human Rights Watch has raised concerns about the Kuwaiti justice system and claimed that, due to process violations, it makes it very difficult for defendants to get a fair trial. In fact, this week Labour MEPs have raised one such case that has had scant attention in the media, of Marsha Lazareva, Kuwait’s top woman CEO, who was jailed earlier this year for corruption following a trial in which the prosecution did not give her defence team full disclosure of incriminating documents and other evidence. In fact, the conditions for non-nationals such as Marsha Lazareva, who is Russian, are described by Human Rights Watch as “truly shocking” by those with experience of the prison system in Kuwait. Accounts tell us of seven women to a cell, with clothes and food limited intentionally by prison officials who distribute to Kuwaitis first and foreigners second.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for initiating this debate. It is important that treaties like this are scrutinised. This treaty was initialled by UK and Kuwaiti Ministers in November 2015, signed in December 2016, ratified by the Kuwaiti parliament in April 2017, but only laid before the UK Parliament in July 2018. I guess we had various other things that we were thinking about.
We know that there has been much engagement with Gulf states in recent years. In fact, the UK offered to host the first-ever meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council outside the region. I understand that this is on hold because of the Saudi/UAE dispute with Qatar. The UK has put effort into increasing exports to the region. Exports to Kuwait rose 23% from 2017 to 2018, with goods and services valued at £1.7 billion. Perhaps we should pay tribute here to the Prime Minister’s trade envoy to Kuwait, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. If the UK leaves the EU, the Government have made it clear that they wish to have a free trade agreement with the GCC states. That has been made particularly difficult in relation to Saudi Arabia, with its involvement in Yemen, the blockade of Qatar, and of course, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
Set against some of its neighbours in the Gulf and the wider Middle East, Kuwait has often been seen by the Government as an example of moderation and political reform. A House of Commons Library paper from 2016 notes that Kuwait has,
“one of the liveliest and most influential parliaments in the region, with the power to cross examine ministers and significant influence over legislation”.
It is obviously good to hear that.
Nevertheless, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, has pointed out, concerns have been expressed, most notably by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, about human rights and freedom of expression in Kuwait. Thus, Amnesty reports that in March, the UK-based writer and blogger Rania al-Saad was sentenced in her absence to three years in prison on charges of “insulting Saudi Arabia” on Twitter. Former MP Musallam al-Barrak was released in April after serving a two-year prison sentence for criticising the Government but continues to face other charges.
Amnesty further reports that the authorities have prosecuted and imprisoned government critics and online activists under penal code provisions that criminalise comments deemed offensive to the Emir or damaging to relations with neighbouring states. Human Rights Watch noted in its 2017 report:
“Provisions in Kuwait’s constitution, the national security law, and other legislation continue to restrict free speech, and were again used in 2017 to prosecute dissidents and stifle political dissent”.
It was noted, however, that Human Rights Watch was allowed access to and dialogue with the Government of Kuwait.
As the noble Lord, Lord Collins, also mentioned, Kuwait has recently used the death penalty. As he explained, in January 2017 Kuwait executed seven people, though it had not, as he pointed out, carried out any such executions since 2013. This is obviously a very worrying development, as he emphasised. There are, in addition, concerns about the independence of the judiciary and prospects for a fair trial. Thus, for example, in the case of the “al-Fintas group”, 13 men were charged in connection with WhatsApp discussions about video footage that appeared to show government members advocating the Emir’s removal from power. This case obviously causes concern. Amnesty concluded:
“The trial was marred by irregularities”.
Concern has also been expressed about the 2016 electronic media law which, as Amnesty argues,
“criminalises … criticism of the government, religious figureheads or foreign leaders”.
The Government’s overseas business risk assessment for Kuwait describes it as a “semi-democratic” country, which is an interesting way of putting it. Political parties are prohibited, or as the Government document carefully puts it:
“Political parties have not been legalised”.
The Emir “reserves the right” to dissolve the 50-member National Assembly. Criticism of the Emir is illegal. These are serious issues which must be considered when assessing this extradition treaty.
We understand that the Kuwaitis have been keen for the treaty to be implemented, arguing that corrupt former officials have relocated to London. Kuwait’s Minister of Justice commented when the extradition treaty was signed:
“It supports efforts to bring convicts and fugitives to justice, which in turn will help ameliorate Kuwait’s ties with the UK”.
The Speaker of the Parliament stated:
“Kuwaitis will no longer see embezzlers of public funds roaming the streets of London and Britain”.
Indeed, as the noble Lord, Lord Collins, mentioned, in 2017 Britain arrested the former head of the social security fund, who was wanted on corruption charges. Although the extradition treaty had not yet been ratified, the extradition request was acceded to and the judge in this case ruled that the extradition could proceed. This case in fact showed that an extradition treaty was not required for individual extradition requests to be agreed by the Home Secretary.
In the light of this background, I have a number of questions for the Minister. What considerations in the UK-Kuwait relationship made this treaty a priority for the UK? In what context was this treaty discussed, both bilaterally with Kuwait and internally within the UK Government? Were linkages made to progress on political reform and human rights? Are the Government generally using extradition treaties as a way of encouraging political reform? How have the Government kept the wider political situation in Kuwait under review since first initialling this treaty in 2015, with the changes that have been noted? Did commercial considerations, particularly if the UK were to leave the EU, play a part?
In addition, given that our international partners in some cases do not appreciate that our judiciary is genuinely independent, what potential fallout could we see for the relationship with Kuwait if extradition requests are refused on human rights grounds? What are the Government’s options to revoke or suspend a treaty if they see violations of human rights in the judicial system or have systemic concerns around freedom of speech and fair trials? Will they keep the extradition treaty under review? There is no bilateral extradition treaty now with Saudi Arabia, Oman or Bahrain. Are any such treaties in the pipeline?
Setting aside Kuwait-specific concerns, there has been concern around extradition policy over the last few years. As the Lords Extradition Law Committee stated in 2015,
“the system of seeking, accepting and monitoring assurances during the extradition process cannot guarantee the UK is meeting its human rights obligations”.
What review have the Government made of their policy in the light of those comments? The UK does have extradition treaties with countries where there are significant limitations on human rights and dubious judicial systems—for example, Uganda, Libya and Russia. It is important, therefore, that this extradition treaty should be adequately scrutinised, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, again for ensuring that we are doing so. I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response.
Baroness Goldie (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to speak for the Government today on the important matter of extradition, a matter in which I know the House has taken a close interest over recent years. By way of introduction, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, that I have observed his disquiet over procedure. In the small number of debates we have had on treaties—I think we had two before tonight—we have not had speakers’ lists, but I am prepared to take it up with the usual channels, because in terms of certainty, and so that people can make a judgment on whether they wish to participate in the debate, further information might be helpful. I undertake to relay that to my very good chum the Chief Whip and see what progress I can make.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for securing this debate to discuss a further step forward in enhancing the close relationship between the UK and an important and valued historical friend in the Middle East: Kuwait. Our co-operation with Kuwait in recent years has spanned the entire spectrum of the UK’s strategic priorities. It has focused on building links between our economies through developing trade and investment, working together to counter the threat from extremism, radicalisation and terrorism that we both face, and continuing to enhance our close and valuable military relationship. Together, we also strive to support peace and stability in a changing region. Kuwait is a major donor in areas of conflict, providing humanitarian aid in Syria and Yemen, as well as supporting projects for the reconstruction of Iraq.
The UK has strongly supported Kuwait’s mediation efforts in recent talks in the Gulf and its support for de-escalation and Gulf unity has demonstrated its commitment to regional stability. As a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since January 2018, Kuwait has also worked effectively alongside the UK, during which time Kuwait has arranged a fact-finding mission on the Rohingya crisis, supported sanctions against the DPRK and condemned the use of, or threat to use, chemical weapons following the appalling incident of the Salisbury poisoning in our own country. As a close friend, we are also able to offer support and advice, where appropriate, as Kuwait continues to develop its democracy, governance and human rights frameworks. I will come to this point and points specifically raised by noble Lords in the course of my comments.
The next important frontier in our co-operation with Kuwait is that of criminal justice. The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, asked about the context of all this. I have tried to explain that we value our very close relationship with Kuwait and we want to reach a mutually supportive situation in which we can each play our role in dealing with challenging issues that arise in the field of and in relation to criminal justice. That is why co-operation on criminal justice with Kuwait is very important.
In July, the Policing Minister laid before Parliament a package of judicial co-operation measures, comprising treaties on mutual legal assistance and extradition. Kuwait has acted with admirable swiftness to be ready to ratify both treaties. I am very pleased that they have now been laid before the House for the requisite number of sitting days to now allow the Government to move towards ratification. As your Lordships may be aware, the mutual legal assistance treaty needs no further legislation to be able to enter into force and will be ratified in the coming months.
In accordance with the provisions of the Extradition Act, Kuwait must be designated a Part 2 country before ratification of the latter treaty can take place. As the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, observed, there have been pressures on the parliamentary timetable with Brexit, but the Government intend to lay a statutory instrument to effect ratification as soon as the parliamentary timetable allows. Orders made under the Extradition Act are made under the affirmative procedure, so it will not be long before your Lordships have the opportunity to debate this treaty a second time. Work is proceeding on the drafting. As I say, the next task is to find a slot in the parliamentary timetable.
By way of general comment on extradition, the UK’s extradition framework is an essential tool for ensuring that those who seek to flee from their crimes are not able to evade justice. In a world where crime and terrorism are no longer contained within national borders, the importance of ensuring effective co-operation on criminal justice has never been greater. We all share a deep respect for the fundamental principle that no one should be above the law. The extradition treaty we are discussing tonight is a further building block in an international structure that will facilitate our collective global ability to bear down on terrorism and serious organised crime. The Government are pleased to have the co-operation of Kuwait on this important issue.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, have tonight raised a number of issues relating to Kuwait’s human rights record and the continued use of the death penalty. Let me reaffirm: this Government are committed to upholding human rights and oppose the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle. The safeguards available in the Extradition Act are strong and reliable in that respect. Extradition from the UK is not possible if it would be incompatible with a person’s human rights. The Home Secretary must not, in law, order an individual’s extradition if they have been, will be or could be sentenced to death. I hope that clarifies matters that naturally concerned the noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness.
On the broader issues raised, the Government of Kuwait respect our position on this matter and we have accordingly included provisions in the treaty before both Houses that make it entirely clear.
On human rights, the noble Lord, Lord Collins, referred to the position of LGBT persons in Kuwait. I was looking at the grounds for refusal in the treaty.
Lord Collins of Highbury
I am sorry to interrupt the Minister. I did read out the grounds and it did not seem clear that sexual orientation was covered, although there is a sentence referring to “sex and other”. Could she clarify that?
Baroness Goldie
I would take great pleasure in doing that. I am just talking about the first paragraph, Article 3(1)(a), which I think the noble Lord read out. My understanding is that the specific reference to sex, or indeed to status, is intended to ensure that persons are not wrongly persecuted for their sexual orientation and that extradition under this treaty shall be refused in any such cases. I hope that that clarifies the understanding of the position.
Lord Cashman (Lab)
Can I seek a further reassurance? As regards the reference to “other” status, as in the UN Declaration of Human Rights, in my dealings with some African, Caribbean and Pacific countries I have noted that some significantly fail to recognise that “other” status includes sexual orientation.
Baroness Goldie
I have described the grounds on which extradition under this treaty would be refused. As your Lordships will be aware, the exercise of extradition is a matter for both the Home Secretary and the courts. The courts must consider the actual application. That is our interpretation of what the phrasing means.
Lord Collins of Highbury
My question did not relate specifically to crimes because of somebody’s sexuality. There can be circumstances where, if someone is being sent back to a country where homosexuality is illegal—and certainly homosexual acts are—and it becomes known that that person is gay, they might be accused or charged with one crime but could then be subject to treatment because of their sexuality. It is that issue that I sought clarity on.
Baroness Goldie
I will write to the noble Lord in further detail. This will come before the House again in the form of the affirmative statutory instrument, but I am very happy to seek further clarification on the points being raised to see whether I can go further than what I have before me this evening.
The noble Lord, Lord Collins, and the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, also raised the matter of the decision in the cases of Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh. That was not an extradition of individuals. It was a decision by the Home Secretary to provide assistance, including mutual legal assistance. The decisions are taken in accordance with the Government’s overseas security and justice assistance guidance, which requires an assessment of human rights risk, including the death penalty. Overseas security and justice assistance guidance has always permitted the Government not to require assurances in mutual legal assurance requests where there are strong reasons not to do so. I reiterate that the UK remains opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances as a matter of principle.
I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, raised the particular matter of Al Rajaan. I cannot comment on individual cases, I am afraid; that is not the policy of the Government. On the serious issue of the 2017 executions, I repeat the Government’s position on the death penalty: we believe that the death penalty undermines human dignity, there is no conclusive evidence of its deterrent value, and any miscarriage of justice leading to its imposition is clearly irreparable. We raised our concerns with the Government of Kuwait at the time and expressed our disquiet that this should have taken place. Again, regarding potential extraditions, we do not comment on individual cases.
The noble Baroness, Lady Northover, raised the matter of other Gulf states. As noble Lords have pointed out, extradition is clearly possible on a case-by-case basis with all countries, regardless of treaties. The Government discuss mutual legal assistance and extradition with partners in the course of bilateral relations. The extradition treaty was negotiated in its own right without linkage to other policy areas. There is a word here that I cannot make out because the writing in the Box is, I am afraid, not of the clarity that I was taught to observe in primary 1 in my Scottish school. I beg the Box’s pardon. It was laid in Parliament as part of a judicial co-operation package alongside a mutual legal assistance treaty. I hope that that reassures the noble Baroness.
In conclusion, we are committed to the global campaign to abolish the death penalty and continue to maintain this position in discussions with the Government of Kuwait. This forms part of the advice and support, which I mentioned earlier, that we provide as Kuwait continues to develop its democracy, governance and human rights frameworks. We share with Kuwait a commitment to pursuing justice internationally.
Baroness Northover
Perhaps when the Minister writes to the noble Lord, Lord Collins, she might also address some of my other questions with a bit more precision—perhaps she will be able to read the writing of the people in the Box. I would be grateful if she did that.
Baroness Goldie
Yes, of course. I will be very happy to do that. As your Lordships are aware, I do look at the Official Report and try to address any points I may have overlooked in the debate. I certainly undertake to do that.
Viscount Waverley (CB)
In the spirit of writing, perhaps the Minister might wish to reflect on this. Given that she has suggested that this is going to come before the House again, I have been reflecting on it during the debate but I have not fully worked out my thinking. Is there any question in relation to the European arrest warrant? Some odd cases have come through the system where the system has been somewhat abused, if I may say, by certain states. Is there any possibility that European arrest warrant issues will come into play and be relevant to this? People are shaking their heads but perhaps the Minister might wish to respond.
Baroness Goldie
It is a rare pleasure to receive comfort from the Liberal Democrat Benches. I understand from the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, that this does not appear to be germane to the issue under discussion—but I hear what the noble Viscount says.
Viscount Waverley
It was a question of whether any other state within the European Union could come into play and make an issue in relation to the European arrest warrant that might affect the process.
Baroness Goldie
I can see a whole debate being possible on this issue alone. I hear what the noble Viscount is saying and we will certainly bear that in mind when we come to a later state of the procedure.
I am sure your Lordships will have realised that the whole purpose of this is to ensure that criminals are brought to trial. But it also means, as noble Lords have rightly pointed out, ensuring that our judicial system maintains its full respect for human rights and protection of those procedural safeguards necessary to ensure the fairness of our system. Our extradition framework, including this treaty, achieves a balance of these fundamental principles, and we look forward to the success of our future co-operation with Kuwait on this crucial subject.
In conclusion, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Collins, for introducing this very illuminating debate, which was a helpful prelude to the debate that will take place when the affirmative instrument comes to the Chamber. It has been a useful opportunity to listen to the exchange of views and I thank noble Lords for their contributions.
Lord Collins of Highbury
I thank the Minister for her response. I have attended one other debate on the treaty. The noble Baroness who moved that Motion exercised her right of reply and, as there is no speakers list, I will do the same.
I just want to reassure the Minister that I do not see this treaty as something bad or regrettable. It is an opportunity. As the Minister says, individual cases can be considered anyway by the courts, but in negotiating and agreeing this treaty, the opportunity was there, as she rightly said, to raise issues about due process and human rights and our concerns over the use of the death penalty. I am somewhat reassured by her comments in this regard.
The Minister said that the purpose of the treaty is that no one should be able to avoid justice—absolutely right. We certainly need to ensure that globally people cannot act with impunity. She knows that I have raised this point on many occasions. No one should avoid justice, and justice must be served and be seen to be served. That is why it is really important for the principles we have raised in the debate to be heard. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her contribution. It is absolutely right that we see these things in context and see them as an opportunity to bring change. The fact that there are still countries in this world where being gay is subject to execution is absolutely disgusting and we need to challenge that.
Data Retention and Acquisition Regulations 2018
20:14 - Division on Lord Paddick’s amendment to the Motion. - Ayes: 64 / Noes: 158 - Lord Paddick’s amendment to the Motion disagreed.
Baroness Manzoor
That the draft Regulations laid before the House on 28 June be approved. Considered in Grand Committee on 24 October.
Baroness Manzoor (Con)
My Lords, the other place approved these draft regulations on 15 October and they were considered in great detail in Grand Committee on 24 October. That was followed by a letter on 25 October to all noble Lords who took part in the debate. Of course, a copy of that letter was also placed in the Library.
The regulations bring into force the draft communications data code of practice and amend the Investigatory Powers Act—IPA—to comply with a European Court of Justice ruling. The ruling requires that there must be independent authorisation for requests to access communications data and, in relation to crime, where the intrusion into private lives would be serious, the offence justifying that intrusion must also be serious. The High Court declared that the Act must be amended by 1 November, which is when these regulations are due to come into force. Therefore, it is important that they are approved today.
I will explain what these changes will mean in practice. To clarify, we are talking about communications data—information such as the name of someone subscribing to a mobile phone contract, the time a call was made or the number that was dialled—but not the content of any calls or messages. At the moment, a police officer investigating any crime can request any type of communications data to support their investigation if it is necessary and proportionate to do so. A request is sent to a designated senior officer who, having consulted a specialist in the use of communications data, decides whether or not to authorise the request.
The regulations introduce additional safeguards to the process. The police officer will no longer be able to request any type of communications data in the investigation of all crimes. Instead, the officer will be able to access only the more intrusive types of communications data—such as where the person was when making a call—in the investigation of serious crimes. Instead of the request being authorised internally, it will now be sent externally to an independent organisation overseen by a Court of Appeal judge. The staff of this independent organisation—the Office for Communications Data Authorisations, or OCDA—will assess the request and, weighing up all the factors relating to necessity, proportionality and seriousness, decide whether or not to authorise it. Only once this independent authorisation has taken place can the officer acquire the data.
There will be cases—such as a missing child, a terrorist attack or another threat to life—where communications data must be accessed more urgently than the new regime will allow. The regulations and code of practice, therefore, include provisions for such circumstances, allowing internal authorisation by a designated senior officer, but make it clear that such authorisations will expire after only three days— not 30 as with ordinary authorisations—and all urgent requests will be reviewed by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner’s office; that is, the OCDA. Your Lordships will see that these regulations are about strengthening safeguards, limiting the availability of communications data to public authorities and ensuring that when it is made available, that happens only after proper independent scrutiny.
When we debated the regulations in Grand Committee last week, the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, raised concerns that the definition of serious crime in the regulations does not abide by the ruling of the European Court of Justice that I have already mentioned. I strongly disagree. All offences that meet the serious crime definition, and pass the tests of necessity, proportionality and seriousness set out in the code of practice, will in fact be serious and warrant the use of communications data in their investigation.
A higher threshold would not allow public authorities to investigate such offences as harassment, stalking, sexual communication with a child, sending grossly offensive messages and contempt of court among others. The Government believe that these are serious and that communications data should be available in their investigation. They are certainly not viewed as trivial by the victims.
The European Court of Justice itself, in its recent ruling on a Spanish case, Ministerio Fiscal, made it clear that a higher level of intrusion into private lives in accessing different types of data must correlate with the seriousness of the offence being investigated. The more intrusive the data request, the more serious the offence must be. Legislation alone cannot give effect to this, and I ask noble Lords to see these measures as a package, with independent authorisation, a legislative threshold that sets clear limits, and the code of practice, which involves considerations of necessity, proportionality and seriousness. As a result, less intrusive data types will still be available when investigating all crime types, but the more intrusive communications data, such as location data, will be accessed only in the investigation of serious crime. Being able to intercept—bug—phones will continue to be available only for the investigation of offences meeting the higher seriousness threshold already in the Investigatory Powers Act.
We consider the regulations to be very much in the spirit of the European Court of Justice ruling. We already have strong safeguards and oversight in relation to our investigatory powers. If an individual believes that their communications data have been accessed unlawfully, they can make a complaint to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, which is independent of government and consists of senior members of the legal profession. The regime as a whole is overseen by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner, a Court of Appeal judge independent of government. Moreover, the Act as a whole must be reviewed after five years, allowing us to consider whether any changes must be made.
The Government have carefully considered the European court’s decisions in this area and have proposed amendments in good faith, ensuring that this important investigative tool is available to the police for crimes whose impact on the victim is considerable. The regulations are about increasing, not reducing, safeguards. If they are not passed into law by 1 November—Thursday—the new additional safeguards I have talked about will not come into force. I beg to move.
Amendment to the Motion
Lord Paddick
At end insert “but that this House regrets that the draft Regulations fail to comply with the spirit of the ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union by failing to restrict the use of communications data to serious offences.”
Lord Paddick (LD)
My Lords, I first remind the House that I was a police officer for over 30 years and that— contrary to popular belief—my certificate of service says that my conduct was exemplary. I acknowledge the importance of communications data in the investigation of serious crime, as the Minister has set out. I also welcome the independent authorisation provisions contained in these regulations, as far as they go.
Secondly, may I give the House some background on the history of the passage of these regulations through this House? At a meeting with the Minister of State for Security and Economic Crime, the Minister of State for Countering Extremism and officials almost three weeks ago, I asked for an explanation of the definition of serious crime in these regulations, which is significantly different from the definition in the Act under which the regulations are made. The Minister for Security was unable to offer an explanation, but undertook to find out and get back to me.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, when Alice was through the looking-glass and having a conversation with Humpty Dumpty, she remarked that he was “exactly like an egg”. He said he found this “very provoking” and Alice explained that he looked like an egg, not that he was one. Their discussion on semantics included the following exchange:
“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things’”.
We have had what we regard as a novel and inappropriate definition of “serious”. There is a current movement, which I welcome, towards language in legislation being as close as possible to normal-speak, giving words their natural meaning. Sometimes, of course, terms need definition, as I accept “serious” does in this context. However, an offence that could give rise to a 12-month sentence is not what most people would regard as serious in comparative terms—I put it that way because I will not be the only person in the Chamber tonight who thinks all crime is serious—and this is what the European court pulled us up on.
I think people will be even less inclined to accept the definition in the case of someone not previously convicted of anything or—it does not say so but presumably this is the case—convicted and given a suspended sentence. Stalking and harassment have been prayed in aid. I for one will not be characterised as not regarding these as serious, but I ask what other areas were, to quote the Government,
“highlighted by law enforcement agencies”.—[Official Report, 24/10/18; col. GC 42.]
Maybe those are the ones that we have already heard about; I do not know. I appreciate that these behaviours often escalate but they are not the only behaviours or offences that can do so. If there is an issue of legislation regarding an offence and the sentence that it may attract, we should address it head-on. The Minister referred in the previous debate to the right of citizens to be protected from crime and terrorism. I have not read through all the terrorism legislation but she may be able to help me: are there any terrorism offences where the sentence is as low as a year?
She said that the regulations will prevent data being acquired in the investigation of trivial offences, and she mentioned that again today. I think this confuses categories of crime, which are what underlie possible sentences, and the particular infringement, which may be anywhere on a spectrum and the court will give its view in passing sentence as to where on that spectrum the test should be. I accept that there are tests of necessity and proportionality and that these are essential reference points for lawmakers and the commissioner, but it is harder for individuals who consider their privacy to have been invaded to look to these in an effective fashion.
My noble friend said that he would not mention corporate bodies and then rather effectively did so. I do not think the inclusion of these has been fully justified. There has been no attempt to distinguish between levels of seriousness in their case. I thought it was ironic that a crime that will be subject to—or qualifies for, if you like—the regulations may be an offence involving a breach of a person’s privacy.
I support my noble friend whose amendment to the Motion—although he opposes the regulations—is, in fact, to regret them, not to oppose them, and not to seek to delay them beyond 1 November.
Lord Rosser (Lab)
My Lords, the debate on these regulations took place last Wednesday in the Moses Room, when concerns were expressed about the definition of serious crime in respect of communications data acquisition and retention as being for offences carrying a maximum of 12 months’ imprisonment. The definition also covers any crime by a body corporate or any offence that involves as a key part of it,
“the sending of a communication or a breach of a person’s privacy”.
Since then the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has put down the amendment to the Government’s approval Motion, which we are now considering.
The reason for the speed in considering the matter further so soon after last Wednesday’s debate is that the Government seek to have the draft regulations approved by this Thursday. If they are not, we will be in breach of a court order following a ruling of the European Court that the relevant parts of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016 are incompatible with European law. The draft regulations have already been discussed in the Commons, where we the Opposition said that we did not oppose the changes. That remains our position and for that reason we will not be supporting the noble Lord’s regret amendment to the Government’s approval Motion if he decides to test the opinion of the House.
Since last Wednesday the Minister, as promised, has written to noble Lords who participated in the debate, in the light of the concerns expressed, setting out the Government’s position on their proposed definition of serious crime in the context of retaining and acquiring communications data. They were valid concerns, which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has just reiterated in very clear and emphatic terms. In a nutshell, the Government’s argument, both tonight and in the letter of 25 October, is that the draft regulations remove a power from the police to use data to investigate non-serious crimes and provide additional safeguards and restrictions on the retention and acquisition of communications data in respect of the Government’s definition of serious crime. The changes provided for in the draft regulations were prompted by the court judgment on the incompati- bility with European law of the relevant parts of the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The Government believe that what they have proposed in the draft regulations meets the terms of that court judgment.
The Government’s second argument is that if they used the definition of serious crime that exists in Section 263 of the Investigatory Powers Act in relation to interception powers in respect also of retaining and acquiring communications data which the Government regard as less intrusive, it would mean that the ability to investigate some crimes considered to be serious would be compromised. The Government also referred to the code of practice and the considerations that have to be taken into account when assessing seriousness, the independent authorisation of communications data requests by the Office for Communications Data Authorisations and the oversight of public authorities and the OCDA by the Investigatory Powers Commissioner.
In theory, these provisions ought to be enough to prevent the definition of serious crime from being abused through ending up with communications data authorisation in respect of crimes that could not be regarded as serious in their nature by any stretch of the imagination. However, there have been too many examples of powers which have been provided by statute in good faith to address genuine concerns in specific areas which have then been abused by being applied or used by those given the authority to deploy them in ways that were never intended or envisaged. Frankly, no one can give a cast-iron guarantee that this could not happen in relation to the use of the provisions in these draft regulations, which were designed to address a court judgement and which may or may not stand up to further judicial scrutiny.
The Minster says in her letter:
“I recognise that some noble Lords may consider that our amendments do not go far enough to limit the retention and acquisition of communications data to serious crime. That question is subject to ongoing legal proceedings”.
The Minister went on to say that the Government would be strongly defending their approach in the courts, but she added:
“Should the courts not agree with our position we would of course move to rectify the regime”.
We understand the concerns being voiced by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, but likewise—as I am sure the noble Lord does, too—we understand the reasons for these draft regulations and the desire to have provisions that will assist in bringing to justice those who have committed serious, unacceptable acts. The issue is whether the regulations meet the terms of the court judgment—a matter that will presumably be determined in the courts—and whether the authorisation and oversight arrangements and procedures, if they survive legal proceedings intact, will prove strong enough to prevent the powers, the purpose of which we understand, being misused. The Government maintain they will be strong enough, but only time and experience will show. The Government now have a responsibility to make sure that their assurances over how the regulations in reality will be applied and used are adhered to and delivered in full. I am sure that plenty of people will be watching to see whether that happens. As I said at the beginning, we did not oppose the changes provided for in these regulations in the Commons, and that remains our position.
Baroness Manzoor
My Lords, I am glad that we have been able to debate these regulations so thoroughly and consider carefully the proposed amendments to the Investigatory Powers Act. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for his very balanced approach to this important issue, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, for their considered view on the issue of what constitutes serious crime. If I may refer them back to my letter, the position that I outlined there remains the Government’s position.
I will briefly say a few things, but I am conscious that almost everything that has been said tonight was said in Grand Committee—I can see the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, nodding—and I have followed it up in writing to all noble Lords who took part in that debate. I again apologise for any confusion that took place regarding the earlier part of the issue that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, raised, in relation to the meetings with the Ministers of State. I was not party to those discussions, so I apologise that I am not in a position to comment, but I hope that my letter went some way to addressing the issues that were raised with me in Grand Committee.
I will say a few things again for clarity. These regulations bring in additional safeguards. They ensure that the more intrusive requests for communications data will be accessed only in the investigation of serious crime and that the vast majority of requests by public authorities to access all communications data—approximately 200,000 requests are made per year—must be authorised by an independent organisation overseen by a Court of Appeal judge. There are very clear safeguards in place. We are taking powers away from our law enforcement agencies in the interests of privacy.
We are, of course, mindful of our duties to protect the public and properly to investigate crimes that they suffer. A balance must be struck and these regulations strike that balance correctly. As I have said, noble Lords may have differing opinions on whether our definition of serious crime in this context is appropriate. Let me be clear. I do not want our police to be unable to effectively investigate an individual sending grossly offensive messages to someone, causing huge distress to the victim who certainly considers the offence to be serious. I do not want to damage the effectiveness of our judiciary by limiting the ability of the police to investigate contempt of court. These are serious matters.
I refer the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, to page 2 of my letter. It is not just the sentence that the person who commits the crime receives. That is important in terms of the 12 months, but it is not the only issue. As the code of practice sets out clearly in paragraph 3.33, a range of factors should be considered, including but not limited to the circumstances of the case, the offender, the impact on the victim, the harm suffered and the motive for the crime. I hope that that goes some way to addressing the concerns that noble Lords raised.
We have a comprehensive code of practice which provides extensive guidance on what considerations must be taken into account by individuals applying for and authorising requests for communications. As I have said, each and every request must be assessed in relation to necessity, proportionality and seriousness. We are strengthening the safeguards and oversight of a regime already world-leading in these aspects, and we are creating a regime that is compliant with EU law.
I am grateful to Members of the House for their time in ensuring that this has been such a valuable and high-quality debate. We take these issues very seriously. I would now like the regulations to be approved and I commend them to the House.
Lord Paddick
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness. It is not primarily about the definition of serious crime being an offence punishable by 12 months’ imprisonment or more. It is about the fact that it goes beyond that to include all offences, whether or not they are capable of a 12-month sentence, that have communication as an integral part, all corporate offences, whether or not somebody can be given a 12-month sentence, and all offences involving a breach of privacy. Clearly that is going beyond the definition of serious crime: it includes lots of offences that are not serious.
I am not reckless enough to jeopardise these regulations by asking noble Lords to vote against approving them, but I hope that noble Lords will agree that the Government’s attempts to get round the CJEU judgment is to be regretted, and I wish to test the opinion of the House on my amendment to the Motion.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 View all Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 137-I(a) Amendments for Committee, supplementary to the marshalled list (PDF) - (30 Oct 2018)
Lord Adonis
“Executive formation: appointment of a mediator
(1) During the period while there is no Executive, the Secretary of State may specify in regulations the appointment of a mediator to facilitate formation of an Executive.(2) A statutory instrument containing regulations under subsection (1) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before both Houses of Parliament by 1 December 2018 and approved by a resolution of both Houses within the period of 10 sitting days beginning with the day on which the instrument is laid.(3) For the purposes of this section, a “sitting day” means a day on which both the House of Commons and the House of Lords are sitting.”
Lord Adonis (Lab)
My Lords, I spoke to this amendment at Second Reading and I will not say anything further, as I want to give the Minister an opportunity to say more about the progress which he and the Secretary of State are making with the parties in Northern Ireland on identifying and appointing a mediator and what the timescale for that might be. This is clearly of huge importance to our debate and to progress towards establishing a new Executive in Northern Ireland. I beg to move.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Northern Ireland Office and Scotland Office (Lord Duncan of Springbank) (Con)
My Lords, thank you for bringing this matter before the Committee. I will make some general points and then some specific ones. The amendment would place the question of a facilitator or mediator in the Bill. We can do that without it going on the face of the Bill. As I indicated earlier today, we now intend to move from the statement which I gave the previous time I addressed your Lordships—that this is part of the mix—to stating that we are now actively consulting with the parties in order to move this matter forward. All elements of the timescale are not yet fixed but I can say that this will be moving forward within the realisable timetable that we have set for the overall movement of the parties gathering. In order for this to be meaningful, such an individual would have to be in play from the earliest stages, in order to move the most intensive form of dialogue forward. We hope and intend that such an individual would be able to act in a much more expansive role than just as a chair. I would rather use the word “Sherpa” in its European context; someone who can be part of the play and engage directly with each participant both behind and before the scenes.
We hope to move this forward with the consent of all the parties involved to make sure that it is a meaningful contribution. I cannot comment further on the individuals who might be in scope for this role, but others have already sent information through to the department, and we are in the process of sifting and examining it in some detail.
Lord Empey (UUP)
My Lords, we have heard the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, that we have a mediator, but we are not comparing like with like. Going back to the time of George Mitchell, we have to remember that everything—the whole constitutional process, from scratch—was on the table. My fear is that if you appoint a mediator, they are not going to be able to confine their activities to the narrow issues that brought the Executive down. I believe Sinn Féin would want to completely open up the whole process, putting on the table the constitution, the principle of consent—all those things. I can see where people are coming from, but it seems to me that it is not beyond the ability of the parties to find a mechanism within themselves whereby talks could be held. To get a mediator to come in to deal with the Irish language Act and the RHI—the two things that brought the Executive down—does not seem particularly realistic.
The agenda would grow and grow, and the process could go on for years. Everything will end up on the table, including the constitution and the principle of consent. I do think we have to try to keep as open a mind as possible, but there may be a difference between a mediator and a facilitator, or a question as to whether the parties can find a mechanism among themselves; but bear in mind where this could go. If some people want to open up a process, there is no better place for Sinn Féin to be than in a process. They are serial negotiators; they want to continue to negotiate, which avoids having to take any tough decisions, particularly decisions in government. We have been warned by others that there are many who would take the view that Sinn Féin will do nothing until the Irish election is over. They do not want to have to take any tough decisions in government, which they would have to do because of the arithmetic, if nothing else.
Bear that in mind when considering the options before us. I would caution that that needs to be taken into account.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, the Committee is listening with great attention to the noble Lord. Would he care to elaborate on the distinction between a mediator and a facilitator?
Lord Empey
I am not personally advocating either, but a mediator is somebody who is negotiating between the parties. A facilitator may be somebody who simply organises the meetings, the paperwork, the breakout sessions and so on. A mediator is playing a Mitchellesque role in meeting the parties, negotiating, putting papers to them and so on. I see it as a step down, if you like, in those terms. I am not personally convinced. If people are not mature enough at this stage, after all these years, to arrange meetings among themselves—and we did have one, admittedly, that was an initiative by one party. I do not believe that we are so far down the road that we could not arrange meetings between ourselves. If the will to talk is there, surely it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the parties can arrange that among themselves. We have an Assembly Speaker and we have Deputy Speakers. They could chair the meetings. All parties are represented, more or less. There are ways in which it could be done, but believe me, once you get into a process with a mediator, it could go on for years.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I listened with great attention to the noble Lord, but I listened with equal attention to his speech at Second Reading in which he said that no progress was being made whatsoever in establishing an Executive, and that it was about time that some was made. If it has not been done by the process he has just suggested—the parties coming together—it is hard to see how some external stimulus could lead to a less advantageous situation than the current one.
Lord Empey
I take the noble Lord’s point, which is pertinent. However, do not forget that if we keep to this three-stranded model, we have a Secretary of State and, where appropriate, an Irish Foreign Minister, and in the proper format there is no reason why they cannot be engaged. I am saying that maybe it would be an incentive if the Secretary of State made it clear that a process was starting and that the parties understood that if they were not prepared to participate in that, perhaps she and others would start to take decisions. I am not trying to be obstructive or rule anything out. I am simply saying, be careful. It sounds like a good idea, but bear in mind that people who are serial negotiators—they have been doing this for 25 or 30 years —will put things on the table and open the whole thing up. My only worry about this is that it just postpones the decisions even further, although I understand fully the noble Lord’s good intentions.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)
I will intervene for a few seconds. The issue is that because the “talks” and “negotiations” have been notoriously unsuccessful over the last couple of years, there has to be some form of structure—although I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Empey, that it has to be on a very restricted number of issues, otherwise you go back to a Good Friday agreement mark 2, and we do not want that. You want to work within the agreement but have some sort of structure. If there is a person who could organise that structure and be acceptable to all the parties, I see nothing wrong with that. I understand that if you expand it beyond the current issues, that could be difficult. However, there are a number of issues beyond those the noble Lord, Lord Empey, mentioned—for example, the Irish language and equal marriage. All those things can be on the table, but it is about getting some form of structure which simply does not exist at the moment. Anything that could help that would be useful.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I invited the Minister to set out the Government’s thinking, which he did, clearly, and I took him to say that they are minded to move towards some form of external mediation at some early date. I take that as a significant statement, and on that basis, I am content to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) The guidance must direct senior officers of Northern Ireland departments, giving due regard to advice from the Northern Ireland Commission for Victims and Survivors, to prepare a scheme to provide a pension to those who are regarded as seriously-injured arising from an incident associated from the conflict in Northern Ireland.”
Lord Hain (Lab)
My Lords, Amendment 3 is in my name and that of the noble Lords, Lord Bruce and Lord Cormack, and, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Bew, indicating Cross-Bench support. I will also speak to Amendment 13A in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce.
When I spoke in March, I raised the plight of the 500 or so people severely injured because of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The overwhelming majority were injured through no fault of their own, and face growing into old age desperately unsure about what the future holds for them. Because of their injuries, most of them were unable to build the kind of occupational pensions that they would otherwise have had. Just recently, one of the WAVE Trauma Centre’s injured group, which has been campaigning for a special pension, received a final settlement on her pension contributions in the form of a lump sum. It was taxed at 20%. She received a magnificent £25.39, which, frankly, is an insult to somebody in her situation.
Jennifer had her legs blown off in a no-warning IRA bomb in 1972, when she was 21 years of age. Paul, who was 21 when loyalists shot him six times because their target who lived next door did not turn up, is paralysed from the waist down. He describes the constant pain he lives with as like,
“sitting in a pool of lava”.
Every two days his carers—his wife and his brother—have to use a colonic irrigation system to empty his bowels into a bucket. That is Paul’s reality.
This especially vulnerable group of victims have had to deal with much more than the physical damage inflicted upon them. Peter was 26 when he was shot and paralysed in a case of mistaken identity in 1979. His wife, his childhood sweetheart, was tormented by misplaced guilt because she opened the door and,
“let evil into their home”,
as she described it. Peter had to watch her drink herself to death by the age of 51.
Mary was 17 when she was paralysed in a drive-by sectarian shooting. She was told that a realistic life expectancy was that she would not see her 32nd birthday. More than 40 years on, she is still here. She has had three shoulder replacements because of the strain on her upper body, being confined in a wheelchair. She has had to pay for these privately because if she joined an NHS waiting list she would be immobile.
Those who suffered severe physical injuries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland are, in many ways, the forgotten victims of the conflict. Perhaps there was an assumption that they had been looked after at the material time with generous compensation payments that would see them financially secure for the rest of their lives, but that simply did not happen. Many of the severely injured have lived much longer than the life expectancy assumptions made at the time. Most of the severely injured sustained their injuries during the 1970s and 1980s. Many predated disability discrimination legislation so, even if they could have found work, the chances that the workplace would have been adapted to their needs—for example, for those confined to wheelchairs—were more than remote. All they want is a degree of modest financial security so that they—and in many cases their carers—can live the rest of their lives with as much independence and dignity as possible.
To that end, I urge the Government to act swiftly to address this cruel legacy of Northern Ireland’s violent past and provide support for the severely injured through the provision of a special pension. Getting the Government both to recognise and to act upon that obligation is the purpose of these two amendments. In terms of the level of pension, the then Victims Commissioner for Northern Ireland suggested a figure of £150 per week or around the current state pension provision. Given the age profile, a lump sum for those aged over 75 would probably be more appropriate.
In any event the cost, including the administration of the pension, either by the Northern Ireland Civil Service or through the DWP, would not be prohibitive. This total cost has been authoritatively estimated to be between £3 million and £5 million annually. These figures clearly indicate that the pension commitment will diminish through the passage of time, even allowing for some provision for a proportion of the pension to go to the carer when the injured person dies. But for the pension to make a real difference to those who need it, it cannot be counted as income for the purposes of qualifying for existing benefits. That is a very important point. It must be “as well as” and not “instead of”, and be in addition to any other pensions and/or benefits that the injured person either is, or will be, in receipt of.
There is a subsidiary issue to be dealt with in relation to the relatively very small number of people who were severely injured by their own hand, but it is quite wrong that the vast majority who were injured through no fault of their own should be denied support because of a specific political blockage that could and should be resolved. These were not people in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were at work. They were at home with their family. They were having a coffee in a café. They were walking home after an evening at the cinema. They were in the right place, where they should have expected to be safe and secure.
Now is the time for the Government to act swiftly, with I hope wide parliamentary backing, after years and years of this case having no response. That is why I speak to this amendment, which simply seeks that the guidance referred to in Clause 3(3) must direct or, as Amendment 13A puts it, provide for,
“senior officers of Northern Ireland departments, giving due regard to advice from the Northern Ireland Commission for Victims and Survivors, to prepare a scheme to provide a pension to those who are regarded as seriously-injured arising from an incident associated from the conflict in Northern Ireland”,
and for that to be backdated, as Amendment 13A requires, to 1 January 2018. I say that because, if this takes some time to implement—if it requires legislation, as I understand may be the case—there must be certainty that this will happen and that, however long it takes to process, it will be backdated so that at least these victims can have something to look forward to.
Lord Cormack (Con)
My Lords, I will be very brief. I was delighted to add my name to Amendment 3, which is also in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Bruce. I do not need to make the case, because it a powerful case that has been powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. All I would say is that during my five years as chairman of the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee in another place I met many people and heard many distressing accounts that underline the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. We are talking about people whose futures were destroyed, whose hopes were blighted and whose lives were changed for ever by an evil act and not by anything that they had done to themselves.
As the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, there were those who were responsible for their own injuries. They deserve some compassion for their terrible mistakes and evil deeds, but that is not what we are talking about tonight. We are talking about those who were blameless and whose need is great, who are advancing in years as they advance in decrepitude, and who are less and less able to do anything for themselves. The only way to help those people, who are as deserving of help as any category I can think of, is for us to do something along the lines advocated in Amendment 3.
I hope that my noble friend the Minister, for whom I have a genuinely high regard and who is a real master of his brief and really concerned with the subjects for which he is responsible, will be able to say enough to prevent any thought of dividing the House. The House should not be divided on an issue such as this. We should be totally united in our determination to do a little for those who have lost so much. I have great pleasure in supporting this amendment.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie (LD)
My Lords, I too support this amendment, which I have signed, and which was powerfully moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. All I add is that it encapsulates the dilemma that the Bill represents. These are people who have suffered for decades and who are towards the end of their lives, although they have lived a lot longer in many cases than they were expected to, with psychological and physical difficulties. There is a cross-party and, indeed, administrative and political consensus that they should be compensated, but there is no mechanism for doing so because that mechanism has effectively foundered or is in deep freeze. In that situation, to say to these people that they will have to wait until such time as an Assembly is re-established would be heartless in the extreme.
There are two issues. First, it should be within the capacity of the Government to make this happen, either in the Bill or by some other mechanism. The cost is relatively low. Secondly, to suggest that it is not possible to do something as sympathetic and compassionate as this, which has such cross-party support, would be very distressing to people who have been led to believe that their case is understood and that there is a willingness to deliver it, when, because of the incapacity of the political system, they might have to wait too long even to benefit. The amendment is well made and there are one or two others that fall into the same category. If the Minister can provide the assurance, he should really be talking not to the House but to the victims.
Baroness O’Loan (CB)
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Hain, on this issue. We need the issues of the past to be dealt with. This needs to be dealt with by means of a separate ring-fenced budget so that it does not come out of the Northern Ireland budget. Particularly on pensions, I know many of the people to whom the noble Lord referred. I have worked with them and met them, and spoken to and for them. There is an ongoing campaign that is wearing them out. I ask that there be support, as there seems to be right across the House.
I also ask for support for additional resources for trauma services, for the ongoing search for the disappeared, such as Captain Robert Nairac and the 17 year-old Columba McVeigh, and for an independent historical investigations unit that is not constrained to a five-year period.
The suffering of those to whom the noble Lord, Lord Hain, referred has been enormous. It has lasted for so long. The Government could make a difference here and I ask them to do so.
Lord Eames (CB)
My Lords, I add my support to that which the noble Lord, Lord Hain, has received already. In my own experience over the years, I have been in these people’s homes; I have been at their bedsides; I have been with their families; I have tried to advise their young people, who were bereft of parental support. Time and time again, the efforts of clergy of all denominations have somehow come to a shuddering stop over this simple question: who is a victim?
Right back in the early stages, when Denis Bradley and I were asked to produce a report on the legacy of the Troubles, we came head-on to this question of definition. In my reading of the words that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, just used in his speech, I have no hesitation in adding my support to his request. These are the real victims of legacy: through no fault of their own, they will carry to their deaths the scars—mental and physical—of the Troubles. I am so glad to support the amendment.
Baroness Altmann (Con)
My Lords, I briefly add my support for the amendment moved so passionately by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. From personal experience, I know what it is like to campaign for a pension that one desperately needs. It is soul-destroying. The relief when the pension finally arrives is also life-changing.
The Government already intervene in devolved issues, as the noble Lord, Lord Hain, said, while the functioning Assembly is not operational. The case for recognition and reparations for these severely injured victims seems absolutely clear. I implore my noble friend, who I know is a compassionate man, to urge the department to show the compassion for which so many across the House have expressed the need.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Hain and the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Bruce, in their Amendment 13A. I spent two and a half years as Victims Minister in Northern Ireland. As we heard from other noble Lords, there is great understanding in this House of the suffering that many have endured. Indeed, the Eames-Bradley report—written by two great men—really brought home to many what was required for the needs of victims, though it was unpalatable and difficult for some.
The victims whom my noble friend Lord Hain spoke about are ageing—they are getting older. Their conditions are getting worse and their circumstances more difficult. One of the things that struck me as both Victims Minister and Health Minister was how, in so many cases, the help that the health service was able to provide was inadequate to meet the needs of those who required support, particularly in cases of mental health. When you spoke to the group of people we are talking about—I do not know whether other noble Lords felt the same—and heard their stories and about the impact of what had happened on their lives, you would be very conscious that you could turn around and take the story with you, but they were living with what they told you and the consequences would never leave them.
We understand the limitations of the Bill and what can be done within it. We understand the problems caused by there being no Executive or Assembly, but this is an occasion when, I hope, the Government could take some action to right a wrong and address an injustice. They could take a step in the right direction to see what support can be given. I congratulate noble Lords on bringing this forward, and I hope that the Minister—who I know is giving considerable thought to this—can give a positive response this evening.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I am struck, as I gaze around the Chamber, by how many people are wearing poppies. And I am struck again by the poetry:
“Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn”.
But of course we are talking about people who will be wearied by the passage of years and who will be condemned to live through that period—victims of a great iniquity done to them. I have spoken of the situation a number of times now with the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I will preface my remarks by saying that it is our hope that we will secure an Executive who can take this matter forward. Were I to stop with that answer, it would be inadequate, so I will not stop there but carry on.
The important issue here is that we have commissioned from the Victims Commissioner a thorough report into all aspects of this serious issue. We have asked her to expand her remit to look at not just physical but mental anguish and I am able to say today that the Secretary of State will write to the Victims Commissioner, asking her to include a date from which payments shall be made. This is not a future point but rather some point where we can be very clear going forward.
As I said, it is our hope that an Executive will take this matter forward. However, if, despite our best efforts, that Executive have not been restored by the time updated advice on a pension issue has been provided by the Victims Commissioner, the Northern Ireland Office will consider how the matter can be progressed. That is not to put it into the long grass or put it away, but to recognise that it must be progressed.
Baroness O’Loan
Has the Victims Commissioner indicated a date by which she might report?
Lord Duncan of Springbank
The Victims Commissioner has not indicated such a date, but I am led to believe that we should be able to see progress in good time, if I can use that term. It is not an answer that the noble Baroness would want. I would like to give her a date but I cannot bind the Victims Commissioner to a date.
Lord Cormack
Of course my noble friend cannot bind her, but could she not be asked to do it within six months at the most? These people’s lives are coming to an end very frequently and we do need to have a date.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I am in a slightly invidious position because I cannot give a date—but I know that six months would be very far away and would be unacceptable to us. I cannot say that specifically, if my noble friend will forgive me, but we will make progress as quickly as we can because we recognise that this is not a matter that can be left to languish. The individuals are living through their own fate and we will not allow that to be the case. I hope that noble Lords will accept these words for what they mean and what they can deliver.
My word—I have been given a sheet of paper. We will guarantee within six months. So, yes, we will be able to do it within six months and I hope that that will therefore give some comfort to noble Lords that we take this matter with the utmost seriousness and we will move it forward.
Lord Hain
My Lords, I am grateful for the support from the noble Lords, Lord Cormack and Lord Bruce, from the noble Baronesses, Lady O’Loan and Lady Altmann, from the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, with his passion, and from my noble friend Lady Smith, because of course she worked with many victims, both when I was Secretary of State and before and did a fantastic job. She, perhaps more than anybody, knows about the issues at stake here, from a ministerial point of view at least. I am grateful to the Minister for the discussions we have had and for the efforts he has made both to understand and respond to the issue. He has showed more conviction to do something about this than I have detected from the Government so far. I do not want to put him in an invidious position, and I certainly do not want to injure his future career by praising him, but he has shown real compassion as well as some determination to resolve this.
I think that six months, with due respect, is a long way away, as the Minister said. The Victims Commissioner has had this instruction since May. That is a while ago and I hope that this can be weeks rather than months. Maybe some of his officials listening to this debate might ring the Victims Commissioner and suggest that she at least read the debate and make her own mind up.
This has to happen—and it has to happen within a specified time. I am not asking the Minister to do that specifically tonight, but I do not want to be in the position of facing some future legislation in six months’ time and then being told, “Well, maybe next year”. I am grateful to the Minister for saying that there will be a date from which it will be applied, even if the actual decision to do something about it comes in the future. I think that that will be a reassurance to the severely injured victims. I look forward to receiving the letter which may give us some clarity. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
“( ) The guidance shall direct senior officials of Northern Ireland Departments to take all reasonable action to prepare to deliver, within the existing legal framework, a redress scheme for victims of historic institutional child abuse, taking into account the recommendations of the Historical Institutional Abuse Inquiry and the reports of the Panel of Experts on Redress.”
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
My Lords, I think this again indicates the dilemma that we are having, although the framework is possibly slightly clearer and it may therefore be possible to implement it at least as well as the previous amendment, which we hope will be delivered. The reality is that the historical institutional abuse inquiry was the largest inquiry into child abuse ever held in the UK. I think it is fair to say that the backdrop was not just the need to investigate: in reality, movies have been made, novels have been written, many testimonies have been given to the systematic and appalling treatment that people have received, north and south of the border, over decades and in many institutions. It is quite shocking. When we read these things, it makes most people very angry that that kind of abuse could have been perpetrated—sometimes, and too often, in the name of religion. However, the point is that an inquiry happened, it reported and made clear recommendations. It was chaired by a retired judge, Sir Anthony Hart, and lasted for four years. It is more than two years since it reported. It included a public apology, a memorial and a financial redress scheme
There is political agreement—and yet, because we have no Executive and no Assembly, we have no ability to deliver that agreement. We are talking about victims who, as in the case of the previous amendment, have been waiting for up to 40 years for redress and have had to live with consequences of that abuse. We are seeing them, again, approaching the end of their lives without having received anything more, at the moment, than an apology and a memorial. There is a need to address this.
The recommendations of the Hart commission provide a clear template. It looks, on the face of it, as if this could fall within the terms of the Bill. In other words, there is enough detail in those recommendations to enable the civil servants to implement them. Again, without guidance, maybe the civil servants feel that they cannot or should not, or that they need the authority of Ministers from an Executive or the Assembly.
If the Minister agrees with the basic analysis I have presented, is it his interpretation that the Bill could provide the guidance that would enable the recommendations of the Hart commission to be implemented within the terms of the Bill as advice and recommendations that civil servants would actually have the capacity to implement? If that is not possible, the same argument will apply as to the previous amendment—that the UK Government need to do something about it. I beg to move.
Lord Maginnis of Drumglass (Ind UU)
My Lords, I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. It would be absolutely ridiculous if the amendment which has previously been accepted were to supersede this particular case of sexual abuse of young people, which predates to a large extent what has already been dealt with in Amendment 3.
Lord Empey
My Lords, my Amendment 6 is in this group. The argument is the same. This is not the first discussion we have had on the Hart report. It has been raised whenever we have dealt with budgetary matters, and we have had two budgets. To put it in context, there is one complication in that the funds are not exclusively a government responsibility because presumably the people who operated the institutions have insurance. We have seen examples, particularly in the United States and elsewhere, where insurers have had to contribute. I am totally in favour of that but it should not paralyse us and prevent us moving forward.
The other characteristic of this proposal is that there is all-party support in Northern Ireland for it. There is not a single, solitary MLA in Stormont who is opposed to it, so there is no reason to say that there is a political issue here. There is no political issue with regard to support. There is unanimity—a rare commodity in Northern Ireland. The victims came to the other place to lobby—I met them in the Public Gallery—and spoke to Members of Parliament. This is a very similar demographic to that referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Hain, including people who were traumatised more than 40 years ago. This is not just a Northern Ireland issue; it applies right across the board, as the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, indicated.
Where do the funds come from? As of yesterday there are unhypothecated Barnett consequentials of £320 million. Where Barnetts are concerned, the money that comes from London does not have to go to particular subjects, such as education or roads; it can go to whichever department the previous Executive directed it to. It would not be difficult to check again whether there is unanimity for this, which I believe there is. I understand the Minister’s dilemma—is this creeping direct rule?—but there is a different dimension here, just as in other amendments that we will come to shortly. There is compassion. There is time. There is the degree of suffering that people endured. Is it right that we add to that when there is no financial, political or any other rational reason for doing so?
I just do not believe that the ordinary person in the street back home, whatever their view of devolution or Stormont, would be that upset if these people who have suffered for so much of their lives receive redress and we deal with this on humanitarian grounds. That is the best approach. There is unanimity of support, there is a humanitarian issue and I believe the resources are available. On those three issues, I hope the Minister will see fit to give us a positive response.
Baroness O'Loan
The people affected by the historical institutional abuse inquiry were also affected by the Troubles. Many of them ended up in residential institutions because of the Troubles. Billy McConville, the son of Jean McConville—who was abducted and murdered by the IRA—died before the payments recommended by Hart were made. I support the proposal and hope that the Government will find some way of dealing with this in the interests of those victims.
Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)
My Lords, I, too, have some sympathy with the amendment moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bruce. As the noble Lord, Lord Empey, said, this issue is supported by all the political parties in Northern Ireland in trying to address this very serious problem.
It is quite some time since the Hart report was delivered to the Government. I know that David Sterling, head of the Civil Service, was working up a Bill to try to resolve the issue, but I am told that he is now saying clearly that it has to be dealt with by a Minister, which slightly worries me. None the less, if there is anything that all the parties can agree on, the Government should grab it, because that does not often happen.
I have raised this subject in the House before, because I believe that the institutions responsible for the abuse should pay up as well. It would be totally wrong if all the money came from the Government. I know that the issue has been raised in the other place as well, and I say to the Government that nothing should stop them trying to address it. Some survivors of the abuse are getting old: some are very elderly, and some have died. Relations have died, too, and those people have not seen the full output of what they deserve. I appeal to the Government and I hope that, with the support of all the political parties in Northern Ireland, and the support shown throughout this House and in the other House as well, when the issue has been raised, they will find a way of dealing with it. We should make sure that we do not create a major problem for devolution in Northern Ireland when it comes back.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
My Lords, it is not often that we find unanimity in such a fashion, so let us grab it with both hands. I fully recognise the importance that Members accord this issue. It stands alongside the earlier matter raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hain. I hope the House will welcome the fact that the Northern Ireland Civil Service has advised that it is currently preparing draft legislation based on the recommendations of the Hart inquiry, which it will publish very soon. On the basis of that there will be a full public consultation, to ensure that we can move this matter forward, and it will be our intention to do so within a sensible time. There is unanimity on this issue and I believe we can make progress on it. I hope that is enough to give the noble Lord who moved the amendment some comfort.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
I am grateful to the Minister for his characteristically sympathetic response, and obviously for the practicality that civil servants are bringing forward legislation. That does, of course, raise the question of how and when such legislation could be implemented, given the present lacuna. So I add the proviso that I hope the Government will ensure that the timetable is not open-ended. This does not have to wait for ever, or for the return of the Assembly.
A point has been raised about the responsibility of those who perpetrated the abuse. Yes, I agree—but I also caution that I would not want that to be used as an excuse to create an argument that would delay things. It seems to me that there is absolute agreement about what should be done and how it should be done. It is good that legislation is happening, but it is slightly concerning that this requires legislation rather than executive action. There seems to be enough in the Hart recommendations to pretty well constitute the basis of legislation, which could be implemented as an executive action. With the proviso that I hope the Government will not allow this simply to languish as one of the issues waiting for the Assembly to return, I am willing to withdraw the amendment.
“(4A) The Secretary of State must establish an advisory panel which senior officers of Northern Ireland departments may consult in cases where they are required to exercise a function of the department under subsection (1).(4B) If a senior officer consults the advisory panel under subsection (4A), then the senior officer must have regard to the advice of the advisory panel.”
Lord Bew (CB)
My Lords, before I speak to the amendment I should like to say that the noble Lord, Lord Hain, is right in his belief that he has my support on the earlier amendment and I am happy to give it. Amendment 5 is about a less emotive matter, but it still addresses a serious question. Noble Lords will have heard, particularly in the speech by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, but also in an allusion just now by the noble Lord, Lord Hay, about the morale at the top of the Northern Ireland Civil Service. It is in a very bad way. Part of the context has already been described by the noble Lord, Lord Empey: the incredible bullying by spads. Of course you hear about bullying by spads in Whitehall but believe me, as someone who knows both worlds, this is a qualitatively different level of bullying. The consequence has been that the Civil Service has lost some of its élan and, to be blunt, self-confidence.
Related to that is the fact that at the beginning of the Brexit crisis the Irish Government, under Enda Kenny, the then Taoiseach, had allowed practical discussions about the border and other questions to go on with Northern Ireland civil servants, but that was then stopped under a new Irish Taoiseach. In fact, the Northern Ireland Civil Service has not had the sort of practical impact on Brexit discussions—even with our own Government, in a weird kind of knock-on effect—that it might be expected to have. When you read that three or four weeks ago Michel Barnier was asking for figures on the trade flows on the island of Ireland—east-west and north-south—your jaw drops because you know that the senior officials at the Northern Ireland Office all know these things just like that but apparently we have been conducting a negotiation with the rather important issue of exactly what is going on in this trade relationship not even known. Perhaps it is not that surprising; there are things at stake in this negotiation other than the actual practicalities of the trade relationships from north to south and east to west, but still they seemed to have disappeared from the scene.
I think, by the way, that this issue has constitutional significance. The NICS has a strong sense of the way in which the Good Friday agreement was established, particularly the notion that if you are going to adhere to the agreement then north-south regulatory arrangements, however they develop, depend on the co-operation and support of the Northern Ireland Assembly. That point is critical: if you are going to defend the Good Friday agreement, you also have to be careful about what is projected in terms of regulatory arrangements north and south, and the Assembly has an effective veto.
We have lost a lot through a lack of morale. It means that when this legislation came down the pipe, officials could be heard rather nervously saying, “I don’t want that authority”, even though, to be absolutely blunt, the Queen’s Government must go on and these decisions are necessary to prevent extreme cases of waste, if nothing else. So it must happen and the Government are right to take the powers. However, in the context in which we are now living, it is right to offer the officials, who strongly suspect that they will be subject to judicial review and all manner of clamour locally about decisions that people do not like, some sort of advisory panel—which might include Assembly Members—as a kind of cushion against some of the pressures that will come their way. It is hard in the current public climate in Northern Ireland to ask a single Permanent Secretary of a given department to, as it were, take on the burden of these decisions on their own because all hell will break loose, even over decisions that we consider the simplest, and the most obvious and clear-cut. There will be calls for judicial review and major public controversies. So there is a case for having some kind of advisory panel so that officials would, in effect, be able to say, “I took the advice of the advisory panel”. That is the case for this amendment, given the current public climate. When the morale of the NICS was somewhat stronger I would not have made it, but let us be clear that everyone knows—the noble Lord, Lord Empey, explained why today—that its morale at the top levels could not now be lower. That is why this is the specific moment at which to advocate this point.
I have one final point. In a slight aside, the Minister talked about the legislation as having been designed to progress public appointments that have lapsed or are not happening. One of those categories is QCs, and I wonder whether the Government have anything to say to clarify their general position on quite rightly wanting to speed up public appointments.
This is essentially a probing amendment and I am strongly in favour of the Bill in general terms. Whatever happens today, though, the Government should be very mindful of the exposed state now of those who head up, as Permanent Secretaries, the individual Northern Irish ministries.
Lord Empey
My Lords, I have Amendment 13 in this group. I am not quite sure that it sits precisely with Amendment 5. To follow up on what the noble Lord, Lord Bew, said, I asked whether senior civil servants were members of the First Division Association, the trade union for people in senior positions in the Civil Service, because these civil servants are being asked to do things that no other civil servants are being asked to do. There is a risk here that is not fully appreciated. We are taking it for granted.
The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, made the point about the law and the department being different. Here, the power is vested in the Secretary of State and back home it is vested in the department—we understand that—and a Minister’s role, when one is in place, is to direct and control the department. What we found when we had a period between devolution before—even though there was direct rule—was that civil servants ended up having to implement policies that they knew those of us who had been devolution Ministers and were again did not approve of. They were put in an embarrassing position when devolution was restored because they suddenly found they were having to work for somebody whom they had previously actively opposed. We have to understand that you cannot take a public institution such as this and simply mould it to whatever circumstances you find on a day-to-day basis. These people have a career. They do not want to get into a firefight with politicians but that is where we are pushing them. We have to be very careful.
My amendment covers audit office reports and, like everything else, these come regularly. Each year the auditor decides an agenda of what issues might come up. These reports are extremely valuable because they look at what is happening to taxpayers’ money. Incidentally, there is another big question. What happens when Sir Patrick Coghlin reports on his inquiry? Where does that go? It certainly will not go into the ether. Who will deal with it? Does the department prepare and publish a response? Will important lessons be learned from these audit office reports? We have to be careful that they do not just disappear because valuable lessons are learned from them here as well as everywhere else. I simply say to the Minister that reports should not just be in the ether, without our knowing what happens to them. It is taxpayers’ money at the end of the day and Parliament has an overall responsibility for that, even though it is devolved. I should like to think that departments will publish a response, even if it is merely to some of the technical matters that may be resolved.
I support the noble Lord, Lord Bew. Practically every week over the last couple of months, senior civil servants have been appearing in that inquiry and getting a hard time—some of them have been there for days—and coming back and revealing what has been going on. I have to say that, even though I knew things were not great, like most other people, I have been shocked by the extent of the abuses that have been allowed to take place and the culture that permitted it to happen. Huge issues need to be discussed here. In this case, I should like to think that responses to audit office reports can be published so that we can learn and, I hope, not repeat the mistakes.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen
My Lords, it has been a very interesting short debate. I think that it has to be dealt with in the context that this is a temporary arrangement. The issue at the end of the day is that if we have anything like an elaborate panel set up, it will give permanence to this totally unsatisfactory system where a part of our country is run by civil servants who are unaccountable in any way to the electorate.
My experience is that as a Minister you would have in the department a system by which you would consult civil society on various decisions that you have to make anyway—at least there should be consultation. Perhaps there is some method by which that could be made a little bit stronger, so that there is a sounding board for the civil servant. The danger always is that the civil servant will be very reluctant to take a decision that might be controversial but which is necessary. That is worth examining, but in the context that this has to be seen as a highly temporary arrangement. It also highlights how terribly unsatisfactory the whole situation is that we do not have a proper elected Government or Assembly in Northern Ireland.
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bew, for his thoughtful Amendment 5, and for giving us advance notice of it. I also note the support given to the amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Empey.
I say at the outset that I appreciate the intent—seeking to give Northern Ireland civil servants some further cover. I listened very carefully to the analysis of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, of the status quo, especially on the question of morale: that was very much taken note of. I want to assure the noble Lord that we have considered options for providing support in this way to the Northern Ireland Civil Service, and will keep them under review.
The decision-making provisions in the Bill are needed urgently, and while the case could possibly be made that there would be some merit in having advice from an external body such as an advisory panel, the challenges and time commitment associated with setting one up mean that we have opted to proceed without one at this particular stage. I should say also to the noble Lord that my noble friend Lord Duncan and I have spoken in this Chamber before about the burden on civil servants, and I add my voice to the understanding that has been given today about the genuine burden that falls on the Northern Ireland Civil Service.
The amendment, however, causes problems in terms of how such a panel, if mooted, would be constituted: under what authority; how it would operate; and what would happen if it could not agree a position. I am sure that the House will understand those questions and the difficulties involved, again alongside the need for speed and urgency today. We will continue to consider carefully whether Northern Ireland civil servants need further support, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Murphy, said, it would have to be temporary. For today I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
I turn to the second amendment in this group—Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Empey—which seeks to direct departments to publish their responses to the Northern Ireland Audit Office. As the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, made clear in his opening speech, the Bill and guidance are not a move to direct rule. To include this amendment in the Bill would introduce a level of formality that we believe is not appropriate and runs too close to directing Northern Ireland departments. That goes against the spirit of the guidance, which is intended to assist departments in deciding whether exercising their functions is in the public interest but does not direct them to take specific actions.
We fully recognise the importance of transparency, which is why the guidance published alongside the Bill seeks to build on the arrangements agreed with the Northern Ireland Civil Service as part of the budget. In addition to Northern Ireland Audit Office reports on budgetary matters, this guidance sets out that all reports and the respective departmental responses will be presented to the Assembly and shared with the Secretary of State, who will promptly lay these in Parliament. This effectively makes them available to the public. The Secretary of State will also now be writing to share these with the Northern Ireland political parties to encourage their scrutiny of all Northern Ireland reports and departmental responses.
The noble Lord, Lord Bew, raised the question of QC appointments. The Bill deals with the bodies that are currently considered to be the most pressing cases. Making the necessary appointments to those bodies is essential to the good governance of vital public bodies in Northern Ireland. The Bill enables the Secretary of State to extend this to other offices by regulation, and we will continue to monitor the situation and assess whether further offices—including QCs—should be included in regulation, which would then be debated by affirmative procedure.
The noble Lord, Lord Empey, raised a point about the RHI inquiry. As the noble Lord says, the inquiry is ongoing, so there is a limit to what I can say on this, as I am sure he will appreciate. However, the House will recall that it agreed legislation earlier this year for external cost-capping regulations to ensure that scheme continuity can be kept. This allows the Northern Ireland department to consult on a way forward to develop options for a longer-term solution.
I hope that this short debate will provide sufficient comfort for the noble Lord, Lord Bew, to withdraw his amendment on the basis that it is already provided for in what we are proposing.
Lord Empey
“( ) The guidance must direct the Department of Health in Northern Ireland to take all reasonable action, within the existing legal framework, to prepare to—(a) reduce waiting times and waiting lists for the provision of all health services;(b) improve the timeliness and quality of cancer treatment services, including a new cancer strategy; and(c) implement the recommendations of the Strategy for Suicide Prevention in Northern Ireland (“Protect Life 2”).”
Lord Empey
My Lords, I have raised issues pertaining to health in Northern Ireland before. I think I quoted figures before that show that, out of a population of 1.8 million, we have 280,000 people waiting for their first consultant-led out-patient appointment. Of those, approximately 90,000 are waiting over 12 months. At the end of June this year, a further 83,746 patients were waiting for admission to hospital. Of these, 18,000 had been waiting longer than a year. For performance figures for A&E, sadly we are at the bottom of the table for the whole of the United Kingdom again—not meeting any targets, but in fact at a worse level than any other part of the United Kingdom. Whichever way you look at it, this crisis in health has been building up for some time. Its origins date from before the Executive ended, because the trend had already been established, but it has now accelerated. These figures refer to the summer, and we have not even begun to get into the issue of winter pressures.
I have drawn your Lordships’ attention before to the fact that I believe that the Government should take control of health back here to Westminster on humanitarian grounds, on a temporary basis. Bear in mind that it happened with welfare reform—the decisions were taken and then the powers were sent back to Stormont. That happened because there was a political disagreement. These figures may mean a lot to somebody or they may mean nothing to anybody, but I can assure Members that what we are seeing here is real harm done to a significant number of people. That is why we really need to take action.
The problem we have at the moment with the absence of a Minister is that nobody can take long-term financial decisions. We are taking decisions within a very short timescale, and anybody who knows anything about health knows that you cannot do that. It requires time and planning and it is very inefficient if it is all done at the very last minute. A Minister could enter the scene and take decisions on even mid-term financial planning. Immediately an Executive is formed it can be taken back to Stormont. Some people say that there is a risk of creeping direct rule. I am not in favour of direct rule; I believe in devolution, but we are dealing with a magnitude of something here. There are 5,600 vacancies. Last week, I visited a hospital. One of the bays in the ward had to be closed because there were not sufficient staff.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, these two amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Empey, seek to direct the Northern Ireland departments regarding health issues and public sector pay. As we have consistently said, the proposed legislation is not a move to direct rule, and decision-making must remain within the remit of Northern Ireland departments. To use this guidance to direct individual decisions would therefore go against this principle.
It is important that senior officers are able to apply the principles in the guidance in determining whether it is in the public interest to exercise functions. I understand the concern to ensure that effective decisions are made on the important issues of health, such as waiting lists, and public sector pay—as the noble Lord, Lord Empey, pointed out. However, as we have heard today, these are certainly not the only important—I stress that word—issues in Northern Ireland. Prioritising certain functions in the guidance could suggest that they should be followed at the expense of others. We are confident that the draft guidance as it stands allows Northern Ireland departments to exercise functions such as those raised in this amendment, although whether and how to exercise functions must remain a matter for Northern Ireland departments.
The Department of Health is already working intensively to respond to increasing demands on the Northern Ireland health service, and will continue to do all it can to uphold its duties in the public interest in this interim period. We of course recognise, however, that there are some decisions not enabled by this Bill. The Bill and guidance simply seek to enable senior officers in Northern Ireland departments to take a limited range of decisions using existing powers where it is in the public interest to do so now rather than wait for Ministers. That is in the context of providing the space and time for political talks to help restore devolved government, an issue that has been much discussed today in the Chamber.
Intervening in individual areas in this manner would be tantamount to direct rule—the noble Lord, Lord Empey, used the expression “potential creeping direct rule”—and would undermine our commitment to devolution and the Belfast agreement. The Prime Minister and the Conservative and Unionist manifesto are crystal clear that we will uphold our obligation to the people of Northern Ireland to ensure that their vital public services are protected. We have always said that we do not rule out further legislative intervention if it is necessary. I realise that my response will disappoint the noble Lord, Lord Empey—he will probably not be too surprised—but on the basis of these points I hope that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Empey
Before the Minister sits down, I want to say that he is not quite clear as to the Government’s exact position. He is saying that senior officers should be able to take certain decisions. Of course, this could be seen as direct rule. Look, folks, this is life—this is people’s lives here. We are not talking about a road junction or something casual. We are talking about people not being treated within any guideline that currently exists on these islands. In other words, these are to be sacrificed because of some political ideal of devolution versus creeping direct rule, or “Who are we going to annoy? We are going to annoy Sinn Féin. We are going to annoy this party or that party”.
Think of the people affected by this. This is not going to go away. It is getting worse. The statistics have been going like this not just recently, but for a long time. The suicide strategy is another one where there is total agreement. It is a big problem back home and it has not been addressed, yet everybody agrees that it should be addressed. What does it take?
I ask the Minister to clarify what he means. He thinks the guidance will allow officers to take decisions, yet on the other hand they are afraid that this would be seen as creeping direct rule. This is a qualitatively different subject matter, and it is on humanitarian grounds that I put this forward, not on a political platform.
Viscount Brookeborough (CB)
It may appear that, because the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is leading this on his own, he may not have support. I think he has support from everybody. I declare an interest in that I have had cancer of the throat. This sort of thing does not just affect the people. It affects their families and dozens of other people; it affects their friends. I feel that it affects their friends and families more because they are so worried that they cannot do anything to help, and yet the state, in the form of the National Health Service, is not helping them. Therefore, I cannot conceive that this is not in the public interest, yet the Minister is almost saying that if a senior civil servant thinks it is in the public interest he may come out in support of it.
The other point is that, on another amendment, on the PSNI, we have just spent five or six hours debating the fact that the primary aim of the Government is to restore the Assembly. Policing is absolutely vital to that, and we cannot see the police force denuded of pay or resources to achieve this end. I am afraid that all afternoon, whenever we have talked about any other part of it, the Government have been saying, “Our primary aim is to restore the Assembly”. We will not restore it without enabling our security forces, the police, to manage the day-to-day situation. The Minister should give a slightly more reassuring answer than, “We’ll post it back and see what they think about it”.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I hope the noble Viscount does not think I said that. First, I am left in no doubt about the passion of the arguments presented by the noble Lord, Lord Empey, and by the noble Viscount in supporting him. However, I think the Committee will appreciate that there is an extremely difficult line to take. We have said that we do not wish to go down the line, whether it is creeping or not, of direct rule. On the other hand—perhaps this is what I really want to say—the reassurance has to be given from this Dispatch Box that upholding our obligation to the people of Northern Ireland is a high priority, as is ensuring that vital public services are protected. This includes the issues raised on health. We are not afraid to step in, if or when we think it is right, and we have said that we will not rule out further legislative intervention. If that is not clear enough, I have to say that this is very much a subjective decision and constantly under review. I cannot say anything more. Finally, I clarify that the Bill enables the Department of Health to take these decisions, and if the UK Government intervened to step in, it could easily be construed as direct rule. I cannot go any further to clarify that point.
Baroness O’Loan
I do not want to hold the Committee up, but I am having some difficulty. The aim of the legislation is to enable the continuity of the delivery of services, yet vital services such as our health service do not receive that attention. I do not understand what is covered by the Bill if things such as this are not.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I hope I have made the point that health is very much a priority. I cannot say anything more. I have also attempted to define the line that we have to take, which is an extremely difficult one in the circumstances that we have been presented with. With that, I hope the noble Lord will agree to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Elton (Con)
My attention is not quite as close as it was earlier today and I did not hear my noble friend’s reply on the question of paying the police. Am I confused? I understood that Amendment 8 would enable the payment of the sums due and already agreed. I did not hear his reply to that; he may have given it, but I did not hear it.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I am not sure I gave it, but in the interests of time, I will look over what I said and write to my noble friend to give a succinct answer.
Lord Hay of Ballyore
My Lords, we have all sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is trying to achieve; when it comes to health, we would all like to see waiting lists reduced in Northern Ireland, and there is cancer care and health as well—there are so many issues within health. This is putting the Minister in an awkward position. I have sympathy with what has been said in the Committee. However, I could also make a strong case for education. If you speak to many principals of schools in Northern Ireland, they will tell you that they are suffering because of the lack of budget and cannot deliver the service they want to deliver. They are even asking parents to pay for some things in their schools. Do we appoint an Education Minister temporarily? Then you will have other departments saying, “I think we need a Minister temporarily”, and you end up with direct rule. Is that what we want?
Lord Alderdice (LD)
My Lords, I have listened carefully to what colleagues from Northern Ireland said. I am no particularly strong supporter of the Government but it seems that, in a way, this debate demonstrates a kind of learned helplessness, not just of politicians in Northern Ireland but of the Civil Service. If there is a problem, it is someone else’s responsibility—such as the Government’s—to sort it out. The Bill is clearly handing power back to civil servants in Northern Ireland and saying, “You’re covered for making any kind of reasonable decision; that’s not a legal problem now. And by the way, if the politicians in Northern Ireland would get their act together and go back, that would rather help things as well”.
What I am hearing is people trying to pass it back and say, “Come and sort the whole thing out but, by the way, we know that that will disrupt all kinds of agreements we have reached—the Good Friday agreement and so on”. I say to colleagues, in fairness, what the Government are trying to do is to give people the legal cover to do what is necessary. That includes senior civil servants in Northern Ireland, who have not covered themselves in glory over the RHI scheme or anything else. This is a chance for them to take responsibility and actually do the governing work that they need to do, and that we all need them to do. To that extent, I hope we can move on with some acceptance of what the Government are trying to do, albeit that it is not as satisfactory as we would all like it to be.
Lord Empey
My Lords, I know the noble Lord, Lord Hay, mentioned education—we could all mention that—but there is a qualitative difference between something affecting life and something affecting bad administration. I need to read Hansard—I am not particularly clear on what the Minister means by his decisions—but I will read it. I assure him that if things continue to deteriorate in that area as they have been, I will certainly be holding his feet to the fire. There will be other opportunities; I am not going to let this drop. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) The guidance shall provide for senior officials of Northern Ireland Departments to report to the Secretary of State at the end of every six month period, beginning with the day on which this section comes into force, on which recommendations of the Report of the Inquiry into Hyponatremia-related Deaths—(a) have been implemented,(b) are being considered and the process by which they are being considered, or(c) have been rejected and why they have been rejected.”
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I rise to move Amendment 9 on the hyponatremia inquiry, which may not be something that is well known to many noble Lords, but I have to tell the House that I have special interest in this issue. As a direct rule Minister in Northern Ireland and Minster for Health, I announced the setting up of this independent public inquiry on 18 November 2004. It was to be chaired by a highly regarded QC, Mr John O’Hara, now Mr Justice O’Hara.
For background information, hyponatremia is a condition where the concentration of sodium in the blood falls below safe levels. It can occur for different reasons: it may be that somebody has been vomiting or has diarrhoea and needs to be rehydrated. In hospital, where patients’ fluids are monitored, it is a preventable condition.
The inquiry was started because five children were identified who had died in hospital. They were Adam Strain, aged four; Claire Roberts, aged nine; Raychel Ferguson, also aged nine; Lucy Crawford, aged just 17 months; and 15 year-old Conor Mitchell. The deaths of Adam and Claire, the events following Lucy’s death, Raychel’s case and the issues presented by Conor’s treatment were all investigated by this inquiry.
Surely, there can be no greater or more painful loss for a family than that of a child. When this happens in hospital and that child was receiving treatment, a fundamental role for any inquiry has to be to understand precisely what happened both before and after, and to give recommendations for future actions to prevent something like that ever happening again. The inquiry, announced in 2004, was originally delayed because of police investigations. For other reasons, the report of inquiry was not published until January this year, nearly 14 years after I initiated it. That report has 96 recommendations. I have just re-read large parts of the report before the debate today, and in places it makes grim and very sad reading.
I want to refer to two key aspects that Mr Justice O’Hara identified, and they will form the background to my explanation for bringing this amendment before us tonight. The first is the number of errors made in treating the children, which, rightly, have been very carefully and painstakingly investigated and recorded. The second is the unacceptable difficulties in getting witnesses to be open and frank. In places, Mr Justice O’Hara refers to what he calls “unsatisfactory evidence”, with an attitude of deceit and defensiveness. He describes this as “frustrating and depressing”. That led to his first recommendation being a “statutory duty of candour”—in other words, a legal duty to tell the truth—and there are 95 other recommendations.
My amendment is about the implementation of those recommendations and to ask what has happened since that report was produced in the absence of a Northern Ireland Assembly, an Executive or Ministers to consider them and take action. Paragraph 1.70 of Mr Justice O’Hara’s report said:
“It is for the Department of Health to take them forward. Many will doubtless require significant detailed consideration to enable implementation. I expect the Department to indicate not only which of my recommendations it accepts but also to make clear how and when implementation is to be achieved. Further and subsequent reports should then be made detailing progress towards implementation with a final published confirmation of same”.
So Mr Justice O’Hara and his team took on this inquiry and made their report with every expectation that it would be properly considered and acted on, and the purpose of my amendment is to ensure progress.
In the intervening years since 2004, I would have expected that, as problems were identified, some of those recommendations would already have been evident and acted on, with new systems and practices being put in place, but we just do not know. Also, some recommendations—particularly the statutory duty of candour—require political decisions. Others might need political direction in terms of funding and others will be purely clinical.
Given the difficulties faced in the 14 years before the inquiry was able to complete and publish its investigations, what is needed now is a totally transparent and open process. However, the difficulty is that, because there is no Assembly and no Ministers or Executive, we do not know what progress has been made and there is no political direction. It seems wrong that a lack of political responsibility in Northern Ireland, with no Ministers and no Assembly, should prevent action, and prevent those concerned—particularly the families of the children I have mentioned—knowing what action is being taken. Even the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Sir Declan Morgan, has described the situation as “shocking” and “appalling”. Ideally, local Ministers—I think there is also a role for a Stormont health committee here—should deal with this as a matter of urgency.
Therefore, my amendment provides for the Secretary of State to bring some humanity to this issue and to seek six-monthly reports with updates on progress—the amendment details the kinds of updates that we are seeking—so that the people of Northern Ireland can be confident that there is some political oversight and openness about what happens now. Whatever the political situation in Northern Ireland, this is too important a report to allow it just to fade away.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, for his amendment, and I know that he supports my amendment as well. I am also grateful to the Minister for the discussions that he and I have had on this issue. I know that he recognises the importance of and urgency behind it. I have had a letter from him this evening which indicates to me that, in so far as the limitations of this legislation allow, he is looking to see what can be done, and I shall be grateful if he can put that on the record tonight.
This matter is key. The families of these children are desperate to know what is happening and how progress will be made. In asking the Minister to respond and outline the commitments that he has been able to make to me in the letter so that they are on the record, perhaps I may press him a little further. In his letter to me, he says that he will seek that information at regular six-monthly intervals from the Department of Health. What is his expectation of the department’s responding? We need some expectation that it is going to respond and is prepared to do so. I note also that the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health, Richard Pengelly, is prepared to meet with the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, and myself to discuss the issue. I hope the Minister can endorse the comments in his letter and explain what this House would expect. It is difficult—we understand that the Government do not want to have direct rule creep towards it, as it were—but unless there is some political responsibility, who else do the families have to turn to in order to see that justice is done and this report’s recommendations are seriously considered and implemented? I beg to move.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, who brings her first-hand experience to this amendment, which I have also tabled, and has given us in detail the history of this very sad set of circumstances involving children who appear to have died in circumstances of negligence within the health service. The fact that it took so many years is in itself a problem, but I do not need to reiterate what has been said.
I noted that on Friday the Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, Sir Declan Morgan, said that it was “shocking” and “appalling” that the inquiry recommendations could be fully implemented because of the lack of an Executive in Northern Ireland. In particular, legislation is needed to introduce a legally enforceable duty of candour—a key recommendation of the inquiry. In light of our debates, I wonder how many times politicians in this House or in Northern Ireland are going to be saying to the public in Northern Ireland, their constituents and voters,“We can’t do anything because we don’t have an Executive”, and at what point the people themselves will say, “When on earth are you going to do something for us?”. They are living in a democratic and political vacuum, with no time limit. I take the point about direct rule, but it is heartless to say to people that we had an inquiry, we got recommendations, but because of political incompetence—the mildest way you could describe it—there is nothing we can do. I hope that the Minister can give some reassurance that this vacuum can be at least partially filled.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, when I knew I was going to give some relief to my noble friend Lord Duncan in responding, I wanted to look up what hyponatremia actually means, and what happens to your body when it is low on sodium. I wanted to add a little to what the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, said. Low blood sodium hyponatremia occurs when you have an abnormally low amount of sodium in your blood, or when you have too much water in your blood. Signs and symptoms of hyponatremia can include altered personality, lethargy and confusion. Severe hyponatremia can cause seizures, coma and even death—so I am left in no doubt about the seriousness of this particular matter.
Amendment 9 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, and Amendment 12 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, provide that the guidance should require Northern Ireland departments to update the Secretary of State to implement the recommendation of an important inquiry into hyponatremia that reported earlier this year. As has been said, the proposed legislation is not a move to direct rule. Northern Ireland departments are not subject to the direction and control of the Secretary of State. As a consequence, to have this requirement on the Northern Ireland Department of Health to report to the Government in such a way on the face of the Bill is not consistent with the aim and intention of the guidance, which is to provide guidance as to the exercise of functions in the public interest, not to direct specific action. To use this guidance to direct individual decisions or to seek to introduce formal reporting mechanisms would therefore go against this principle.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I am grateful to the noble Viscount. I was rather surprised that he answered; I had expected the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, to respond as the letter is from him. Could I have one clarification? In the letter to me from the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, he said that he would be writing personally. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, said that the Government will write. This has to be done at ministerial, not official, level. Will he confirm that to me?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I can give a complete reassurance to the noble Baroness on that basis. It might be a good idea if I can commit that my noble friend Lord Duncan will write to her. I will also put my name on that letter.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
No, the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, has already written to me and I am happy with the letter he sent. I want to confirm that the letter to the Department of Health in which the noble Lord, Lord Duncan, will seek at six-monthly intervals to get an update, which the Minister has said the Department of Health will respond to, will be a letter from a Minister, not an official.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I was having a bit of a breather, but I am very happy to confirm that. It is important that we do this—absolutely essential.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
I am grateful to the noble Lord. I understand and appreciate the time that he has invested in this. He has been very generous with his time and his views. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Adonis
“( ) The guidance may direct departments after 1 May 2019 not to enforce sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861.”
Lord Adonis
My Lords, in moving Amendment 10 I shall speak also to Amendment 11. The intent of these amendments, although they had to be drafted in a more complex way, is very simple: if the Northern Ireland Assembly has not legislated for equal marriage and abortion rights in Northern Ireland by next May, equal marriage and abortion should, by the authority of this Parliament, be made legal in Northern Ireland next May.
I do not intend at this late hour to press this matter to a vote, but my first comment is that I believe, based on the balance of parliamentary opinion in this House and the other House, that if the Northern Ireland Assembly does not move to address these basic issues of civil rights over the next year or so, Parliament will be left with little choice but to act in this manner. Particularly on the basis of the vote held in the House of Commons last week, where there was a majority of 100 in favour of Stella Creasy’s amendment, the intent of which was clearly that abortion and equal marriage should be legalised, although it is not possible to do it through this Bill, I believe that it is the very clear view of the House of Commons that it would move pretty swiftly in that direction if the Northern Ireland Assembly does not.
Clearly, this needs to be reconciled, if possible, with devolution. The right way to do that is to give the opportunity for a new Executive to be formed in Northern Ireland and for the Northern Ireland Assembly to consider this issue, in the expectation that Northern Ireland will not remain the only part of the British Isles where equal marriage and abortion rights are not recognised. It is my belief, however—and I can only express my view—that if the Northern Ireland Assembly is not prepared to act in that regard, the Parliament of the United Kingdom will be obliged to do so in due course. Sending that message out from this House is quite an important signal to politicians in Northern Ireland that there is really not an option for Northern Ireland to continue for any long period of time to deny what many of us would regard as fundamental human rights.
Lord Trimble (Con)
I have a simple point. I am sorry to repeat myself from earlier on today, but abortion is legal in Northern Ireland. There is only one small point of difference in the law between Northern Ireland and England and Wales. Therefore, to talk about denial or otherwise is wrong: it is not a matter of law. The problems lie elsewhere.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, your Lordships will be very open to different ways of resolving this issue, but it is a fact at the moment that some 28 women a week travel from Northern Ireland to Great Britain for the purpose of having an abortion, because it is not possible to access these services in Northern Ireland. So whether it is theoretically legal or not, women in Northern Ireland are not able to access these services at the moment, so to all intents and purposes abortion is not available to them.
Lord Adonis
It is not a different matter in terms of the impact on the women affected. This is surely the fundamental issue.
Lord Adonis
I am entirely open to the solutions being found in Northern Ireland, but if those solutions are not found, the only course open to this Parliament is to change the law. The reason that I speak in such direct terms is that it is very important to be able to offer assurances to the people of Northern Ireland themselves that this Parliament is not prepared to allow this abuse of civil rights to continue for any substantial further period. That appears to be in line with majority opinion in Northern Ireland itself. An Amnesty International poll taken earlier this year showed that 65% of people in Northern Ireland think that abortion should be decriminalised and 66% think that Westminster should act in the absence of the Assembly.
Baroness O’Loan
Is the noble Lord aware that Amnesty is promoting abortion in Northern Ireland, hence the results?
Lord Adonis
My Lords, that in no way invalidates the findings. Those figures are from a poll; they do not represent Amnesty’s own view. A Sky News poll earlier this year found that 76% of people in Northern Ireland support an equal marriage law, and also wish this Parliament to carry such a law if it is not carried in Northern Ireland. I state all this because this is the situation as I see it. My own view is that we are not standing by the people of Northern Ireland in guaranteeing these basic rights at the moment. If I was the responsible Minister, I would think very seriously about seeking to change the law now, but, because of the great respect that I have for the devolution settlement and the Good Friday agreement, it is right that we should allow one last opportunity for the devolved institutions of Northern Ireland to resolve these issues of fundamental rights. If they are unable to resolve them, I do not believe that there is any realistic alternative to this Parliament doing so at some early date.
Lord Alton of Liverpool (CB)
I do not know whether the noble Lord was present earlier to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, challenge the poll to which he referred. I draw his attention to the ComRes poll that was carried out only last week in Northern Ireland. It found that 64% of the general population and 66% of women in Northern Ireland agreed that changing the law on this issue should be a decision for the people of Northern Ireland and their elected representatives. It also found that 70% of 18 to 30 year-olds agreed that Westminster should not dictate that change to them.
Baroness Barker (LD)
Will the noble Lord, Lord Alton, say who commissioned the poll from ComRes and make available the questions so that the House can see them?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
My Lords, for clarity, we should allow the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to finish his speech. There have been a number of interventions and I am sure other Peers will have a chance to intervene afterwards.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, my response to the noble Lord, Lord Alton, is that of course the devolved institutions are not even sitting in Northern Ireland at the moment, so we face two issues in this respect. The first is that the Northern Ireland Assembly should be given an opportunity to address this matter. Clearly, it does not have that opportunity at the moment because it is not sitting. The Bill seeks to ensure that the Northern Ireland Assembly does sit and is sustaining an Executive by the end of next March. The second point concerns the situation if the Assembly is not, even when it is sitting, able to address this issue, I do not believe it is consistent with the poll that the noble Lord has just cited that the people of Northern Ireland would regard it as satisfactory for the Assembly in Northern Ireland not to address this issue of fundamental rights. One way or another, in a short time, this issue must be resolved. It will not be satisfactory either for the Assembly in Northern Ireland to fail to address this issue or for this Parliament to allow fundamental breaches of civil rights to take place in a substantial part of the United Kingdom. I beg to move.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern (Con)
My Lords, my Amendment 16 has the honour to be joined to the two amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, Amendments 10 and 11. It seems to me that Amendment 10 breaches a fundamental aspect of the constitution, namely that it is not right for anyone not connected with the prosecution to intervene to alter or to direct a prosecution decision. That is what Amendment 10 does. Amendment 11 again breaches the constitutional rule that our judiciary is not to be directed by departmental guidance. The Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has no authority whatever to direct the prosecuting authorities in Northern Ireland not to prosecute existing statutory provisions there, and certainly no authority to order the judiciary in Northern Ireland not to obey a part of the rule that is there already.
Amendment 16, which was passed in the House of Commons, is intended to deal with both matters as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has explained them. It seeks to get the Secretary of State to issue guidance, which will have effect as they wish, but the amendment is so drawn that it does not specify that the guidance has to be of a particular kind. It is obvious from the way it was introduced in the Commons that that is what they would like to see, but the amendment does not require the Secretary of State to do anything that is unconstitutional or wrong. That is why, as far as I am concerned, I shall not press the amendment. It is a matter that was decided on a free vote, on the issue of abortion—which is always subject to a free vote in both Houses of Parliament—and therefore I shall not press it to a Division. However, I thought it might be necessary to have further discussion on it. Having regard to the amount of discussion that took place at Second Reading, it may not be necessary to do more than introduce it and see whether anybody wants to speak.
As for the first two amendments, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, these are quite unconstitutional. Indeed, the first, on interference in a prosecution, was a constitutional disaster in, I think, the 1920s, and as a result the constitution of the United Kingdom has not had the law officers be part of the Cabinet ever since. Decisions about prosecution are not Cabinet decisions; they are the responsibility of the law officers. In Northern Ireland, in the present situation, the Director of Public Prosecutions is the authority. Nobody has authority under our constitution to tell him what to do in relation to an existing law. The amendment is framed on the basis that this is still an existing law not to be enforced by the department. That is a completely unlawful order. The Secretary of State would be quite wrong to give guidance on that aspect in Amendment 10, and in relation to the judiciary in Amendment 11.
Amendment 16, which I have tabled, is the way that the House of Commons decided to deal with this same matter, which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, will improve on with his amendments. The Commons agreed the amendment by a majority of about 100. As far as I am concerned, it can stand, because it does not direct the Secretary of State to do anything unlawful. It obviously hopes that the Secretary of State may manage to do something that the Commons had not quite thought of how to do itself. Anyway, that is the way it is. There is no attempt in Clause 4, as it is now as part of the Bill, to direct the Secretary of State to do anything that is necessarily unlawful.
Baroness O’Loan
My Lords, I put my name to Amendment 16. I should like to speak to it and, briefly, to Amendments 10 and 11.
I have no doubt that the ultimate purpose of Clause 4 and Amendments 10 and 11 is to change Northern Ireland and United Kingdom law by decriminalising abortion. This would mean that abortion would cease to be illegal in all circumstances. That means that any baby, at any stage of gestation, right up to birth, could be aborted. No human right exists to do that. I think noble Lords would wish to accept that that, at least, is true. There is no human right to abort babies as described. To decriminalise abortion would be, to my mind, the act of an uncivilised society.
We do not have any declaration of incompatibility. If we had such a declaration, it would not change primary legislation, nor would it create an imperative for changing primary legislation. The law is provided for in Section 4 of the Human Rights Act, which says:
“A declaration … does not affect the validity, continuing operation or enforcement of”,
any provision, and,
“is not binding on the parties”,
to the action. The effect of a declaration of incompatibility, which we do not have, would be not to change the law, but to ask the Northern Ireland Assembly to think about changing the law. Having considered a declaration of incompatibility, were one to exist, the Government would have the option to do nothing. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in her Supreme Court judgment, said that Strasbourg would have regarded doing nothing,
“as within the UK’s margin of appreciation. It is at this point that the democratic will, as expressed through the elected representatives of the people, rules the day”.
The Secretary of State is the representative of the UK Executive. She is not the Northern Ireland legislature for any purpose of considering a change in the law. It is not for the Secretary of State to assume the role of the Northern Ireland Assembly to change primary legislation—nor has she indicated any wish to do so—or to issue new guidance pursuant to primary legislation.
Since health and justice are devolved matters, since this Bill does not change the law on abortion in Northern Ireland, and since the courts have no power to change the law in this respect in Northern Ireland and have not done so, the law stands. Since the matters referred to in Clause 4 and Amendments 10 and 11 are matters of law in Northern Ireland, and since only the legislature in Northern Ireland may make law in respect of those matters, it must surely be illogical to ask the Secretary of State to issue guidance, which would be incompatible with that law.
I have nothing more to say on the matter, other than that we need to think very carefully, and that Amendments 10 and 11, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, says, direct the Secretary of State to do something that would be unlawful.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, it may have come to your Lordships’ attention that anybody from this side of the water telling Northern Ireland politicians what to do is likely to bring about exactly the opposite result to the one they want. What is much more likely to affect Northern Ireland politicians is when their own people start to say things to them. On issues such as abortion and divorce, it is very clear that on the island of Ireland the views of the population have changed quite dramatically in a relatively short period. That is why I do not depend on opinion polls, which are notoriously unreliable in all sorts of ways, as has already been pointed out, depending on what questions you ask, in what kind of way, of what group of people at what particular stage. That is why at Second Reading I asked the Minister whether he might give consideration, at an appropriate time, to whether it would be in order under the terms of the Bill, as it has come to us from the other place, for the Secretary of State to consider recommending referendums on these two issues to be carried out with the people of Northern Ireland.
If the people of Northern Ireland said to their elected representatives, “Actually, we have a different view from the one you think we have and things have changed a lot for us in the last little while”, that would be a much more appropriate and effective way of making change, although if the people of Northern Ireland take a different view from that which might be expected, that is an important issue that must also be respected. It is not reasonable or acceptable to say that something is a devolved matter but if you do not make the decision that the people in London like we will stop it being a devolved matter. That is not a very human rights-based approach to things. But I believe that dramatic changes are taking place in the views of the people of Northern Ireland on many issues and the only way for us to become clear about that is to put it to the people in a clear fashion. I wonder whether the Minister might be able to help us on this, either tonight or in the relatively near future.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Alderdice has made a fairly constructive suggestion, which has already been replicated in the Republic, with quite dramatic results. But my question relates to the amendment in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I accept that the law is where it is and that if it is devolved, it is for the Northern Ireland Assembly, which does not exist, to change the law. However, the Supreme Court has already indicated that it questions whether or not the law in Northern Ireland is compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, and has indicated that if an individual case was brought, it is likely to rule that it is not. In those circumstances, if a ruling was made that said that the law in Northern Ireland is not consistent with the convention, but there is no Assembly and no devolution, what is the mechanism by which the law can be changed to bring it into line with the European convention?
The issue on gay marriage could also move in that direction. It has not yet but given the acceptance of gay marriage more and more widely across the world, it may well become an issue where human rights law says that the right to gay marriage is a human right. If that became the case, somebody would need to change the law to bring it into line with the convention. In the absence of an Assembly—which would have to do it, whether it liked it or not, but is incapacitated because it does not exist—who would do it?
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, the answer is that the Human Rights Act makes it absolutely plain that the declaration of incompatibility does not of itself change the law. If the law is to be changed, that has to be done by the appropriate legislature. In this case, because of the devolution, that would be the Assembly in Northern Ireland if it was functioning. Because of the devolution, that is the way it is: it is the Legislative Assembly that has the power to do this. There is no question of the Secretary of State being able to do it by guidance. That is out of the question. The Human Rights Act made that very plain.
There was quite an important discussion on this during the passage of the Human Rights Bill. Some people thought that the courts should be able to overrule existing statutes that were contrary to the human rights convention. But the politicians of that day, including Jack Straw, were very keen on the view that in our constitution Parliament should be supreme and the courts should not be able to overturn Acts of Parliament. That is a matter for Parliament itself. Of course, as I said at Second Reading, the great example of that in our arrangements recently has been the issue of prisoners’ voting rights because it was declared incompatible and yet Parliament decided not to change the law for some considerable number of years.
Lord Shinkwin (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 16, in the names of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. I thank them for tabling the amendment because I have a direct personal interest in it, having been born with a severe disability. My objection to the current Clause 4, which I appreciate was not part of the original Bill, is twofold.
First, I object on the grounds of inequality. As noble Lords will know, I do not take a position on abortion itself, but I most definitely do take a position on disability equality. Though supposedly about advancing human rights, Clause 4 is actually about a hierarchy of human rights. It is, in effect, about denying the right to exist of, and the equality of, human beings diagnosed with a disability before birth, and ensuring that the power—dressed up as rights—of stronger human beings reigns supreme.
A world in which one group’s equality is more important than another’s is not equality; it is inequality. Clause 4, perversely, would achieve the opposite of its presumed purpose: it would entrench inequality. The argument which was advanced forcefully in the other place—that this is somehow about equality—is therefore bogus. The fact is that if Clause 4 becomes law, more human beings with my condition and other disabilities will be aborted. As it stands tonight, Northern Ireland is the safest place in our United Kingdom to be diagnosed with a disability before birth. That will change if Clause 4 is allowed to stand part of the Bill, because the presumed protection against the most lethal form of disability discrimination—death for disability—will be gone, in time.
A quick glance at the Department of Health’s own statistics tells us everything we need to know about what would happen. I wonder, would any noble Lord care to hazard a guess at the trends in disability-related terminations? Only last week noble Lords may have read about the amazing breakthrough in intra-uterine surgery on human beings diagnosed with spina bifida before birth. Indeed, human beings diagnosed with my condition—brittle bones, which put me in hospital for most of my childhood—can now be treated from the moment of birth with medicines such as bisphosphonates, to ameliorate even some of the most severe forms of the condition. Some people with my condition lead perfectly normal lives, to the extent that they can play sport.
Lord Morrow (DUP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin, on his excellent speech. I think he has captured it all here this evening, and I put on the record my appreciation of what he said.
I shall speak to Amendments 16, 10 and 11. I begin by responding to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I shall first touch briefly on the effect of each before reflecting on their immediate implication and then on their broader constitutional consequence. If the departments were advised not to enforce Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act, it would allow abortion for absolutely any reason up until 28 weeks’ gestation. It would propel Northern Ireland from a place where it has the highest abortion legislation in the British Isles to having the loosest. In supporting this measure, parliamentarians from England, Scotland and Wales would be thrusting on Northern Ireland a far more liberal abortion law than they think appropriate for themselves. There is simply no justification whatever for this approach.
Setting aside the fact that no declaration of incompatibility was made by the Supreme Court in June—and that even if it had been, it would not have changed the law—the only criticism in the obiter comments was in relation to abortion in two very narrow contexts: first, when a baby is so severely disabled that there is a likelihood that it will die in the womb, will not survive birth or will die soon after; and, secondly, when a baby has the misfortune that the father was a rapist. This would not justify anything remotely resembling not enforcing Sections 58 and 59. Indeed, adopting such a course would be diametrically opposed to the statement by the court that Northern Ireland’s abortion law—Sections 58 and 59—is human rights compliant in prohibiting abortion on the basis of severe malformation.
The amendment is also deeply problematic because of the way in which it would expose people to the risk of prosecution. In the first instance, where these amendments would direct departments not to enforce the law, the law would remain in place. The Secretary of State would effectively be directing departments to make people aware that the law would not be enforced by them—which is likely to result in some people feeling more at liberty to break the law. This, however, would not stop private prosecutions. It is not right that we ask the Secretary of State to put officials in a position where they send out messages that are likely to result in some people breaking the law, thinking they will not end up in court when they will. This would be monstrous.
Amendment 11 is also deeply problematic. If the hope is that officials enforce Article 15 of the Matrimonial Causes (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, the amendment is misconceived. That piece of legislation relates to the conduct of judges, not departmental officials. If the hope is that officials will enforce Article 15 of the order by directing judges, that also will not work because it would contradict the principle that the judiciary is independent and not instructed by the Executive.
There is an even more profound difficulty with both amendments and their attempt to encourage the Executive to dispense with enforcement of the law. In examining them both, one cannot help but think of that very formative period in our history that, arguably, has done more than anything else to give us the constitutional system of government that we enjoy today. The Glorious Revolution was, in part, a response to the tendency of James II to dispense with the enforcement of laws—laws that remain on the statute book. His actions created a constitutional crisis that provoked the Glorious Revolution.
I know that the parallels are not exact. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is not a king: nor does he claim to be. He is raising this as a parliamentarian and suggesting that Parliament takes this step. However, I feel deeply uncomfortable about the idea of Parliament sanctioning one law to undermine another one that remains on the statute book. There is a real sense in which effectively he is asking Parliament for permission to overthrow the sovereignty of Parliament. This request is wrong-headed, and acceding to it would be destructive of our laws.
I support Amendment 16, in the name of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan. It seems to me that Clause 4 is one of the most problematic provisions in the Bill. Although those who secured the inclusion of Clause 4 believe that Northern Ireland’s abortion law has been declared incompatible with human rights, no such declaration has been made. Even if a declaration of incompatibility had been made, it seems that the champions of Clause 4 have completely misunderstood what it means. When a declaration of incompatibility is made, the law is not changed and does not have to change. This point is made absolutely clear by Section 4(6) of the Human Rights Act 1998. The fact that, constitutionally, a declaration of incompatibility brings with it no imperative for legal change is set out very clearly by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, in paragraph 39 of her judgment in the recent Northern Ireland Supreme Court case back in June.
I now turn to examine some of the specific problems with the understanding of how the declaration of incompatibility applies in the context cited by Clause 4. The first specific example of incompatibility is set out in paragraph (a). This statement is problematic for two reasons. First, as I have already noted, no declaration of incompatibility was made; and secondly, again as already noted, the majority of the noble and learned Baroness’s commentary in the Supreme Court judgment also questioned the balance struck by the law in Northern Ireland in two very narrow contexts—foetal abnormality and rape. The commentary did not provide any justification for suggesting a general problem with Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act. Repealing Sections 58 and 59 would result not simply in adjusting the balance of rights in relation to those two specific contexts, but instead would permit abortion on demand for any reason up to 28 weeks’ gestation. The idea that the majority of her commentary suggests a problem with Sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act per se is extraordinary. Subsection (1)(b) is equally confusing.
It is plain wrong to suggest that the Supreme Court has identified any human rights problem with Article 6(6)(e) of the Marriage (Northern Ireland) Order 2003. There is a challenge to that provision before the Northern Ireland Court of Appeal, the case having already been rejected by the High Court. To date, however, the definition of marriage has not been considered by the Supreme Court.
Having considered the immediate problems with both provisions, I now turn to the wider constitutional point. It cannot be right to require the Secretary of State to produce guidance for officials that has the potential to critique or undermine existing legislation. The only guidance that it would be proper for the Secretary of State to provide, mindful of Section 4(6) and Section 6 of the Human Rights Act, is guidance that upholds current primary legislation unless and until it changes. For the Secretary of State to do anything else would undermine the rule of law.
Mindful of this I have asked the Minister for an assurance that any guidance issued under Clause 4 will make plain, first, that even binding declarations of incompatibility do not have the effect of changing the law or of creating a legal imperative requiring the law to be changed in line with Section 4(6) of the Human Rights Act; and secondly, that no convention right can negate contrary to domestic legislative obligations in line with Section 6 of the Human Rights Act. Unless and until such a time as the law is changed, any guidance provided by the Secretary of State must require officials to uphold that law as it stands.
Lord Cashman (Lab)
My Lords, I speak in favour of the principles outlined by my noble friend Lord Adonis in Amendments 10 and 11, and against Amendment 16. I will be very brief indeed. Basically I am speaking in defence of Clause 4 because I believe that I have listened to a misrepresentation of that clause. For me it is as simple as this: the women of Northern Ireland and the lesbian, gay and bisexual people of Northern Ireland should be afforded exactly the same rights and opportunities as other citizens across the rest of the United Kingdom, and no one should face discrimination based on where they were born or where they now live. For those reasons, I support my noble friend’s amendments, but particularly Clause 4 as it stands.
Lord Browne of Belmont (DUP)
My Lords, I have listened very carefully to the wise words spoken by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, so I very much welcome Amendment 16. I want to say a few words about Clause 4. The architects of Clause 4 in the other place were very clever, and I pay tribute to their ingenuity. The word “functions” is dropped into Clause 4 in an attempt to make it fit, but it is no more than a fig leaf. Clause 4 is not about functions; it is about policy. This is not the appropriate legislative vehicle for this clause, touching as it does on sensitive issues that are highly controversial, particularly in Northern Ireland.
Regardless of our views on abortion and marriage—and there is a divergence of views right across this House—we can surely agree that they are issues deserving of proper attention and debate. A clause of this kind in a Bill of this kind does not provide that opportunity. What we have here, I rather suspect, is an attempt to change the law through guidance. It cannot work—any change would require legislation—but it is seeking to influence key devolved policy matters that should be decided by a Northern Ireland Executive and Assembly. It is proper for those matters to be dealt with by the devolved institutions. Northern Ireland is the most recent part of the UK to vote on abortion law. In 2016 a clear majority of Assembly Members voted to retain the current law. We should be very wary of undermining devolution, or being seen to undermine it. There is a risk that this clause creates a dangerous precedent for interference that could have wider consequences for our constitutional arrangements. Clause 4 is inappropriate, poorly drafted and should have no place in this Bill.
Baroness Barker
The noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, and the noble Lord, Lord Alton, have repeatedly said that there is no right to abortion, but your Lordships will know that time and again international courts and the UN have agreed that access to abortion is a right under Article 8. There are many rights that are not set out specifically in the convention, but the right to privacy and the right to family life are inextricably linked to control over one’s body and reproductive rights.
Therefore, I ask your Lordships to vote against the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, if it is put a vote, which I hope it is not. It inserts a reference to Section 6 of the Human Rights Act, and that is designed to constrain what the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland could include in guidance. That would be most likely used to declare that the current criminalisation of women who end their own pregnancies in Northern Ireland is acceptable under human rights law, because it is as a result of one or more of the provisions of primary legislation and the authority could not have acted differently. Specifically mentioning Section 6 of the Human Rights Act could require that guidance be issued that knowingly contravenes Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights—the right to privacy and family life. There have been many mentions of the court case in June, and we know that there will be a case before the Supreme Court later this year. It is important, therefore, that the guidance issued in Northern Ireland is sufficiently up to date to ensure that the men and women of Northern Ireland do not lose the access to human rights that the rest of us have.
This is a wrecking amendment, it would overturn the decision made by a majority in another place, and I hope therefore that all noble Lords will resist the amendment of the noble and learned Lord this evening.
Baroness Smith of Basildon
My Lords, I had not expected to be on so soon. Many of us in the Labour Party have some form on debating Clause 4. I am nothing if not consistent: I want to keep Clause 4. It is worth reminding ourselves what Clause 4, which was voted into the Bill by a cross-party majority of almost 100 in the House of Commons, says. It came on the back of a decision by the Supreme Court in June that Northern Ireland abortion law was “untenable and intrinsically disproportionate” in relation to rape and incest, which are criminal matters, and fatal foetal abnormality. The House of Commons looked at this issue within the confines and context of the Bill and also at gay marriage, which is possible in the rest of the UK as a result of a law passed in your Lordships’ House.
Noble Lords have rightly said that Clause 4 does not change the law but states that, in the absence of a Northern Ireland Executive to scrutinise the impact of laws on abortion and same-sex marriage in Northern Ireland and, specifically, their incompatibility with the UK’s human rights obligations, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is required to provide clear guidance to Northern Ireland civil servants on the operation of these laws, and to update the House each quarter on how she plans to address the laws’ impact on the UK’s human rights obligations. This is exactly what has been agreed by the House of Commons by a large majority.
I understand why the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, and the noble Baroness, Lady O’Loan, have brought forward this amendment. It recognises that the existing law may contravene the European Convention on Human Rights but then says that the Secretary of State can do nothing about it. That does not seem to be a position which your Lordships’ House would want to be in. Like my noble friend Lord Cashman, I understand the sentiments and principles behind the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Adonis. We think alike on these issues. I struggle with the concept of issuing guidance to civil servants not to enforce legislation. Guidance is not the way to do it, and that is why the House of Common has taken the approach that it has.
All noble Lords understand that these issues evoke emotional responses. They are difficult, personal issues, which is why this is a matter of conscience and there is a free vote in both Houses of Parliament. The House of Commons sought a way forward which is both proportionate and within the terms of this legislation. As I said once before within my own party: I urge your Lordships’ House to protect Clause 4.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
My Lords, this has been a thought-provoking, considered contribution to the debate this evening. At the outset, I draw the attention of the Committee back to the functioning and purpose of the Bill itself. The Bill is designed to ensure an opportunity to re-establish a functioning Executive. That is the ambition behind the Bill and its subsequent elements. A functioning Executive would go a long way to addressing the issues which have been raised this evening. We can be fairly clear that this matter most correctly rests with an Assembly in Northern Ireland.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has put forward an amendment and has graciously said that he will not put it to a vote. However, his contribution has allowed an open opportunity to explore each of the elements within the wider debate. The noble and learned Lord has been clear about the constitutionality of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. However, the purpose behind them is understood. He too was seeking to send a message with his amendments this evening. He has done that; we have heard the message.
I also listened very carefully to the impassioned remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Shinkwin; everyone here will have been moved by them and recognised the passion with which they were given. The Government have no intention of undermining or diminishing the position of persons with disabilities. That was never an attempt or an endeavour. This Bill and any guidance it puts forward would not influence Northern Ireland departments to act in any way which is not compliant with Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998, which includes provisions to ensure equality between people with disabilities and people without disabilities. I recognise, however, exactly the points the noble Lord made, and they are perhaps for us all to reflect upon this evening. This is, as a number of noble Lords have made plain, a matter of conscience, and I have no doubt that many this evening will be considering these elements as they listen to the ongoing remarks.
I am also taken by the ideas put forth by the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice. Two things become clear to me. Public opinion is a curious thing. Sometimes we think that we know what it is, and sometimes we are wrong, but I think he is absolutely correct that there has been an evolution in public opinion within Northern Ireland. Exactly what it is and how it can be determined can be captured in snapshots of opinion polls, which are like the blink of an eye. Sometimes they change, and it is very hard to pin them down. I cannot make any commitment regarding his novel idea of referendums, but I would like to discuss that further. If he is amenable, I would like to sit down in the future to explore that very thing. However, it is of course not for this particular Bill to move that matter forward.
Baroness O'Loan
The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, told me that the Government’s position was that there would be no move on abortion by this Parliament as long as the Northern Ireland Assembly was in devolution mode. I do not think it is helpful for the noble Lord to suggest that there be a referendum on abortion in Northern Ireland at this time of night, in this Bill. Even to discuss it, I think, is most unhelpful.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
I hope the noble Baroness will forgive me, but I disagree with her on this. I do not think that, in opening up a discussion with the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, we are doing anything other than recognising that there are challenges ahead, in respect of which this is but one opportunity to progress. It is not my intention that we will do any more than discuss this; indeed, it is far too great a discussion to have. Equally, this is perhaps not the correct Bill through which to do it, and this is not the right time of day to have such a detailed discussion.
I recognise a number of the points which were made by the noble Lords this evening. I am guided, in truth, by one simple fact. Clause 4 as drafted does not in any way instruct the Secretary of State to issue guidance to civil servants in Northern Ireland to disobey the law. It cannot do that in any way whatever. Given our earlier discussions about the challenges facing the civil service in Northern Ireland, perhaps this would be one burden too far, to try to encourage movement in that direction. Our purpose here is to ensure that, in recognising that Clause 4 came to us with overwhelming cross-party support from the other place, we acknowledge that that came from a democratic House. We must recognise what it represents and understand how best to take it forward. That is exactly what we will do, and we will do so carefully and in a very transparent manner. That is what is required from this particular clause. We will not be issuing guidance that seeks to undermine the letter of the law, in effect usurps it or changes it in any fashion whatever. We cannot and should not do that. I stress again that this is a matter correctly to be taken forward by the democratic Assembly of Northern Ireland.
On those points, my Lords, I hope that you will find it acceptable not to move your amendments to a vote.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I assure the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, that I have no intention of becoming King James III, and can I assure the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, that I am only too well aware of the defective drafting of Amendments 10 and 11. It was no part of my purpose to abrogate the proper operation of the law. I was simply advised by the Clerks that, because of the limits of the current Bill, it was not possible to have a straightforward proposal in it to legalise abortion and equal marriage, so in order to enable a debate to take place, the amendments were moved in the form that they were. However, I recognise that the noble and learned Lord does not intend to press his amendment, and nor do I intend to press mine. As the Minister rightly said, I was simply seeking to set down a marker for what the Northern Ireland Assembly will need to deliberate on—assuming there is an Assembly. I need to say in conclusion that if there is not a Northern Ireland Assembly within a reasonable period of time, I do not see how this Parliament can abrogate its responsibility for maintaining fundamental human rights in Northern Ireland.
Lord Trimble
“(4A) If the Secretary of State deems it in the public interest for a senior officer of a Northern Ireland department to exercise a function or functions of that department during the period for forming an Executive, the Secretary of State may summon the Northern Ireland Assembly to debate the issue.(4B) A debate under subsection (4A) may not extend beyond four hours.”
Lord Trimble
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to stand after sitting for so long. Amendment 13B, in my name, is grouped with two amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but I see no overlap between the two. The noble Lord’s amendments relate to the early stages of the process, when the Secretary of State has to formulate and issue guidance, whereas I look beyond that to what the operation might be.
From the point when the Assembly collapsed, I turned my mind to ways in which we might get it going again or find some way of substituting, or other ways of carrying out what Northern Ireland needs. I still feel that the suggestion of the Welsh model was quite good, but it became clear that it was far too much for the Northern Ireland Office to digest and that my rather ambitious proposals would not get anywhere. I have therefore gone to the other extreme and drafted something as short and simple as can be, but which would give the opportunity for a significant step forward.
The amendment takes off from the provisions in the Bill whereby senior officials in the Northern Ireland Administration can exercise, if they think it is in the public interest, the powers that they have under the legislation, which goes right back to the 1920 Act. I took that and added to it a proposal that the Secretary of State may, where she or he is satisfied that it is in the public interest, summon the Northern Ireland Assembly to debate the issues that they have in mind. This is entirely discretionary on the part of the Secretary of State. It does not compel her to take any particular action but gives her the opportunity to bring the Northern Ireland Assembly together to discuss how the powers referred to in this legislation are carried out. That would be beneficial to the Northern Ireland Office and to the Government. They would then have the opportunity to discuss what they are doing, or to see other people discussing what they are doing at some length and, I hope, with some degree of careful examination of the matter. This would improve the quality of what has been done and, as I say, would give the opportunity to move in that way. I will not go into this in detail, but a serious debate by the elected representatives is bound to add something to the quality of the Administration and is worth having.
There is also a political aspect to this, because if we had this implemented—again, it is entirely at the discretion of the Secretary of State; I am not saying that she must do this, and it could be that it is not operated—by bringing the Northern Ireland Assembly together, we would be taking a concrete step towards it coming back as it should. It adds something to the discussions that the Government may be having in trying to persuade the parties to sort out their differences and then return to the Administration. By having it in operation, even if only for a few hours on particular issues, we would make it clear that it is possible that the Assembly can work again, and will work again. Having got that initial first step, it will be easier, I hope, to take other steps beyond that.
This is a very modest amendment and I shall not press it to a vote. It is purely discretionary; nobody is obliged to do anything with regard to it. I shall not spin out the discussion any further. I think the best thing I can do for the House tonight is to sit down and let things take their course. I beg to move.
Lord Alderdice
My Lords, there is one reason why I would support the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has put forward: from the beginning, the element of the Northern Ireland institutions that worked rather well was the Assembly itself. When it came to the Executive functioning, that was much more contentious and difficult, but the Assembly functioned rather well. The idea of finding ways in which the Assembly could start to meet again, to debate issues of some substance that would increase, to some extent, the accountability of the Government side—be it civil servants or others—is a good one. To simply bring the Assembly back together for one occasion to debate a contentious issue would potentially be damaging because the old splits would re-emerge. To come together on a number of occasions to debate issues that are not necessarily of high contention but are nevertheless important seems to me a good idea. Whether one follows the very specific proposal in this amendment, or some of the other ideas that the creative mind of the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has produced over the last little while, the principle is important and merits exploration by the Government. To that extent, I support the amendment.
Lord Adonis
My Lords, I have Amendments 14 and 15 in this group. I think the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, undersold his own amendment. It seems to me that he was raising a very important principle: it should be possible for the Assembly to meet in the absence of an Executive. As somebody who looks at this from outside, it has always seemed strange to me that, because of the architecture of the Good Friday agreement, the Assembly cannot meet if it has not sustained an Executive. I do not know whether the noble Lord can tell me if it legally cannot meet. It certainly has not met in the absence of the Executive. It seems, in terms of seeking to engage the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, and encouraging them to create a context in which an Executive can be formed, what the noble Lord has proposed is extremely constructive. The Minister will be able to tell us whether legally it is possible to proceed in the way the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has proposed. My amendments facilitate a meeting of the Assembly for the specific purpose of discussing Brexit, given that that is one of—not the only, but one of—the most important decisions that will be taken affecting Northern Ireland over the next six months. It seems highly detrimental to the people of Northern Ireland that their voice is not being taken account of in any formal way, apart from the impact that they are able to have through their elected representatives in the House of Commons. If it were possible to bring the Assembly together for the purpose of discussing Brexit in the absence of Ministers, I cannot see any good reason why that should not happen.
I understand the point that the noble Lord, Lord Alderdice, has made, which is that summoning the Assembly purely for the purpose of discussing one issue—a contentious issue—may not be the best way of proceeding. Enabling the Assembly to meet to discuss a wider range of issues and issues of immediate local concern, including many that were raised at Second Reading, such as infrastructure, public services and so on in Northern Ireland, could help to inform the decisions that officials take. That would seem to be an eminently sensible way forward, and it appears to be what the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has in mind. However, if it were legally possible for the Assembly to meet in the absence of Ministers, I would have thought that that would be an excellent way of proceeding, and my amendments would simply include Brexit among the issues that should be discussed by any such meetings of the Assembly.
Lord Empey
My Lords, there might be a couple of technical issues surrounding this. As I understand it—perhaps the Minister can confirm this—under the current law the first item of business when the Assembly meets is the election of a Speaker. The Assembly would refuse to do that under the current circumstances, so that would have to be addressed.
However, there is a wider point that I want to make. I am sure that the Minister or his predecessors have been saying for more than a year that they are prepared to think outside the box. However, this is a hermetically sealed box; it has a number of combinations on it but nobody knows what they are; and it has not been opened in the past year. Not a single idea has been brought forward. For months the noble Lords, Lord Alderdice and Lord Trimble, have been putting forward options—but they are talking to a brick wall, because the principal holy grail at the moment is, “Don’t upset the Shinners”. As long as that is the driving force, we will never move a yard forward.
So I hope that the Minister will, with the Secretary of State, genuinely be prepared to look outside the box. We will be sitting here having this conversation in several months’ time, and I do not know whether these are the right options but I think that they certainly merit discussion. The Northern Ireland Office has to start thinking outside the box. I understand that the Prime Minister and everybody else is Brexit focused. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, rightly said that this is the biggest change that has happened to us in the last 20 years and we are out to lunch. Our voice is not being heard, yet the people of Northern Ireland will be the most directly affected. It is barking mad that we are in this position—so let us genuinely think outside the box.
I hope that when he winds up, the Minister will be able to refer back to Amendments 7 and 8, which I spoke to earlier, concerning the circumstances in which our health service and other matters could be addressed in the future. These are all parts of a bigger picture. I just hope that he will persuade his right honourable friend in the other place to start thinking outside the box, because we are trapped, it is wrong that we are trapped and people are hurting. This Parliament has a responsibility towards those people, and we are not doing our duty.
Lord Murphy of Torfaen
My Lords, I think that there is a case for putting this on the table as a matter for discussion in the forthcoming negotiations. Obviously the Good Friday agreement is a structure that means that all sorts of different organisations have to operate at the same time. You have to have an Assembly, an Executive, a north/south ministerial body and a British intergovernmental conference with the Republic of Ireland. However, the noble Lord, Lord Empey, is right: you have to think outside the box. There has to be imagination. The noble Lord, Lord Trimble, has been talking for at least a year about using what could have been the original Welsh model, when the Welsh Assembly was effectively a very large county council. It has changed considerably over the years—in my view, for the better. But that was an opportunity for elected people in Wales to get together. We have just under 100 Members of the legislative Assembly in Northern Ireland. They do not meet formally or informally. This would give them a chance to go to Stormont and talk about issues, and also talk among themselves—to start talking again—because this is all about talking in many ways.
Lord Bruce of Bennachie
Before the Minister replies, may I add that if he is minded to make a constructive response to this, might it involve scrutiny committees meeting again? That is a way of getting people to work together, and within those scrutiny committees could be a Brexit committee. The best way to break the deadlock is to get people used to the idea that they did work together and they could do it again.
Lord Hay of Ballyore (DUP)
I did not intent to speak on this particular issue, but we are talking about the Assembly meeting to discuss issues. This has already been on the table. All the other parties are keen for the Assembly to meet to discuss Brexit, and there are other serious issues that the Assembly could come together on—public representatives meeting and coming, as far as possible, to a consensus. This has been on the table for some time. All the other parties are happy to move in that direction, at least for the Assembly to meet without an Executive. The only party which has said no to that is Sinn Féin—so anything suggested this evening is already on the table, and it has failed. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, is right—why do we pander to Sinn Féin? We will never achieve what may be achieved in trying to get devolution up and running.
It is important that the Assembly does meet, even without Ministers and an Executive. That would be a start—discussing some major issues that deeply concern the people of Northern Ireland.
Lord Duncan of Springbank
My Lords, in my head I have a New Yorker cartoon of a very elegant gentleman with a cat on the floor next to its litter tray. The gentleman is pointing and saying, “Never think outside the box”.
We do need to think afresh—Amendment 13B from the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, and the other amendments from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, do have certain impediments. The noble Lord, Lord Empey, referred to the question of the Speaker and the question of cross-party consent being one of those impediments. I do not want to end this evening’s discussion on that negative statement. Let me take away some of the ideas that have been expressed tonight. Let me think and reflect on them in discussion with my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and let us see if we can live up to that statement of “thinking outside the box”. On that basis, I hope that noble Lords will not press their amendments.
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
Lord Mackay of Clashfern
My Lords, I said earlier that I would move this amendment, but since it has been grouped with the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, I think we have had plenty of opportunity to discuss it, so I will not move it now.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 View all Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 137-I(a) Amendments for Committee, supplementary to the marshalled list (PDF) - (30 Oct 2018)
Arrangement of Business
Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)
My Lords, the Public Bill Office will be open to receive amendments during the next half an hour. At the end of that window, the time for the House to resume will be advertised on the annunciator. I should warn noble Lords that in the event that no amendments are tabled, the period between the end of the tabling window and the resumption of the House may be fairly brief. I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure and in so doing I suggest that the House does not resume before 12.07 am.
Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill
Tuesday 30th October 2018
(6 years ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 View all Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018 Debates Read Hansard Text Amendment Paper: HL Bill 137-I(a) Amendments for Committee, supplementary to the marshalled list (PDF) - (30 Oct 2018)
Lord Taylor of Holbeach (Con)
My Lords, I have it in command from Her Majesty the Queen to acquaint the House that Her Majesty, having been informed of the purport of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Bill, has consented to place her prerogative, so far as it is affected by the Bill, at the disposal of Parliament for the purposes of the Bill.